Songs for Saturday: Keep the Dream Alive

[mdlbear]

On January 28th, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster happened. I wrote Keep the Dream Alive shortly afterward (less than a week, IIRC), and performed it in the Challenger Memorial concert at Bayfilk III.

I added a verse in 2003 for Columbia.

The recording on the song page, is not particularly good -- much too fast, among other things. If I put together an album of space songs I'll re-record it. There are some concert performances, most of which are better: ConChord 2008, Conflikt 2009, and Westercon 2011. If you only listen to one, make it that last one. I should promote that one to the song page, but I'm being lazy.

Keep the Dream Alive Copyright 1986, 2003 Stephen Savitzky. CC by-nc-sa/4.0. In the year of Nineteen Eighty Six, On an icy winter's day The shuttle Challenger left the pad And started on her way The shuttle Challenger lifted off With seven brave women and men In flames they died just ten miles high, And never came home again. Never came home again, In flames they died just ten miles high And never came home again. And seventeen years later Nearly forty miles high, Columbia's wreckage wrote a line Of fire across the sky But long before the jetstream blew Her trail of smoke away We saw that it marked a highway We would travel again some day. --2003--02--01 So never say that they died in vain Nor stay on the ground afraid, The stars are one step closer now Because of the price we've paid. And mourn for the shuttles that fly no more, And weep for the friends we've lost, But to leave the Earth will still be worth Whatever it has to cost. And fire no guns in last salute But let the rockets roar, And reach for the wide and starry sky As Challenger did before. And raise no earthbound slab of stone, To mark the place they lie, But write their names with a shuttle's flames, Ten miles in the sky. And here's a toast to the shuttle crews Who died for the dream of space And all the pioneers who have The sky for a resting place. No grave nor tombstone do they need, For their memory will survive As long as we fly beyond the sky And keep the dream alive. Keep the dream alive, As long as we fly beyond the sky And keep the dream alive. Keep the dream alive, Let the shuttles fly beyond the sky And keep the dream alive. *Note:* Permission is hereby given to record, reproduce, and publish this song, provided you notify the author and send the usual mechanical license fees to a space-related charity, for example the Space Shuttle Children's Fund. Watch this space: I intend to put up a lead sheet and recording as soon as I can get them together. Meanwhile, a very inadequate (low-resolution scan of a second-generation copy of a hastily-pencilled, inexpertly-transcribed) lead sheet can be found here. Don't say I didn't warn you. Online: http://Steve.Savitzky.net/Songs/dream/lyrics.txt Automatically generated with flktran from ../Lyrics/dream.flk.

Comments

[freyjaw]

I remember where I was. I had just come back to my dorm room from my Winterim class when I got a call from my mom (I paid for my own phone). Mom told me to turn on the news - the Challenger blew up. I turned on my little TV to see, then yelled it down the halls. It was an awful day.

[madfilkentist]

Good song! To me, the issue isn't so much speed as that the guitar competes with the vocal line rather than enhancing it. This is a song where the lyrics are all-important. I'm not a guitarist, so I can't say exactly what to do, but having it mark the verse and refrain boundaries and elsewhere reducing it a bit in the mix might be the way to go.