Welcome back Wolf 359 friends and fans to another installment of Wolf 359 Daily! It’s October 16th and Mission Day 510, so we’re jumping in with a quick episode to discuss “A Little Night Music”!
While it’s the second one on our schedule, “A Little Night Music” was our first Mission Mishaps mini-episode. It was originally released on September 12, 2017, between season 4 episodes “Dirty Work” and “The Watchtower.” While many of Wolf 359’s earlier mini-episodes carry some story details and important character backgrounds, the Mission Mishaps tended to be more like fun little vignettes. They were certainly a nice relief on the off-weeks between episodes as we barreled towards Wolf 359’s climax.
“A Little Night Music” sees Officer Eiffel discovering another duty that he was hitherto unaware he was expected to perform. Wolf 359’s first mini-episode, “Are Spacesuits Itchy?” involved a similar instance, though in that case Eiffel was expected to answer third-graders’ questions about space. Today, Eiffel provides his first quarterly morale-boosting broadcast for the crew. Y’know, nearly a year and a half into their mission. No big deal.
Eiffel decides to try to describe some of the radio transmissions they’ve received as part of his broadcast, and I gotta say, this hit a special place in my music major heart. I cannot tell you how many times I’d forget the name of some instrumental piece that I should have known the name of, and had to be there like “You know, the one that goes da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da? You know it. That one!” One of my favorite websites back then was a music library site that included a little point-and-click keyboard that you could plunk in whatever tune you were thinking of, and it would do its best to find the piece that best matched it. We got a lot of mileage out of that one.
Anyway, most of Eiffel’s broadcast discusses the “Mind Eraser,” Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major. I love that Eiffel says “Its superpower is being the catchiest thing in the universe,” because the chord progression of Pachelbel’s Canon does crop up in an awful lot of popular music over the years. I’m going to include some YouTube links in the article text to two videos that have lived in my brain for longer than I want to think about. The first is Rob Paravonian’s “Pachelbel Rant,” which was a real one-two punch for me as someone who was heading to college to study music and had played cello since the fifth grade. The second is Axis of Awesome’s “4 Chords” medley that all use this “I-V-vi-IV” progression. (I know that’s not the exact progression of Canon in D Major, don’t at me, musicians in the audience). Truly, Pachelbel's Canon is the earworm of all time, and once you hear it in a song, you’ll never unhear it.
I also just love that by the end of this episode, Eiffel seemed to actually get kind of invested in giving this broadcast and forgot he was supposed to be curmudgeonly about completing his contracted duties. The Mind Eraser truly cannot be stopped. Also loved that it was turning the broadcast off which raised crew morale. Hey man, whatever gets it crossed off the to-do list.
These Mission Mishaps are such fun little asides. It’s a shame that several of them fall outside of our real-time relisten, having taken place earlier in, or outside of the Hephaestus mission. There are some stretches in our schedule where we won’t have any official broadcasts, so maybe we’ll squeeze in a few off-the-record moments to talk about them as well. But next up on our schedule is Episode 7: “The Sound and the Fury” coming up on Friday, October 18! We hope you’ll join us again, and in the meantime, give “A Little Night Music” a listen on wolf359.fm or your podcatcher of choice!
Today’s rejected Pryce and Carter tip:
There must be some kinda way out of here, said the joker who clearly hasn’t read the fine print in his contract.
Wolf 359 Daily is written and recorded by Rina Cerame
Wolf 359 is a product of Kinda Evil Genius Productions. More information on the show can be found on their website at wolf359.fm
We’ll be back on October 18 for Episode 7: “The Sound and the Fury.” Thank you for listening!
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