I've been listening to Josh Ritter's latest album lately (The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter) and I'm very much enjoying the song The Temptation of Adam. Maybe it's because compared to the rest of the album (which is quite different from his folk-rock ways) it more closely resembles his previous work, or maybe it's the unlikely juxtaposition of a story about love taking place in a place of war, but the song has really hooked me.It's not often you hear anything about missile silos now a days never mind find a love song that takes place inside one. In fact, I would hazard to guess that a lot of younger listeners might not even know that much about the history of real missile silos during the cold war in the 1960's, a time fraught with tension. Missile silos were originally intended to carefully house the nation's nuclear weapons in time of war to protect them from a first strike by an enemy. As such, they were housed fairly deep underground as defense against being destroyed by an attack, and were designed to be self-sufficient in case of nuclear fallout.
Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the mapAll of the sites were decommissioned in the 60's, some after only being in operation for 4 years, and anything of value was removed. Since then, many have fallen into private hands, and you can actually buy them for your own use if you have enough money and technical skill to renovate them. While you're enjoying the song, poke around in the following sites to learn more about the history behind the song's setting:
Of all the places where you thought that love would be found
But I would only need one pin to show where my heart's at
In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground
Read and see the history of the development of missile silos at SiloWorld.
Take a virtual tour of a missile silo HERE and HERE.
Want to buy one? Head over to this site.
2 comments:
I've finally gotten around to listening to that Josh Ritter disc, and it's pretty great, I gotta say.
"I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the bomb."
"I think about the big one, WW III
Would we ever really know the world was ending?
You'd just hold me here forever like you're holding me tonight
I think about that great big button, and I'm tempted."
My god that song is genius...I agree that it harkens back to his earlier stuff, which I'm still moderately more in love with.
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