1 00:00:01,540 --> 00:00:05,820 \h Announcer: Please welcome John Speck, Musician and Avionics and Flight Controls Lead 2 00:00:05,820 --> 00:00:14,620 \h for NASA Kennedy Space Center 3 00:00:14,620 --> 00:00:22,290 \h John Speck: Hello. I was very young, I lived in Michigan growing up, 4 00:00:22,290 --> 00:00:26,300 \h I lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, that's where Kellogg's makes their cereal. 5 00:00:26,300 --> 00:00:30,570 \h There was an amazing thing in the music industry that was going on at the time, 6 00:00:30,570 --> 00:00:35,260 \h it was called Beatlemania and it didn't really affect me too much, but, 7 00:00:35,260 --> 00:00:40,330 \h because I was very, very young at the time but I remember going to school and my teacher, 8 00:00:40,330 --> 00:00:45,710 \h who was at the time I thought was maybe about 105 years old, she brings the class to 9 00:00:45,710 --> 00:00:48,020 \h the front and she says "I have an announcement to make." 10 00:00:48,020 --> 00:00:53,430 \h We think great, we're getting out of school early, or something like that, and she proceeds to tell us, 11 00:00:53,430 --> 00:01:00,040 \h she saw the Beatles at Shea stadium over the weekend, and she tells us about the screaming kids, 12 00:01:00,040 --> 00:01:05,130 \h and the limos, and police and she was like this giddy 16-year-old 13 00:01:05,130 --> 00:01:09,840 \h teenager reading a "beat" magazine, and I thought wow! 14 00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:12,820 \h This music really has an effect on people. 15 00:01:12,820 --> 00:01:18,780 \h So I go home, and I tell my parents about this, and pretty soon we have a 45 record player and 16 00:01:18,780 --> 00:01:27,030 \h my brother Jim and I are playing these 45s, these Beatle's songs "twist and shout" and we're into guitars, 17 00:01:27,030 --> 00:01:33,350 \h rock stars, we told our parents we need guitars, they said well sure, no problem. 18 00:01:33,350 --> 00:01:37,820 \h They go upstairs and come back downstairs and brought us our very first guitars, 19 00:01:37,820 --> 00:01:45,080 \h they were wooden tennis racquets and hard to tune and hard on your fingers but we really didn't care, 20 00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:48,720 \h we put straps on them and total rock stars. 21 00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:55,550 \h I just remember that feeling in my hand, it was so great. But then one day the music stops. 22 00:01:55,550 --> 00:02:01,650 \h This is not a Buddy Holly story; it is where I start to cleverly inject engineering into the story. 23 00:02:01,650 --> 00:02:09,750 \h The record player actually breaks. I'm not sure what all broke but I'm pretty sure the stylus or the wires. 24 00:02:09,750 --> 00:02:16,370 \h My mom in her great Michigan wires, well, john, I guess you have the knack. 25 00:02:16,370 --> 00:02:20,780 \h I don't know what the knack is. All I know is I fix things. 26 00:02:20,780 --> 00:02:27,140 \h So fast forward, move to Dayton, Ohio, get real guitars, take lessons, 27 00:02:27,140 --> 00:02:32,120 \h learn how to play, play in other groups and continue to fix things, of course, 28 00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:35,740 \h and then go off to college and study electrical engineering, and then 29 00:02:35,740 --> 00:02:42,220 \h I really started to play with other musicians, so basically doing music at night and engineering by day, 30 00:02:42,220 --> 00:02:47,500 \h and that seemed to work out very good and I played with a lot of really great musicians. 31 00:02:47,500 --> 00:02:50,680 \h And I thought well maybe this is something that I want to do, 32 00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:54,170 \h but then there were really three things that changed my mind. 33 00:02:54,170 --> 00:02:59,860 \h One was I was an extremely poor college student and I was very tired of that. 34 00:02:59,860 --> 00:03:04,350 \h The next was all of my engineering buddies, they're all graduating and they're 35 00:03:04,350 --> 00:03:13,490 \h getting real j-o-b-s and my musician friends were sitting around waiting for the next g-i-g, 36 00:03:13,490 --> 00:03:21,700 \h so I went with the real j-o-b, and never regretted it and now playing with a group of other engineers and 37 00:03:21,700 --> 00:03:28,920 \h they all have the knack, and we basically play music at night and launch rockets by day, and that, 38 00:03:28,920 --> 00:03:34,850 \h my friend, is basically how music has affected my engineering or my engineering has affected my music. 39 00:03:34,850 --> 00:03:39,490 \h So now I'm going to give you a little bit of innovation, inspiration, 40 00:03:39,490 --> 00:03:45,480 \h or the insanity of writing a song at least for me, and I'll tell you a little bit about it. 41 00:03:45,480 --> 00:03:51,480 \h I took a 20-hour train ride up to Washington, D.C., to visit my daughter, Emily, 42 00:03:51,480 --> 00:03:56,160 \h and I thought what a great opportunity to write a train song, because there are so many great train songs, 43 00:03:56,160 --> 00:04:01,250 \h and this is a perfect opportunity to do that, and this was working out really well. 44 00:04:01,250 --> 00:04:06,390 \h I got on the train, and I found some music that I liked, and I always find that's the easy part, 45 00:04:06,390 --> 00:04:10,910 \h and I actually wrote a train verse and I thought, this is a rockin' train song. 46 00:04:10,910 --> 00:04:15,820 \h So ten hours later I'm still on the train and I'm tired and I'm wired and I can't sleep, 47 00:04:15,820 --> 00:04:22,620 \h and I have this dark thought in my head and I go, hey, I don't think my wife likes me as much anymore. 48 00:04:22,620 --> 00:04:25,240 \h I don't think she thinks I'm as hot as I used to be. 49 00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:31,760 \h Then I write this dark verse and I go, this is no longer a train song, this is a dark song. 50 00:04:31,760 --> 00:04:39,650 \h Anyway, 15 hours later, I get some sleep, I wake up and I go, I am the stupidest person. 51 00:04:39,650 --> 00:04:43,050 \h I wouldn't last a day without my wife. She's amazing person. 52 00:04:43,050 --> 00:04:48,800 \h I don't see how she puts up with me, so then I write this, well, a romantic part of the song, 53 00:04:48,800 --> 00:04:54,270 \h and then finally, after almost 20 hours, I said it's just time to get off of the train, 54 00:04:54,270 --> 00:04:56,720 \h and I say, it's just time to say good night. 55 00:04:56,720 --> 00:05:02,660 \h So that's really the name of the song is called "just say good night" and I find with any new song, 56 00:05:02,660 --> 00:05:07,600 \h it's very rough around the edges, because it's brand new but I know you guys are all rough around the edges, 57 00:05:07,600 --> 00:05:43,090 \h too, so I thought I'd give it a go. Anyway -- One, two, three, four. 58 00:05:43,090 --> 00:05:47,030 \h Riding on the night train into the dark 59 00:05:47,030 --> 00:05:52,920 \h Riding on the night train into the light of the day 60 00:05:52,920 --> 00:06:00,170 \h Well it's hard to keep that spark and turn it into a flame 61 00:06:00,170 --> 00:06:03,770 \h I don't see that smile, that light in your eyes 62 00:06:03,770 --> 00:06:10,290 \h I don't see that spring in your step when you reach for my hand 63 00:06:10,290 --> 00:06:17,080 \h It's hard to keep that spark and turn it into a flame 64 00:06:17,080 --> 00:07:05,420 \h Time to say good night, well, it's time to say good night 65 00:07:05,420 --> 00:07:09,460 \h I love you more than water and the sunshine 66 00:07:09,460 --> 00:07:15,290 \h I love you more than words and my hands can possibly say 67 00:07:15,290 --> 00:07:22,310 \h Well it's hard to keep that spark and turn it into a flame 68 00:07:22,310 --> 00:07:28,030 \h Hard to keep that spark and turn it into a flame