A new periodic feature whereby I spout my own biased and bilge like observations on things I have seen, read, heard or experienced......
The Airbus A380
Big, Beautiful and Bold. A truly magnificent piece of engineering and a glorious looking machine. A gleaming, shiny tribute to European technical and financial collaboration. Apparently even when loaded with its usual quota of 555 passengers, it will use about 3 litres of fuel per 100Km per passenger. Thats about the same as a Ford Mondeo, except of course the Mondeo would require around 7 refuelling stops to cross the Atlantic and if pulling a trailer full of luggage would see its consumption drop by around a fifth. I know the bleeding heart, limp wristed, sandal wearing, leaflet waving, vege-fucking-tarian conservationists are now pointing to aircraft as the root of all evil and the cause of global warming (yet to be proven), but air travel is now a part of life, so fuck off and tend to your plants you knobbers. Stay in your crummy little towns and in your own tiny minds. Live like fucking cavemen if thats what you want. Me...I want planes, sun and technology, no matter how shite it might be. If I want peace and quiet and tranquility then I'll find it in the Highlands, but after a week I want my civilisation back. Air travel is no longer just for the rich, but for everyone. It has broadened minds by allowing travel to distant places where other cultures can be seen and experienced. It educates us if we choose to allow it, and of course it satisfies one of Man's great fantasies - the ability to fly. Yes, I know the Chav population use it for a two hour hop to shitholes like Fuengirola where they can "enjoy" a bit of Britain in a sunny land. And undoubtedly air travel has encouraged some of the vilest parts of our culture to be exported, like Lager Louts, Slutty pissed up girls, "real" British pubs (yeah, they're so fucking real), street vomiting, piss poor cuisine and bad dress sense. But without it, we'd have to put up with this shite and these wankers all year round, so why not export it away for a while. Just a tinge of sadness though regarding this beautiful flying dolphin.....it is subsonic, so you'll not get there any faster than if you were on a Jumbo or an Airbus 333. If Concorde had a grave it must be spinning in it. The money grabbing, thieving fucks that are the Airline industry is the only example of a business where the technology has gone backwards and the sale of something that actually takes longer is cherished. When I see this machine, as I did Concorde, I just think that by the grace of God and the pressures of the market place, the human race has civilised itself.
Amused to Death - Roger Waters
Some of you may have noticed that my recent "I'm Currently Listening to.." was set to the above album. So I thought that like my sporadic display of great (in my view) Art I would add the odd Jack review on music, film, books or TV or whatever I fucking fancy. So it starts with this magnificent offering by the God of Great Writing. He who should be honoured and cherished. The one that is Sir Roger of Waters, The King of The Floydness that was Pink. As you may have guessed I have always stated my favourite band is, and always will be Pink Floyd. Masterpeices like The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals will be held up and revered in future generations in the same way as works by Strauss, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart are today. When they split I was as devastated as a young teenage girl who was in love with The Bay City Rollers the day they "quit" and had lost her first pube on the same day. Why would this supreme band, who stood above all others, had ignored the Singles Chart without a flicker of an eyelid, had swatted the punks aside with a contemptuous swipe and had written music so angst ridden that the covers should have had warnings on them about not being sold to unhappy people with access to a gas oven, split up? The answer was because of Roger Waters ego. The man had a chip the size of an Airbus A380 on his shoulder. He hated the world and everything it had done previously, everything it did now, and everything it was going to do. Manna from heaven if you're a songwriter. So he disbanded Floyd, threatened to destroy the master tapes of The Wall to ensure the others didn't get any money and recorded the aptly named Final Cut with his nemesis David Gilmour. The tension in that studio must have been electric. Since then they haven't spoken to each other, except by courier when producing the album Is There Anybody Out here? which is a live version of The Wall.
Because of this I have ignored his solo works and lived off the collection of Floyd albums from their Roger days, and the two studio albums made post Rog, and the two live albums made post Rog. Then last year I bought a music DVD of the man himself in concert. Skank had bought me a live Gilmour DVD taken at the Robert Wyatt Meltdown concert in 2001, which had Gilomour doing a "Floyd" unplugged type set and was simply stunning. I thought some balance was needed here as I always favoured Gilmour and believed him to be equal in Floyds success to Rog. The Rog DVD was a real eye opener. Great songs, including some live stuff from Animals which I'd never heard done live before. It was on this that I heard the song Perfect Sense, the lyrics of which I published last year as being very poetic, and very apt considering the hostage situations occurring at the time. As a result of this I asked Skank to buy me the CD's for Christmas, and so now I am the proud owner of Amused to Death, The Pro's and Cons of Hitchhiking and Radio Kaos.
On first hearing this album I thought...."fuck me thats hard going" but that was the exact reaction in 1979 when I first played The Wall. I persevered then and I did now and by the end of listen number two I had decided that some tracks were already growing. A read of the lyrics during lunch and I started to understand the theme. And now several listens later it is right up there in the list of my top albums. Covering topics such as the futility of war, the dependence upon TV, the media saturation of our lives, the globalisation of our cultures and a moving tribute to an old soldier and an imaginary girlfiend killed on TV in Tianamen Square, this album is stunning. The lyrics are sung ranging between Waters frustration and despair through to his passion and caring. Pointed lyrics as well and an ending 4 tracks which quite simply act as a moving and thought provoking diatribe on modern life. My favourite track is between Watching TV, It's a Miracle and the title track Amused to Death. The songs are very reminiscent in parts of early Floyd, with smatterings of elements of Echoes and Animals thrown in for good measure. Aside from the usual array of jets, dogs barking, cars driving byand detuned radio sound effect, the guitar features heavily as well, but using Jeff Beck instead of Gilmour. Yes, Jeff "Hi-fucking-Ho-fucking Silver Bastard Lining" Beck! This man performs easily as well as Gilmour, which disappoints me as I have always seen Gilmour as a guitar god and all round nice guy (he sold his London house for £4million and gave the whole lot to the charity for the homeless Shelter!). That aside I would recommend this to anyone who actually still likes to turn the lights down, put the headphones on, or turn the hi-fi up and read the lyrics, whilst playing the air guitar, singing every note and actually LISTENING to the music. If you stop the CD to replay the really good bits then this could be for you.
Not for teenagers or people who like dancing!
Roger Waters was the soul of Pink Floyd, not Syd Barrett. Roger Waters was the person who drove the band to produce their benchmark masterpiece albums. He is my lyrical poet and hero.
This supermarket life is getting long
What is the heart life of a colour TV
What is the shelf life of a teenage queen
Ooh, Western woman
Ooh, Western girl
News hound sniffs the air when Jessica Hahn goes down
He latches on to that symbol of detatchment
Attracted by the peeling away of feeling
The celebrity of the abused shell, the belle
Ooh, Western woman
Ooh, Western girl
Ooh, Western woman
Ooh, Western girl
And the children on Melrose strut their stuff
Is absolute zero cold enough
And out in the valley warm and clean
The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think, no tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender, what is wrong with me
Why am I so out of breath
The captain said, Excuse me ma'am,
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told, we bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth.. but then it was over
We oohed and aahed, we drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars, a keen eyed lookout spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead, they repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every reason for our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry, no feelings left
This species has amused itself to death....
Later GrocerJack
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