Us And Them

And so the juggernaut that is Groover's Pink Floyd Week rolls on until it bumps inevitably into "Us And Them".

"Us and them.
And after all we're only ordinary men.
Me and you.
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do.
Forward! He cried from the rear
And the front rank died.
The general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side."

I've been re-reading The Bible just lately.
I know, I know; I'm a Godless heathen who says there's no God and no afterlife but I was prompted by an encounter in the British Museum the other week.
Dig around in the British Museum and you'll find all sorts of stuff from Biblical history. I spend way too much time in there.
I'd not read The Bible from cover to cover since I was a kid and I'd forgotten what a cracking good read it is.
So last night I'd read as far as Rehoboam. And it struck me that his is a good tale to put in an "Us And Them" post. So here goes:

Rehoboam was (as well as being a size of champagne bottle) Solomon's son and king of Israel, though it turns out he was a pretty crappy one.
Around 930 BC he inherited the throne and proceeded to make a complete asshat of himself, resulting in the division of his nation and the permanent loss of the ten northern tribes (yes, the same ten lost tribes of Israel that the tabloids are constantly finding in bizarre places around the world).
Most of the chapters in The Bible refer to the arguments between Rehoboam and Jeroboam (by sheer coincidence another size of champagne bottle; go figure …), who was Solomon's chief general, and of God's siding with Jeroboam against Rehoboam's folly.
It seems that the northern tribes were already pissed with Solomon for grossly and greedily over-taxing them and had agreed that they would make Jeroboam their king if he suceeded in a revolt against Rehoboam.
Well, that failed and Jeroboam scurried off to Egypt to hide out and lick his wounds. Meanwhile, Rehoboam went up to see the northern tribes and to listen to their case.

Stick with me; there is a point to all this guff.

The Bible has him taking advice from the wise elders that he should reduce the burden on the people and they would love him for it. You'd think that was sensible advice. He'd got warlike Egypt on his southern border and what he needed was a united nation with lots of people willing to fight for him.
Instead he goes off with his mates (a bunch of young tearaways and scallawags) who tell him to scourge the people with scorpions where Solomon has only previously scourged them with whips.
And the dork only goes and takes the advice of the stupid kids over the advice of the sage elders.
"Ha!" thinks God. "I've given these idiots the land of Israel so many times and every single time they fuck things up. Chosen People? Looks like I chose a bunch of fuckwits! Well … I've had it with 'em. I'm going for a lie down. I'll send my boy down later to pick up the pieces."
And off he toddles, leaving Rehoboam to reap the harvest of his own folly.

So Rehoboam grabs hold of his tax collector and says "Go tell the buggers I'm doubling their taxes", whereupon the tax collector is - somewhat predictably - stoned to death by the people and Rehoboam goes "uh-oh" and leaps in his chariot and high tails it back to Jerusalem.
The ten tribes bring Jeroboam back from Egypt and set him up as king and "there was war between them all their days".

This had the effect of trashing the country and the economy and allowed Egypt to invade the south. Rehoboam payed them off with all the treasure in Solomon's palace and his people did look upon him and shake their heads and say "Twat!".

Meanwhile, up north the ten tribes happily partied on for another couple of hundred years until the Assyrians conquered them. Assyrian policy was not to assimilate on the later Roman model but to drive conquered peoples from their land and to disperse them.
And so the ten lost tribes of Israel were indeed lost. A whole lot of them ended up living in Manhattan; others did stand-up in Vegas or moved to Hollywood. The rest are out there somewhere. The tabloids know where … Hey ho.

The point of all this is that history has a tendency to make greedy, venal and ignorant people leaders … the shit floats to the top. And that, even though there are lessons from history such as this one in all the holy books of all the world's religions, the idiots totally fucking ignore them.
The folly of Rehoboam was to have pursued policies contrary to his own interest. Greed and ignorance overcame common sense and resulted in war, poverty and far-reaching consequences that are still being played out in the Middle East today.
Modern leaders still disregard this simple lesson.
And I'm not just talking about Bush. Look around the world. There is war everywhere. Darfur, Indonesia, Chechenia, Congo, all over the fucking place.
And every one of these wars could have been avoided by looking at the lessons of the past and learning from them. Applying common sense over greed, ignorance and fear.

And of course we come back to the very things our governments use to keep us in check: ignorance and fear.
Fear = Control.

Our weapons have evolved since Biblical times; our brains it seems, have not.
Back then, desert tribal behaviour was based on ignorance, fear and mistrust:
Me against my brother;
Me and my brother against my cousin;
Me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger.

Us and them.

Fuck it. If we cannot learn from what's in front of our eyes we don't deserve any better.

Hey Ho, Huff The Talbot

I love that song.
Anyone who can tell me which song "Hey ho, huff the talbot" comes from without recourse to Google has incomparably splendid taste. The clue is in the fact that this is Pink Floyd week, but it's not quite as easy as that.

Anyhoo, it seems that some of my dear readers across the pond are unfamiliar with the Floyd, so here's a well-worn tale to give you some sort of idea of the kind of people we're dealing with.

This from Wiki:
"The original Pink Floyd pig was designed by Roger Waters and built in December 1976 in preparation for shooting the cover of the Animals album. Plans were made to fly the forty-foot, helium-filled balloon over Battersea Power Station on the first day's photo-shoot, with a marksman prepared to shoot the pig down if it broke free. However, the pig was not launched.

On the second day, the marksman wasn't present because no one had told him to return, and the pig broke free due to a strong gust of wind (gaining a lot of press coverage). It disappeared from sight within five minutes, and was spotted by airline pilots at forty thousand feet in the air. Flights at Heathrow Airport were cancelled as the huge inflatable pig flew through the path of aircraft, eastwards from Britain, over the English Channel, finally landing on a rural farm in Kent that night.

The pig was recovered and repaired for the resumption of photography for the album cover, but unfortunately the sky was cloudless and blue, thus "boring". However, the pictures of the sky from the first day were suitable; eventually, the album cover was created using a composite of photos from the first and third days.

The pig that was originally floated above Battersea Power Station was called "Algie"."

Say "Hi" to Algie Pig.

As a nation, we English are kinda proud of our little eccentricities. This was one of them.
Oink oink!

The Boredom And Pain

As Vic was the only one to zig-zag her way through the boredom and pain of Pink Floyd's very own quiz, she becomes our runaway winner with three million points out of a possible seventy-six.
There's no prize other than the right to wear a smug grin for the remainder of Pink Floyd week.

Here are the rest of the answers:

28. Doctor Strange from Marvel Comics.
29. Ballet de Marseilles.
30. Eclipse.
31. Meddle.
32. The Alan Parsons Project (yes, the one featured in Austin Powers 3).
33. Syd Barrett.
34. The huge inflatable pig being photographed for the Animals album cover.
35. Richie Havens and Big Brother And The Holding Company.
36. A nude woman.
37. Britannia Row Studios.
38. Michael Kamen. He co-wrote the apalling "Everything I Do" for Bryan Adams.
39. (a) The Beatles; (b) Abbey Road Studios; (c) Sergeant Pepper.
40.(a) Gerald Scarfe; (b) Jane Asher (c) Paul Mc.Cartney; (d) Peter Asher; (e) Gordon Waller (of Peter and Gordon).
41. (a) Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict; (b) If.
42. The voting bell in the Houses of Parliament.
43. Ely Cathedral.
44. (a) Royal Festival Hall, London; (b) 1967.
45. June Child, later Mrs. Marc Bolan.
46. (a) Floyd's artwork company; (b) Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell.
47. Cambridge (that's Cambridge, England for the Yanks).
48. The Mouse from Bike.
49. (a) Buffy Saint Marie and The 1910 Fruit Gum Company; (b) 1971.
50. Jimmy Young and Syd Barrett.

Next week I'll be asking a thousand and one questions about my bottom.
Start revising now.

I Mean, Good Manners Don't Cost Nuffink

Hokay.
Well after the first part of Pink Floyd's very own quiz, gleaned from the pages of this prehistoric document that is the programme for their last tour, Vic is WAY in the lead. In fact Vic, you have far more points than if you had answered them all correctly.


Here are the correct answers for yesterday's questions:

1. They were all bands containing one or more members of Pink Floyd.
2. Nick Mason; Roy Harper; Claire Torrey.
3. They are both singing dogs who have recorded with the band.
4. Medicine Head; 1972.
5. Alan Parker ("Fame" and "The Commitments").
6. Absence; physical or mental.
7. David Gilmour for Ozzie Clark's Quorum.
8. The London College of Music.
9 Joe Boyd.
10. (a) Producer of both Piper and Saucerful; (b) also Richard Wright; (c) an English hit record "Oh Babe, What Would You Say".
11. Cambridge slang for "fucking".
12. Paul and Linda Mc.Cartney.
13. (a) Stephane Grapelli; (b) Yehudi Menuhin.
14. South Africa.
15. Jeff Beck, but the band were too in awe of him to ask.
16. (a) Mike Curb (b) Zabriskie Point; (c) Michelangelo Antonioni.
17. (a) Barbet Schoeder. (b) Barfly.
18. (a) There are only six instead of seven colours in the spectrum. (b) Indigo.
19. Roger Keith Barrett.
20. St. Augustine's Road.
21. A newspaper headline.
22. Echoes.
23. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun.
24. Comfortably Numb.
25. Corporal Clegg.
26. Chapter 24.
27. Time.

And here, for anyone who can be bothered (or has Vic's twisted yet hilarious imagination), are the rest of the questions:

28. Who is the strange figure on the right hand sie of the cover of "Saucer …"?

29. Which ballet company did Pink Floyd play live for?

30. What was DSoM originally called, when played live?

31. What was the previous studio album called?

32. What did the engineer of DSoM go on to write and produce?

33. Who appeared at the recording of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"?

34. What escaped Battersea Power Station (and gave Vic the emblem for this week)?

35. Who else was on the bill when Pink Floyd played the Winterland Ballroom in 1967?

36. What's behind the red veil?

37. Where was Animals recorded?

38. Who was the orchestral arranger on The Wall, and what is his connection with Sherwood Forest?

39. Who was in which studio, recording what album during the making of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn?

40. Which artist animated The Wall? Who is he married to and who was her previous boyfriend? Who is her brother and what is his partner called (Scarily, I know all of these; in fact I got over thirty right when I answered this the first time. How sad is that)?

41. What are the longest and the shortest song titles in the Floyd repertoire?

42. What is the meaning of The Division Bell?

43. What is the building behind the statues on the Division Bell cover?

44. Where were the Games For May held and in which year?

45. Which of Floyd's secretaries later married a pop star?

46. What was Hipgnosis and what names were associated with it?

47. Where is Grantchester Meadows?

48. Who is Gerald?

49. Who supported Floyd on their first Japanese gig and which year was this?

50. Who inspired "One Of These Days" and who inbspired "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"?

I must say, the second batch of questions are so much easier than the first, so I expect a few correct answers to drop into my comments box.
You need only answer the ones you know and the ones you have a very silly alternative for.

Check out Vic's answers in yesterday's comments box for a raucous chortle.

You Can Ride It If You Like

Tempus fucking fugit!
When you get to my age it flies past so fast.
Before I'd even got a proper look at yesterday … FOOM! … it had flashed past my grasping fingers and I'd got hit slap in the face with today.

Vic has brought this home to me with Pink Floyd Week.
I remember going to see Floyd's final tour a couple of years back, so I dug out the programme to have a look and it was nineteen fucking ninety-four!
What the Hell happened to those thirteen years?
I looked under the bed … everywhere … I can't find the buggers.

So I took out the programme (above), dug around in what is rapidly becoming an antiquarian item and found lurking within it a Pink Floyd Trivia Test.
I remember this driving us scatty on the journey home from Earl's Court after the concert. So now I'm going to drive you lot scatty with it.
I'll divide it in half as there are lots of questions.
Tomorrow I'll post the second half together with the answers to the first half.
If you know any of the answers, pop 'em in the comments box. I'll be marking inaccurate answers just as highly as accurate ones; higher if they make me giggle.
Of course, if you went to see their last tour you'll have a copy of the programme with all the answers in, but try not to look at them.

Hokay; here comes Pink Floyd's very own trivia test (you can't get much more official than that):

1. What do "The Tea Set", "Sigma Six", "The Flowers" and "Jokers Wild" all have in common?

2. Whose are the vocals on: a) One of These Days; b) Have A Cigar; and c) Great Gig In The Sky (DSoM version)?

3. Who are Madamoiselle Nobbs and Seamus, and what is their relationship to Pink Floyd?

4. Who else made an album called "Dark Side Of The Moon" and when?

5. Who dirrected "The Wall"? Name two other films made by him featuring music and entertainment.

6. What is the underlying theme for "Wish You Were Here"?

7. Who drove a van for which famous fashion house?

8. Who attended which music college?

9. Who produced Arnold Layne?

10. Who is Norman Smith, what other name does he use and for what is this alias noted?

11. What does "Ummagumma" mean?

12. Name the two stars who provided spoken material for DSoM, but were rejected in favour of, among others, Jerry the Irish doorman.

13. Who played on a session for Wish You Were Here but was not eventually used? With whom was he recording at that time in EMI studios?

14. In what country was "Another Brick …" banned?

15. Who was first considered as a replacement for Syd Barrett in 1967?

16. Which future Leutenant Governor of California worked on which Pink Floyd soundtrack and who directed that movie?

17. Which director went on to make which successful Hollywood film after making "More" and "La Vallée"?

18. What is scientifically incorrect on DSoM's cover, and what is missing?

19. Is Syd Barret's real name Roger, David, Nick or Rick?

20. Was DSoM originally conceived in Abbey Road, St.Augustine's Drive or Rodeo Drive?

21. Where did the title Atom Heart Mother come from?

Where would you find:
22. "Coral caves"?

23. "Watching the watcher"?

24. "Distant ship's smoke"?

25. A wooden leg?

26. Reference to the I-Ching?

27. "Quiet desperation"?

Right. That's enough to be going on with.
Have at 'em and good luck.

As A Matter Of Fact It's ALL Dark

Two days in to Groover's Pink Floyd Week and two post titles which - as any fule kno - are the first and last snippets of speech on the Dark Side Of The Moon album.

And which lead me, in a nauseatingly slick segué, to this photo I took last week at the Science Museum in olde London Town.

Meet Charlie Brown.
I kid you not. This little fella is the actual command module from Apollo 10, and has been around to the dark side of the Moon.
And yes, it was named "Charlie Brown".
Somewhat predictably, the lunar module was named "Snoopy".
If there are any kids (persons under the age of thirty-seven) reading this, who may not know what a lunar module looks like, there's a photo of one a couple of posts down; it's the big gold crinkly thing with the ladder up the side.

So anyhoo … This is a photo taken from Charlie Brown coming back round from the dark side of the Moon. That's us over there, waving.

And this is Charlie Brown as seen from Snoopy.

Back in May of '69, Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan squeezed themselves into that little tin can and went whizzing round the Moon in a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing a little while later.
Eugene Cernan actually manœvred Snoopy to within 8.4 nautical miles of the Moon's surface. NASA never showed the footage of him gnashing his teeth in frustration and bitching about that "fucking Neil Armstrong … That bald bastard's gonna get all the credit".

My favourite Apollo 10 factoid is that Snoopy is still sniffing around.
While every other lunar module either got burned up in the Earth's atmosphere or crashed back onto the Moon, Snoopy got parked in a heliocentric orbit so, just like a puppy called to heel, he's following us around the Sun for ever more.
Cool, huh?
Next time you look up into the sky, give him a wave.

The other thing NASA didn't reveal is that the dark side of the Moon never got finished.
God set it up so that one side of the Moon perpetually points down at us, and He drew that silly face on it, too.
But us apes were never supposed to get uppity and go look around the back.
The Apollo missions found the dark side was just a load of scaffolding, littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans the Angels had left when they decided to call it a day and go fishing.

NASA also faked the conspiracy theory footage by shipping a big shed up to the Moon and filming themselves dicking around in there.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

"And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes,
I'll see you on the dark side of the Moon. "

I've Been Mad For Fucking Years

"Hey ho, here we go."
(Syd Barrett from "Flaming" off "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn").

At last it's here: Groover's Flying Pig Week.
So eyes down for a Fracas Monday Melee with yet another twist of Vic.


1: The Misanthropic.
(Name something - about humanity - you absolutely hate).

"Forward! He cried from the rear,
And the front ranks died.
The General sat,
And the lines on the map
Moved from side to side."

Us And Them: "Dark Side Of The Moon"


2: The Meretricious:
(Expose someone or something that's phony, fraudulent or bogus).

"You know it's going to get harder,
Harder and harder,
As you get older"

Dogs: "Animals"


3: The Malcontent:
(Name something you're unhappy with).

"Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say."

Time: "Dark Side Of The Moon"


4: The Meritorious.
(Give someone credit for something and name it if you can).

"Ginger, Ginger you're a witch."
(Yup; I still think Willow is sexier than Buffy)

Lucifer Sam: "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn"


5: The Mirror.
(See something good about yourself and name it).

"Yippee!
You can't see me,
But I can you."

Flaming: "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn"


6: The Make-Believe:
(Name something you wish for).

"You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I know a room full of musical tunes.
Some rhyme, some ching, most of them are clockwork.
Let's go into the other room and make them work."

Bike: "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn"

Apologies for the preponderance of early stuff but (a) I'm old, and (b) I don't consider Mrs. Gilmour a lyricist worth quoting. I'm a Syd man.

And if you don't know where the post title's from, you shouldn't be here.

Boys' Toys

And so we leave the Natural History Museum to head just next door to the Science Museum.
Before we go, this is for Kate (sorry):

Here's one I ate earlier.

The Science Museum is full of boys' toys, like this aeroplane crashing into a lighthouse.
Any males reading this will be making the sound effects already.

Proper technology doesn't need sissy computers. It needs overalls and a lump hammer.

I love this stuff. Look at this beam engine. Pure porn!

But science moves on … from beam engines we move through to Babbage's Difference Engine.
Now that's what I call a computer.
No fucking "error message" there, Mister Gates.

And from Stephenson's Rocket …

to the real deal.

The Science Museum is just one huge building full of sex if you're a middle-aged bloke who never grew up, like me.

Hennyway … after lunch we went to see how Nelson's getting on.
His statue is actually life-size; I'm really, really tiny.
If anyone missed my post of the unveiling party with the man himself, here it is.

Then we went shopping and Phil spent the gross national product of a small country on a watch.
He also lost a game of "Pin The Tail On The Parasite House".

London's fun.
Come visit.
Buy me coffee.

Dem Bones

Hokay.
So even though I spend seven hours a day commuting in and out of London I still like to go there on my days off.
Phil's been wanting to go see the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum so off we toddled to Olde London Town.
It was a beautiful sunny morning so I decided to do my normal daily walk to work from Liverpool Street Station to Westminster (follow the trail on Google Earth to see how bloody fit I am). I love this view when I reach the river. Our lovely soft London light I keep banging on about.

Saint P's is always spiffy in the mornings.

I know it's a bloody long walk but it beats the hell out of driving to work and just walking across the car park.

So eventually we get to the Natural History Museum. It's a cool building; there are stone monkeys climbing the columns and snakes and birds and fish carved everywhere. Fun.

And there are dinosaurs with monster cocks! Check out this guy! Whooee!

Triceratops; jerky, stop-motion star of many a Ray Harryhausen epic monster movie.

I think this is the one Jesus rode.

Critters.

Kinda scary for the manicurist.

Bigfoot (I'm size 11, whatever the Hell that is in the States … I don't know).

Inevitably, Phil gets collared to take photos of girls with inadvisable trousers.
Young lady; have you SEEN yourself from behind?
That's an offensive butt. Pack it away in a nice flowy skirt for decency's sake.
Sheesh!

More pics later.

Phil Finds A Dinosaur

Looky!

Phil in the main hall of the Natural History Museum.
I'm just home and knackered so I'll start posting the photos of our splendid trip at the weekend.

Toodle Pip