Day 15: Boston
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 LOUSY TUNES
Orange is not a colour that suits me. I tried to tell the prison wardens this but apparently it is the duty of the American penitentiary system to make people look as inhuman as possible. At least they could not make me over to look like Meatloaf, which is more inhuman than possible.
Apparently I was due up in court first thing in the morning so after a cursory breakfast I was chained, manacled and put in the back of a van for the trip to the Boston court. I t was a pity about the breakfast, as I always liked porridge. Indeed Porridge the sitcom was probably my favourite TV comedy due to lack of a theme tune. But I digress, back in the van I was chained to a young woman names Simone who apparently was up on some sort of shoplifting charge. We chatted briefly, she commented on my perfect elocution, and all was going well until I asked her what she had shoplifted.
“CD’s,” she replied.
“Seedy what’s?”
“You know, Compact Discs. Naz, Jay-Z all that shit.”
My blood ran cold. Here I was chained in the back of a police van to someone willing to go to prison to obtain music. But it was only going to get worse. After a moment or two of deliberately giving her the stare, we we stunned by a terrible squealing noise and then a massive wallop as the vans wall came to meet us.
Seconds later when I regained my composure, I saw the back of the van had been peeled away by a car accident. Not only that but Simone was on her way out through the hole.
“Come on,” she said to me.
“I’d rather stay. You see I have only been arrested for bearing a passing resemblance to Angela Lansbury-”
“I don’t care if you have been arrested for passing a bear through Angela Lansbury, you’re coming with me.”
I did not have much time to argue. She yanked the chain and I stumbled into the downtown canyons of Boston with her. I was now a fugitive, shackled to woman whose very ideals I despised. It was a bit like that film with Tony Curtis in it truth be told. Crispian would have known what it was called.
BOSTON: More Than A Feeling
What can be more than a feeling? A sensation? A wave of nausea? A slap round the back of the head with a house-brick? All of those films would be preferable to listening to Boston’s More Than A Feeling. A song which was invented seemingly to crystalise the who genre of Adult Oriented Rock, and that crystalisation seems to be lead guitars that sound a bit like bagpipes.
More Than A Feeling itself is supposedly a wistful song about a girl leaving the lead singer. Of course she’s left him. He is the lead singer of one of the dullest bands in the world. How long do you think it took them to think of the band name? Was it a finger in the atlas, was it looking at the address on the court order that told them to SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Apparently the Boston debut album, on which More Than A Feeling was the debut track was the best selling debut album in the US. I can only assume that this was also a record year for landfill sites all over America.