Day 6: Metal Box
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 LOUSY TUNES
Crisis has just hit. I was in rather high spirits last night, after Crispian had discovered exactly why tomcats make “THAT” noise, and was supping a comforting single in my bunk. I had just written yesterdays diary log and all was well with the world. My reverie however was interrupted by a sour faced Captain Jack storming into my chambers just after sundown
“What is the meaning of this,” he said, red faced and generally as unpleasant as the Billy Joel song with the same name.
“I think you’ll find if any man storms a lady’s cabin, they are the person who gets to use that line.”
“No, this,” he said indicating to a black box and a tangle of wires which had once been the ships radio.
“That? I think that is the radio I founf upstairs. Awfully dangerous things radio. One minute you are listening to a thoroughly fascinating play about some middle class people in Gravesend wondering whether to pack granny off to a home, and some fool tunes it in to Capital. No, best off without those things.”
“This radio is our lifeline.”
“I thought the rope tied to that rubber ring out there was a lifeline.”
My attempt at being both bewildered and beguiling however did not work on the Captain who was a vision of rage. Crispian suggested that he managed to sum up the pure boundless energy of rage in a much more coherent way than Ang Lee had in The Hulk. I was not so sure, merely thinking of Johnny Mathis can make me turn quite green and quite angry.
There was a summary trial of my actions in which the ships cook had the casting vote. I felt this was somewhat unfair as the cook was prejudiced against me swigging all of his rations of alcohol. How was I to know this was a non-stop voyage across the Atlantic. Anyway, suffice it to say that for want of a proper brig, the slap me inside one of the empty containers on the ship – and apparently I shall be trapped in this Metal Box for the rest of the trip.
Public Image Limited: Metal Box
I suppose I have been locked away in a metal box because I am a perceived danger to the crew of The Jonah. Public Image Limited’s release of Metal Box also came in a metal box. DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS.
(My conclusions for comparison sake.) Sneering, learing, jeering and clearing his throat were pretty much the stock in trade of John Lydon (Johnny Rotten – can you people not take a hint). Never Mind The Bollocks suggested the album was all bollocks (there was nothing left to mind on that album). So Metal Box came with Lydon’s trade-marked irony intact, with packaging that dared to not to play it. Instead put a couple of Star Wars toys in the box with a twenty pence piece and bury it as a time capsule. Admittedly the future race of humans who dig it up will have evolved beyond music (lucky chaps) and treat the whole thing as being tantamount to nuclear waste. Perhaps even worse.
Jah Wobble was also involved in creating the particular aural horrors on Metal Box, which meant that there were burbling dub things going on all over the shop. Anyone else notice that dub is but one letter away from RUB, short for what this stuff is. Turn it into a frisbee, use it as a particularly well insulated home for your pet catapillar. But don’t play Metal Box, the packaging warns you.