Day 23: Saturn V
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 LOUSY TUNES
A pallet in the back yard of a boathouse is not the worst place I have ever slept (that would be Wembley Arena during a Van Morrison concert) but it was pretty uncomfortable. I was up fresh in the morning with the sun though, to catch my old ship mate, if not actual mate, Captain Jack sneaking into the yard.
“Jack,” I shouted.
“Yarr,” he said back, accidentally catching his foot ina lobster pot. “What brings you here, you’re bad luck.”
“I’m bad luck. Its you boat that is called the Jonah. It is you who lost my container. Now tell me, where is Crispian?”
“The young lad. Well, once he registered you dead, he decided to use your money fulfilling his dream.”
“What? Starring in a remake of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest?”
“No. Going in to space. I believe the lad is down at the Kennedy Space Centre now.”
At the suggestion of the word Kennedy my face lit up. It was about time I ripped the piss out of The Wedding Present. However after I forced Captain Jack to give me lift to the Space Centre I realised I would have even bigger fish to fry. As I got to the large rockets I saw Crispian, sneaking into a Saturn V rocket. I followed, almost to immediately get clumped round the head with a spanner.
INSPIRAL CARPETS: Saturn V
Why would you name a band after a carpet? Why? So I can walk all over them. Okay then. I think it is a fact universally accepted that OAsis are one of the worse bands ever. So to think that Noel Gallagher learned his craft as roadie for the Ispiral Carpets makes you wonder what kind of reverse meritocracy was operating in Manchester in the nineties. Though of course the Carpets come from Oldham, which containing the words Old and Ham may give you some idea of the general quality fo a Inspiral Carpets gig. Except that in this case Old Ham does not mean Mick Jagger sticking his arse in our face, that it refers to a ropey old machine much belov’d of the Carpets. Lets just say it wasn’t a boon for anyone when Clint got his hammond out. Wheeze wheeze drone drone.
But to this terrible song. “The Saturn V was one of the most impressive machines in human history” says Wikipedia. How ironic, then, that the Inspiral Carpets’ tribute to the monster rocket was recorded using one of the least impressive machines in human history, viz. the Hammond Organ. Named Hammond after its inventor, and organ because it sounded like cock. The Saturn V missions flew between 1967 and 1973, coincidentally the heyday of the Hammond – unfortunately there the similarities end.
These days the rockets are in museums with big “DO NOT TOUCH” signs on them. The Hammonds are in the hands of chimps like the Inspiral Carpets. Would that the situations were reversed! Then the Inspirals would perhaps blast themselves into space where grotesque alien life could look on their frightening faces with strange familiarity.