Day 25: Dark Side Of The Moon
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 LOUSY TUNES
Picture this, a lady of leisure in a spacesuit, weightless, sucking neat gin through a straw. Perhaps it is not what I had planned when I embarked on this epic quest around the world, but after four or five sucks the situation did just fine. Crispian let me be, sensing much of my annoyance through some newly grown bumps in his head. Anyway he was too busy arguing with the likes on NASA on the radio.
Apparently what we were doing was very illegal.
But luckily there were no police in space. Well except The Police, Walking On The Moon, but knowing Sting they would have forgotten their helmets. Apparently that is one of the downsides of four hour tantric sex.
Anyway I awoke the next morning with a terrific hangover and a slightly concerned looking Crispian hovering (literally) over me.
“Never fear Crispian my boy. I’ll be right as rain if you fix me a nice Bloody Mary.”
“That is not what I am worried about. You drank more gin than I expected.”
“Meaning?”
“We only have enough fuel to make an emergency landing on the moon. Then we will be stranded.”
“Are you telling me you did not budget for some wastage of fuel.”
“I did not budget for your appetite in gin.”
“Well it had been fifteen days since I last supped the juniper juice. I am only human.”
At which Crispian muttered to himself about Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 and I found the straw to the Tanq Tank had been cruelly removed. Instead I had to endure hours of endlessly slow space maneuvers as Crispian hummed Also Sprach Zarathustra , at least until I cuffed him around the helmet again. I dozed until we had finally bumped down.
“It all looks a bit crappy out there,” Crispian said, disappointed.
“You surprise me. Someone disappointed with The Dark Side Of The Moon. Who would credit it.”
EASY STAR ALL STARS: Dub Side Of The Moon
When Roger Waters and the rest of the post Syd Barrett and loving it Floyd sat down and made Dark Side Of The Moon they probably thought they were making the dullest album in the world ever. And indeed for much of the history of pop music, this would have been true. In the rampant ego pot that was the Floyd, the only loser was the bored shitless listener, who instead tried to pep up the experience by playing the wizard of Oz backwards over it or smoking banana skins.
I can only imagine that it was ingesting some highly rotted smoked banana skins that put the idea of Dub Side Of The Moon into the Easy Star All Stars head.
“I know, what is the dullest album ever?”
“Dark Side Of The Money.”
“What is the dullest music ever?”
“Lovers rock reggae.”
And thus this sleeping draught in aural form was concocted. Sounding exactly like Pink Floyd except:
a) Jamaican accents
b) Reggae beats
c) It inventing a new hybrid form of music “prog reggae” which neither skanked nor was progressive.
And the goal of this wonderful hybrid of tedious and interminable? Why to make money of course. Its track five.