Tokyo had defeated me. What with its cans of sweat and its omnipresent neon, it was like someone was constantly playing AC/DC at me all the time. And that makes Tanya a very upset girl. So I decided to get out of town and see more of this great nation who shall never rise above the stain placed upon its name by David Sylvian. So I though a bit of history would be in order, so I caught a train to Hiroshima.
I have always been interested in bombs, ever since I substituted a prop for a real one in Chumbawumba’s Ticky Ticky Ticky Time Bomb video. They got knocked down, and did not get up again for a significant amount of time. But for all the times I have threatened to flatten Mick Hucknall with nuclear ordinance, I have never seen exactly what a nuclear bomb could achieve. Hence Hiroshima (I would have gone to Nagasaki if it wasn’t for the godawful jazz standard by Stefen Grapelli and Django “Gap-Fingered” Reinheart.)
But, dear reader, I have been let down on both fronts. Firstly the train I traveled on was a Shinkansen: which is like riding the Sarah Records Express (pansies in the boiler I daresay). But when I arrived at the now lovely restored city, I was reminded that there was indeed a terrible song about Hiroshima, which would haunt me forever.
GARY MOORE – Hiroshima
There is a certain strain of lyric writing (and strain as in constipation is the correct word) which defies criticism. Heart-wrought commentary on terrible word events dare the critic to say that no matter how poorly written, they are from the heart. Nevertheless Gary Moore defies me to say his paean to the dead in Hiroshima is not an insult to their memory. Surely words like this make us all understand the true horror of Hiroshima:
They still remember the day when Little Boy dropped from his womb.
They still remember how their homes became their children’s tombs.
Their suffer mourn each soul who died that August morning
Why don’t we listen, why don’t we heed the warning?
They make us understand via simulation rather than the pure force of language. Is the pain of hearing his raspy horrid voice saying these clumsily rhymed words really equivalent to being burned alive in a nuclear holocaust. Of course not. I am alive longer to experience the suffering.
Hiroshima, the place where innocence was burned.
Hiroshima, the memory makes my stomach turn.
Hiroshima, men came to shadows where they stood.
Hiroshima, this kind of evil brings no good.
Nice that Gary is very accepting of the evil that does bring people good. He would be more understanding when I kick in his Braille face. But you have to feel sorry for the guy, a man whose own official website seems a little bit more dedicated to his famous dead mate than him.