sweet effay

It's my nephews birthday on Saturday so, being a loving uncle, I stumped up twenty quid for Darth Vader's electronic lightsaber. Told his mum and her reaction was "Oh could you swap it for one of the Jedi's lightsabers? They don't like being the baddy."

What is going on with the youth of today? Back when I were a lad we all wanted to be the baddy! Woe betide the parent who got you a replica of a British army issue .38 revolver for your birthday: You wanted a Luger or a Walther P38 at the very least. Captain Black was cool (have I mentioned my Captain Black t-shirt?) and we all wanted the ghosts to eat Freddy, Daphne and Thelma (they could leave Shaggy and Scooby because they were funny).

I was too old to play at Star Wars with my pre-pubescent chums, but I guarantee that if I hadn't been, I would have wanted to be the emperor so that I could tie whoever was stupid enough to want to be Luke to a tree and torture him.

Kids today, they have their priotities all wrong and that's why society is in the mess it is today.

John Tyndall is dead. Looks like he'll never get his wish to drive a tank down Carnaby Street come true now. Wouldn't it be great if the Rastas really did have the one true religion and right now Tyndall was standing in front of the throne of Jah with Haile Selassie seated on the top step going "Boy, did you ever fuck up."

Psychbloke and kek-w have both been going on about how they would like too see a movie made about Elric. Well, there is one already, sort of. It's actually Elric the Musical and you can get it on DVD:



Just to preserve my street cred, I should point out that I had to get this picture off the Net as I don't actually own a copy. I was in the audience when it was being filmed though.

You know the 'Stonehenge' scene in Spinal Tap? Well imagine sitting through an extended version of that complete with musicians in hooded robes and glowing red contact lenses, and dancers and mime artists acting out the story. Every now and then Michael Moorcock would come onstage and shout some poetry. He also chucked loads of signed Elric books into the audience which created quite a frenzy.

In fact, the whole thing was so toe-curlingly embarrassing that it was the last Hawkwind gig I ever went to and it was nearly ten years before I bought another of their albums.

But John, I hear you say, surely the tunes made up for the stage show! No, not really. It was the period when Huw Lloyd Langton was in the ascendant covering everything with guitar wanking. He was writing quite a bit if their material back then as well. I leave you with his lyrics for ‘Moonglum’:

Moonglum, friend without a reason
Moonglum, friend without a cause
Embarrassed by a show of love
But would stand by the man of the feeble blood

This bond meant much more to him
Than a kingdom offered by a Queen
No words for his silent trust
As the sword goes on to sate it's lust

Moonglum and Elric hunting Theleb K'aarna
Myshella now replacing Queen Yishana
See them travel through the open skies
See the amazing steel bird fly

Armies stand too soon to fall
Sorcery is the tune they call
Pitting wit against flesh and gall
Timeless searching in timeless halls

Walking out to meet his death
To find this was no release
Searching for some sort of ease
Denying feelings that made him weak

Moonglum and Elric hunting Theleb K'aarna
Myshella now replacing Queen Yishana
See them travel through the open skies
See the amazing steel bird fly

Not much time to write, so let's have some pictures. These were prompted by kek's observation over at Kid Shirt about science fiction book cover designs:

too many fucking post-grad design students with Apple Macs...we need pie-eyed hippies fucked on skunk designing SF book covers...

Which I couldn't agree with more. Here's my copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, published in 1978:



Here's the current edition:



Which one would you choose?

The thing is, that you could buy books simply on the strength of their covers. Who would do that these days? Of course a lot of books with great looking covers were awful, but it didn't really matter. Here's a great cover attached to a truly dreadful book I will never read again, but I'm still pleased that I have it:

Stumbled into Norwich this afternoon to buy some bootlaces. Outside HMV there was a big sign reading ‘Special Offers on all your Live 8 Favourites’ with a list of prices underneath. It turns out that their special offer price for Dark Side of the Moon is £10.99, which is distinctly odd as they were banging it out for £5.99 before the Big Event. Perhaps they’re just trying to help Dave Gilmour get more profits to give away…

Anyway, what I want to know is why isn’t Sir Bob jumping up and down screaming about what a bunch of evil bastards HMV are for cashing in on the suffering of others? Perhaps he is, but I haven’t noticed because the media is overloaded with people making political and economic capital out of the suffering of bomb victims.