Test-tube Tribute Bands & The Ultimate Encore…

The Alternative Advent: Day 7

zztop advent postThere’s nothing remarkable about it—

All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself…

Johann Sebastian Bach

We live in an elegant universe, which according to some is composed almost entirely of a very large string section, indefatigably riffing out an eternal coda without rest. It has absolutely nothing to do with what it eats, no matter the Bard’s avowal that if music be the food of love— because it plays on regardless of physicists harping on about attraction.

It certainly has nothing to do with love … or sandwiches...

It is what it picks, plucks, taps, sweeps, shreds and strums— and it does it without a single fret, which might I suppose, render certain things inexplicable but at the same time, it would explain why the world goes round as it does.

It does it for us, so we can play ourselves; or with ourselves: ultimately it all depends on how enlightened or blind we want to become.

If you’ve ever heard of The Boys from Brazil or The Second Coming Project, you’d know that neither of them have anything to do with the universe, football or sex— unless of course, you count Pele’s Viagra commercials, which in a delightful quirk of the universe working in harmony to connect my vagrant ideas, I can ingeniously, albeit inadvertently have it all my own way and cover all the bases.

No, they are in fact about the cloning of a bunch of baby Hitlers and a bunch of baby Jesus’.

Now far be it from me to question the dedication of either party, since I regard such endeavours purely as entertainment first and then  just expect the inevitable ridicule to turn up at some point or other. However, as hypotheticals go, it’s an amusing one and all well and good until somewhere along the way someone has the notion to have them doing something together.

This would be problematic for some, because they’d probably get along— Jesus got along with almost everyone after all. But to do it, just to do it, would pose unique ethical problems, so they probably wouldn’t. The fact of the matter is, they couldn’t be trusted to get it done right.

Cloning should therefore, be left where it belongs— in the only place where ‘ethics’ is still a dirty word: reality television. And they should treat it with the levity it deserves.

The format would be the primary hurdle, but I was thinking along the line of something really quite simple. Something like:

The cloning of famous historical figures to create the ultimate tribute bands…

Take these guys for example:

Untitled-1 Robert Engels, Karl Marx & Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin

Sure, they were instrumental thinkers, but if we brought them back— I’d much rather see them with instruments. It could just be me but I think their resemblance to ZZ-Top is uncanny.

But why stop there when we could have:

jfk as bowie1x1JFK as David Bowie

grant flyn bogart gable 2 1x1Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable & Humphrey Bogart as The Beatles

malcom x jackson 1x1Malcolm X as Michael Jackson

miller and joyce do the proclaimers1x1James Joyce & Arthur Miller as The Proclaimers

The potential for abusing the genetic material of luminaries is boundless— and if I can have this much fun with google and photoshop, imagine how much fun the universe could have with a bunch of test-tubes and a T.V.

Half the game is 90% mental…

Yogi Berra

Author: DB James

It's one of the finest things we do; write about our lives, because not only do we reveal our minds through revelations our thoughts provide us— But it gives us an incentive to be honest... It's almost impossible not to consider the value of thoughts with the fairly steady flow of them; their rudimentary worth, relevance to our lives and the importance to the people who have them. It's easy to see how distorted a thought can become when left to constant re-examination and how faceless victim/culprit dichotomies are given grounding by a name or a hover-card. If the last few weeks has demonstrated anything, it's how something as simple as a pen-stroke can release the burden and stresses they invariably cause. I've had glimpses into how fears, confessions, pains and crises can be put right by words creating deeds by changing little parts of the world. And I shouldn't be surprised: we write about things and repeat ourselves about things that have meaning to us. It keeps me humble...

28 thoughts on “Test-tube Tribute Bands & The Ultimate Encore…”

      2. Thanks – they’re passable as long as long as you don’t focus to much :p I remember one year I for our family get together, I did blends of different people as my part of a quiz – I had Bin Laden with Kissinger; Madeline McCann with Jodie Foster – a whole load of them…

        Ha! I was determined to get him in! It was the tweaking of the black and white portrait which was the most challenging, but then half way through, I wished I’d done him and Jackie as Sonny and Cher… I might still go and turn the Eagles into the Marx Brothers! 😀

      3. I lack photoshop skills, but I did get an Apple app once, that was supposed to blend people’s features, and I think it was advertised as predicting what any two people’s kids would look like. Being eccentric as I am, I decided to get all Dr. Frankenstein with the splicing app, and took a picture of my dog, and spliced it with me… it was very disgusting, like something out of a horror movie… I was surprised how realistic it looked… mixing and matching people’s faces sounds like a much more healthy kind of mischief, and easier on the stomach too… lol

      4. lol it’s a bit time consuming – but fun! The trick is get finished before the pixel-blindness kicks in! 😀
        I used to restore old photos and spent a good four days on one which measured 1.5 x 1 inch; a wedding photo that’d been carried throughout the war – I eventually had the background reconstructed and blown up pretty tidily to 8 x 10 inches – but I didn’t want to look at anything for while after that…

        These by comparison are a doddle :p

      5. Ah, it sounds like you are a professional then! Makes sense from the photos in your post, even if they are doodles in comparison. Not trying to overwhelm with compliments though, I genuinely admire the skill and humor. I recently got some photoshop CC, LightRoom and some other features with a Cyber Monday deal from adobe without having to buy the software… I’m basically renting the software for $10 a month, with free updates for as long as I rent. I’ve wanted to gain photoshop editing skill since I was in middle school, when a friend showed me what is now a seriously dated version of photoshop!

      6. That’s really kind of you – I’m pretty blessed with a wide skill set, which drives some people crazy, but there’s a lot of work that goes into getting them, and a leg up genetically 😀

        If I were you I’d just pound the software until you don’t have to think about what you’re doing: tweak, tweak and tweak again. It’s the best way to learn – have an idea in your head then make it so. I do just about everything in my head before I start – writing, especially, photography, editing – it certainly helps with clever wordplay, to be able to see the words before writing them down – it’s a bit like fridge magnets!

  3. I was listening to “Tax Man” as I read this…I love it! Humphrey Starr! Thanks for cheering me up. 🙂

    I see music as a necessary part of my existence. Maybe I am just behind the times, but today’s music ain’t got the same soul.

    Reply

    1. I was always under the impression that decent music stopped being made in 1984 and everything I’ve listened to produced since then is just down to my utter lack of taste! 😮

      I loved doing that album cover – if you noticed, I actually used other peoples ears just for a laugh – you only see one on the original. It was just personal whimsy! 😀

      Reply

      1. Ah yes, now I see some of the ears don’t quite match up..very clever! 🙂

        I would add about 10-ish more years to 1984. The last decade has completely lost me, so I live in the past where I know all the words.

      2. lol awwww 😀

        Had the structure of education been different I’d probably been more mathematical – it was a disgrace really; just given a workbook for 5 years. I was a child prodigy and should never really have gone through 7th, 8th or 9th grades. I’d been reading over 7 years by the time I left Primary, had an adult library ticket at 8. But I’ve done a lot of incredible stuff since then too…

        But never had the chance to study mathematics the way I’d like to. I’ve been semi-retired for 18 months, so I should look into it really! 😀

      3. i know, school can mess you up along the way, i teach the kinders, and try really hard to find the way each learns best and their strengths and help them to understand this about themselves. my advise to you, my dear friend einstein, is to go for it, there is no time like the present. and if you learn maybe you can help me and i’ll trade you letters for numbers )

      4. Seriously, the maths at the time was just a series of work books – and the number of discrete lessons you could count on one hand. That said, it didn’t stunt me too much, I just never got the chance to learn the really cool stuff that’d help me make black holes with baseball bats and what have you!

        I had promised myself never to step into another classroom unless I was lecturing about something I really wanted to. I might yet though, we’ll see! 😀

      5. don’t have to ever enter another classroom in your life, (unless you are visiting my kindergarten which you would enjoy), but go out and learn from people who understand and use math in ways that are interesting and amazing to you. there you will find your holy math grail.

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