Judy loved the Beatles. She grew up in Liverpool , and was a teenager during the sixties. The decade of Pop Goes the Weasel, sexual awakening and so on. Every Earthling ‘Friday’, Judy would head to the Cavern Club and dance to Mersey Beat with the local boys dressed in winkle pickers* and drainpipe trousers**. Together they would bob up and down, up and down, to rock n’roll, fresh off the boat from the Big Apple***.
Boing, boing, boing! It was an innocent time, and a right old jolly.
Back then there was something appealing about dressing up like a BBC+ executive among the young, and the Beatles did much to perpetuate this fashion, or rather their manager, the fastidious homosexual++, Brian Epstein was perhaps responsible. Leather was out, ironed white shirts and black tie was in!
If the Beatles twisted, you shouted; if the Beatles asked to hold your hand, you came over all wobbly at the knees and fainted. If John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than the prophet Jesus, then they were; if McCartney was the Walrus+++, then he was.
(E-extract from ‘Swinging Sixties: a Descriptive History of Ancient Earthling Paradise’ by Arthur C. Bojangles)
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..It may surprise you to learn, I am writing this from the far flung future. The Beatles are ancient history nowadays, and they and Judy are piles of dust, or worse a series of astro particles dispersed into the gravity free atmosphere of the solar system.
When I was walking my lunar pet, Bubba, only seven Fyre ‘hours’ ago, I came across a Time Capsule embedded in a bank of sand. At a distance it looked like just another piece of lunar rock, but something drew me to it all the same; up close I could see what I had thought to be a lump of lunar rock was, in fact, a metallic container. Now it stands in the lava lamp lighting of my lunar living room, with all the sand atoms removed by an electromagnetic scrub. I have also managed to wrench the door open with an animatronic beak.
Inside, would you believe, there is a cathode ray tube, a grammar phone, a piece of vinyl, a Cavern Club membership card with a bunch of boy’s (?) telephone numbers scrawled all over, a couple of grainy sepia photo portraits, and an old earthling print (yes, print!!!) newspaper front page with a vengeful editorial against the aforementioned John Lennon.
You see, I am a historian of earthling popular culture. Earthlings would have called me an anthropologist. My speciality is the sixties, or ‘swinging sixties’, to use an ancient phrase from the era. In spite of the millennia separating you and I – you at home, in the 21st century, seated on your cushioned ‘settee’; me, hovering on what you might consider a ‘magic carpet’, writing this communiqué to you using my telekinetic powers and expert knowledge of Olde English – Fyrians still love to learn about the Beatles, the Cavern Club, Mersey Beat, Brian Epstein, hell, even the lives of everyday ‘working-class’ gals such as Judy. Or at least enough of us Fyrians do to afford me to live on more than a diet of Mars Planets (the oldest known and most intergalactic confectionery in the universe, as well as the cheapest).
On your earthling calendar you will note it is the earthling month of October, the year 2012. If you venture into one of your earthling record shops, you will likely find a big glossy poster of the Beatles tacked to the show wall – it’s their fiftieth anniversary. On my Fyrian calendar time is more of an abstract than it is to you, but if the Beatles had been cryogenically preserved, in earthling terminology I am living through their five thousandth anniversary. Talk about leaving your thumb prints on ‘civilisation’!
By the way, the prophet Jesus, has almost altogether disappeared from the annals of history, along with Adolf Whatshisname, the comic actor, famous for his slapstick mime. Besides, no one, to ‘date’, has put a Jesus record in a Time Capsule (not even Cliff Richard) and, I’m told, film (including The Great Dictator) of Adolf Whatshisname has largely been deleted from the vaults of Christendom’s library, or at least from the main hub on Cloud Nine (there may be some bootlegged versions floating around in Space).
So, I have often wondered, dear Ancient Earthling, why the Beatles remain effervescent, still written and talked about; heck, some of us Fyrians even listen to their music – our favourite? ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’. A spiritual throwback if ever there was!
Why then is this?
Here is a summary of my theory: because, whatever ancient earthling Anabaptists, Rolling Stones, distant relatives of Mike Love (who wrote Back In the U.S.S.R, my polkadot arse!), the creators of the now outlawed suckmybeatles.com, ancestors of Sharon Tate, Charles Manson, contend…the ‘fab four’s’ pop jingles never actually hurt anyone.
Pete Best excepted.
In short, the Beatles music represents colour, fun, delicious, artful simplicity, togetherness, love and hope – qualities of our existence, Fyrians and Ancient Earthlings share, and always have shared (save perhaps, the artful simplicity).
Yours ever,
Arthur (or Art)
END COMMS.
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*Ancient earthling headgear, looked great, but pinched your ears rather
** Ancient earthling legwear, looked great, but were so tight around the crotch area as to limit ancient earthling reproductive capability among the male species
*** Ancient earthling citadel in the ancient earthling land of England , a little way east of Liverpool , the capital city
+ British Broadcasting House: providers of pornographic material for undersexed male and female ancients
++ Ancient earthling term for entrepreneur
+++ A small, toothless ancient earthling rodent, around the size of a small pebble, but with up to one hundred legs
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