Light years apart

News has reached Medd Towers that stellar intellect Kim Kardashian has this week called the Apollo 11 moon landing a hoax. Buzz Aldrin the oldest living American astronaut doesn't take kindly to that kind of talk. Aldrin, the man who followed Neil Armstrong onto the surface of the moon, is a highly respected, much decorated, NASA & United States Military hero. Kim Kardashian, on the other hand, is a skank.

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Never one to shy away from shameless self promotion, did I tell you I wrote a song about the moon landing? It's called One Small Step...

John Medd · One Small Step

The Sea of Tranquility

Oh I do like to be beside the Sea

of Tranquility

Where Neil and Buzz in ’69

took a giant leap for mankind

and found craters and rocks beneath their feet

Not cheese. Or aliens to greet.

So they planted a flag and left behind

a planet so utterly amazing, beautiful, desolate, barren and beguiling that after fifty years we're desperate to revisit, and find…

The Sea of Tranquility.

1969

The events of 1969 are currently looming very large. There are a number of monumental 50th anniversaries going on right now; not least Apollo 11 - a must see movie is on general release depicting just what Neil Armstrong and the real Buzz Lightyear got up to when they were floating in their tin can half a century ago.

I remember Aldrin saying in Andrew Smith's Moondust that NASA were very candid with the crew when they signed up for the mission of all missions: their chances of coming back alive were given at no more than 50/50. This is one film I will not be missing.


And Abbey Road. The Beatles' final recorded album (Let it Be, despite coming out in 1970, was already in the can before the Fabs entered EMI Studios in Abbey Rad for the last time). Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn is touring the country later in the year giving his unique take on the events that made Abbey Road, quite literally, The End. And he's coming to a venue near me, so I'm well chuffed.

Joey Ramone may have left this earth (as too have all the original Ramones), but he still looks down on New Yorkers: the sign for Joey Ramone Place, if you look high enough (it's been stolen so many times it's now been sited where it can only be reached by basketball players) is in the Bowery district, close to the site of a (long gone) club where he and the band played many of their 2,500+ gigs: CBGBs - the New York punk venue.

Joey Ramone - 1969

First, find yourself a 200 foot chimney

Is it any wonder we don't send men to The Moon anymore? Apparently Messrs. Armstrong and Aldrin were told that their chances of coming back were 50-50. Middle management just wouldn't allow that anymore; at least not without a high-vis vest.

Take a look at this clip of Fred Dibnah, wearing his trademark flat cap, climbing a 200 foot chimney with a scaffold board strapped to his back, smoking a fag and half way up calmly announcing 'one false move and it's half a day at the undertakers.'

If the car was invented this week they'd ban driving within a week. Nothing's so sure.