Tales from typographical oceans

So, SO glad that I just missed being a teenager during the Seventies.

All right, I DID have to contend with reaching maturity just as Mrs Thatcher and her various minions starting consolidating their hold on the country.  Possessing a mind totally unsuited to the traditional Ferenghi way of thinking proved a serious disadvantage during the era when profit was king, as did my hippy-dippy tendency hair during the concurrent reign of new wave.

But at least I didn't have to listen to prog rock.

Could hardly avoid it yesterday evening, though.

Flatmate was listening to the Stuart Maconie show on Radio 6 - which featured the alleged Yes 'classic' Tales From Topographical Oceans as the album of the week.

Even the so-called 'highlights' that Stuart had selected for public consumption proved beyond all reasonable doubt to the listeners out there just why punk had to happen.

Every single sodding tune seemed to meander up and down and round and round and back again, chewing the end of its own bloody tale like the ouroubouros snake of ancient symbolism for hours and hours on end, yet never really getting anywhere.

No wonder people had to be off their heads on drugs, drink or both to enjoy this sort of music.

Flatmate commented that one track sounded just like the 'introduction' to something.

"What?" I replied.  "A hobbit opera?"

Then we both fell about laughing.

But it's true.

If hobbits write and perform operas, then that's just what I would imagine them to sound like - Mozart crossed with Steely Dan.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear a real tale from a topographical ocean, here's one:

Is nothing left?  Have all things passed thee by?
The stars are not thy stars.  The aged hills
Are changed and bowed beneath the ills
Of ice and rain, of river and of sky;
The sea that riseth now in agony
Is not thy sea.  The stormy voice that fills
This gloom with man's remotest sorrow shrills
The mem'ry of thy lost futurity.

This extract from a sonnet to the trace fossil of Oldhamia was penned by John Joly, former Professor of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin.

Now, he may have liked wearing a radioactive hat in order to test the effect of the gamma rays on his memory, but he displays a much subtler understanding of the immensities of geological time than the assorted members of Yes.

Plus he gets to the point a damn sight quicker.