Saturday, April 25, 2009

ginger's bought it

More posthumous Ballard-related articles - this one is quite interesting in tht it's a list of musical works inspired by Ballard's writings. I mentioned the Klaxons connection a while back, but there are plenty more.

The reference to a wrecked English Electric Lightning on the cover of Suede's 1997 B-sides collection Sci-Fi Lullabies brought back some childhood memories - when we lived in Newbury in the mid-1970s the Royal International Air Tattoo was held at the US air base at Greenham Common (we just used to call it the Greenham Air Show). I don't recall that we were ever interested enough to bother actually attending, but I do clearly remember standing in the garden watching the Lightnings go over, or more specifically listening, as they were easily identifiable as by far the loudest thing to fly over all weekend.

2 comments:

Emma said...

I do remember Grandpa once took us to the air show to see the 'Lightning Jets'. We were quite small I think.

electrichalibut said...

Well, there you go. I don't remember that specifically, but I do remember being mildly obsessed with Lightning Jets for a while.

Greenham Common has a slightly eerie abandoned look to it these days. Must go and have a wander round sometime & see if they've left any cruise missiles lying around.