On The Origin Of Idiots

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Want to hear something amusing? It seems that a new British movie starring Jennifer Connelly called ‘Creation’, which is about Charles Darwin and is about to be released worldwide, can’t find a U.S distributor because too many people in the States object to the Theory of Evolution. Holy fuck, that’s funny!

Apparently only forty percent of Americans believe in the Theory of Evolution, Those are the normal Americans, the ones like you and me. There is another twenty five percent who believe in the account of creation exactly as it is in the bible, and those guys are mental. They tend to listen to Country music and have gun racks in pick up trucks, and they don’t take kindly to strangers, no sir. They also believe that the devil is a real person with hooves and a tail and a goatee beard. Kind of like the wee free Presbyterians here in Scotland. They put the mental into fundamentalist and should be avoided.

I can prove the Theory of Evolution right now and in one word. Ska. The fundamentalists say that God created Ska in 4004BC and in only six days, presumably so he could have the seventh day off to watch the Eastenders omnibus. But that’s just not scientific. There is no possible way that God could have created Ska in six days. It’s just silly. Scientists have already carbon dated The Skatalites and we know for a fact that they are over a million years old. It’s science, stupid. Yet when you present this evidence to the church, they simply say that God put The Skatalites here to test our faith, like dinosaur bones, and we shouldn’t think about it. Colour me unconvinced.

Ska had to have evolved slowly over millions of years, probably out of some form of Rock-steady or Blue-beat, perhaps, but geologists can’t be sure. Maybe it was reggae. One thing is for sure; no one seriously accepts the Church’s position on this at all. They don’t even accept that Ska exists, and are notoriously slow at catching up with scientific facts. They condemned Galileo in 1633 for saying the Earth revolved around the Sun. They apologised later of course. In 1992.

Speaking of Creation, we were at the Eden Festival in the Forest of Ae, organised by a chap called Adam. If you were there then you know all about the fiasco getting into the place. It’s basically a three-mile trail into the forest, but allegedly some arsehole had caused a traffic jam on site so the police stopped all the traffic on this trail while they could sort it out. It took us over two hours to get through all the traffic which we only did by dint of being in the band. Most punters would have probably waited much longer than that, effectively missing the first day. Andy and I were the last to arrive from the band, about ten minutes after we were supposed to be started, but at least we arrived. It was a massive stage, with drum riser AND keyboard riser. We were impressed. We may have to start insisting on that in future. We played about an hour and a half of sheer Ska magic, and I broke a string. Thanks to Adam for inviting us, and to Scott for taking the photos in far from ideal circumstances, and to a great crowd. Great night. Next stop Linkylea.

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