July 15th – Music to my ears. Drag racing has been
something I’ve enjoyed since the 60’s…oh, er, hang on; that statement may need some
clarification. That’s not drag racing
as in me and several other men dressed in evening gowns, wigs and six-inch-heels
competing against each other over a 740-yard distance to win an evening out at
The Trocadero with the beau of your choice, that’s drag racing as in highly tuned, severely altered, virtually
unrecognisable from the original pieces of engineering…vehicles competing
against each other over a 740-yard distance to win…well, a cup, really, and
your life too, so a pretty good outcome all round really.
I used to attend the British Nationals at Santa Pod Raceway
every year with friends (as some of you with long memories for this daily blurb
of mine will remember – me, a beautiful lady and a level of insensitivity that
hasn’t been equalled since Attila the Hun forgot to knock…) when the sport was
in its infancy over here. Each year the Americans would ship over a dozen or so
cars or bikes and show these Brits how it’s done and I have to say, committed
environmentalist that I am, I still get a buzz from the sheer, raw power of it
all.
Back then, if someone did the SS ¼ m in 8 or 9 seconds that
was pretty amazing. Now? Now they’re doing the SS ¼ m regularly in 6 seconds; regularly.
The world record? 3.53 seconds… You know
that phrase, blink and you’ll miss it?
I was there (Oh, Christ, here he goes…) I was there (probably in 1970/1-ish) when
a guy called The Michigan Madman
regularly straddled his motorbike, a motorbike which had a Chrysler Hemi V8
strapped crosswise in the frame… So, that’s him, lying over the engine…?!…lying
over the engine as he broke the then world record for a motorbike down the SS ¼
m; I think he did it in something like 7.5 seconds. He did another run about an
hour later…we saw the bike disintegrate under him. So that’s eight pistons
moving at something like 9,500rpm just underneath your bollocks… Who’s a lucky
boy then? He got up and hobbled from this one, well he had to as he’d broken
his leg…hobbled to the ambulance…they bred ‘em tough in them days…
Did a bit myself, me and one of my brothers. I know, I know,
I can hear the rolling of eyes and the oft repeated;
‘Why?’
from here.
Don’t have any explanation for it at all. It’s a sound thing,
I think. Like the sound of foxhounds singing in a block of deciduous, English,
autumnal woodland…well, as stoopid as it sounds, those hounds and the sound of an
unmuffled V8 are both music to me.
Before the English drag racing base was established at Santa
Pod, the first visits to our shores by these monster machines took place at Blackbushe Airport U.S.
Bob Dylan, has done a lot of things in his lifetime. You all
know I’m kind of ambivalent towards him, certainly don’t see quite why and how
he’s so popular; accept it but don’t understand it. His marketability as a folk
singer in the Woody Guthrie idiom (was never convinced on that one…and I’d like
to think neither was Dylan; would certainly go up in my estimation if that was
so) and his undoubted ability in crafting a song (you all know in what high
esteem I hold, Masters of War; one of
my D.I.D.’s) and also his, for want of a better word, bravery in eschewing the
labels and strait-jacket put on him by his fans when he went electric in 1965
all add up to a man in charge of his own destiny and willing to announce as
much, so, fair play.
On this day in 1978, Dylan performed a different kind of
music at Blackbushe Airport when he did an open-air concert in front of a
200,000 strong audience; probably still the biggest for a solo artist even now…which
was aptly named Picnic at Blackbushe.
However, Philistine that I am, given the choice of two hours
of Dylan or 8 seconds of The Michigan
Madman…? I have to say I’d be hard pushed to choose.
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