Happy Birthday Blues, a tale of mystery, mystique and Fractured Fractals!
The Fractured Fractals, space and time's greatest ever Country & Galactic Band, had just shot through the Martian Time Slip on their return from their latest galactic tour when they chanced upon a pink flash in the horizon.
Piqued by this, The Fractured Fractals followed the pink flight path only to lose it briefly in a mid afternoon thunderstorm. The storm itself was some of the worst weather they had ever encountered on Planet Earth. There were times when Quackus Vituloanatidus Multiplumus played plaintive tunes on his celestial violin fearing for their life.
Fearing the very worst The Fractured Fractals burst into song playing out their greatest back catalogue and creating some of the most amazing notes ever played whilst their ship was buffeted around, frazzled and burnt by the most terrible electric storm ever.
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| Fearsome Fractal |
The Fractured Fractals had travelled across time and space more than any other musical entity of time itself. It was said that their Space Time Miles were of a legendary magnitude, so much so that their very existence was paid for by them.
Never ever however had they encountered such weather.
The worst however must always pass and sure enough after what seemed like an eternity, a very relative concept in their relatively displaced lives, the terrible storm cleared and with it returned a semblance of calm.
They used all their sensors, their amazingly ancient and yet efficient onboard Active Positron Scanned Array to trace that pink flash.
Well they never did see the pink flash, even though GRIBL - iv, their onboard computer (powered by the most powerful and latest Chips bought from the famed Chippy Alley and housed in the oiliest and fishiest of newspapers) started churning out reams on the Pink Flamingo, A Nonsense Chronicler of repute in world of Jazz and Blues and relatively unknown in the Galactic Country music sphere.
And then finally, over the hills and far away and just for a precious moment the Æthergazer managed to capture an image which lasted for an even smaller moment on the storm damaged 6th Dimensional Transducer. And what a bright and happy image it was, as far removed from the electric storm they had just negotiated as could be possible.
The onboard computer went on overdrive, over heating and shutting itself down as it spat out a spiral of questions.
Well assuming that the Pink Flamingo has been wishing the Maharaja Blues a Happy Birthday let’s assume that we are all equally mystified by it as nobody seems aware of this blessed date.
Was the band ever born or did it organically and musically develop from the sands of time and place?
Was it an accident of gravity?
Was it a Higgs Boson that disrupted the eternal juke box!
Is this band without a known birthday an accidental osmosis of bosons and music streaming out of a celestial Bose?
Or was the band decanted from the timeless vat of blues creativity that is held in a secret cellar in a Calcutta of another dimension?
GRIBL -iv quivered again and hissed out a fishy exhaust, its screen flickering out ''Summon the Cod Father'', ''Scan for Saucers'' and ''We have Incoming....'' before lapsing into a series of error messages in rhyming couplets smelling of curry sauce. The cockpit stank of prophecy and haddock, remnants of the electric storm sizzled every now and then, from somewhere in the spaceship's cavernous underbelly, a battered jukebox mysteriously suddenly started playing The Gruntcore Orcestra's legendary lost track, ''The Battered Hull'' and then the cockpit began to glow with that warm grime of cosmic microparticles as another print out slowly snaked out and spiralled on the floor.
In a corner somewhere, Tigris Felinus and Quackus Vituloanatidus held on to each other and shivered violently. Then gathering courage, they reached out and picked up the stain print out. And it mattered, it changed their understanding of things and generated a shift in the bands musical direction, a shift so violent that it made their music infinitely more complex but also infinitely out of reach of their many fans, a shift with consequences that eddied through known space and beyond.
It went on to become the cover of their final album: “Shiverphonic Reverie: Live from the Storm” and it is said that the Lilac Rhino whispered on experiencing this momentous album, “When the fractals fracture, only the duet remains.”
The contrast with their previous album which had broken quantum charts couldn't have been more. Though musically deeper in complex dark undertones that was to make it a cult classic, the Shiverphonic Reverie sank without a trace in the galactic charts leading to the disenchantment and disbanding of the Fractals alas.
“Smoke & Gears: Live at the Clockwork Pavilion”
The album that broke the quantum charts. The tiger’s brass-stringed contraption roared like a thundercloud, while the rooster’s violin summoned auroras in minor key. Fans still whisper about the encore—when Tuk Tuk descended from the rafters in a flamingo-shaped zeppelin and jammed with them on a tabla made of moonstone. The poster captured Tigris Felinus and Quakus Vituloanatidus mid performance, instruments blazing with steampunk mysticism and ethereal smoke, it felt like the apex of their cosmic fame, the kind of poster that would hang in every interstellar dive bar and flamingo temple from Cardiff to the Crab Nebula.
It is said that the Lilac Rhino was heard whispering “Where fractals danced, feathers sang and tigers roared.”
Aah but we digress, we must go back to the print out picked up from the floor by the shivering duo.
The Origin Myths of Maharaja Blues
As told by the Pink Flamingo, who speaks only in riddles and syncopated saxophone solos.
• No birth certificate, no umbilical chord
One day, the eternal jukebox hiccupped. A Higgs Boson, drunk on delta rhythms, tripped over a cosmic cable and spilled a groove across spacetime. That groove became Maharaja Blues, a tremor in the vinyl ether.
• It was not born, it was distilled
In a Calcutta of another dimension, beneath a tea shop that serves existential dread with lemon, there lies a cellar. In that cellar, a vat bubbles with the essence of forgotten solos, ancestral riffs, and the sighs of harmonicas played by ghosts. From this vat, the band was decanted; neat, no chaser.
• Gravity didn’t birth it. Gravity joined the band
The Maharaja Blues is an accident of gravity and grace, a slow osmosis of bosons and blues, streaming from a celestial Bose speaker mounted on the back of a passing comet.
• Time didn’t start it. Time merely tuned its guitar to the rhythm of the Maharajas
The sands of time didn’t shape it, they jammed with it. Each grain a note, each dune a verse. The desert itself swayed.
So yes, the Pink Flamingo’s birthday wish is less a celebration of chronology and more a nod to the eternal jam session. The Maharaja Blues was never born, it was heard, felt, and remembered before it ever existed.
MMtBB
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