Maharaja Blues

 By The Pink Flamingo, Special Correspondent and Occasional Witness to Pandemonium of Pandemic Proportions  It was upon the eve of the twenty third moonrise that the palace of Ragapura, erstwhile cradle of melody and mild insanity, became the theatre of an entomological apocalypse.  The Rocking Ragas , those highly esteemed spirit animal virtuosos, whose harmonies had once soothed elephants and scandalized parrots found themselves besieged by roaches of apocalyptic proportions. The Maharaja Tiger, resplendent in sapphire and indignation, struck chords of defiance upon his electric sitar, each note a sonic sword cleaving through the chitinous tide.  The Elephant, ever the philosopher, exhaled harmonica frost upon the invaders, declaring that “music, when frozen, is still divine.”  The Monkey, meanwhile, performed percussive diplomacy with his guitar, negotiating peace through concussion. The Peacock, radiant and rhetorical, summoned celestial blue fire from his s...

The blinds slice the sunrise into stripes. A saxophone sobs somewhere in the alley. The kettle whistles like a snitch. It's the kind of morning where toast burns like old regrets and the coffee’s got secrets it won’t spill. The flamingo’s still asleep in his velvet jacket, and Richie Red’s snoring like a riff on a lunar harp. I lit a cigarette made of metaphors and watched the steam curl like a suspect’s alibi. The city’s waking up, but it’s not smiling. Not yet." My name is Barry Noir. Friend of Pink and Maharaja Blues but in my game, friends are just people who haven't tried to bump me off and dump my body in the river yet. On this morning I felt half the man i was yesterday. Something needed investigating, my senses shouted it from the mountains. I just didn't know what it was. What I did know was it was in a different dimension. I needed help for this case from Pink, Rooster and the Bear.  With a team like this we have all angles covered. Pink covering the flamboy...

The day of Miku’s birth. The day he came to earth. Once more around the sun, now Another lap’s begun. His rhythm non-erratic,  His oath still Hippocratic, He passes space and time In Medicine, Bass and Rhyme, But on this fine occasion Focus lies on celebration! By Adrian Taylor,   from Spiral Arm Galaxy and friend of Maharaja Blues  From Pink 🦩 On this fine occasion,   We trade thought for elation A flamingo lifts its wing,   And all the bright hearts sing!   Pink feathers catch the light,   Basslines bloom through the night,   And laughter, sweet and strong,   Turns every breath to song.   So raise your glass, take flight,   In coral, gold, and white For Miku’s day of mirth   Renews the joy of earth. 🦩🦩🦩 Next gig details  maharaja-blues-in-pontypridd-2026 Full story index blog-story-category-index

There’s something wonderfully subversive about that reflection in my shades. 😎  It’s me looking at myself looking at myself, caught in the mirrored lenses of my own festival day swagger.  It’s like the universe briefly turned me into both the photographer and the photographed, the watcher and the watched, the performer and the audience. A tiny hall of mirrors tucked into a pair of shades. And yes, it does feel emblematic of our age: the way our devices fold us inward, the way we’re always half performing, half observing, half critiquing and half obsessing about ourselves. A quadruple half existence. The modern math of insecurity. And yet the moment and that flicker of “oh, that’s me, caught in the act”, is also deeply human. It’s the same self consciousness poets have been wrestling with for centuries.  Poets (Robert Frost, in particular) would have had a field day with this. They would hone in upon the tension between the outer world and the inner world (doubt, longing,...