Blog
25
Nov
2010
Background to our Songs: Monkey Space Camp
Written by Jimmy
Monkey Space Camp by AbubillaMusic
A silly song about two very silly boys… and the Monkey Space Race.Let’s start with Greg’s video:
Great video by Greg, with Hannah making a massive contribution pulling together a lot of the authentic footage of the Monkey Space Race. Now there’s two things you know: the big fat truth and the big fat lie:
- The BIG FAT TRUTH: This song is about Gus and Mike. Throughout the Summer 2010 Spanish Jam, they have acted like Space Monkeys, runnin’ around like idiots, fun, but loud, fun, but very loud, fun but… well, a Space Monkey is a Space Monkey. The lyrics were written while they were playing a game they called body pong, which essentially involves them playing table tennis and every once and a while running around the pool as fast as they can trying to juggle a ball between two table tennis bats. Why? Because if you play normal table tennis you only disturb those directly next to the table. If you play body pong, you disturb the whole back garden, the neighbours and a good percentage of the Costa de Sol. As Jimmy watched this, he thought of two things – they are Monkeys and he wishes he could make them quiet down. Monkeys? Get them to quiet down? Launch them into Space! That led to memories of reading about the Monkey Space programme and that led to thinking about what Space Camp would be like with a lot of these Monkeys. Done.
- The BIG FAT LIE: This song is a sensitive portrait of the US-Soviet Space race – the absurdity, pointlessness and cruelty of it all. All done to a great set of rifts. You begin to think this when you watch Greg’s video. It is inherently very sad and you weep for the little guy being rescued at the end, almost as much as you despair for the three Monkey’s lined up in braces. And the headlines flashing between Dog in Space vs. Monkey in Space look like bad Sci Fi. Except it happened. There is a lot you can read on the programme that is interesting and Greg’s video is a great summary of it all. But no one was trying to be that profound. We just wanted to launch Mike and Gus into space, to a rock far…far away.
Jimmy