Hear ye, hear ye!


It is entirely plausible that this may come
as a bit of a shock!


Despite the undoubted and fittingly established fact that the Dirty Pants Band trailed the blaze as far as all popular music since 1966 is concerned, there was a bit of life on the music scene prior to that.


Alright, we all acknowledge that Elvis Presley, BB King, Adam Faith and Norman Smith have been around since the invention of speech but all of these minor figures owe their careers to Rock Carnaby and the Pants.


However, the Pants didn’t evolve, Godlike, from nowhere, there had to be a beginning surely, a chicken and egg scenario. 


Do not despair dear reader, we are now starting to understand the complexity of this perplexing conundrum.  In the meantime, we now know that a tiny fragment of this puzzle can be solved. After years of research, involving many minutes of tireless  probing, sacrifice, starvation and celibacy  we can confirm that Reginald Banana is e,ven older than Skid Marks and that, even more thrilling, he had been involved with a secret society of musicians in 1963, even before the Pants were sewn together!


The group of musicians Reg was in league with were Vesta’s Bards, here is an extract from an ancient piece of publicity found in Melody Maker August 4 1963:


Vesta was the goddess of the hearth of the home, Bard is an abbreviation of bastard (b’st’rd is another example) Dumezil[3] draws a comparison between Roman religious conceptions and rituals and the relevant aspects of Vedic religion. Sacrificial ritual in Vedic India, required the presence of three fires, two of them being essential.[4]

The so called hearth of the landlord that marks the connexion to Earth of the offerer, i.e. is the marker of the origin of everything in the ritual act. In Vedic ritual such kind of fire must be round as Earth itself is round and also because on Earth there is no distinction in direction without reference to Heaven.


The sacrificial fire that on the contrary must be quadrangular as it is intended to convey the sacrificial offer to Heaven in the form of smoke. These two fires were laid on a West-East line.

The third fire had the function of protecting the offerers from attacks of evil spirits and was placed to the South, considered a dangerous direction. Dumezil elaborates that in Rome the whole site of the city itself was considered as an extended sacrificial ground,[5] with the temple of Vesta performing the function of hearth of the landlord and other temples that of sacrificial fires. He remarks that the temple of Vesta was the only ancient temple in Rome to be built in a round shape and covered with a dome to protect the sacred fire from rain, other temples being quadrangular. Ancient Romans as well as other Indoeuropean people believed Earth is a sphere. Every temple however had to have two fires of which one was a hearth (foculus) and the main was the sacrificial ara.


In this conception the function of defensive fire was performed by the temple of the god Vulcanus that was situated to the South of the city wall, this being in accord with what could be expected from the omology with the Vedic situation.


The Aedes Vestae and the Ignis Vestae being indeed the Hearth of the city of Rome guaranteed its connexion to Earth and its permanence in history. It did not need to be inaugurated as other temples since it was an aedes, not a templum, its power and function being totally limited to Earth and bearing no relation to Heaven and its directions. In other words its function was exclusively terrestrial, implying stability and lasting over time.


It is noteworthy that the sacred fire standing for and representing the terrestrial origin could be lit only by the friction of two pieces of wood, one of them being necessarily an arbor felix auspicious tree (probably an oak)[6] and cave in shape. Water was not allowed into the inner aedes or could stay for longer than indispensable on the nearby premises. It was carried by the Vestales in vessels called futiles which had a tiny foot that made them unstable.[7]


Quite a number of rules of the aedes Vestae we know about can be explained with the comments to homologous rules in Vedic rituals concerning the hearth of the landlord.

In conclusion, Vesta is a symbol and a protector of Rome and its site, the hearth of the great Roman family.


Something of an interesting diversion!








 
Reported sighting of 
Reginald Banana


Reginald Banana has spoken from beyond………

Hot on the heels of the news about Che, we bring stunning news to our reader, this has just been announced. Reginald Banana has re-appeared amongst us, these immortal words have come to us from the ether: 

Hello Skid,
I had a message out of the blue from ANO. Your name came up in a later conversation.
Best regards,
Howard Hughes   Reginald Banana. 


What is it with the Pants? You search for years and can’t find a peep, then loads turn up at once, just like a 93 bus!


This is a bit like the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, so much will now be possible for us to understand and assimilate.

Included in this earth shattering announcement is something even more amazing, Reg still slaps the old Axe and is in an ensemble of proper performing musicians, granted, they lack the authentic pomp of the old Pants but for amateurs they make a game stab at it, hear for yourself at http://www.myspace.com/5ampblues/music/songs?filter=featured

Think of it, the possibilities are limitless. For starters, Justin will be able to learn another chord (doubling his repertoire) if Reg has retained his wonderful teaching skills (he always boasted he’d ’‘had a lot of boys under me” in a previous stint in Public Schools, thinks… might have been public lavatories!)



* later changed to The Dirty Pants Band after a lengthy legal dispute from a then emerging  trio with major record company backing






The last known photograph of Reginald, at about the time he retired to his loft, shuffling about with his feet in Kleenex Tissue boxes, shunning contact with the outside world, for fear of  contracting AIDS (Anti-inflammatory dyspepsia syndrome).
http://www.myspace.com/5ampblues/music/songs?filter=featuredshapeimage_4_link_0