Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts - Kula Shaker

Skip to the beat? - Well more Skip really...

'I hear the sound of drums on a melody, calling me to return, Well light up and catch the sun, 'cause it’s gonna be revolution for fun' - Bevan, Darlington, Mills, & Winter-Hart

Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts is the second album by the British indie and psychedelic rock band Kula Shaker. Take a listen here). They were good for a couple of albums in my opinion and I found them very refreshing at the time but their style perhaps limited their output perhaps. It’s one of the albums I’ve enjoyed listening to along my 23 year marathon journey and yet back in 1999, I couldn't have listened to it whilst running as the MP3 player had yet to be released to the masses and Portable CD Players skipped and wore batteries out at an alarming rate.

It must have been a few years later as it wasn’t until 2001 that the MP3 player hit the market and it was only 2003 when I really started to use a Sony Walkman MP3 Player, after using the short-lived Sony 'Mini-Disc' System, on the Flora 1000-Mile Challenge. All the tech from back then is a bit fuzzy if I'm being honest...

All that got me thinking what has changed in the world during the time I’ve been running and it’s amazing that we no longer need Cassettes, Fax Machines or Zip Drives to store stuff on, not to mention the Internet and Facebook to 'Announce' every aspect of our lives to the masses and invite people into our 'Marathon Running' adventures.

You see back in 1994, running marathons was easy. You simply sent a Universal Entry Form cut out of ‘Runner’s World’ with a Cheque or Postal Order (remember them?) to the Race Directors and turned up on the day and ran, as fast as you could, in your very short shorts. 

There was no need for a  Race Vest, MP3 Player, Garmin, Heart-Rate Monitor, Compression Gear, Zero-Drop Shoes or Salt Tablets. All that BS hadn't been invented. If you wanted race results, well they were sent out in the post for an extra 50p or you put an SAE (that’s a Self-Addressed-Envelope) in a shoe box at registration.

To join the 100 Marathon Club, you just needed to run 100 Marathons and say you’d done it. We knew who had and who hadn't as we all knew each other - by name...

My it was an easy ‘Analogue World’… So why did it all change, or in fact why did it need to change? What was wrong with things being less immediate and more clunky? The world certainly wasn’t any less enjoyable. In fact it might well have been a whole lot better! It's hard to say when you are living the moment.

At the time, I can say it felt ‘Embryonic’ and maybe the ‘Sound of Drums’ was the heralding of the 'Digital Age' that has changed every aspect of my life for sure and yours no doubt over the past 23 years. 

I wonder what the next 23 have in store for us both? I still believe that we'll have some way of seeing information projected into our eyeballs using some form of spectacles (great word) or chip built into the back of our optic nerve. Who knows? I bet it's already been developed if truth be known.

I just hope I'm still around (North Korea willing) to see what happens and can continue to adapt to an ever-changing world that I find myself part of.

What are your 'Drums saying?'

Amen.

Rory Coleman - 999 Marathons - 244 Ultras - 14 Marathon des Sables

9 Guinness World Records - 8,647 Days' Alcohol Free - 495 Days' post GBS

Location: Cardiff, Wales.