The crew of Apollo 11, in a quarantine van, greeting their wives on their return. (NASA)

Neil Armstrong (left of centre) once commented to a journalist that when he was on the moon, he could shrink Earth (Father Ted style) to a space no larger than his thumb. ‘And did that make you feel big?’ the journalist responded. ‘No, it made me feel small,’ was Armstrong’s response.

On July 20th, Neil Armstrong became the first man to plant a foot on the moon. The iconic achievement of the 1960’s which provided one of the defining quotes of the century, never came attached to a famous face – that was Armstrong’s choice. A promise made by Kennedy, kept by Johnson, and delivered by Nixon came to represent America’s most singular achievement since its own independence and its biggest statement of intent as the most powerful nation on the planet – the very planet that one of its citizens was now able to hide behind a thumb.

As well as landing a piece of kit that contained less technology than a crap mobile phone, maybe Armstrong’s second greatest achievement was ensuring that he himself did not become a pop culture icon, but that a man in a spacesuit did, a powerful enough image for MTV to use heavily in their launch many years later.

Within weeks of the landing, the Charles Manson murders brought a symbolic end to the 1960s, so soon after the decade’s exploding possibilities had been symbolically realised with Apollo 11’s moon landing. However, as much as the Manson murders remain an icon of the 1960s, Armstrong’s words and Apollo 11s achievement now reach far beyond a decade and a moment in time.

Instead, Armstrong’s slightly bumbled line and his tentative adjustment to zero gravity have come to symbolize the furthest boundary a human being has ever physically ventured. The budget that funded the enterprise was probably secured on the grounds of shallow cold war vanity but its outcome produced a far deeper significance.

That and a load of nonsense conspiracy theories.

We may never reach as far again.

“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. “

The Great Gatsby

Neil Armstrong, August 5th, 1930 – August 25th, 2012

blurblog 5, the final part in our blur marathon below. blurblog 1, on Hyde Park and how Blur have become a central part of our pop life is here, blurblog 2 on the tricky early years is here , blurblog 3 on the triumph of Parklife, and the cracks beginning to reveal themselves in the Great Escape here and blurblog 4 on Blur to Think Tank here.

“There were no rows,” Graham Coxon said when he left Blur in 2002, in the middle of the troubled “Think Tank” recordings in Morocco. This was both magnaminous and unlikely, given the combustible personalities involved. Indeed, looking back on Blur’s career, it seems obvious that Blur have been in various states of war from the very beginning, that their career has been one long and confusing battle.

First there was the war for attention, a battle all four members seemed eager to sign up to, and which culminated in their first, false commercial dawn with “Leisure”. This was swiftly followed by the war against Suede and looming irrelevance:  the band barely had a chance to celebrate their success before Brett Anderson’s glam wrecking crew had eclipsed them utterly, in the music press, in the charts and most importantly of all musically. This led to the band striking back with a far more satisfying record, the razor sharp, bristling “Modern Life Is Rubbish”, one which didn’t sell. Continue reading →