JFK

This is the back of a VHS case, which contains a video of Halo Jones* performing live at The Bull and Gate on the fourth of September, 1989**. That's me in the middle, with Ashley Jones on my right, and Ric Francis to my left.

If you look at the track listing, you'll see at the bottom that there's a song called 'Frame 313/Game 209', which is really one song with an extended introduction. Game 209 was the name of a game show in a dream that I had but Frame 313 refers to the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination. The 313rd frame is the one in which he is hit.

It was fifty-three years ago today that JFK was shot. 

When I spoke to a friend's company earlier this year, I framed my presentation with the conceit that the future began on September 12th, 1962, when JFK addressed Rice University. It's known as the 'We choose to go to the Moon speech' and it is an address that is full optimism and hope, of determination to do things that are not only great but to do them for the benefit of mankind. Listening to the speech, he is the kind of leader under whom I would like to live and, indeed, serve.

For me, JFK's assassination was the snuffing out of a dream, one that I am only slightly embarrassed to admit I hoped might be reborn in 1997 when New Labour came to power. 

One further interesting point about the assassination (whether you take it at face value or not). A few years ago, I read 'A Brief History of the Cold War' by Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, in which he states quite casually, almost in passing, that the assassination was carried out by a trained, hired assassin and not Lee Harvey Oswald. (Hughes-Wilson was both senior within the British armed forces and NATO, so someone I'd take seriously, although can he really be so sure of the facts and publish them without rebuttal?)

* It was at this gig where we changed our name to Rhino. A woeful band called Halo James had entered the charts and we didn't want to be confused with them.

** You can find the entire performance on YouTube.