Deep Purple

No!   Nothing To Do With The Heavy Metal OAPs
Conrad has to be careful what he says here, he's ringing the gate bell on the long gravel drive leading to being a pensioner himself, and you can only look on with a kind of awe at a band that was formed in 1968 and is still going.  Conrad prefers the Coverdale-Hughes era stuff himself.  Art?

Like this

     There I go again, going off at a tangent on what the Intro's not about.
     "How about telling us what it is about, then?" I hear you query.
     Okay.
     Bigos.  Polish Hunters Stew.  I made it a couple of weeks ago, without fresh herbs or allspice, and was determined to have another go at it, prepping the slow cooker last night and setting it a-cooking today.
     There were just two problems.  Number One: it's the hottest day of the year and the slow cooker was sitting in the kitchen and simmering for nearly six hours, raising the ambient temperature to easily 450C (it says here).  Number Two: there were no white cabbages left in Morrisons last week, so I got a red cabbage instead and used that and - Art?

     Everything a nice deep shade of purple.  It reminded me of the psychedelic batter you get when making beetroot cake.  There's easily enough for four hungry people in there and thanks to the expression of muted disgust on Wonder Wifey's face when I asked, Conrad rather suspects he's going to have to eat it all himself.
     Motley!  Bring me some plain linen, for I intend to dye it royal purple*.

Who's Laughing Now, Gustav? Part 2
If anyone was laughing in 1977 it certainly wasn't the Tone-Deaf Fossils - excuse me, the "Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia", thanks to the Czech dissidents who put out the human rights document Charter 77, itself largely inspired by the miserable treatment dished out to our heroes, The Plastic People Of The Universe.  Art!

Hey!  I do the puns around here!

     Here an aside.  The British Army Of The Rhine used to broadcast the text of Charter 77 in code, knowing that Teuton, Sinister and Czech espionage agencies would all faithfully record it, as they did routinely to all BAOR broadcasts.  Quite what happened when it got decoded and translated is a moot point; Conrad would love to have been a fly on the wall in that HQ.
     The thing is, the Tone-Deaf Fossils didn't dare crack down Sinister-style and just execute everyone, or there wouldn't have been any Czechs left.  They did note an alarming rise in alcoholism, absenteeism and emigration as people left the country so they could buy TPPOTU vinyl**.
     Then along came Gorby, and the political foundations in Czechoslovakia began to quake, because, being Fossils (and Tone-Deaf) they feared change and dithered about what to do.
     Well, the Velvet Revolution decided for them.  They all resigned in late 1989 as the Czech dissidents took power - without defenestrating any of the Fossils, which was mighty forbearing of them.  Art!

The Velvet Underground
(Sorry, couldn't resist)

     The Fossils sacked their head It's-Too-Louder, one Gustav Husak, who had been a bootlicker par excellence; so much so that he carried a tin of dirt around with him, so he could dirty Kosegin's shoes and then slobber over them as proof of his undying love they hoped to try and - nope, sorry, they were annihilated politically.

The Plastics today

     You will find that the Plastics are still going strong, kind of like the whole "That which does not kill us makes us stronger and better able to strum an A minor chord progression", in this the twenty-first century.
     Gustav Husak?  Died a forgotten man in 1991, and when they did an autopsy, they found "Ti chlupati muzikanti!" engraved on his heart**.  You might see some sardonic musical acknowledgements of this next year.
     So.  Sinister repressive dictatorial regime: 0 Hairy avant-garde musos: 15
     (It means "Those hairy musicians")
     
Gadzooks!
And also Zwounds!  A couple of months ago we featured an edition of the venerable "Victor" comic FOR BOYS that had a hideously anachronistic cover picture.  Art?

Remember?

     Your Humble Scribe gasped in horror as he read the story's date and location: Germany, March 1945, because those tanks are the Mk II version of the Crusader.  They never served in mainland Europe and were relegated to training only, after the war ended in North Africa.
     I put this detail up on Listy's blog, when he praised the accuracy of a "Victor" cover that showed a period-specific Universal Carrier, rather than the Bren Gun Carrier (which is kind of like the difference between Ocean Grey and Military Grey).  Mind you, it was 17 years earlier in 1962 when they paid closer attention to detail.
     Listy responded by saying that the desperate Teutons resorted to using captured British cruiser tanks in their last-ditch defence of Germany.  I had never heard this one before, and it stopped me in my tracks.  One does not doubt the Listy, for he is wise and does lots of archival research.
     Food for thought***.

A completely different Listy, but such an awesome title I couldn't resist

"Taprobane"
No!  Nothing to do with pentabromane.  The latter is rocket fuel, the former is a private island off the coast of Sri Lanka.  We've mentioned this place before, and given the unseasonal appalling tropical heat that has risen to incredible highs of as much as 220C (it says here), in This Sceptred Isle, Taprobane would be a much nicer place to be than the sweltering environs of Babylon-Lite.  Art?

Problematic if you want to go get the morning paper

Finally -
I think we'll finish with another Horror Trope, because it's fun subverting the endless iterations dreamed up by generations of lazy screenwriters and directors.

<A badly-lit, dingy bathroom with a stained bathtub where our hero is going to wet his face at the sink, below a mirrored cabinet on the wall>
OUR HERO <glances at mirror, which reveals only him present>: Let's try a bit of revivifying water, hmmm?
OUR HERO <Bends down, splashes face>: Tepid but it'll have to do
OUR HERO <upright and looking into mirror again>: Ah, still only me here.  Of course, this huge blank patch where the backing has degraded and thus won't act as a mirror anymore might be concealing anything.  And if that sinister anything realised same belatedly and tried to loom menacingly behind me - well, it would have to be so close as to be on top of me.  And it's not.
<whistles merrily and departs empty bathroom>

This is the 237th time this has been done.  I counted.

*  We shall go into this further, though not today.
**  Perhaps
***  NO!  Normal-coloured food.