We spotted some touts near a chip van and made our way across. We got down to business then, with Marcus and I having mentally geared ourselves up beforehand for a heated and frank exchange of views regarding the price. Their hearts didn’t seem to be in it though, to be honest, which was really good news for us. I think they’d been hoping for better business from the punters on the day, but because most of them had been relatively sober going in, what with all the pubs and offies being shut and all that, they were far less inclined to be taken to the cleaners than if they’d been out of their bins. The touts tried to haggle with us a bit but it was kind of ‘token’ really. They gave up the ghost soon afterwards, so we got our tickets at cost and were good to go. At this stage it was around half past seven in the pm, so we were just about on time for the main event. We walked through the barriers at the main entrance and having made our way past the marshals with surprisingly little grief, we headed briskly towards the action.
So where was I anyway, before all that other shit went down? Oh yeah. That gobshite with the bottle of piss. As if we hadn't seen enough of that already for one day. Fuck me. He continued to swirl it around and around, spraying anyone and everyone in his immediate vicinity, and as the main concert started, his actions, although unsavoury as I’ve said before, were unusually fitting and appropriate for the moment. There weren’t many upsides to the current situation until one came to the fore almost immediately; which temporarily rendered the current urinary and musical travesty slightly more bearable. No more than five metres away we spotted Marcus’s brother Geoff, that erstwhile bastard purloiner of concert tickets and vodka. And as if providence had once again decided to play a part in the whole affair, a more than liberal dosage of piss landed squarely on his face just as he turned around and noticed that we were there. So as I mentioned previously, we were in abject aural pain at this precise moment in time (which I’ll go into in more detail in a moment) but the sight of this, and indeed Geoff's sorry arse running away into the madding and increasingly fractious crowd, was enough to lift our dampened spirits immeasurably. I'm not saying that it made everything OK exactly, but it definitely made our present calamitous state of affairs considerably more tolerable.
So why was it so bad I hear you ask? Well, consider the following words if you will, and then draw your own conclusions.
“And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare…”
The opening lyrics of ‘Future Legend’ by David Bowie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUHWeN_aPQ0. Ominous, brooding and chillingly delivered by our coked up and deliciously fucked up protagonist. He is emaciated and wooden and in truth he isn’t really there. There are no smiles and there will be no smiles. If something looks like a smile, it’s a grimace. Inside he is screaming. The year is 1974 and ‘this IS Rock and Roll’!
Fast forward thirteen years (yes, just thirteen short years) and consider the following words also if you will.
“Up until one century ago there lived, in the Zi Duang province of an eastern country, a glass-like spider. Having devoured its prey it would drape the skeletons over its web in weeks creating a macabre shrine of remains.”
The lyrics at the start of ‘Glass Spider’ by David Bowie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9fQTQ6z324 Ominous, brooding and cheerily delivered by our Pepsi-upped and dubiously narcissistic protagonist. He is in annoyingly rude health but in truth he isn’t really there. There are smiles and more smiles and sickly, saccharine sweetness abounds. If something looks like a smile, it is obsequious and self-satisfied and in actual fact a sneer. Inside he is screaming. The year is 1987 and this IS genocide!
The bemused crowd looks on aghast at the bombast. He has descended from a chair lift fifty metres above the stage and wears a tightly fitted and impeccably tailored scarlet red suit. He speaks into a red telephone cum microphone and not a hair is out of place on his head. The stage is constructed as a giant Glass Spider, that of the one referred to in the lyrics above, and between himself, the musicians and the dancers (whose actual purpose is anyone’s guess), there are fully fifteen people on stage. Fifteen people responsible for this turgid nonsense and many more besides. Those behind the scenes, backstage and side stage, and the suits that populate top floor offices in New York City high rise skyscrapers. A multitude of crossed fingers and palpitating hearts, all hoping against hope that this unfathomably precarious stack of cards doesn’t come tumbling down at any moment. It’s all about balls you see, of which clearly nobody related to this travesty today, has any to speak of.
Marcus piped up.
“OK Freakalot,” he said measuredly, with a not unimpressive degree of control. “We’ll talk about Geoff and all that later, but before all that…WHAT…THE FUCK…IS THIS?”
“Marcus my friend” I replied. “I know. It is a travesty. Nothing more, nothing less. But above all that also my friend, it is two words and two words alone. Spinal Tap. It is Spinal Tap my friend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Fc_5slG_Q.”
Perhaps it happens to all Rock demigods at some stage in their careers. You know that quite staggeringly unbelievable loss of perspective? Has Jagger experienced it? Prince maybe? Definitely Prince. Graffiti Bridge anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIvPmwse0Iw The problem here anyway is fairly simple and comes down to a pretty obvious truism. Never believe your own bullshit. And for fuck sake EDIT!
Which is all very well of course but if you do find yourself blindly going down that road, you must at the very least ensure that you have a safety net of people in place, any people really, to explain to you that you’ve ‘veered a tiny bit off course there mate, let’s steady her up there now, that’s it, there you go, now we’re back on track, phew, that was a close one, sheez, we nearly looked like fucking idiots there. Ha ha, boy, would we have looked silly if we’d gone down that road, holy fuck, serious egg on the face. MAJOR bullet dodged!’
So this was the Duke's problem. I was convinced of it. Looking at him there, strutting around the stage making ‘Sons of the Silent Age’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6dN57MNLqg look and sound like a Boney M number. The answer to me was as obvious as the nose on your face. That is of course, for just one of his entourage to have the spine to knock on his door and you know, ask to have a quick word in his shell-like. Just that and then the whole thing might quite easily have been radically different, and not the total catastrophe it was right now.
I can see the conversation in my head though and it doesn’t end well.
Random Yes Man, Soon To Be No Man: “Knock, knock.”
David Bowie: “Come.”
RYMSTBNM: “Ehh, David. Err, sorry, Mr Bowie I mean. I wonder if I could have a word in your, you know, shell-like if I may?”
DB: “Yes. Yes, you may.”
RYMSTBNM: “Well, I was looking at the rehearsals yesterday and whereas it all looks very good and all that… AHHH FUCK IT MAN, IT’S A CROCK. A FUCKING CROCK OF UNSPEAKABLE SHITE. I MEAN WHAT ARE YOU ON? HAVE YOU NO DIGNITY? JESUS FUCKING H DUDE. HOW DID IT COME TO THIS? TIME WILL CRAWL? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTpTUh0TpH0 IT FUCKING DOES ALRIGHT! FOR THE FUCKING AUDIENCE!!
DB: “SECURITY!”
OK, but it’d be worth a shot right?
So not being overly enamoured with the entertainment on display, we wandered around the field for the next little while, looking for a beer tent obviously, and Geoff also if we could find him. If we could nab the bollocks when he wasn’t expecting it, we could definitely shake him down for the cash he’d fleeced off us, which would definitely make our day more palatable going forward.
We eventually spotted him buying hash off some dealer behind a tree near the back, which was good news for us, very good news indeed. We’d get to sneak up behind him basically, and he’d have zero chance of escape. Wily and cunning as the most fastidious of green berets so, we were on him in a heartbeat and he never saw us coming. Pinned to the ground within seconds, he was a badger in a snare and going nowhere fast.
"Geoff, you complete and utter fucking plague!" shouted Marcus angrily, with one knee planted squarely on his chest, rendering any immediate notions of flight for the usurper impossible. His hands were wrapped tightly around his throat also, so Geoff’s present predicament was unquestionably torrid.
"You knew I was dying for this gig all year,” Marcus continued furiously, “and still you robbed my stuff! You complete and utter sack of fucking shit!"
Considering the fare on offer from the stage, it seemed scarcely conceivable that anyone might have waited all year for this ghastly drivel. But there you go, that was the way it was. We were young back then, but would realise over time as the years trundled by, that life was generally more likely to be beset by anti-climaxes than not.
"He's right Geoff," I joined in, standing to the side and nodding my head sagely. "Your actions were reprehensible in the extreme. Of that there can be little denial my friend."
"Fuck you, lexicunt!" said Geoff, a reference related I think, to the fact that he viewed my vernacular as more ostentatious perhaps than it possibly needed to be.
"Steady on, old chap," I retorted, wounded to the core.
“Wanker!” he spat out, and then turned his squirming head back to his seething sibling. He made a mock plea for mercy then, with his total arrogance and indifference to the situation gushing forth in torrents.
“Oooh, ever so sorry little brother,” he mock winged like a baby. “Boo-hoo, what’s a poor little boy to do, did someone rob your ikkle tickets and your ikkle bokkle a wodka, awww, that’s terrible bro, coochie woochie woo. So anyway, yeah, call the fucking feds Poindexter, there’s a fucking crazed larcenist on the loose!”
So it’s all very well being contemptuous and full of shit and all that, but it really is best I think to reserve those particular character traits for moments when you’re in a more esteemed position of advantageous leverage or power. In his current situation so, I couldn’t help but think that it was a tad ill-advised for Geoff to be continuing on with this specific choice of rhetoric. If anything Marcus was becoming even more incensed by his general smart-arsedness, which of course brought with that, considerably more pressure being applied to Geoff’s overall sternum and oesophageal regions. So he eventually realised I think, that he might have to consider the idea of going down the road of a plea bargaining kind of situation, if he was to get himself out of this sticky situation at any stage in the near to medium term future. His next words therefore were chosen I feel, with a noticeably more subdued degree of assiduousness.
“Ahh jaysus Marcus, sure it’s only money wha’?” he ventured forth more jocularly. “And sure I have a good bit of it left on me anyways, in any case.”
Which was more good news of course, and exactly what we were looking to hear. Marcus didn’t seem to be in the mood for instantaneous leniency however, and looked to me like someone who was inclined to make him sweat it out for a bit longer. I looked at my watch so and nodded over in his general direction, in a bid to impress upon him the idea that we might be far better advised to be doing other things rather than sitting here chewing the fat with his buffoon of a sibling. Comprehending my gesture eventually, he thankfully took immediate steps to close the thing out.
“OK, so how much have you got left then fuckface?” he said, easing his grip on Geoff’s neck slightly, but keeping the knee in position on his chest just to be on the safe side. He was a slippery fucker at the best of times, so wouldn’t be looking for a gilt-edged invitation to be making a run for it.
“Forty notes,” he said “And I’ve just bought a twenty spot off that bloke for me and a couple of girls I met earlier as well. So you can have some of that as well if you like, there’ll be plenty to go around. Just get your knee off me chest will ye Marcus, for fuck sake. I can hardly breathe!”
“Whoah there," said Marcus, intrigued and curious now all of a sudden. "Back it up there a bit cowboy,” he continued, easing his knee off just a bit. “Some girls you met?”
He was right of course. Fuck cash, dope and gargle, this was an opportunity to be introduced to actual girls. We’re talking gold dust right here; information that could potentially negate almost completely the total certainty that for the next three to four hours, there was a very strong likelihood that we’d be vainly sifting through the crowd, being told to fuck off by practically every girl or group of girls that we attempted to engage in conversation. Until of course we might happen upon some that were either almost as desperate as we were (given the waning hour and all that), or too doped up or pissed to know the difference. It was of vital importance so that we handled these newly come to light facts very carefully; as in that the situation that had recently come to light could not in any way be fucked up. All of a sudden so, Marcus's louse of a brother was our new best friend.
“Yes indeedy Marcus Aurelius!” said Geoff animatedly, recognising his out. He was stupid but not that stupid. “And two big time fucking hotties they are too, mein sibling, seriously well upholstered. Ann and Fiona. So do youse wanna go and meet them then or wha’? ”
Well d’uh.
“Maybe,” said Marcus, not showing his hand yet completely. Ever the strategist. “First things first though, hand over the rest of the readies now and then I might let you up.” He probably knew in his heart of hearts that Geoff probably had sixty notes left, or even eighty, but considering the fact that we needed to keep him onside long enough for us to meet with the girls, he made a wise decision I think, not to press the point too hard about the supposedly lesser amount that remained. Geoff fished into his pocket so and made with the dough. Just forty also as it happens, so maybe he was telling the truth. But you wouldn’t be putting your house on it anytime soon; the rest of it was probably in his shoe the sneaky bollocks.
The key to the success of the next phase of the venture so (well the way I saw it anyway) was to ensure that Geoff didn’t do a runner if an opportunity arose. Once he’d effected an introduction for us to the girls though, we didn’t give a flying fuck what he did with himself afterwards. He would no longer serve a purpose. In the meantime however, as we shimmied and slipped in and out of the crowd in the general direction of the sound tower (this was where he’d said he’d meet back up with them), we had to keep a very close eye on him in case he tried to make a run for the hills. He was a slippery customer as I’ve said before, so needed watching like a hawk. I walked in front of him so and Marcus behind, so that if did try any funny stuff there was no way he’d make it very far. I got the impression though, from what he was saying on the way through, that he actually fancied his chances with either or both of the girls once we got back. So there you go, it just goes to show you. There’s no accounting for delusion. No self-respecting young girl would ever seriously touch Geoff with a barge pole though, I mean he was a fucking halfwit at the best of times, so not an especially auspicious catch whatever way you cared to look at it. And if you throw mean spiritedness and general self-centredness into the equation also, it made for a pretty dastardly combination all in all. Geoff’s understanding of his own personality however, that is how he was perceived by the general public and girls in particular, was clearly residing somewhere close to the farther reaches of the twilight zone.
The crowd was restless still, and as we arrived at the sound tower Bowie had just launched into ‘Let’s Dance’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4d7Wp9kKjA; with very few in the audience it has to be said, looking overly inclined to acquiesce to his wishes. As a gathering they were obstinately stationery. Geoff veered us towards two girls that were standing to the left of the tarpaulin that covered the scaffolding for the sound tower, and at first glance they certainly seemed to be very nice indeed. And one of them in particular. The one I would find out soon enough was known as Ann.
“Right so, here we are,” said Geoff, as we sidled up. “Ann, Fiona, Marcus my little brother, and his mate Johnny Freak Show. I met them over there when I was scoring the dope.”
He could fuck off now so we were both thinking. His job was done. Which probably sounds harsh I know, but seriously, you haven't met Geoff . A complete and utter bollocks. He actually hung around for quite a while afterwards as it goes, but anyway, whatever; let's not worry about Geoff. He was kind of superfluous to the current situation from here on in, now that our immediate attention had been diverted down a different track.
I’m not sure if you’ve experienced this before yourselves, but a somersaulting stomach is a hell of sensation to behold. It's typically reserved for six year olds travelling over bumps in roads of course, but is an intense and breath-taking thrill that from time to time makes a re-appearance in later life. And usually at just around the time you’re least expecting it as well. So around about now basically. Fiona was decent enough I suppose and you’d certainly give her a go if she was up for it. But Ann was on a totally different level. A vision of divinity. Kate Bush. I might have imagined it of course, but I’m almost certain that at the moment we met a chorus of harps serenaded around and above us, whilst an orchestra of choral symphony was limbering up somewhere else also in the general locale. If someone had informed me as well that cherubic winged creatures were flitting hither and thither over our heads, and had begun to shoot miniature arrows in the general direction of our respective right and left ventricles, well you’d have got very little argument from me on that score. I’m not entirely sure of the following either (and if someone was to ask me to place a bet on it, the old wallet would have almost certainly remained in its customary state of defiant and cobwebbed closure) but I do have a vague recollection of her being bathed in a soft white light of the most radiant incandescence, with long golden tresses flowing freely about her porcelain-like skin against a panoramic back drop of the Mediterranean sea of the deepest azure. Standing astride a giant oversized sea shell, a heavenly and perfectly formed vision of creation recently raised from the depths of the sea and borne, well it seemed to me anyway, of Aphrodite herself.
But as I said, I might have imagined all that. She was a vision of loveliness either way though, notwithstanding fifteenth century Florentine hallucinogenics on my part. Speech of even the most rudimentary nature was proving unusually difficult for me to come by also, so it was left up to the demigoddess to make the first move.
“Johnny, how’s it going?” she said, looking in my general direction and smiling. “Marcus,” she continued, nodding at him with her smile receding somewhat. At least that’s what my innermost subconscious was telling me anyway. Which may or may not have been the case. This assumption on my part was probably marginal at best, but you know yourself, much as we'd like to suppress it, our egotistical self does like to play tricks on us from time to time.
She’d mentioned my name first though right? Not Marcus’s? So surely that counted for something? Well maybe or maybe not but anyway, all that aside, let me describe Ann’s specific physical attributes to you. And on this occasion I'll try to utilise slightly less flamboyant and more contemporary vocabulary as my tools of conveyance. That whole ‘Birth of Venus’ thing is all very well of course http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Botticelli), but if you’re looking for a better-rounded and generally less flowery idea of what she was actually like, then physical portrayals inspired by classical fifteenth century works of renaissance art are probably not the way to go. Let’s cut to the chase so then shall we? From the top down?
The first thing you need to consider is that although Ann was modelling garments that were totally and comprehensively associated with the drastic fashion statements that were prevalent during the 1980s, that she herself was carrying it off with a hubris that was in direct contrast to anyone else in the environs at the time. A lot of this I think came down to the totally unassuming self-confidence and comfort she seemed to have in her own skin. Given the fashion options available to her however, it was remarkable enough that she looked so good. Her hair was of a golden strawberry blonde, and in defiance to gravity itself, it bounced majestically up and down around her face dramatically as she communicated. Tiny rays of sunshine entwined themselves intermittently between her golden tresses and her face, and she wore a simple white blouse that besides the top two was buttoned all the way down the front. The collar of which was upturned also, as was the style of the day. She wore oversized plastic red earrings and facial make-up that was applied sparingly but well. Her lipstick was of a scarlet red hue, which when contrasted with the pale pallor of her unblemished, powder white skin, brought to mind the look of one of those movie starlets from the 1950s. She wore cerise pink three quarter length pedal pushers and her blouse was gathered in at the waist by a thick black patent leather belt that was garishly decorated at its centre with an oval shaped brass buckle. She wore white ankle length boots on her feet, which seemed at the time to me, to be a pretty questionable choice of footwear for a girl who knew she'd be spending the best part of her day wandering around a large field in the middle of rural Ireland. She was flair and panache personified however, whilst everyone else in our immediate surroundings seemed no more than one or two steps ahead of Hayzi Fantayzee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXu8hd49ZZM. In addition to possessing a mesmerising figure, her face really was quite something to behold. She had spaniel sad eyes that were strikingly piercing and of a half blue/half hazel hue. When she smiled her eyes became alive and her teeth, which were perfectly straight, were eye-catchingly pearl like also. The principal thing here though and chief among anything else that made her look or seem beautiful, was that wonderful trait that some attractive people sometimes have. That is of having absolutely no idea themselves that this is the actual case. It’s not something that I’ll ever have to worry about myself of course, but in the same way as some beautiful people are sickeningly self-satisfied and arrogant, the opposite is true of those that are beautiful but aren’t aware of it. She spoke