Extract from “Some Obscure Lesion of the Heart” by Nels Stanley

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side.

-- Hunter S. Thompson.

“Pulsing skronk, mate.”

“Say what?”

“That’s what the kids are into. Not this folksy shit. Pulsing skronk.” He sipped lager from a plastic cup, wiped a moustache of foam from his upper lip onto his Aphex Twin T-shirt and stared past my ear at the ranks of Marshalls lined up by the stage. “Glitchcore. Multi-wavelength subsonics. High-end divebomber BPMs.” He grinned, exposing yellow teeth caried from long-time speed use. He smelled like death. “Not jangly fucking love songs sung by a bunch of Art School wankers. I mean, who do they think they are? The Boo Fucking Radleys?”

“Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind,” I said, looking around desperately for someone to save me. Not twenty feet away, a group of identical looking young men in flared trousers and boring shirts stood on stage while the guitarist threw a tantrum about monitor levels. The sound engineer lit his third joint of the afternoon and settled into his Anais Nin book. Their manager was nowhere to be seen, thank God; a few roadies – all of them earnest, aloof young men in Beta Band T-shirts and brick-thick bifocals – sneered their displeasure at me. Cunts, I thought uncharitably, then felt a pang of remorse; mustn’t speak ill of virgins, my mother said. Words to that effect, anyway.

My new friend ripped the cellophane off a pack of Embassy No. 1’s with his teeth then proffered the spittle-drenched packet. I politely declined. He shrugged, and turned to watch the band, who were now arguing about the time signature I Hung My Head was written in.

“It’s five/nine, Charles. Any prick could tell that.” The lead guitarist, resplendent in a frightful green velvet shirt, shook wispy blond fringe from his eyes and stroked his acne-spattered chin. “Or maybe nine/five. Not seven/ten, at any rate. It’s a fucking Sting song, not Miles Davis.”

My new friend nudged me in the shoulder.

“What are you here for, then? With the band, are you?”

The question. It haunts my days and pursues me down the Stygian corridors of night. I scraped my foot on the floor, bummed a ciggie and lit it off his. Then I looked around, to make sure there was no-one within earshot. The band jangled out the intro to An Englishman In New York, stumbled over a chord change. The singer swore into the mike, spun about on his heel and stomped off-stage. Everybody was safely ignoring me.

“I’m a hack,” I whispered. The temperature of the room dropped seventy degrees. My new friend stiffened, a look on his face like he was about to whip the cigarette from my mouth and stamp on it. The roadies swivelled like they were all on castors, sneering at me in unison. The smell of the place suddenly filled my nostrils, ghosts of Old Holborn from a million roll-ups and sweat from a hundred thousand armpits. It seemed to solidify in my throat. My stomach churned. I grinned and hurried away, heading for the street, for light, for life.

*

Safe in the car. Mix tape slotted in. Head back against headrest; Nick Cave screaming; rain falling Biblically, making a nice streaky effect on the windscreen. Finish the ciggie. Wind window down an inch, flick butt out. Watch shoppers straggle about between the puddles. Nothing to do for three hours but sit and think and worry vaguely about not having a real job.

A knock on the window. My new friend leered into my car.

“Cor Jesus,” he said. “Let us in for fuck’s sake.”

I thought briefly about date rape and Rohypnol and whether or not you could soak an Embassy No. 1 in it, then opened the passenger door. He flopped into the seat, then broke wind loud enough to drown out the Bad Seeds.

“Into that, are you?” he said, as I turned the stereo down enough to make conversation possible.

“Into what?” I asked, on the defensive.

“Fucking Goth,” he said, lighting another cigarette. He pronounced it ‘Goff’. Of course.

“Actually, I don’t mind some of it. It’s...” I looked out into the street. A small child stood outside an ironmonger’s, pressing their head against the window, unmindful of the rain, trying to bore through the plate glass by force of will to get at all the lovely shiny things in the window display. “Look. I like lots of stuff. Taste in music is subjective, all right? There’s no right or wrong. There’s stuff people like that they simply cannot defend on a rational basis. I just get paid to sneer in print, that’s all.”

He drew reflectively on his smoke, flicked ash onto the floor.

“Nice speech. Prepare that, did you?”

“Actually, no. No I fucking didn’t.”

The rain pattered madly on the roof. The reek of cheap cigarettes, lager and a T-shirt probably not washed since Kurt Cobain was alive filled the car.

“S’no biggie. I prefer something with a bit more oomph meself.” He stuck a chubby finger in his ear, twiddled it about then withdrew it. A glistening lump of something thick and yellow adhered to the tip. He wiped it on his sagging trackie bottoms. I tried not to gag. “Y’know...”

“High-end divebomber BPMs?”

He grinned, nodded once like a dog-owner whose Pomeranian has just performed a long-practised trick.

“Yeah. Like I said, pulsing skronk.”

 

To read more, buy now.