A Short Story by Mark Rae.
Jesmond, June 1987.
‘If you take then put back good, if you steal, be Robin Hood’.
Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen is spinning on the Marantz home stereo, the VU meters bounce on beat with ‘Appetite’. My name is Mark, at school they called me Raegun. I’m 6ft, skinny, pale blue eyes with more freckles than I would have chosen. In a month I’ll be 19. I’m sat on a sagging single bed, behind me a Toronto Blue Jays poster is pinned to the wall, above my pillow, a picture of Flavour Flav cut from the NME. I work as a laboratory chemist for Sterling Winthrop, a drug company that makes over the counter pain killers. My counter of choice is Hitsville USA, an import record shop off Eldon Square in Newcastle. I spend the money I make crushing Panadol tablets on the hypnotic selection of vinyl racked up in Hitsville. Sterling Winthrop is five short stops on the Metro from my flat in West Jesmond, in a dull spot called Fawdon. My manager lets the workforce listen to music on weekend shifts. I bring Maxell c120 mixtapes with Public Enemy’s Yo! Bum Rush The Show interspersed with Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers “We Need Money”. My work mate, Johnny Thompson, drives a white Triumph TR7, his initials are painted on the drivers door. He tells me the music I listen to is embarrassing. Johnny’s in a synth band out of Gateshead. Sometimes it’s hard to listen to his opinions when he has remnants of the blue eye shadow he wore during the previous nights gig clinging to his face. Ziggy Stardust in a white room with a Bunsen burner.
Every June the fun fair comes to Newcastle’s Town Moor. A desolate place with a smattering of cattle is transformed into a mile long strip of bright lights, noise, and sugar. For ten heady days the whir of diesel engines, the hiss of compressed air and the chilling screams of children filter through the back streets of Forsyth Road, bleeding into the gaps between tracks on my record player.
Last night a grey-haired lady in a long white shawl came to the door, ‘Do you want to be lucky?’ She asked, looking through me and twirling a sprig of heather wrapped in tin foil. ‘Criticize’ by Alexander O’Neal was blaring from the Wurlitzer on the town moor, for a moment it locked in time with the Cameo record playing in my room. I reached in my pocket, the shrapnel jingled, she heard the metallic noise and lowered her gaze. ‘Don’t criticize my motives’ sang Alexander. ‘Back and Forth’ sang Larry in return. Too many records from America are arriving every week. ‘No thank you’, I replied to the lady in the white shawl and she flicked the tin foil and heather at the door as it closed. In amongst the echoes of music and screams she hissed something indecipherable. I thought it could have been about stealing but I’m not sure.
Manchester, October 1987
I am no longer a chemist. For the next four years my chosen field of punishment will be an unpaid saunter around the workings of the human mind. I’m living in a new city, surrounded by thousands of boys and girls dressed in ripped denim. I need to scratch an itch. I push the blue metal door and fall into Johnny Roadhouse, a second-hand music shop on Oxford Road. I move through the cigarette smoke, through the saxophones, violins, and guitars, in the back a four-foot-long black coffin rests on a table next to a Marshall amplifier. I step over a pile of cables and move closer to the painted plywood. The word ‘Parties’ and a phone number that begins 0161 is all that remains of a ripped sticker hanging between the metal clips holding the coffin together. I lift the heavy lid and a rush of perished rubber rises from the late 70’s disco equipment. Two Garrard belt driven record decks stare up at me like big emotionless black eyes beaten into submission by multiple requests of ‘Tiger Feet’. A Realistic mixer with a cross fader sits between the decks. I had been daydreaming of this two-inch metal strip that allows you to manipulate sound, with the hope of joining two plastic yesterdays into one shining tomorrow. A shiver of anticipation races through my spine, triggering flashes of the summer gone by. A Wednesday night at a club called Manhattans back in Newcastle. My first experience of playing records in a DJ booth, the chrome tinted future fitted into the neon wheelhouse, perched on the edge of a sunken dance floor, yellow tiles glowing softly. Pressing the silver start button on the Technics, the bass passing through my feet, a sonic grip around my soul. “Move the Crowd” by Eric B & Rakim thundered heavenly across the empty dancefloor. A water feature filled with terrified terrapins vibrated.
‘How much for the DJ coffin?’ I ask the man sat on a stool behind the counter in Johnny Roadhouse, his dirty blonde hair gathered into a ponytail, Embassy Regal down to the filter, plucking a fretless bass along to ‘Birdland’ by Weather Report. Pressing pause on the jazz fusion, he raised his bloodshot eyes ‘Eighty quid’ he replied, thick Manc accent making me homesick, I suppress it. I need to grow, up, fast.
Last week I spent all my money on Ultimate Breaks and Beats in Eastern Bloc. Stu Allen would have been impressed if I knew him. But I don’t know Stu Allen, just his voice counting down the hip hop top ten over a loop of ‘Sport’ by The Last Poets on Piccadilly Radio every Sunday.
I ask the shop assistant if I can use the phone, he passes it over with his clawed yellow fingers. I book a taxi to Hathersage Road, to a flat in the white building next to the swimming baths. The muscular figure of my flat mate, Mark Pickstone, greets me at the door, his eyebrows raised. We carry the coffin up the stairs and into the biscuit tin flat. It slides on top of the TV in my bedroom, a stuffy place that doubles as a lounge. Mantronix and Schooly D are spreading the news in here, it’s better than Granada Reports. Eventually I turn the TV on and discover we’ve missed a live performance of ‘Voodoo Ray’ by A Guy Called Gerald that had taken place yesterday, in the swimming baths next door.
To keep spirits up and costs down, Mark Pickstone invents a sandwich called ‘The Proetta’. It consists of white bread and frozen peas cooked in a wok with soy sauce. It’s exotic, we can survive on this. Two copies of the Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache rattle away on top of a layer of talcum powder. Next month I’ll discover slip mats.
Sheffield, February 1988.
The house in Broom Hill looks like Amityville. The road outside is steep, a big roundabout at the bottom marks the start of early electronica. Snooker is big. I’m visiting friends, ideas will collide like the samples on ‘Superfly Guy’. Saturday morning, I’m sat at the Formica topped kitchen table with Martin Wiltshire, a mathematics genius. We’re discussing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon on the ZX Spectrum. The doorbell rings, Martin opens the front door, last night’s hot knife smoke exits the hallway. A political scientist has arrived, he’s carrying a twelve inch by Nitro Deluxe under his Levi denim clad arm. Ross Clarke has bright blue eyes, an earring, and a quiff. Like myself, he has taken the train to Sheffield from Manchester.
“What does brutal with the milimetre mean?” I ask Ross, as he puts his bags down next to the kitchen table.
“It means we should probably start a club,” he replies.
“I don’t know anybody to invite but I have got enough records, I tested painkillers to pay for them,”
“Martin told me about that on the phone. Maybe you could play the hip hop, I’ll play the house, you could do the funk and I’ll do the breaks,” he continues after taking a seat at the Formica.
“No, I’ll do the breaks,” I reply, thinking of the double copies of Ultimate Breaks and Beats leaning against the base of my bed in the biscuit tin flat. The breaks that made my wallet lean.
“What shall we call it?” Asks Ross, as the theme tune from the lunch time airing of Neighbours filters through from the lounge. I cast my mind back to the night of the empty dance floor and the tank of terrapins in Manhattans. A flyer on a chrome trimmed glass table at the entrance, a photocopy of Mike Tyson flexing a bicep, above it the name FEVER, a club that had been run by friends of Norman Cook, both called Matt. I’m thinking it’s just one tiny tweak, are you listening Paddy MacAloon? We will steal and put back good. Fever becomes FEVA. A flash of the white shawl, the words swallowed up by the closing door. You will be lucky, won’t you?
Manchester April 1988
Rolling in tandem with Ross. Early doors on a Friday night. Under the ground. Into the basement and a club called The Man Alive, Grosvenor Street. Caribbeans are playing dominoes on round tables and DJ Nipper is transforming ‘yellow is the colour of sun rays,” slurring the acapella of “Keep on Movin’”, stretching it, chopping the phrase into rhythmical oblivion. There’s only enough room in the creosote-stained booth for two bags of records and a DJ. Nipper’s partner, DJ Fizz, watches on from the side of the wooden dance floor. Cans of Red Stripe are being loaded into the fridges behind the bar.
“Good ain’t he?” Says Fizz with a smirk.
I nod enthusiastically, head an inch from the ceiling, lighting low, carpet sticky.
“Do you think the manager would let us have a night here?” Ross asks, hands in his jean pockets.
“Midweek, yeh?” Nobody gives up weekend nights. You’d have to kill them first.
The manager comes over, barrel-chested, black suit, white shirt, he puts down his dominoes, looks us up and down. We tell him we’re going to fill his club. He likes confidence. Now we’ve got twelve days until the Wednesday we start.
I make a flyer out of Letraset. We litter every inch of south Manchester. FEVA is reborn in a different place, half stolen, spiritually intact. Ross knows people, less people want to hang the DJ. Things are changing.
Whalley Range September 1988
The wind blows the Common Limes that line Russell Road, the leaves are starting to drop, everything orange, breaking down like the drums at the start of “Last Night Changed It All”. I’m in a new house, a terraced Victorian, room in the loft. I can see Alexander Park from the window, it looks like a fair is setting up and the wooden parts of the Wurlitzer are laid out on the grass. I’m sharing the house with a psychologist called Tristram and a vet called Anne. I’ve got two silver Technics and a Gemini mixer set up on the nylon carpeted floor. I can’t afford a table, scratch practice is sending strong messages to my back, painful ones.
The doorbell rings, I bend down to look through the letterbox, my back sends a shock wave, I can see a suit. I open the door with a wince, it’s the landlord. The vet has been complaining about the paint job in the house, the landlord has come to let us know that some painters will be coming. I leave a note for my housemates in the kitchen and catch the bus to town. FEVA at the Man Alive needs feeding. I need more records. I’m on an 85 bus, top deck, full view of Moss Side. I see a lady with a white shawl walking toward the half-constructed Wurlitzer in Alexander Park. I can smell lilac and earth, like the heather up on the moors. The M62 is so close, full of the night. The bus weaves through the concrete, past the giant horseshoes of the crescents, into the bustling bodies of Manchester. I head to Market Street and Spin Inn Records, hoping to pass the audition for access to better records. Spin Inn is covered in printed charts, the back wall behind the counter holds the most wanted vinyl, the specials still in boxes, imports rushed fresh from the airport tarmac. Russ Marland greets me with a nod, opening a box on the floor behind the counter. Picking out a pristine white sleeve from the box, he slides the Tommy Boy 12” along the counter. I pick it up, turn it to read the blue label with black print.
De La Soul “Plug Tunin’” / “Freedom of Speak”.
“You don’t need to listen to it,” says Russ. He knows.
I ask for a 12” copy of “It’s My Thing” by EPMD, cast my eye at the top 100 cassettes that fill the wall next to the till. I hand him ten quid, leave the shop and get on the 85 back to Whalley Range. Sitting on the top deck I wait for a glimpse of The Whalley pub and the trigger to jump. The doors hiss, Withington Road is shaded on the right, shady on the left, I’m walking south.
Back at the house two teenage decorators with pallid skin, short brown hair and shiny rings are toshing the walls. The house smells like an ICI plant. The sound of Inner City’s “Big Fun” is bouncing across the roofs from the fair. Up in the loft, one of the decorators is in the room, speckles of paint drying on the Gemini mixer. I wipe them off with a torn old Thomas Dolby T-Shirt. Cash Money watches from the cover of “The Mighty Hard Rocker” against the wall behind the Technics decks. “Nice room,” says the decorator, in his splattered white jump suit. I look up at the open window, cold air is circulating.
I hear the door open downstairs; the painters are leaving. Tristram calls. I follow his voice down two flights of stairs to the kitchen.
“I’ve been to Alderley Edge,” he throws a paper bag weighted down by its contents, it thuds on the cheap cream kitchen work surface. I’m thinking, chocolate fingers, cream buns, something to go with the hash oil.
“For lunch?”
“No, my friend, for the journey,”
“Where are we going?” I ask, shifting the Tommy Boy import 12” from my right hand up into my left arm pit.
“George is coming round tonight; we are going to do mushrooms. Fancy it?”
“I don’t know, I just want to listen to records and practice scratching,”
“It will be perfect for that,” says Tristram with a glint in his eye.
“The walls are still wet from the painters,” I point to the source of the chemical smell down the hall.
“It’s getting too cold to keep the windows open,”
“Remind me to close them, if you get a chance,”
George arrives at 6 o’clock, he’s dressed in a long grey coat, sandy hair, his green eyes ever so slightly shifty, funny that, he’s from Newcastle, it should feel easier than this. I still haven’t listened to the record under my arm, the one that didn’t need to be listened to before I passed the cash across the counter at Spin Inn.
For a moment I thought I’d heard “Criticize” but it must have been the wind. The vet is in her bedroom, crying. “Over the moors, take me to the moors,” muffles its way from under the door. I’m up in the loft, feeling detached from everyone, the smell of paint leaving. The needle is about to find the start of De La’s “Plug Tunin’”, before it drops my name is called again. I hang the tone arm back in the clamp and clamber down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Your sandwich is ready,” says Tristram.
“I promised myself that I wouldn’t live on sandwiches, not after all the peas I ate by the swimming baths, during the era of Voodoo Ray,”
“It’s not your dinner, it’s the journey, remember?” Tristram lifts the edge of the bread, revealing a thick spread of honey, a pile of pencil thin mushrooms rests on top. It looks like a visual representation of a very bad idea.
“I still haven’t listened to my new records,” I delay with a cough.
“There will be plenty of time for that,” says sandy haired George with a bad Geordie smile. I take a bite out of the sandwich, it tastes like the bees made the honey in a basement, autumn invades its horror into my mouth. We all pretend to be friends and retire to Tristram’s room. The bay window by his record player reaches out into the street. Tristram puts on “Aja” by Steely Dan and picks up his guitar. By the end of the second side of the record the bay window is encroaching into the house.
“The outside is coming in,” I say biting at my lip, then every nail on both hands.
“Get up, walk around,” says George, his green eyes piercing, ungodly.
I stand up, reintroducing myself to the muscles that control my body. I go to the bathroom, the walls are breathing, swimming in piss, everything drowning.
“I don’t like it,” I say to myself and reverse out of the toilet like a dalek, drifting back into Tristram’s room.
“We’re going outside,” says Tristram.
I hear him as if he were a judge. I can almost see his wig.
“You are hereby sentenced to serve 25 years at Her Majesty’s pleasure, in this room, with the outside coming in,”
The outside coming in. The door shuts, now they’re outside, the wind is blowing the leaves, it sounds like rats have been rushed across the deck of a listing ship. I run up the stairs, escape to the loft, each step sprung with the fungus, lit by lights, soft like wet marzipan. Cash Money is still staring, he never changes. I pick up the two records from Spin Inn, float back down the stairs, and re-enter Tristram’s room. They’re still out, most likely dead now? Killed by the outside, everything out there is dangerous. I slide the EPMD 12” from its sleeve and put the instrumental of “It’s My Thing” on the NAD record deck. I don’t want lyrics, words make things happen in your head, music is only sound. Sounds should be safer. The helicopter in the intro of “It’s My Thing” rattles overhead, chopping at the air, there’s a knock at the door, it’s them, they must be back, my god, they’re still alive! Whalley Range has spared them, there will be no need to ring their parents with bad news. But I can’t answer the door, it’s too dangerous. The sampled bass line of Tyrone Thomas “Seven Minutes of Funk” is sloshing about in the room like hot molasses. What if they are out there and laying in the rose garden injured? Clawing at the door for help. Could I live with myself, tell my parents what I didn’t do and should have done? With that thought held I force myself forward, toward the door, the dirt from unwashed student hands smeared around the lock. The helicopter is back but this time it feels real. I open the door. She’s there. I know it’s her because she looks down at my pockets like the last time. I’ve got no change, there will be no jingling. The white shawl shimmers like an early frost. Her face moving, shifting, melting.
“Has it happened yet?” Her voice is desperate, deep, changing on every syllable.
“What happened?” Speaking feels like chewing little snakes and whistling through fifty feet of crisps.
The shawl evaporates, she turns into two people, the stench of lilac, soil, and heather. Tristram and George are back.
“You’re not dead,” I whisper.
“Dead?” says George, his answer distorting in the orange street lights, no one’s laughing. We stare and try to remember who we are. Tristram puts his hand on my shoulder and guides me for two yards, back to his room. Wide-eyed black sheep.
“Don’t put that record on, it makes the sky fall in,” I say to Tristram, pointing at the EPMD 12” spinning round clicking in the run-out groove.
“Put this one on instead,” I hand him the other record from Spin Inn.
The Daisy Age Begins.
It seems like the new record with the blue label from Spin Inn lasts for a week, the samples like stolen moments colliding different versions of time. I declare to myself that I now understand music, but I don’t want other peoples words in my brain. It’s too late. Here they come.
“Plug One, Plug Two.”
A warm hug dripping in ju ju.
“Words are sent to the vents called humans, then converted to a phrase called talk,”
Yes… yes, that’s right, they really are!
The fungus is in De La, the plugs are tuning, combing my brain, lighting up the dark.
“Turn it off,” whispers George.
“No!” I reply with a gasp, face like a stamped lemon. I can’t lose this chance, this version of time will let me escape the outside.
“I have to look after George now, he’s our guest,” says Tristram, eyes black like a Great White shark.
“I have to go upstairs,” I mumble, taking my two 12” records, tucking them back under my arm. George doesn’t want the shock of the new.
The stairs feel solid on the approach to the loft. I push the door open, the room is freezing cold. Underneath the Toronto Blue Jays poster, my Gemini mixer is alone. Footprints in paint lead across the room to the window, it’s wide open. I gaze into the dark, across the roof, down in the guttering a white plastic square with three brass tongues point back at me. The plug from one of the Technics decks hangs from a length of torn electrical wire in the gutter. Scratch practice suspended.
The fair leaves Alexander Park. FEVA at the Man Alive is a sell-out.
“Plug Tunin’” by De La Soul is the first record played.
“What’s that?” Asks Ross, squeezing into the tiny DJ booth, earring shining.
“Something new,” I reply, neck pressed sideways against the headphones, next record held firmly on the deck.
“What are the samples from?”
“I don’t know, whatever it is they stole, they put back good.”
The owner of the Man Alive can’t hide his smile.
Back home on Russell Road the house feels rejuvenated. I need some new decks.
I can’t sleep.
This is just the beginning.
