It melded perfectly into a seamless whole and the grand pulsating amoeba settled into its centre, content and undividing as it rippled and flexed gently within itself, occasionally stretching along its axis as the fluctuations in time and space lent tension to the eventual resolutions in synchronisation and harmony.
The many became one. The one became the many, and all we had to do was hold it together and let it do the work as the repetition made nonsense of what we thought we knew.
Let us pick a word.
Let’s choose the word ‘strawberry’.
Take a deep breath and say that word out loud rhythmically until you have run out of breath. Now do it again … and again … and again, until it stops making any verbal or audible sense to you. Do you notice the way the inflections change with repetition? Do you lose the coherent start, end and middle of the word? I used to do this as a child with this word until it made me laugh when it all stopped making sense.
OK … we’ve got that bit down. Now try saying that same word for twenty minutes … over and over again.
Perhaps as a further experiment you could invite some friends round and all do it together. Can you tell your voice from everyone else’s? Unity has a funny way of fucking with your sense of what is yours and what is theirs, what was what, and even if what is … at all … mostly.
Now get back to me on the monkey and the marijuana question.
Is this making any sense at all?
Hopefully not.
That’s the whole single point, really: to end sense through repetition of the familiar. To strip sense from the senses you have, and thereby open the world through limitation. Stop. Making. Sense. It is the musical equivalent of the zen kōan, which so perplexes the mind in its seeming contradiction that the mind itself, repulsed by its own lack of understanding, quantum leaps beyond the self-imposed boundaries and habitual perceptions of reality it has taken for granted as being correct.
Or maybe you do. Or maybe it and you do. Is it you? Are you you? Is the you you knew you? Or is the I you were you? Is this confusing? Who? Are you confusing it with you?
Don’t worry … you’ll get tired of caring about these things eventually and just get back to the womwomwowmwowmwowmwomwomwomwamwomwomwom.
It’ll be easier in the long run, and this is going to be a very long run indeed so you don’t want to be expanding any energy on useless questions about whether or not you even exist or not. The show must go on … and on … and on and womwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowm wowmwowwmwowmwowmwowwmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmw. Settle down now, breathe deeply, don’t grip your plectrum too tightly, hold the tempo that’s sliiiiiiding across the millifractions of the moment … that’s gone, that’s gone … Do you wish you weren’t so stoned? Do you think you should have got a proper job, after all? Do you look stupid? Did you lock the door? IS YOUR CAT HAPPY? Or is everything going womwomwowmwowmwowmwowwow? Is that YOU going TICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICK? Is it time to tock yet? Settle down, monkey mind … you can do this. It doesn’t matter how stoned you are.
Settle down. You can do this for as long as you think you can … can’t you?
Thankfully, at this point within our peculiar conundrum of unity and individual performance, our friend the virtuoso will arrive in the nick of time to add a little light and shade to the endless plain of womwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowm.
He will bring a reassuring voice … something to hold on to in all of this space …
A familiar refrain.
Jason Spaceman is asking you a question? But what is it?
There it is again. It certainly sounds like something you ought to understand, but then it changes … ever so slightly … urging comprehension of the previous question you somehow missed but thought you understood. It’s like a nursery rhyme you heard once in a more innocent time, and it is oh so obvious what it was. Then it changes, but only just enough so that you can’t remember what was different about it the first time. Anyway. Fuck it, it sounds nice and that’s the main thing. The tone is pleasant … and now that the band is playing all together we are almost loud enough to drown out those two people talking loudly over in the far corner of the bar about how shit we are.
I wonder what the ducks think? Floating blissfully upon the Ganges as they are.
How does it feel?
The guitars fade back into themselves and the room, and everything else seems to be ending too. Perhaps the song is finishing? Do you know how long you have been playing? The repeater and tremolo slide up along the octaves and somehow your mind, which has grown so used to their company and repetition, goes with them and actually listens. It … them … it … and then it plays … a little snatch of the melody from ‘Honey’ for no good reason … once … and then it goes back to the womowomwowmwowmwowmwowm …
Did that happen? Did you hear that?
Then … the actual voice of God appears. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, would you please take your seats for this evening’s showing of Wings of Desire.’
What? We are already sitting down? What does God even mean by that?
Womwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmowmwowmw wowmw wowmw wowwow.
And then the refrain … and the questions … and the questions.
Womwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowmwowwmowmwom.
Spectral shapes, motifs and melodic archetypes drift in and disappear, while the occasional mythical beast emerges from the ocean of drone, rising and submerging with barely a ripple. Imaginary colours pulse lysergically, and the drift of time is forgotten within the boundaries of limitless sound. How could so little mean so much? And what happened to all of those stupid and meaningless questions that seemed so important earlier? After 44 minutes and 17 seconds of this sort of thing our perpetual motion machine begins its descent back to what we will laughingly refer to as reality. The music ends and a smattering of applause greets the relief and disappointment of relative silence.
I looked up from my bass and tried to come to terms with not doing the thing I had been doing for nearly fifty minutes. I shook the blood back into my rigid and aching left hand and flexed the claw of my pick hand. I checked that the other musicians were finished and then reached down to switch off my amplifier.
I was quite surprised to find that it was impossible to switch it off.
It was impossible to switch it off because I had never switched it on in the first place. This was quite confusing and embarrassing until I realised that nobody, not even me, who had been sitting on my amplifier, had actually noticed that it wasn’t switched on. A monkey could have done what I had just done. A non-existent monkey could have done it. The ducks outside could have done it … or a giraffe. I stood up and walked over to the bar to get a drink, leaving my bass guitar propped up against the amplifier ready for the next set.
I returned to the dressing room and was greeted by the reassuring aroma and the large and reassuring presence of Pat Fish who had turned up, guitar in hand, to lend weight to our note for the next set. We said our hellos and continued with the job at hand.
The door to the dressing room opened and a member of the arts council stuck his head inside. ‘Could I, erm, have a word in private with one of you, please?’
Sonic stood up and followed him out of the smoke-thick room, after inhaling deeply and passing the joint.
He returned ten minutes later looking faintly surprised and wearing a smile.
‘Hahahahaahahaa,’ he laughed. ‘It looks like we won’t be playing the next set. The management said that our services will not be required.’ He laughed again. ‘But they are going to pay us for both sets.’
This seemed like a minor triumph on more than one level.
‘I heard some bloke at the bar moaning about that wonderful music,’ said Pat. ‘He was moaning and groaning and then he turned to his friend and said, “To think that Elvis died for this.”’
The laughter and the smoke escaped the narrow confines of the windowless room. When we had stopped laughing, we went back out i
nto the arts centre foyer, packed up our equipment and went home. The live recording of that performance continues to sell, twenty-seven years later. To this day, I’m not sure if it was art or not.
The Nun Next Door
Somehow it had been decided that the band were going to have a rehearsal in my front room. I didn’t mind, but I wondered if the neighbour might.
I had never met her, but I had heard her coughing through the wall, and even though she had never been round to complain about any noise, I thought that the sound of ripping feedback and a full drum kit might be a bit much for even the most tolerant of neighbours. I decided to go round and let her know what was going on.
I rang the bell and waited by the door at the side of her flat. There was no answer. I knew she was inside, because I had heard her coughing earlier. I rang the bell again and rattled the flap of her letter box. I saw movement through the frosted glass and eventually, after an age of unlocking, the door opened and I found myself standing face to face with an elderly nun. She smiled at me. ‘Hello,’ she said, brightly. ‘Can I help you?’
I was a little surprised that my neighbour was a nun. She seemed friendly, despite the fact that I was obviously a long-haired ne’er-do-well and probably not a churchgoer. ‘Ah, hello,’ I said. ‘Sorry to bother you. I live next door and I just wanted to come and tell you that we will be making a bit of noise later. We are having a band practice. If it’s too loud please come round and tell me and we’ll stop. It won’t be a regular thing, I promise.’
‘Pardon,’ she replied, still smiling. ‘You’ll have to speak up. I’m a bit deaf, I’m afraid.’
Hiding my obviously selfish delight at hearing this news, I repeated myself loudly.
‘Oh, lovely,’ she said. ‘What kind of music is it? Are you a bit like Michael Jackson?’
I smiled back and shouted that we were a bit like Michael Jackson.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘It will be nice to hear a bit of life in the place. You play all you want to. Don’t worry about me.’
I gave her my heartfelt thanks and shouted that if she ever needed her bins putting out or any help with anything, that she should come and tell me.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘You just play your music and have a nice time.’
I was all smiles as I thanked her again and walked back to my own flat. Not only was my neighbour nice, she was also deaf. It couldn’t have been better.
When the band turned up with all of the equipment I went outside and gave them a hand loading it into my bedroom.
‘You won’t believe it,’ I said. ‘The next door neighbour, who coughs a lot, is a nun ‒ and here’s the good news: she’s deaf as a post.’
Jonny set up his drums in the corner of the flat, and we arranged the amplifiers and plugged in the guitars. The power was switched on and Pete produced an ominous wave of searing feedback. ‘Maybe we should do ‘Walkin’ with Jesus’ for her?’ he said, and then we launched into ‘Rollercoaster’ and the whole house shook to its foundations.
Shortly afterwards I got the news from my flatmate that he was going to move out. It wasn’t to do with the rehearsals ‒ there was just too much Spacemen 3 business going on, and that always brought with it a certain amount of weirdness somehow. Around that time, I got a letter from the dole office regarding my claim. It said, ‘The law of the land has decreed that you must receive the sum of thirty-six pounds per week as a legal minimum.’ The next day, I got a letter from them that said I was going to get six pounds per week for the next six months because I had got the sack from my last job. I thought it was actually a joke at first, but when the first dole cheque came through I realised it wasn’t. There was no way I was going to be able to survive on six pounds a week.
The picture on the back of Playing with Fire is taken from a photo session we did in my bedroom for the first interview I was ever part of. Pete did the talking, while me and Jason just sat there saying nothing. Pete handled the press fairly well. He talked about drugs quite a bit, and we were fine with that too. When the photographer took the photos, I was completely stoned on hash and wine. All the way through the photo session, the cameraman kept saying, ‘Just try to open your eyes a bit more.’ I suppose we looked a bit stoned.
After it had appeared in the Melody Maker I received a visit from my landlord. Because I had stopped working and because the dole were giving me very little money, I had fallen behind on the rent. He came into his flat that I was now living in by myself, and said he wanted a word with me. These were the words he had with me: ‘You’ve got your money for your drugs, Willie, but you obviously don’t want to pay me. I think you ought to leave the flat as soon as possible.’ I suppose he had read the interview. I couldn’t be bothered to try to tell him that actually I had no money for drugs or anything else for that matter. We were still mixing the album and it was sounding great, so I didn’t really care about the fact that I had no money or that I’d lost my flat and my job. I thought it would all work out OK if I kept on playing. Nothing else really mattered to me at all.
Tiny
Being short on clean laundry and quietly proud of our recent achievements, I had foolishly chosen to wear a Spacemen 3 t-shirt while going for a lunchtime pint with a friend in Rugby town centre. I walked through the town centre, happily whistling a modulated drone over some low-note split-frequency Tuvan throat singing as I strolled among the unhappy shoppers. The sun was shining and it was almost possible to imagine the town as being filled with possibility and wonder. I met my friend at the clock tower. The clock tower in Rugby town centre is a large clock, in a tower, conveniently situated next to the Clock Towers shopping centre. There were a few sixteen-year-old goths surrounded by pigeons in the uncomfortable seating area. The mini-goths were crimped and made up to perfection, resplendent in black leather and carefully distressed rags. They were hanging on stubbornly despite the lateness of the decade. I greeted them with a nod and a smile. I met my friend and we both walked the twenty-five metres to the crossroads at McDonald’s then turned right into the pedestrian lane that would take us down to the White Swan, or the ‘Dirty Duck’ as it was known affectionately by the locals.
We chatted as we walked and my friend asked me how the band had been going. I was feeling pretty optimistic, so I was probably bragging a bit and telling unlikely tales of far-flung gigs in glamorous locations like Hull.
We were about to make a journey to Paris to play at the Locomotive club which was next to the Moulin Rouge in the Pigalle district. It was going to be my first trip abroad with the band. I was really excited about playing my first gig outside the country. That’s probably why I had the t-shirt on. It was luminous orange and yellowy green, and in the middle it had the triangle with the 3 in it. It was a fairly striking design.
We walked into the pub and I bumped into somebody I knew. I made the customary greeting, ‘All right, Tiny?’ as I approached the bar where he was standing with one of his mates. ‘How’s it going?’
Tiny was so named because he was not tiny, in the same way that the Dirty Duck was neither dirty nor a duck. He was a big and imposing character who I had got to know through our cosy network of ne’er-do-wells and miscreants. He was a sort of biker and he had a face that carried a few scars from some late-night glassing incident outside one of the pubs in town. Don’t get me wrong here, I liked Tiny, and we had always got on pretty well. We weren’t mates but we were on more than nodding terms. My greeting to him would have traditionally been met with a similar response, a bit of banter, and maybe a joke if you were lucky.
Despite the fact that it was early in the afternoon, Tiny was obviously a couple of pints into his lunch, and God alone knows if he had slept in the last two or three days. ‘Huh?’ he said, as he looked me up and down with disdain. ‘You can tell he’s an arsehole just by the t-shirt he’s wearing!’
He said this fairly loudly to the man who was standing next to him.
Being sober and fairly happy, I wasn’t quite sure i
f it was some sort of joke, so I shrugged it off and laughed. ‘Yeah, I know. I didn’t have anything else that was clean and it was free.’
He didn’t smile. He took a couple of steps closer to me, sneered and said, ‘Yeah, but only a COMPLETE arsehole would wear it.’
He stood there, not far from my nose, and waited for my reaction. Tiny was sort of smiling, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was one of those smiles that meant you might be about to get punched in the face.
I looked at him, realised it wasn’t a joke, and turned away to go and sit with my friend, who had taken a seat close by. ‘Well, you can’t please everybody, man,’ I said over my shoulder before I sat down. I turned in my seat and said, ‘We’re off to Paris at the weekend. See you there, mate!’
‘I’ll see you outside,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll see what kind of man you are.’
This was a fairly clear declaration of intent for such an early hour.
‘Nah, you’re all right, thanks, Tiny. Bit early for me, and I’ve got to look after me hands.’
‘Yeah, I fucking knew you were a wanker,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come outside and we’ll see how much of a big man you are?’ he said, still standing and facing me.
‘I ain’t looking for a fight, Tiny. Leave it out,’ I replied. ‘I’m just trying to have a fucking drink.’ I wasn’t smiling any more. I sat down and ignored him while he continued to throw boring insults at my back and pretended to laugh at his own jokes. I wasn’t feeling so fucking optimistic any more, but I didn’t really let it get me down.
Waves of Joy
As the ship pitched and rolled, low waves of vomit rolled across the toilet floor and broke gently against the unconscious figure of the recumbent drummer, who was snoozing peacefully in the unfresh tide with his head on his arm. Mercifully, he had somehow seen fit to keep most of his face away from the contents of other people’s stomachs. When the ship pitched back to stern, the vomit rolled away from him, broke against the far wall under the urinals, gathered force and then made its way back across the toilet floor towards him as the ferry plunged into another huge trough of water. It had been a rough crossing, but not for Jonny Mattock, who was probably dreaming about something related to drums while being blissfully unaware of the fact that he was being freshly exposed to a gently lapping tide of partially digested food every thirty seconds. He was fairly well coated in the stuff, so it seemed that he had rolled over a couple of times in his sleep trying to get comfortable. I stood in the reeking bathroom, stepping over the rhythmic waves of puke, and considered the best options for both of us.
Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands Page 8