A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The tune plays on through another round of the chorus. Most of the audience keep clapping. They think it’s a gimmick. Even Jessica and PV1 stay with it, though their director has the presence of mind to digitally scramble the pixels around Foster’s nads. (The genitals stay censored throughout the three minutes of torture they unflinchingly relay to the nation before finally pulling the plug on the transmission when Foster pisses himself. British values, gotta love ’em.)

  And with the guest of honour finally having been presented to the crowd, it’s time for them to meet their real host. An inset window on the screen shows my hand poised over a voltage control and a charge button.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ my voice hails out crisply from the PA. ‘We are here tonight to pay tribute to the contribution to British music made by the one and only Nick Foster. The stars are here and I’m sure all of them have their own memories and impressions of him... but what does the man himself think of his own legacy?’

  A second inset appears on the screen, showing hand-held footage of the same room in Foster’s house as he had posed in for the clips shown earlier on PV1. It pans across from the framed gold discs to a wall housing a good few hundred CDs.

  ‘This is Nick’s own CD collection,’ I explain. ‘This is a unique insight into what fuels and inspires a pop genius. And it’s a mark of his well-known modesty that these shelves play host to absolutely none of his own recordings. His home PC and his iPod tell a similar story. Not one Nick Foster track appears on his personal playlists. But stranger still, there doesn’t appear to be any manufactured disposable pop records by anybody else in here either. Why would he deny himself the very pleasure that he brings to millions?’

  The screen flashes up a caption at this point, white out of black:

  ‘My old dad worked down Billingsgate fish market, and that’s how he learned the difference between a tradable commodity and something genuinely valuable. There’s fish that’s just for buying and selling. You don’t fucking eat it.’

  – Nick Foster, Melody Maker, August 1992

  ‘On a night like tonight, it would be great if we could appraise Nick’s legacy by exploring just how ingrained his music has become in the national consciousness. Admittedly that’s a difficult thing to measure, but just for fun, we’re going to see how deeply Nick’s music is ingrained in his own consciousness, and you at home can see how your answers compare against the man himself. I should add that if you really want to join in properly and get the full effect, you’re going to need two crocodile clips, some electric cabling, and a variable resistor to regulate the current.’

  The screen now shows a close-up of Foster’s sweating and contorted face, my hand and the electrical controls still visible in the inset window. My hand twists the dial until the needle reads 1,000 volts.

  ‘What’s going to happen here is that I’m going to ask Nick to play name that tune, but just from the lyrics. If he gets it right, I knock five hundred volts off the next shock. If he gets it wrong, I let him hear the melody, which gives him the chance to win two hundred volts off. It’s not as much, clearly, but when it’s pumping through your unearthed flesh at five amperes of current, you’ll be grateful for it, believe me. Oh, yes, and before the shock, there’s a bonus question, but we’ll get to that in time.

  ‘Okay, first lyric for you, Nick, and for everyone watching at home. Here we go: “Gonna make my move, gonna feel the groove. Gonna feel the heat, gonna dance the beat.” For five hundred volts, name that tune.’

  He says nothing. The camera tracks out again, showing all of his naked body lashed to the giant amp. I repeat the lyric.

  ‘I’m going to have to hurry you, Nick. I realise the lyrics are utterly vacuous and probably indistinguishable from a thousand other shitty songs you wrote, but you did write them, so why not take a stab. I’ll even give you a clue: it was from 1987 and it reached number three in the UK charts.’

  ‘It was . . .’ he croaks, then has to swallow, his mouth too dry to speak. ‘It was “Here I Go Tonight”.’

  ‘Ooooh, sorry, Nick, that’s not the answer I’ve got here. But there’s still two hundred volts at stake, so why not have a listen to the melody and have another go at naming your own number-three hit single from 1987.’

  The trademark synth brass intro plays over the PA. Nick’s face strains, difficult as it might be to imagine his facial muscles stretching any tighter. The music fades out before the vocal can begin, though it’s my firm belief that it wouldn’t help. You can see his head jiggle as he tries to keep the song playing in his head.

  ‘Is it “No Stopping Me”?’

  ‘Is it “No Stopping Me”? I wonder what everybody is saying at home.’

  Around the Tivoli, where they still think it’s some kind of risqué joke, there are a lot of shaking heads. PV1, still broadcasting at this point, have even located and zoomed in on Sandi Bay, the woman who sang the song I’m looking for. She bopped around a swimming pool in hot-pants and a boob-tube in the video, but right now she looks like a deputy bank manager on her works night out. She’s also looking anxious and confused, wincing uncertainly at his wrong answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nick. The answer is “Dance All Summer Long”.’

  He closes his eyes, grits his teeth, bracing himself for the electricity.

  ‘Now, now, relax. You didn’t get any volts off, but there’s still the bonus question. It’s worth two hundred and fifty volts, but the catch is, if you get it wrong, those two hundred and fifty volts get added, not taken away. Now, I’ve already given you the name of the track, and the year and the chart position, but for two hundred and fifty volts, can you tell me who had a hit with it for you?’

  He’s breathing quickly, over-excited, panicky. Sounds like he has the answer. On PV1, the camera remains fixed upon Sandi Bank Manager.

  ‘C-can I pass?’ he asks.

  ‘No, Nick, I need an answer. Have a think: 1987, top three, “Dance All Summer Long”. Summer, think summer. There’s a clue.’

  He nods, blinking, bites his lip.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Swallows again. ‘It was Surfs Up!’

  ‘That would be Surfs Up!, spelled with no apostrophe before the “s” and a nauseatingly jaunty but redundant exclamation mark after the “p”, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ he affirms expectantly.

  Sandi Bay looks a little grey, her cheeks sucked in. She’s oblivious of the camera, but she doesn’t need to know anybody’s looking in order to feel humiliated. There, there, pet, it was a long time ago.

  ‘“Dance All Summer Long” by Surfs Up!. Let’s just hear a little more of the song and find out if you were right.’

  The track fades up again, in time for the vocal to start. ‘Gonna make my move, gonna feel the groove.’ It’s an unmistakably female voice. While none of Surfs Up!’s three personnel were ever likely to be confused with Mark Lanegan, they were nevertheless a boy band. From his face, it’s obvious that Foster remembers that much at least.

  I hit the button and bring it home to the Tivoli crowd that, while I’m finding it funny in the extreme, it’s no fucking joke.

  Before PV1 drops the feed, they pick up one final shot of Sandi Bay. She’s not looking quite as horrified as everyone else might deem entirely appropriate.

  The Tivoli itself, with Garth at the helm, doesn’t have the option to cut the feed. With no PV1, I don’t see what happens inside, but I do see people begin to exit the place within a few minutes, and I know from the laptop that the feed streaming my recording of Nick Foster’s gameshow experience keeps running until it loops; in fact, it is a good few minutes into repeating itself before anybody, despite deducing that it’s not live, dares to risk pulling the plug. This means that the ensuing and increasingly hysterical abandonment of the evening’s activities is carried out against the backdrop of Nick failing to identify his 1994 number-one smash ‘Party Round the Pool’ from the lyrics: ‘Power up the lights, Get the music playin’ loud, Get your baby movin’ right, Cause it�
�s just a crazy crowd’. He subsequently nails it from the intro before blotting his copybook again by attributing it to Sunshine Seven instead of Four Play. Easy mistake to make when there is nothing to musically distinguish one set of willing fame-ravenous whores from another, but it still cancels the two hundred and fifty volts he thought he had bought back.

  Bzzzz.

  Hurts so good. Hurts so good.

  Turn up the music cause it

  Hurts so good.

  The ensuing performance outside is considerably less of a choreographed spectacle, but undeniably a spectacle all the same. Jesus God, have you ever seen an emergency celebrity-evac? All of a sudden there’s a hundred self-important wankers trying to occupy the same stretch of concourse, determined not to spill beyond the awning-covered red-carpet area on to the ordinary, proletarian-accessible thoroughfare as they look expectantly for the limo they – or their ‘people’ – are desperately trying to hail on their mobiles. There’s a unique expression comes across most of their faces, one that really deserves a coinage, ever after commemorative of this night: it’s a combination of confusion, anxiety and affronted indignation as they each assess the ever-complicating situation and the realisation dawns on each of them that poowittuwme won’t be getting any special consideration. The phrase ‘Do you know who I am?’ already forming in their minds, gets forced back unspoken and they simply have to take their chances the same as everybody else.

  They’re largely spared the paparazzi, at least for a few minutes, the snappers having mostly fucked off for a drink and a bite in the time between the grand entrances and the generally happier hunting to be had shooting the better-lubricated exits. A couple of keener ones are back in position but not yet set up again and consequently taken by surprise by the sudden swell of tux and taffeta.

  The limos start to pull in, but there’s a bottleneck created by there being only enough space for two to park at once, and the first one there, being mine, has further reduced the pavement space. However, with the departing celebs seemingly determined not to be seen venturing desperately along the street in search of their rides, lest they appear like common citizens attempting to hail a Hackney, the resulting melange beneath the awning soon resembles the world’s most over-dressed late-night taxi queue. There’s even young males squaring up to each other and girls shedding mascara-smearing tears. Throw in a few kebabs and the picture would be complete.

  My limo gets a lot of hopeful glances, though the absence of a uniformed driver getting out to hold open a door for the VIPs soon prompts sufficient scrutiny for them to notice the printed sign occupying the rear passenger-side window. ‘Vogue 2.2’ it states. The limo is not a stretch, but a customised Merc with rear- and front-facing seats in the back. Next to so much vulgar ostentation, it subtly whispers both class and ‘fuck right off’.

  Most of them clock the sign and begin looking along the growing line. What’s just precious is that even if they spot their driver back in the queue, they don’t move towards him for a quicker getaway, especially not with the photographers increasingly geared up. One, however, does finally approach my car and knocks on the front passenger-side window. I ignore it. He tries again, eliciting the same lack of response. Outraged by this, he comes around the front so he can see me through the windscreen. I point to a second ‘Vogue 2.2’ sign on the dashboard.

  ‘We’re with the same record label, mate, and we’re going to the same fucking place. We’ll all fit, so open up, all right?’

  I just shake my head. He doesn’t like this. He slaps the bonnet angrily.

  ‘Listen, mate. Don’t give us any jobsworth shit or this’ll be the last shift you work for this firm. Is this face not slightly fucking familiar? “You’re Dynamite” ring any bells? I’m Daz Hartnell, we’re Four Play, and this limo is going to the Tailspin Records reception, so if you don’t want your P45 tomorrow morning, open the fucking door.’

  I glance back into the passenger section. He’s right. It’s officially built for six, but there’s plenty of room for everybody.

  I open the fucking door.

  The Vogue 2.2 trio pile in right at Four Play’s backs, trying to disguise their indignation at this imposition. Fake camaraderie at their shared shock and discomfiture is exchanged as they take their seats, the Vogue girls tutting a little at having to squeeze between two Four Play counterparts already occupying the forward-facing row.

  I pull away into the London night and everything calms down soon after. The sleep agent sees to that.

  It’s only music. That’s what people always say. Don’t take it so seriously. It’s only music.

  Anyone who says that deserves to listen to nothing but Nick Foster’s aural chewing gum for the rest of their lives. Music is one of the achievements that truly elevates man above the beasts, one of the ways in which he gives expression to something within that is greater than himself, older than himself, more universal, more enduring. Music makes manifest the aspiration of the human soul. Or at least it should try to.

  ‘Only music’ is an oxymoron, like ‘only life’, ‘only oxygen’, ‘only your firstborn’.

  ‘Don’t take it so seriously. Each to his own. It’s all a matter of taste.’

  Away and throw shite at yourself.

  This is not about taste. That, in fact, is part of the fucking point. It’s about a lack of respect for music itself. That’s what all these little fame-whores are guilty of: Four Play, Sunshine Seven, Surfs Up!, Angel Cakes, One False Move, the whole Foster roster, every manufactured plastic turd ever shat out of the X Factor anus, every auditioned, formularised and split-second synchronised troupe of interchangeable grinning marionettes. If I simply didn’t like their music, I wouldn’t be so offended. Let me state again: this is not a matter of taste. What offends me is that these eager little slut-monkeys are not interested enough in music to particularly have a taste. They’ll sing anything they’re told to, they don’t care what. They’re not interested in music. They’re only interested in locating the path of least resistance between themselves and the cover of Heat magazine.

  Bedroom bastarding Popstars? The most laughable irony about this cultural atrocity is that when they were kids, the contestants on this partial-birth abortion of a show never danced around their bedrooms playing air guitar or singing into their hairbrushes. These little narcissi would instead have been posing for imaginary photo-shoots, calling their pretend publicist on their toy mobile, and practising climbing out of their pedal cars in front of imaginary paparazzi.

  It’s not about the music for them. When I cased Foster’s CD collection, I wasn’t remotely surprised that it didn’t contain any of the vapid, disposable, prole-pod fodder he inflicts on the rest of us. But what surprised me even less was that, despite having millions to spend and CDs flung at him for free anyway, his collection was no bigger than you’d find in any middle-class, middle-aged suburban living room. I owned more records than that by the time I graduated uni. Music is merely his business, the field he works in. He has no love for it, never mind passion. There’s fish that’s just for buying and selling, he said, but the truth is the cunt doesn’t even like fish that much.

  I always loved music. I always had a passion for it. Maybe too much of a passion; certainly far more passion than the people I tried to work with could ever handle. Yeah, that was the problem: I can appreciate that, now that I’ve got the perspective afforded by several years and a couple of lifetimes’ distance. At the time, all I could see was their limitations, their pettiness, their mediocrity. Now I can see that I presented too much of a challenge. I brought too much passion, too much vision. They realised they were in over their heads, I wasn’t another teenage dreamer simply playing at being in a band, and the difference between my own abilities, my own scope and theirs was what forced that realisation upon them.

  At uni, the fools I fell in with really were just bedroom pop stars; calling them a garage band would be granting the sorry undertaking an unmerited sense of ambition. They only wanted
to pretend, wanted to play covers, close their eyes and merely imagine themselves in the role of Stuart Adamson, Mike Scott, Billy Duffy, whoever was cool that term. To think that they ridiculed me for wanting to bring my own uniqueness, my own expression in from the start. The Bacchae: it could have been beautiful, should have been triumphant. I wanted to give them a name, a sound, a message, a uniqueness, that would have them striving for the heavens from the off. No acting like somebody else, no borrowed, off-the-peg costume of what a band should be, but a distinct, strident vision, constructed uncompromisingly, unflinchingly and unapologetically from the ground up.

  They couldn’t see what a gift I was laying before them. Said I was trying to fly before I could walk. I was ready to soar, motherfuckers. Wasn’t my fault they were still insecure about every step they took in their babywalkers. Probably for the best that the band were strangled at birth, imploding after one disastrous gig, Larry the Little Drummer Boy being particularly culpable for the fiasco due to his insistence on taking lead vocals from behind his kit on one of the songs.

  I found a more technically capable collective to work with a few years later, post-uni, and really thought that our mutual maturity as well as more comparable musical gifts would make for a more stable platform. Unfortunately I encountered merely different degrees of the same problem. They had the ability the student wannabes lacked, but were just as scared of my passion and intimidated by the scope of my vision. I laid my promise before them and they recoiled in fear, again unsettled by confronting the gap between what I thought a band could do and the limits of what they believed themselves capable. There was the petty egotism to deal with too, folk who just couldn’t accept their station. They rejected my songs and my ideas because it would have meant playing second fiddle: they saw immediately that they were dealing with something unique, and which could not be diluted in the name of collaboration. They preferred the prospect of first-name writing credits on something inferior, to mere contributor status on what I would have coaxed out of them. Thus they rejected the chance of uniqueness and settled for being another copy of something that was already over-familiar. Admittedly it was a better copy than the student clowns could manage, and, calling themselves Chambers of Torment, they did go on to sell a lot of records, but they never did anything unique, anything truly original. I always laugh when I see them described as ‘fearsome’ or ‘scary’, just because of a few tattoos and some hackneyed horror imagery in their videos. I know the truth. I know they are cowards.