This Is Memorial Device

by David Keenan

  You would get to know the customers and of course we invented nicknames for them all. There was one called The Wee Oddity and two called Hansel & Gretel and one called Two Tub Man. Everyone who worked there was covered in a permanent layer of dust. It got everywhere so that we looked like a bunch of walking statues. Early on I heard about a customer who they called The Artist. Every few months she would call in to buy a bag of cement for herself. She was described as a tiny girl with big sunglasses. And with long hair down her back and wearing skinny jeans. And with scuffed training shoes and often wearing no socks. And with a torn suede jacket on. She would hoist the bag of cement onto her back and walk home with it almost bent double. This I must see, I said to myself. But for the first few months there was no sign of her.

  Occasionally we would have a works night out and the boss would book us a function room at The Tudor Hotel. Everyone would get pissed up and try to hit on Rachel. The boss made a point of only employing Catholics, which made her twice as vulnerable. Sometimes her boyfriend would chaperone her but then there would be jokes about Status Quo and about Jaffa Cakes and about seedless oranges so that they would have to leave early and we would be left to make up stories about our sex lives, which back then for me numbered one in its entirety. Although some of the men were married to wives that looked like small ugly boys, they never talked about their wives. They only talked about the girls they had sex with when they were at school. They had sex with them under railway bridges while playing truant or in the summer on the edge of golf courses. There was an air of sadness to it all that I experienced.

  Everything came to a head at the works Christmas do in 1983. I had been drinking beforehand. I had met up with some old school friends in Glasgow and I had got well and truly hammered in the afternoon. Then I had jumped on the train to Airdrie, where I had fallen asleep on my back in a park off Forrest Street. When I woke up it was already getting dark and I had one of those daytime hangovers that can only be remedied by a session of furious masturbation. I tossed off behind a tree with my trousers round my ankles in the open air, just the way I like it. Then I walked to The Tudor Hotel. I had a carefree feeling as I made my way into town.

  The boss had hired a DJ and there were a lot of employees’ wives and girlfriends attending. I asked a few of them to dance out of politeness and also because I was still drunk. Their looks weren’t up to much but they certainly smelled great. Middle-aged women were always attractive to me. Rachel was there on her own. By this point her boyfriend had left. He had been scared off, in other words. I could tell that she was acting funny. I could tell there was something wrong at home. I had a spliff in my pocket from earlier that day so I asked her if she fancied a toot. Is it illicit? she said. In that case, yes please. Illicit, that was a good one. We walked outside and we took a detour into the bushes. We made our way along the overgrown path by the side of the railway. I could barely see in front of me but she took me by the arm and so I concentrated on taking one step after another while leading us into the blackness. We came to a small wooden bridge that was lit up by the glow of the street lights and I fired up the joint. When I passed her the joint it was almost as if I had to bend down. She was so small. But she sucked it in like a pro and then she exhaled this big cloud of smoke without so much as a cough. I am pregnant, she said. I probably should not be smoking. Then she said, fuck this, and she took another hit. Who is the father? I asked her. Obviously my boyfriend, she said. Who the fuck do you think is the father? I’m sorry, I said. It’s okay, she said. I know everyone says that he is a Jaffa. I pretended I did not know what she meant. You know what I mean, she said, seedless. Oh right, I said, although I had been in on the ridicule from the start. I saw a video at school of a foetus crying in a bucket, she told me. I do not want it, she said. I do not want my baby. But I do not want it crying in a bucket either. By this point I was completely monged. I started imagining myself in a bucket with my legs and arms all splayed and disconnected. For a second I thought I was choking on my own fluids. I need to stop thinking about this, I told myself. Then she began snatching with her hand in front of her. It was like she was trying to grab something from out of the air. Did you see that? she said to me. There are fireflies! There are no fireflies in Airdrie, I went to say, and certainly not in the middle of the winter, but then I saw one and then I saw several buzzing all around us. Oh my god, she said to me, they are doing the constellations. There is the Southern Cross, there is the Centaur! That is the only names that I can remember. She said some more but I was never any good at astronomy. But I can say that the lights moved in formation and that it was possible to make out patterns so maybe crosses, dogs and Hercules all might have been in there. I think I see my star sign, I said to her and I lifted her up and she immediately wrapped her legs around my waist and I kissed her and we held our lips together for the longest time. I had never kissed a woman who was pregnant by another man but it is true that it tastes different. It is saltier for a start. What are we going to do with ourselves? she said to me.

  Afterwards she got drunk and fell down and a friend of the boss’s wife had to take her home in a taxi. I walked home. I had another hangover already but it felt great. That was when Mary made her appearance. I turned up late for work the next morning and just as I was dragging out the signage I heard the door go and the sound of footsteps in the hallway. I looked up. She was wearing a pair of big black sunglasses. I need a bag of cement, she said to me. To take away. What do you think this is, I said to her, a Chinese restaurant? I was trying to make a joke but she just stood there and said nothing. Okay, I said. One bag of cement, coming up.

  4. The Next Thing I Knew Remy and Regina Were Dating (If You Can Believe That): Johnny McLaughlin gets a doing in George Square a real pasting in George Square actually I wasn’t there but when I heard about it of course I knew it was gonna be over a woman and of course it was and it was a sore spot so when I asked Johnny to write something for the book he said that first off he wanted to set the record straight about what happened and besides Remy Farr who at this point had just left this heinous synth-pop group Relate and was still a year or so away from joining Memorial Device was all tied up in it too so I said okay but cut the bullshit.

  Even though Remy Farr got called Big Remy he really wasn’t that big (but he did have a blockhead). Another thing was he never had moods (he didn’t seem to have the standard emotional range of normal people). You never saw him angry or depressed although sometimes he would be quieter than others (but even then it felt more like a tide coming in and out, a planetary concern, rather than actual human feelings). He always talked at you, never to you, and it all felt like material he had prepared earlier (like a routine, complete with punchlines and build-ups) as if he knew exactly the way the conversation was going to go and had prepared a series of puns and ripostes well in advance (like he had thought of everything, had figured out every angle, so that it was impossible for you to steer the conversation anywhere that he hadn’t anticipated).

  There were rumours that he was gay (no one had ever seen him with a partner). He had been a member of a fairly notorious Coatbridge synth-pop duo both of whom dressed up in caked white face paint (and with huge black painted lips) and poured blood over themselves (on stage). They claimed Leigh Bowery ripped them off.

  Back in the day the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser had written a piece about them where they called Bowery out while debating the merits of fake blood versus real blood. The other guy in the group (I can never remember his real name, but his nickname was Wee Be-Ro because he wore so much make-up it looked like he had coated his face with flour) had argued for fake blood. Somehow it looks more real (he said), plus it flows better. Big Remy argued for real blood. It does something to you psychologically (he said). It smells like blood (it tastes like blood). At one point it was actually keeping something alive. It operates on you. Blood operates on you? Wee Be-Ro asked him. That’s right, Big Remy said: blood is the surgeon.

  That’s the story
of how their 12” single came about. I bought it at the time (which would have been 1982). Me and Ross would pick up any independent single released in Scotland back then, mostly from a booth (upstairs) in the Savoy Centre in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, where this guy called Jim and his girlfriend Moira (who always wore thigh-high leather boots and had crimped hair) ran a stall that stocked stuff like the first Disabled Adults EP, the early Pastels singles, Subway Sect, Scrotum Poles and The Fire Engines (they even had copies of the legendary Dissipated 7” back in the day) alongside ‘Blood is the Surgeon’ by Relate (that’s what they were called, it was an awful name). Plus they got no respect because when Imagination played this big show in Coatbridge (on the back of their appearance on Top of the Pops), Relate agreed to support them (they tried to make the case that they were some kind of Trojan horse, smuggling performance art into the context of a choreographed pop gig, but no one bought it). So Big Remy had a lot to live down.

  I was introduced to him one night at The Griffin (in Glasgow) (an unforgettable night really), where me and Ross had been out drinking with this guy Damien Cook (an old school friend who had his own share of personality issues), and at one point Damien bit through a pint glass (and then said, dare me to eat it) and later he picked a slug up off the street and cooked it over a gas flame (and swallowed it whole) and then he slept out on the balcony naked in the snow (it was late November) (at which point I thought to myself, let him die and give us all peace) but of course he leaped up in the morning as if he had just had the best sleep of his life (the next thing I heard was that he had a nervous breakdown and was living in Australia). Inevitably Damien and Remy ended up butting heads, two fatherless voids in search of an audience (I’m saying that with what I know now, so perhaps it’s not fair), but whereas Remy had his script prepared well in advance, Damien’s was more like a desperate improvisation on the very edge of falling apart (which isn’t to slight Remy but maybe Damien was the greater artist).

  Anyway a month or so later with this other guy that I knew (he wouldn’t mean anything to you if I told you his name but his name was Drew McPherson) (he had really bad buck teeth and his nickname was Tusky – Tusky McPherson) we had gone to Joy of a Toy, a regular Friday-night club off West George Street (in Glasgow), and afterwards (while hanging about in George Square waiting for a late-night bus) I spotted Big Remy. I could make out the sleeve of the second Suicide LP through his record bag and so I went up and said hello. At this point I was dating this gorgeous chick (from Caldercruix) named Regina Yarr. She had been drinking heavily and earlier that night there had been a scene where she had locked herself in the toilet (and threatened to kill herself). Now all her make-up was smeared and her tights were skewed and she was staggering around in her stocking soles holding her heels in her hand (in other words she was hot as hell). She grabbed at Big Remy’s record bag. I need this, she said. ‘Mr Ray’ is my second-favourite song after ‘All I Really Want to Do’ by The Byrds (or it might have been ‘Chance Meeting’ by Josef K). Remy acted nonplussed. It’s nowhere near as good as their first album, he said. Plus it’s produced by Rick Ocasek of The Cars, give me a break (which was rich coming from him).

  Bullshit, Regina screamed. That’s bullshit. In that case you should give me that album right now because I love it more than you do. Then she dropped to her knees and began tearing at the bag (literally). I went to pull her off and without thinking caught hold of her hair and yanked her head back at which point she bit my hand and I slapped her around the head without thinking (just a reflex movement) but then I ended up knocking her to the ground by mistake. You hit women? Big Remy said (immediately rounding on me). Suddenly we were surrounded by onlookers. He punched her out, someone said, he fucked her up. (Grow some balls, I remember someone else shouted, which was unfortunate given what we would later learn about Remy’s history but whatever). Leave him alone, someone else said, he’s just a wee boy (that stung). It was like people were coming at me from all sides. I started flailing and striking out (punching the air). Someone caught my arms from behind and held me while Big Remy (quite calmly, this was the weird thing, what did I say about his emotions) took potshots at my face (but it was a vicious attack all the same). As soon as I got away another two guys in suits that had nothing to do with it whatsoever tried to have a go (like my bloody nose made me fair game). Tusky McPherson split the scene without even staying around to help (or even to see if I was alright) so that was the end of our friendship as far as I was concerned (he’s working in a bank to this day, what a dick). After a while the police showed up and they interviewed me in a doorway but the only thing they seemed interested in was whether or not I was gay (which had fuck all to do with anything but that felt like some kind of extremely petty form of divine retribution). I took the last bus home on my own. The next thing I knew Remy and Regina were dating (if you can believe that).

  5. Rimbaud Was Desperate or Iggy Lived It: Ross Raymond recalls hanging out with Richard the drummer from Memorial Device as he bores everyone to tears (but not really not deep down that wasn’t true at all as we all found out later when Richard burned the whole thing to the ground) in another excerpt from the epic book on Airdrie that one day Ross was gonna write himself but that of course he never finished and that never had a title but that at various times might have been called The New Book of Airdrie or This is Airdrie or Airdrie Calling or An Alternative Airdrie or Inverted Airdrie even, that was always in the back of his mind because of the Memorial Device album Inverted Calder Cross then there was Negative Airdrie that was another option and of course No Airdrie he always thought that could have been a good one but maybe that was too obvious you know like No New York and then there was Subterranean Airdrie he toyed with that one for a bit, Airdrie Underground, who knows, Go Ahead and Drop the Bomb on Airdrie, he could never decide and what does it matter now anyway when there’s no underground in Airdrie to speak of whatsoever and everything is on the surface and ugly in plain sight and why he is talking about himself in the third person all of a sudden that’s another thing that we will never know.

  Back then Richard Curtis seemed like the dullest of the lot or maybe the straightest of the lot, it’s fair to say, maybe the most seemingly ordinary, is what I’m trying to say, in other words to an onlooker or a mere acquaintance or an audience member he may have come across as a square peg in a black hole, which wasn’t actually true but which in a way made him the most eccentric of the lot, the most unusual of the lot, in a way, which also made him the drummer, inevitably.

  I met him after I inveigled my way into a recording session by Meschersmith, that was his first band, under the guise of interviewing them for the second issue of our legendary fanzine that never saw the light of day. When I walked into the studio, which had been assembled in the guts of a spooky half-abandoned church in Plains, Richard was putting the finishing touches to an Airfix model of a 1970s Yamaha motorcycle. What the fuck is he doing making an Airfix model in a studio, I said to myself. The next thing I knew they had roped me into doing backing vocals on a Buzzcocks cover. Back then the rest of Meschersmith were all communists and council workers, all except for the guitarist, Jim, who worked for a local butcher, so the conversation tended towards the trivial and the politically mundane, the going rate for paying roadies, cuts of meat, the politics of local government … I was so bored senseless that I made my excuses and left early.

  My friendship with Richard was easy and reassuring. Every Friday night he would meet me at the bottom of the street next to the Chinese restaurant and we would walk to The Staging Post in Airdrie, where we had already acquired the status of minor celebrities, Richard through a Meschersmith video that had been shown on late-night TV, me through my occasional articles in the local newspaper where I would talk about the new groups and encourage people to drop out and go see the world, all the while living at my mum’s house in Airdrie.

  There were always would-be scenesters hanging round the bar, vacant tosspots like Colin Grant – maybe you
never heard of him, lucky you – sweating about future publishing royalties that he would never see, a really bitter couple with a crap band name that came from some American TV sitcom bitching about how no one wanted to be seen as being able to play their instruments any more, girls longing to be groupies, the usual hangers-on, every one of them fretting over a vision of the future that would see them crowned with all of the worries that fame and notoriety would bring. We would mostly drink on our own although sometimes we would join groups of other musicians but even then we kept to ourselves or what Richard would do is he would reduce it to the trivial, he would bring everyone down, which actually was a good strategy. For instance, one half of the bitter couple – let’s call her Stacey Clark, I really don’t want to give her any publicity at this stage of the game – was prone to these emotional outbursts, these great declarations of instability and poetic madness, none of which she was even living. I saw her flat one night, one Saturday night when we went back there after closing time and she barely had a book in the house and her bathroom was all chrome fittings and I had a look through her record collection, which is always the first thing I do when I visit someone for the first time, especially what’s lying around the record player, and it was okay, you know, Wire, Television, our man Johnny Thunders in pride of place, this is Airdrie after all, but then there was stuff like Dire Straits and Queen and worse, and right at the top of the pile there was this compilation of soul songs that had appeared in adverts for jeans and I took it out of the sleeve and it was played to death. But anyway she would bring up all this stuff, like Rimbaud was desperate or Iggy lived it, pat comments. She said she had hung out with Lou Reed once and that he had thrown her in a swimming pool in a hotel. It was a lie, of course, she had never even met Lou but the fact that she would boast about being abused by him in a swimming pool made you think, get me out of here right now. Then she would bring up some random exhibition or art thing, like, oh did you see the Fluxus exhibition in Edinburgh or the gallery show of who knows the fuck what and Richard would instantly intervene. I hate art, he would say. I would never go to an art gallery in my life. She looked at him like he had just confessed to fucking corpses, which was more her style, really.