Beatles, Ants and Vulcans

Vulcan bomber in flight

In 1969 we lived at R.A.F Laarbruch in West Germany. My Father was an Arctic Warfare psychopath  with the British army who had maybe a 100,000 troops ready to dash over the border with East Germany to stop the great unwashed influx of Communist soldiers and armored columns that were to smash a huge swathe to the Atlantic and splitting the ‘Allies’ into two….i suspect my Fathers role was to go to Finland or somewhere North and cold full of snow, he had a full ready kit of snow gear, skis, and sniper weaponry. I was four years old but aware of the tensions around the place. We lived right at the bottom of the main runway for the base and on certain nights we would be shaken out of bed by sirens.

These sirens, ear splitting, shaking the house which was only separated from the runway by a strip of forest, tall German pine forest, seemingly untouched, quite a magical place for a four year old. The sirens, screaming and it was a call to arms. Within seconds the old man would be dressed for combat, tooled up and every buckle and catch snapped down tight, rucksack ready. Mom would put the radio on and US Forces radio would blare out the Beatles, Elvis, Roger Miller. Mom busied herself as she told me later if the Russians had decided to get their war on we would have been dead in a few hours from a Tactical nuke that would be dropped on the base which was a Hornets nest of Vulcan bombers loaded with enough fuel to get to their targets in Russia and then simply drop out of the sky, no fuel, one way mission, probably nothing left of home. So spoken words were few and along the street lights popped on and the same things were happening in other houses staffed with Cold War Warriors and their families…The Beatles were playing ‘Oh bla di oh bla dah’ or whatever and every time it comes on the radio now in this future my ass tightens up and i want some Mom thing to grip onto and soothe me. He waited by the window for the truck which crept along the residential street slowly like a hearse, and the warriors filed out of their cheap army housing and into the belly of it and the truck went around the corner and was gone. Then Mom cried, and i goofed around like a four year old does….and the roar of the Vulcan bombers shook the house and the stink of the fuel permeated everything.

In the days between alerts i would play in the garden, and sometimes if Mom was around i would clamber over the scrub at the bottom of it and go into the forest a little, it was cool under the canopy of Pine needles, there was interesting things, fallen over trees blown down by storms, huge Ferns, holes and through the trees the base. Occasionally a Vulcan would take off on some test flight or training mission and it would creep slowly only a hundred or so feet up scraping the tops of the Pines it seemed, and the engine exhaust would filter like a mist and settle in the hollows and holes of the forest.

It was a Summer day, a little cool maybe Spring, and i was clambering around the scrub. Mom was chatting over the fence to our neighbour, another Army wife. Involved maybe in gossip, arms folded, discussing base crap. I was cool, there wasn’t anywhere for me to run away to, i was safe in there but i went a little deeper in. Mom was engrossed in tittle tattle probably.

There was a fallen Pine i remember, and i used to climb onto it and inch myself along until i reached the hillock and detritus of the root ball which made a great place to hide, jump, investigate. I inched along my pudgy little hands probably sticky with resin…and i saw it at the end of the trunk…

It was small maybe the same height as me. It had an elongated head that was thin and smooth and a dull red colour the same as its body. Its arms were puny and stick like as it clambered over the tangle of roots with ease in one movement. Its eyes now, as i noticed were a dull black and huge like a pair of wrap round sunglasses. It came within inches of my face in a flash staring at me…i tried to back away not in fear but the thought occurred that this was its place, its location not mine…..and then there was another behind me blocking the way back down the trunk. I looked to my left and there was a six foot or so drop to the ground, a short stumbling run and i would have been back in the garden, i could still hear Mom she was that close. The thing in front of me touched my hair and that was all the help i needed, i screamed and jumped.

R.A.F.Laarbruch married quarters

The next thing i was aware of was flying through the tops of the trees at a good speed, avoiding the tree tops which seemed to bend out of the way, i felt like a Vulcan bomber, enjoyed the experience…pressed against my face either side were my two new found friends, passionless, eyes so close to me but not holding me i felt as if i was floating. The next thing i remember was spinning madly through the tops of the trees and over the base, i could see the runway, i could see the tops of the buildings, the people moving between them, the rows of Vulcan bombers, fueled ready for action. I knew i was ok, there was no threat, i didnt even know what a threat was, my ‘friends’ were ok, this was fun.

I remember talking to them of stupid things, kid crap with my short vocabulary and them smiling as we whizzed around the base and then to their home. It was a foggy place a vehicle maybe, not as we know a mode of transport, no controls or readouts, no paraphernalia of space technology…they came to it as i understood for matters of the spirit. My friend showed me a drawing of a spirograph (as it seemed to me) each line intersecting with another but always crossing always repeating. It traced the line with its thin fingers and then again it touched me on the forehead. I understood something then and the deed was done i suspect as the two things, beings whatever grabbed me roughly and started to spin me around until i was dizzy and cried out….i was out of their place and in the tops of the trees again and back at the base, i saw Dad walking around smoking a cigarette. I waved and he walked on. The two things gripped me tight and descended through the trees to the fallen tree and placed me back where i was before the experience…..then they left.

Sometimes you can remember a ‘True’ story as well as you can. All through my life i tried to keep the experience as simple and as true as i could without extrapolating what happened into a more digestible experience one that would sit happily in a book of Alien abductions or some other madness. I dont know who they were, i dont want the vagaries of my adult knowledge to somehow denigrate a positive and fulfilling experience. I wasn’t threatened or harmed although as an adult i cant sleep by an open door or an open window. These things weren’t even interested in me i dont think or maybe they were who knows. This is just a thing that happened as i know it and here i put it down so others can read about it.

MikeHatesYouAll

I went to see Motorhead a couple of years ago and to be honest you get to see them every fucking year as they tour non stop “We like to get out and play, we love playing live, its what its all about” says old warty bollocks Lemmy himself. Of course we know why he like to play, the cash. That’s beside the point. This rant is about the audience. At the front of the gig was a phalanx of fat bald headed cunts and their fat fucking wives getting their groove on. Dudes who remember going to see Motor head when they were any good back in 1981 or whatever. They knew all the lyrics man, they knew them as their shitty lives required that they fill their emotionless existence with memories of when they were last happy, maybe the last time they had hair really. Now they shuffle along to gigs in packs, a New Wave of British heavy metal sadness. It’s not confined to rock music either. Step forward any band that manages to reach 30 years of age and a few albums that were any good. The Stone Roses, a band i enjoyed way back, they made one good album, their first one, a mix of jangly pop ripped off from numerous other US bands from the sixties. I had a conversation with my brother (who was a late starter with the Roses really) who said…”what a load of shit, the Stone Roses were the one original band in the eighties” fucking tit. The Roses played the V festival, same thing, 30-40 something beered up pricks singing along out of tune to those classics provided by a band that played sub Led Zep riffs with a fucking disgrace of a vocalist that couldn’t and most of the time wouldn’t sing. One good album, their first, and then they should have retreated into anonymity.

This rant is about the music and the people that listen to it.

I know a local band, quite quirky and interesting, it doesn’t matter who they are or what kind of music they played. I bought a CD off them, it was a kind of city mash up. Grime beats with a little funky guitar and rhythm section, good song writing, lyrics that mean’t something (to them at least) and it had heart. They split up last week as they couldn’t get gigs locally or nationally. Why? Mikey wondered. They couldn’t get a gig as the venues either had an age policy on the door or they couldn’t fit them in a busy schedule that included other bands….what were these other interesting bands? ‘Iron on Maiden’, ‘Mentallica’, ‘Motorbreath’, ‘Sin Lizzy’ insert your own tribute band here. Whats the fucking problem? Live music is alive and thriving! Our local music press says. No it isn’t its dying a death. Music as an art form is suffering a distinct bad time….

Black Sabbath made their last good album in 1975, they made four good albums then it all went tits up. Slayer haven’t made a good album for 20 years, Motorhead made two good albums….i know music is relative and all that bollocks but seriously thats the truth as i see it. These bands are kept alive by me and you simply because they offer us some spiritual warmth from that time when we were young and reckless, when music meant something….now we pick our way through this present lifetime and claw those moments back, we defend our favourite bands, we immerse ourselves in cult worship of bands that don’t fucking deserve it. We see our heroes in documentaries  where some poor drug addled cunt like Lemmy or Gene Simmons pad around their palatial palaces of palaceness while some big titted blond cunt walks around in the background giggling while the musician waxes lyrical about the cocaine he snorted with Robert Plant in LA in the mid seventies. It makes me want to cry (eventhough CSNY told me i dont have too). If you can’t get a fix of your favourite guilty fucking band as they are either dead or too fucked to get in a studio then you can go and see one of those ‘tribute’ bands above and join the hordes of desperate fat bald headed cunts who also need their fix of retro metal.

Listening to a lot of music as i do i groove to finding new music, i have not found much that interests me to be honest. Last week i sat through a gig of one of Birminghams much touted Doom bands and to be honest in the half an hour before the band came on i was mildly interested. The audience looked young, functional, intelligent, a good mix of people who looked like they knew what good music was. I allowed myself to get a little excited by the thought of watching some interesting soundscape throwing. The band came on……..sub Black Sabbath riffs and crap Tool-esque doodling, i felt like crying.

Perhaps i will…..but then social networks. I skate, i know young dudes, they have the time to do my listening for me and often they provide links to music or even make their own, they have circumvented the gig, deal, release cycle and have opened up their own way of the groove. They link to the past heavily, and why not? Every band has an influence, they listen to everything as thats what they enjoy, thats how they get their groove, they aren’t interested in the machinations of rock lifestyle and fable. They know good music, you see it on their ipods, they don’t know Geezer butler or Tony Iommi but they know a badass riff on Volume 4…..i salute those young bloods, they give me joy when all else fails, hope and happiness.

In conclusion….it’s the last time i will listen to music that is more than 18 months old. The Sabbath albums i grew up with will be consigned to the bin, the Judas Priest the Led Zeppelin the Cream the AC/DC the Slayer the Metallica all the rock ‘greats’. You have let me down, mediocre music for fat bald headed tax inspecters and gas fitters. I’m sick to the back teeth of retro fucking anything, skateboards, old broken down skateboarders, reunion tours, beery reminisces. The time has come to embrace the new and the groundbreaking, it is out there somewhere. Know young people, listen to them, they know what we don’t, their musical knowledge is better than ours and it always will be, they have the benefit of listening to EVERYTHING.

For the others, the fat bald heads, the barbecue attenders, the buffoons, the fat wife, the mortgage, the detached house, the sick Vauxhall good on gas commute wagons, their sick children, their masturbation RedTube nights, the 30th anniversary box sets, the stand around generic beer drinker, the swing lows, the ten yard stares, the vinyl, the tribute act, the mild revulsion of the black man, the pump and squirt sex, the reissue skateboard, fat girl hair, Ingerlanders, Saxons, the lizard queen, the racist joker, the goatee beard wearer……fuck you i hate you.