Mama - Peter Cave

 MAMA - PETER CAVE

Yet more pulp fiction dredged up from second-hand bookshops on the East Devon coast, this time from the mean and dark backstreets of a place called Dawlish. I keep getting writers Peter Cave and Richard Allen mixed-up as they both during the 1970s knocked out very similar, gratuitously violent types of books about Hells Angels and Skinheads that sold in surprisingly large numbers. It's an easy mistake to make as anyone aware of this genre might acknowledge. Mama, by Peter Cave, is the sequel to Chopper, the story of England's King of the Angels, and as the blurb on the back cover explains: 'Chopper may be dead but his girl lives on. Mama. A motorcycle groupie becomes Queen of the Hell's Angels'.

So what might be here for us to learn on perusal of this now classic cult book? Well, firstly, Peter Cave had a knack for giving his characters interesting names. For example: Danny the Deathlover. Can you imagine having that as a moniker?

We're also informed about how Hell's Angels can apparently at times be 'a force to reckon with, an army without fear or favour, a crusading band of renegades dedicated to the violence of revolution and social disruption'. And who am I to argue with that? Especially when at the wrong end of a bike chain wielded by some geezer in black leathers and steel-capped boots, sporting a swastika tattooed on his forehead. Self-preservation is my wont.

We also learn something of the alleged initiation process into the the Angels, involving vomit, urine, and phlegm, that could quite easily double-up as a video from under the counter of a 'specialist' shop in Amsterdam's Red Light district. And on that same subject, we also discover what 'pulling a train' means in regard to one girl and up to seventeen Angels in a row. Moreover, we learn of the Angel's code in regard to never running away from a fight, be it a physical one or a more metaphorical one as in achieving the dream of escaping to America where an Angel can ride easy upon its endless highways.

Mama is (as are all of Peter Cave's and Richard Allen's New English Library books from the Seventies) pulp fiction for the social anthropologist. It's the kind of book that Stewart Home has always wanted to write but has never quite managed to do so. At the time of its publication it was a gateway drug for disenfranchised children everywhere to start taking an interest in reading something other than Marvel comics. It's an insight into what scared anyone involved in the education system of the 1970s, fearing the influence it might have upon their young charges. Mama is an example of what is deemed 'low culture' by the self-appointed regulators and arbiters of what is passed as 'mainstream' culture.

Mama is also of course, rubbish, but it's cool rubbish given the seal of approval by your typical, home-grown kid on the street of any council estate or tower block of any dirty old town or city in England. Mama not only rocks but it rolls.

John Serpico

I, The Machine - Paul W Fairman

I, THE MACHINE - PAUL W FAIRMAN

Another sci-fi book that I've bought and read based solely on its cover. If only life could be as simple. Published in 1968 in larger print than usual for this kind of book, and 'printed on scientifically tinted non-glare paper for better contrast and less eyestrain'. Again, if only life could be as simple.

It's pretty obvious just from the cover that there's something odd about I, The Machine. It's Pop Art, isn't it? A mixture of collage, cut-up, and psychedelia. Story-wise, it's science fiction of the weird kind. It's science fiction on drugs.

I wonder if anyone has mentioned this drug aspect in any past reviews? I suspect not, so let's take one for the team and just consider it for a moment, shall we? If you were ever to indulge in a drug of the psychedelic kind, a non-user might be inclined to ask you what it's like? But actually, that's not the right question. Instead, what should be asked is 'What's it about?'. There's a bit of a difference between the two and it's an important enough difference to solicit the right answer. But how to explain that answer? How to put it into words?

There are echoes in I, The Machine of The Matrix, Zardoz, Logan's Run, The Time Machine, Forbidden Planet, and even One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in the way that a mental asylum can be a metaphor for America. Set in the far-distant future where the earth has been devastated by war, what is left of civilization is now under a protective shield in a man-made world called Midamerica, where every conceivable need is catered for. It's the ultimate, fully-realized technocracy where no-one works, no-one struggles, and no-one is deprived. A world where every whim can be resolved at the touch of a button; maintained by robots and managed by an all-seeing eye of providence, not unlike The Orb's 'Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld'. Not unlike that which is symbolized and can be found on the Great Seal of the United States and on the back of a dollar bill.

From this world emerges one man - one citizen - by the name of Penway whose thoughts become troubling: 'An axiom shaped for him: There is no such thing as unreality. All things, from the most indestructible plastic to the vaguest of hallucinatory dreams, are real, and must be dealt with as such. Reality is nothing more than effect. Everything that impinges upon the human consciousness leaves a greater or lesser effect. Therefore, everything of which consciousness can become aware is real'.

Without even taking any drugs, they're the kind of thoughts that could easily fit into a Bill Hick's 'It's just a ride'-type monologue.

Things don't just stay at this level, however, for it's when the same citizen discovers a community of naked people living 'underground' who call themselves the Aliens that the shark is jumped, as they say.

'Penway felt electricity running through his nerves, sparking at his nerve ends as he saw her standing there. She had sprayed off her suit and was nude. This revealed a surprising thing. Jenka had a thick, darkly gold pubic growth. It was the first one Penway had ever seen. Few females allowed hirsute disfigurement of any description on their lower bodies. But instead of being shocked, Penway found himself erotically stirred. He had never seen anything so attractive. Noting the direction of his eye, Jenka lowered her own. "It is our badge," she said. "A symbol of the Aliens."'

From there on, revolution and the destruction of the eye of providence is in the offing.

I, The Machine is pulp fiction of the science fiction variety but as I maintain: the medium is not the message and it's yet more proof if needed that pulp fiction-type books are not to be belittled or viewed dimly; and that old, paperback pulp fiction books can often wield hidden treasures. That's not to say this particular one is some sort of long-buried, hidden gem but it's certainly a weirdly rarefied one.

John Serpico

The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise - Brix Smith Start

 THE RISE, THE FALL, AND THE RISE -

BRIX SMITH START

It's no reflection on Brix Smith Start but in an autobiography of 461 pages it's not until page 147 when Mark E Smith enters the story that things start to get interesting but then understandably so given him being the stuff of such cantankerous legend. Before this, it's all about Brix growing up in Los Angeles where she lived on some sort of ranch with her dysfunctional, psychiatrist father. Do we really need to know about the pet tortoise Brix had as a child? Well, no, not really but it's forgivable because such attention to detail bodes well for when she starts writing about her time in The Fall. And that's why we're all here, right? That's what we've come for?

Does The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise warrant our attention? Is it worth the effort of ploughing through what is a near-tome of a book? I would have to say yes but you need to have an interest in The Fall to act as a motivator as without that you might just as well read Viv Albertine's autobiography which if not better, is definitely shorter.

As I said, it's not until Mark E Smith enters the story that things start to get interesting but the high comedy starts when Brix leaves America in May of 1983 and flies to England to live with Mark in Manchester. 'I never expected Manchester to be so grim,' she writes 'Nobody smiled. Everybody looked so poor. All their clothes were drab. Where was the colour?'

In the taxi from Piccadilly train station to where Mark lives in Preston, Mark points out all the must-see sights of his beloved city: 'Look, Brixie, there's the Boddingtons Brewery! There's Strangeways Prison!' All Brix can see, however, are squat little buildings with the words 'Cash and Carry' spray-painted on their front windows. 'I didn't know what Cash and Carry meant,' she writes 'but I had a feeling it wasn't glamorous. It was a long way from Bloomingdale's, that's for sure.'

It's on arriving at Mark's flat for the first time, however, that the comedy goes from observational to full-on Monty Python:

'Shall I make you a cuppa?' Mark asks. 'Yes, please,' say Brix 'I'll get the milk. Where do you keep it?'

'Out the window,' Mark tells her .

'What do you mean, 'out the window'?'

Mark pushes open a sooty window at the back of the kitchen to reveal a cement ledge where perched precariously is a small bottle of milk, a pack of Danish back bacon, a carton of eggs and a loaf of Hovis white bread. Brix is incredulous. Perhaps this is a traditional resourceful British custom, she wonders?

'Where is your washing machine and dryer?' she asks.

'I wash me clothes in the bathtub,' Mark replies.

'Mark, there's no hot water!'

'You have to turn on the immersion heater, love.'

'What's an immersion heater?'

'Do you have a shower?'

'Of course.' Mark then proceeds to show Brix a bizarre hose-like contraption that you attach to the mouth of a tap.

Brix is aghast.

It must be said, this is first-class, top-notch comedy. Things get even more hilarious later on in the book, however, when Brix recites an anecdote about her sex escapade with Micky Mouse at Disneyland. I won't reveal the details but it's genuinely bizarre. And if Brix thought Manchester was a culture shock, she was in for a surprise on her first visit to Blackpool. Her mother and stepfather are coming over from America to visit so Brix asks Mark where they could take them? 

'Let's take them to Blackpool, it's great,' Mark says 'You'll like it, it's like Disneyland and it's by the seaside.'

'My family loves the beach,' Brix writes 'so we rented a car and drove to the most heinous place I've ever been to in my life. It was grim and freezing. They call the amusement park area Blackpool Pleasure Beach. The rides were like the rides of doom, rickety and old. Along the promenade they hang lights, grandiosely called 'illuminations'. They do this in lots of seaside towns. They looked like crude crappy candy canes in black and white. I've seen backwoods country carnivals with better lighting decoration. My mother turned to me and said 'This is the night of the living dead'.'

Brix's book isn't a constant stream of funny anecdotes, by any means. Mark E Smith, for example, is revealed as being a very naughty boy that leads to divorce between Brix and him. There's a lot of airing of dirty washing going on here but then that's the thing about autobiographies in that they allow this. It's probably the only place to do it, really. It's also the place, of course, to settle scores and on that point, Morrissey of The Smiths is but one of the targets. Did Morrissey name The Smiths after Mark E Smith? It's feasible. And what's worse: being fired from The Smiths crew for eating meat whilst on tour, or being fired from The Fall crew for eating a salad? It's obvious which one is the funniest and this also makes it obvious that without Mark E Smith having a central role in Brix's life, her story wouldn't be half as good and would certainly not be half as entertaining. And entertaining it most certainly is.

John Serpico