Guilty Pleasures (Part 10)

GUILTY PLEASURES (Part 10)

As a teenager full of the joys of youth, I rather liked the Anarcho Punk band Crass and would always go out of my way to catch them live. They would lay on what can only be described as a roadshow, with banks of televisions stacked alongside stages bedecked in anarchist and peace banners. It was all very un-rock'n'roll.

They were always supported by bands and poets such as Flux Of Pink Indians, Poison Girls, Dirt, Andy T, and Annie Anxiety. Except these bands and poets weren't really support acts because they were all very brilliant in their own right; Poison Girls in particular, who on a variety of levels may even have been actually better than Crass.

Yes, I used to like Poison Girls.

Their lead vocalist was a woman in her mid-forties who went by the name of Vi Subversa and she was unconventional to say the least. That is, unconventional in terms of who might typically be regaling audiences of volatile, angry young Punk rockers in an Anarcho Punk band.

Her voice was cracked and smoke-ravaged in a Marianne Faithfull kind of way, and her age lent her lyrics a conviction that shone with a truthfulness that was rare. When she sang - or declared - for example, a line such as "I denounce the system that murders my children," you just knew she really meant it.

All of Poison Girls' songs were exceptionally good but there was one in particular that for me was inspirational. A song from their début album Chappaquiddick Bridge, entitled Daughters and Sons. It was a song that demanded no explanation. You either understood it or you didn't and if you didn't then you probably never would.

I saw Poison Girls live on a number of occasions over the years, one such time being at the Treworgey Festival, in 1989. There's a school of thought that says the Castlemorton free festival of 1992 was the last major free festival before the Criminal Justice Bill took hold but I'd argue it was Treworgey even though it was actually (or meant to be) a ticket festival.

Like the Glastonbury festival at that time, there was the pay-to-enter site and the free Convoy site adjacent to it but very quickly all the fences came down and it merged into one gigantic free-for-all with no policing, no rules and no infrastructure.

Along with Hawkwind, the Levellers, Misty In Roots, Gaye Bykers On Acid, Chaos UK and all kinds of strange and wonderful bands, Poison Girls played a set and later on that evening I saw Vi out on site and on a whim I approached her and said "Hey! Thank you, Vi, for just being alive!"

She gave me a bemused look and asked why I said this so I replied "For being so good, for being so brilliant, for being so inspirational."

I found myself babbling and Vi probably thought I was just drug-addled (as most people at that festival were) but I wasn't really. Well, I made my excuses and continued on my merry way, leaving me feeling as though I'd just embarrassed myself and Vi probably wondering what the fuck was all that about?

A few months later I went to see Poison Girls again when they played at the Thekla showboat in Bristol, and I saw Vi walking around in the venue so, like an idiot, I approached her again and with a smile said "Thank you, Vi." And once again she gave me a bemused look as if to say 'What for?'. And once again I began babbling: "For everything. For being so good. For being so inspirational. For just being alive." I was embarrassing myself again.

Vi Subversa passed away last month, which made me remember these two occasions I met her, both times (though she was on both occasions lovely with me) leaving me thinking I'd made a fool of myself. With the news of her passing, I once again pondered just how brilliant Poison Girls were and how very special and inspirational they were. And it made me think I'm glad I said those things to her on those two occasions rather than trying to be cool or trying to discuss politics or whatever with her. I'm glad I said what I said because I meant it and now there'll never be an opportunity to say such a thing again - except for here on the Internet.

So, thank you, Vi, for everything. For being so good. For being so brilliant. For being so inspirational.

Thank you for just having lived.

                                                                                                                                                                               John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (Part 31)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 31)

I fear seagulls in Exmouth are getting bigger and one day will be the size of pterodactyls. No longer will they be feeding on detritus and the rubbish from dustbins but will have their eye on more nourishing prey. At the very least, the signs in town will have to be changed from 'Please don't feed the seagulls' to 'Please don't feed the seagulls - your children'.

For all that, the question remains: Where do seagulls go when they die? Why aren't our streets strewn with their carcasses? Is it true they head out to sea to die? If so, does this mean they know when they are soon to die and like elephants head for a fabled graveyard? What is this sense of death they might have and why don't we as people have the same? Or maybe we do? If only on a subconscious level? On a humankind level, are we actually somehow aware of our impending demise and might this explain Donald Trump? Might this explain David Cameron?

If indeed seagulls do head out to sea to die then what distance are we talking about? Why is there never seagull remains swept up onto the shore? You'll find everything else under the sun (and from under other suns too) swept up on the shore at break of day but never a hint of seagull.

The world is a strange, mysterious, frightening but wonderful place and no more so than in Exmouth where seagulls the size of dinosaurs hover outside your bedroom window on a morning and Armageddon is not denied.

Exmouth is a favoured seaside holiday resort that welcomes careful drivers and happy campers.

Queer - William Burroughs

QUEER - WILLIAM BURROUGHS

On first moving to Devon it felt like stepping back into the 1970s before I realised it wasn't time that moved slower down here but news. Rumours are just starting to circulate, for example, that Margaret Thatcher has died. Could it be true? A nation will mourn, surely? Or perhaps not?

What this means is that there are people here who don't yet realise school is over and there are no more lessons to be learned. That the school gates are wide open and we're liberated - free to run riot.

What this also means is that you can be sat on a train reading Mein Kampf and no-one will bat an eyelid but sit down and start reading Queer by William Burroughs and blokes will start eyeing you up for either a fight or a bit of cottaging in the gents.

Compared to say, The Naked Lunch, Queer is a very straight story. Straight as in narrative, not in sexual orientation for there's lashings of homosexual lust in it. Actually, he's a bit creepy isn't he, William Burroughs? Lusting after young boys, gazing upon them as they play. Can this behaviour be forgiven? It was another world back then, of course, and for Burroughs it was really another world, distorted by junk sickness and strung out in heavens high hitting an all time low. But still, how are his confessions meant to be taken these days?

Queer relays the story of the love for a guy called Gene Allerton by William Lee (Burroughs' alter ego) and his attempts to get to know him and ultimately to get him into bed. It's a kind of love story, then, though also a story of obsession, addiction and junk sickness.

Lee does eventually get to bed down with Allerton but it's when Lee persuades him to go on a journey to South America that things get really interesting. Lee's on a quest to find a source of Yage and once they get going it allows Burroughs to slip into his florid descriptions and anecdotes that he's so renowned for, though in this book there's no evidence at all of cut-up. It's all his own work as fevered words trip off his tongue like a man delirious.

At one point, Lee's in a bar launching into a full-blown monologue about a time at the headwaters of the Zambezi where he traded a keg of paregoric for a boy, then later in Timbuktu trying to trade the boy for another model at Corn Hole Gus's Used-Slave Lot:

'Gus rushes out and goes into the spiel: "Ah, Sahib Lee. Allah has sent you! I have something right up your ass, I mean, alley. Just came in. One owner and he was a doctor. A once-over lightly, twice-a-week-type citizen. It's young and it's tender. In fact, it talks baby talk... behold!"

"You call those senile slobberings baby talk? My grandfather got a clap off that one. Come again, Gussie."

"You do not like it? A pity. Well, everyone has a taste, feller say. Now here I have a one-hundred-percent desert-bred Bedouin with a pedigree goes straight back to the Prophet. Dig his bearing. Such pride! Such fire!"

"A good appearance job, Gus, but not good enough. It's an albino Mongolian idiot. Look, Gussie you are dealing with the oldest faggot in the Upper Ubangi, so come off the peg. Reach down into your grease pit and dredge out the best-looking punk you got in this moth-eaten bazaar."

"All right Sahib Lee, you want quality, right? Follow me, please. Here it is. What can I say? Quality speaks for itself. Now, I get a lotta cheap-type customers in here wanna see quality and then scream at the price. But you know and I know that quality runs high. As a matter of fact, and this I swear by the Prophet's prick, I lose money on this quality merchandise."

...... "O.K., now, what can you give me on this Lulu-Effendi? Perfect condition. Just overhauled. He don't eat much and he don't say nothing."

"Jesus, Lee! You know I'd cut off my right nut for you, but I swear by my mother's cunt, may I fall down and be paralysed and my prick fall off if these mixed jobs ain't harder to move than a junky's bowels."'

And so on, until Lee suddenly looks around and sees that the bar he's in is empty and that he's delivering his monologue to no-one, so he pays for his drinks and walks out into the night. (In fact, this sounds like a typical night out down The Phoenix pub, in Exmouth, though that's a whole other story).

Whilst reading Queer a thought occurred to me: Did William Burroughs ever meet Timothy Leary and if so, did they get on? Opiates and psychedelics and did ever the twain meet? Thanks to the wonders of new technology and a quick Google search, lo and behold there they both are looking like the best of friends. Isn't the Internet wonderful? But I digress.

Queer isn't William Burroughs best book - for that I would nominate Cities Of The Red Night - but it's still very good, very funny and very interesting particularly if you know anything about Burroughs and his oeuvre as this is the book that for some reason wasn't published until 1985, over 30 years after first being written.

It's an enjoyable read but for enhanced enjoyment of it I'd recommend reading it on a train. In Devon.

                                                                                                                                                                               John Serpico

There they are

Exmouth Bound Soundtrack (Part 4)

EXMOUTH BOUND SOUNDTRACK (Part 4)

Up and down the Avocet rail line, in and out of Exmouth, day in day out... But it's not a chore, it's not a grind - it's a pleasure. It's time out. It's a beautiful view...

It's a time to relax. Kick back. Time to think, to read, to listen to music. To feed your head...

A Confederate General From Big Sur - Richard Brautigan

A CONFEDERATE GENERAL FROM BIG SUR -

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

Having recently been sexually assaulted by Nick Cave, I was in need of some love, tenderness and understanding so who better to turn to than Richard Brautigan?

A Confederate General From Big Sur was Brautigan's first published novel though it only came to the attention of a significant readership on the coat-tails of Trout Fishing In America, his second and much more successful novel. Brautigan is the narrator going under the name of 'Jesse' and he relates the story of a summer spent with his friend Lee Mellon (the Confederate General of the title) in a rudimentary shack on the cliffs at Big Sur, on the Californian Coast. He records various episodes of their time spent there, forming an almost straightforward narrative which for a Brautigan book is quite unusual.

The two of them live in abject poverty, existing on a diet of sea snails and dough. At night they're kept awake by the sound of croaking frogs and the only people who seem to pass by are thieves in the night trying to steal what little gasoline they have in their truck.

In a way they're like children playing in the dirt and all that keeps them going are their eccentricities and their imaginations. They're eventually joined by two girls, one a prostitute (with a heart of gold) and the other a college drop-out; then finally by another friend of Lee Mellon's who's carrying a briefcase containing $100,000 but who's also going through a mental breakdown.

It's all very amusing and entertaining in a light-hearted way, without too much fuss made about such things as 'likelihood' and 'probability'. For example, what might be the chances of them finding a bag of marijuana stuffed behind a rock in the fireplace? Pretty slim, you might imagine, but that's what they do which is alright because it leads to them all getting massively stoned, which makes for another episode for Brautigan to write about.

When Jesse (or Brautigan) first meets the college drop-out girl she asks him 'What do you do?' and he replies 'I live in Big Sur'. She asks him the same question a couple of times more to which he replies 'I'm unemployed' and jokingly 'I'm a minister'. What's interesting is that he never once says that he's a writer.

A little later on as they're driving back to Big Sur, Henry Miller makes a cameo appearance: 'We drove by Henry Miller's mailbox. He was waiting for his mail in that old Cadillac he had in those days. "There's Henry Miller," I said. "Oh," she said. With every passing moment my liking for her flowered another time. Not that I had anything against Henry Miller, but like a storm of flowers remembered during a revolution I grew to like her more and more.'

A Confederate General From Big Sur contains all the ingredients for what makes Richard Brautigan books so likeable: idiosyncrasy, innocence, imagination, unconventionality, surrealism, oddness, etc, etc. It also contains a very good ending or rather, it contains a very good infinite number of endings. 186,000 endings per second to be precise. And if you know anything about Brautigan as a writer you'd know this is the kind of thing that makes perfect sense when reading him.

Richard Brautigan is no longer with us so after sponging down with one of his books I fear it's going to be back to being sexually (and psychologically) assaulted by Nick Cave and his ilk again from now on...

John Serpico

The Death Of Bunny Munro - Nick Cave

THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO - NICK CAVE

I've met Bunny Munro. He's out there. I've met him in city centre pubs on a Saturday night, in night clubs, in work places, on building sites, in factories and in offices. I've met him in management boardrooms, in ranks of police, in the mansions of the rich and the slum tenements of the poor. From the canyons of New York, to the flat fields of Holland, to the beaches of Crete, to the streets of your town. He's out there.

I've met Valerie Solanas also. She's out there as well. I've met her at anarchist bookfairs, at political protests, political meetings and demonstrations, at parties, at gigs and in backstreet pubs. From the squats of West Germany of old, to the social centres of Italy, to the kraakpanden of Holland, to the tower blocks of London. She's harder to find but she's out there.

Bunny Munro is the central character in Nick Cave's The Death Of Bunny Munro and to say he's a horrible creation is an understatement. He has no redeeming qualities in the slightest. He's an ignorant, selfish, misogynist, cheating, stealing, sex-obsessed monster. Valerie Solanas is famous for shooting Andy Warhol and for being the author of the SCUM Manifesto - the Society for Cutting Up Men.

In her manifesto, Solanas states her case immediately in the opening paragraph: 'Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of it being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex'.

She then goes on to describe men thus: 'The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the service of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations'.

And so on and so forth. The SCUM Manifesto is extreme, militant, provocative and controversial. It also repeatedly hits the nail on the head when it comes to summarising men. For example: 'The male will swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, furthermore, pay for the opportunity.'

And who could argue with that?

Nick Cave has obviously read the SCUM Manifesto because his Bunny Munro character is the epitome of man as defined by Valerie Solanas, resulting in a very rude book but rude in a horrible way. Bunny is a door-to-door salesman of beauty products in Brighton and he's the best. He could sell a bicycle to a barracuda, as he puts it. He's a master of the art. He's also, as put by what might be the Devil, 'a fucking trip, man! Out of this world, baby'. In a league of his own. 'A fucking inspiration!'

Bunny's on a quest, searching for the holy grail. Seeking Valhalla. We're talking here, however, about a character in a book written by Nick Cave, he of the Birthday Present, the Bad Seeds, and Grinderman. So with that in mind, should it come as a surprise that Bunny imagines Valhalla might be found in Avril Lavigne's pants? And if a homeless, dying, junky girl turning blue from having overdosed on heroin happens to look like Avril Lavigne due to the black bags beneath her eyes resembling Lavigne's 'kooky' eye-liner then so be it. For Bunny - who thinks the song Spinning Around by Kylie Minogue is an 'orgiastic paean to buggery' - it matters not.

Nick Cave is a very good, very clever, very intelligent writer and there's a lot going on in The Death Of Bunny Munro: Recurring themes, premonitions, profane dialogue, comedy, tragedy, a relentless downward spiral, delirium and redemption. It has depth. All held together and made palatable by the inclusion in the story of Bunny's 9 year-old son whose love for his father never diminishes and is genuinely the stuff of heart-rending genius.

Cave's story is of a dead man walking and is often dark and at times disturbing. Light, hope and love, however, is shed by the son and it is he that in many ways the book is actually about. Why The Death Of Bunny Munro hasn't been made into a film yet is anyone's guess, as it's crying out for it. Though saying that, there's really no possible way a film could better the book, so perhaps that's the reason? Moreover, might there be objections from Avril Lavigne? Who knows? If given the choice, perhaps she might even wish to star in it? Though unless she's looking for a serious change of image, I very much doubt it.

John Serpico

Exmouth Bound Soundtrack (Part 3)

EXMOUTH BOUND SOUNDTRACK (Part 3)

Up and down the Avocet rail line, in and out of Exmouth, day in day out. For many of us it's the chosen mode of transport as it's relatively cheap, it's quick, and it's relatively efficient. It also affords us the luxury of just gazing out the train windows at the world passing by outside.

It affords us the luxury of reading our books or of listening to music on our iPhones without any distractions. It affords us a moment to daydream, to gather our thoughts, and to ponder life...