Last Night A DJ Saved My (And Your) Life - Flash Fiction

Satan’s royalties had dried up. Despite Milton giving him a fair shake of the whip and though a bit anthropomorphic, William Blake had etched him a reasonably fair hand. Baudelaire’s litanies had promised much but turned out a complete bust and don’t even get him started on Screwtape. But since then, nothing. While his other nourishment stream of human souls had also become completely debased. What need of an unredeemer when the race had already become utterly irredeemable? Even if it all came straight out of Satan’s own playbook. So much had come to pass from his manifesto, unfortunately just not in his infernal name. He should have created lawyers earlier on in the piece, to sort out copyright.

Trusty Mammon had secured for him a power meeting with an agency to relaunch his moribund career. A reality TV show lay potentially in the wings. “Pro-bono?” Inquired Satan, being down on his uppers. (The fires of Hell were on a timeshare basis to slash running costs). “Nobody is pro-Bono are they? Even God has distanced himself”. “No, I mean gratis, as a Charity account”’ “Charity?” “Well, more a mates’ rates sort of thing. After all did I not create PR and marketing direct from my sulphurous realm?” 

Satan is sitting on a beanbag in Reception, leafing through piles of house clearance auction catalogues. Dreaming of what sort of monarch’s throne he would take possession of.  Something a la mode for the new kingdom of darkness. One that could comfortably cradle his spreading posterior and avoid agitating his accursed haemorrhoids. A dentist’s chair, baby’s bucket carseat, bus station tip-up. Tanning bed recliner, milkmaid’s stool and tuffet, a commode. The Bishop’s cathedra… once profaned with some purgatorial pimping of course. He inquired of the receptionist if he could take the brochure with him for reference. Mammon whispered that it was all online now for his convenience, though Satan murmured that he didn’t get on with the internet what with his bedimmed eyes. Which was why he didn’t have an I-Phone, which Mammon felt a pity, since it could so very easily co-ordinate his revolution to retake Earth at a stroke. 

At last the pair were ushered into the meeting room. The account manager was sat atop a tennis umpire’s chair. “Please, sit down”. “I can do no other” Satan responded, on account of his inflamed lumbago and fiendish sciatica which had condemned him to a sedentary life in the main. Which was probably why you could add piles to his heaps of pathologies. He turned  round to catch sight of a sex harness swing that was the only seating on offer. Mammon dived into the minimal clearance beneath its leather. As Satan scrambled on to the contraption and rocked unsteadily back and forth, Mammon fiddled with the straps and buckles. At least with this particular seat design there was no material chafing his sore plums. What the hell was Mammon doing under the leather beneath him?

“So Mr Lucifer-“ (a nom de guerre), “I’ve been taking a squint at your social media presence. Few followers, even less ‘Likes’, what on earth have you been doing to establish your brand? Even God has a spoof Twitter account”. “I don’t want ‘likes’, I want ‘dislikes’”. “No Master, for your heinous deeds you actually want ‘likes’”. “Gentlemen, perhaps you can save such quodlibets for later, we are on the clock here. Now tell me, what talents can you bring to the table?” “Talents? I was under the impression this was all on someone else’s dime”. “Not those sort of Talents Master, we’re all in your fiendish Eurozone now. He means abilities”. 

“Oh, well I’m gifted down below, tupping, fornicating and all manner of carnal reprehensibilities”. “Well yes, that’s a given for any Reality TV show, the sexual shenanigan subplots for the Tabloids. What else, for example, can you hold a tune… you know sing?” “Only angels sing!” “Weren’t you an angel once? I’m thinking The Voice”. “Alas no, since the accident, he’s gone from contralto to basso profundo. They did call him Snakehips Satan back in the day”. “Which day was that, before The Fall I take it…” “He can still throw some shapes”. “What are you his agent, Mr 15%?” “I handle his business affairs yes, but only to reinvest so as to advance the greater glory of Hell”. “Okay, I’m prepared to get you a shot at Strictly Come Dancing, if you show me your moves on the dance floor. I’ve got comps for Stringfellows so we can-“ “How is Peter the randy old devil?”

Satan dug the optics. The strobes reminded him of the shadows flitting between the licking flames of Gehenna. But the music made his ears bleed, he was supposed to have all the best tunes, no wonder his fortunes were so low if this was what was being churned out in his name. “Let’s get this Ragnarok and Roll started” as Satan commandeered the PA and from the deadened air conjured up the sound of fifes, tabors and Jericho Trumpets. They pounded out their martial sounds, yet not in military rhythms. This sonic assault was not about unison for keeping a marching beat, rather it targeted atomisation. The punishing pulsation located itself inside each dancer’s head, obliterating any sense of  their own heartbeats, their breath or their thought processes. Cutting them off from any other sensation of the world. Mutinous skeletons in thrall to an inhuman reverberation. Many began to convulse uncontrollably, grand mals brought about by the Grandest Malevolence of them all. Satan stomped over to the DJ’s booth, snatched up the mic and bellowed exultantly “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin now pleasure headed sinners?” The DJ, protected by his Beats™ headphones was unaffected by the cacophony and began to sample and splice el Diablo’s rhythms into a catchy breakbeat. He wrangled Satan’s fractured discordance into a danceable tune, so that all the floored casualties were able to slowly raise themselves, before throwing their arms in the air to the tempo. Satan hobbled away, taloned hands over his ears. The PR agent hurriedly bit into his arm so as to draw blood, before chasing after Satan waving the Reality TV production company’s contract in his direction. 

Gladioli All Over - The Smiths & My Novel

This week I'll be doing one-a day posts about songs included in my latest novel "Time After Time", how the music fits into the narrative and where the band or the song fitted into my life.

Today's is The Smiths "This Charming Man". It's a big deal for me to host The Smiths on my blog because they were a band I really didn't like for the reasons below. But the book demanded a tune for a guy being picked up on his smooth operating by a lady and well, this fit the best.



"You one of those 'new men' we always used to hear about?"

"You could say that."

"Same as the old men and the 'new lads' if you ask me. 'Metrosexuals'? The clue is in the 'sexual'..."

Okay, so why don't I like The Smiths?

1) I had the misfortune to see them early in their career when they were already being touted as the next big Indie band. They were supporting The Fall who were on the same Rough Trade label at the time. What the upstart Smiths didn't figure is that this was Mark E Smith, main man of The Fall, putting them in their place, playing off their name to make it seem that they were his house band. Anyway, I have poor eyesight and moshpits are not great for geeks with glasses. So in my long past gigging days, I used to get as close to the stage as possible in order to facilitate some minimal level of vision without my specs. To ensure my space at the front, it meant I had to stand through some pretty terrible support bands in my time (and to be fair a sprinkling of real gems). Hence I'm stood there waiting for The Smiths to take the stage, my arms crossed in as hostile an 'entertain me then' manner as I can summon. As per the video above, because it was his Oscar Wilde meets Dame Edna Everage schtick, Morrisey comes on stage with a bunch of gladioli and in the first song brings the flowers down on the heads of the audience. That's us up against the stage and the pollen sets off a raging, most unseasonal hay fever in me that fills my eyes with water so that I view the Fall's set through a veil. 

2) Manchester is the home of UK music. Liverpool has produced little music of note since the Beatles and London has surprisingly few of its own indigenous bands, though plenty flock from the provinces to take up residence in the capital. Sheffield has occasional flare ups of interesting bands, but nothing quite so sustained as manchester as to make it the rock and roll capital of the UK. If you don't believe me about Manchester, here are some of its musical alumni: Joy Division/New Order, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Buzzcocks/Magazine, The Fall, 808 State, Autechre, The Bee Gees (!), The Chemical Brothers,  The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Freddie And The Dreamers, John Mayall, The Verve and Oasis. Now Manchester transmits an image of itself through its music. And that image involves a certain chippyness and cussedness to all things London. It's hard, gruff and irreverent. And then along came The Smiths and almost single handedly undid all the sterling work of the bands from the late 1970s and very early 80s with their rather fey adoption of the trope of Oscar Wilde. Of course I acknowledge that in time The Smiths turned out to be more popular than maybe any of these bands, (other than Oasis, but don't get me started on those Merseysound wannabees!) or at least comparable. But some of us weren't comfortable with what that meant for Manchester...

3) When I was at university, all the cool alternative blokes (of which I liked to consider myself as one, okay maybe without the cool), were desperately casting around for a new band to follow after Ian Curtis of Joy Division killed himself and the remnants of the band turned into dance-pop New Order which was overtly beyond the pale even though we all secretly loved them and indeed the only time I ever saw them play live was at a University Ball in my final year. Anyhoo, Joy Division fans wore long trenchcoats and needed a band that enabled to continue doing so. For some reason, despite the iconography of gladioli and dear Oscar. lead singer Morrisey's misery warbling green lit the trenchcoat brigade permission to carry on moodying in their long outerwear. So I spent many a university party with the girlfriends of the cool set as the only male present, commiserating about how their boyfriends were off away at a smiths concert, or refused to dance with them because the party music was not 'right'. Actually there were some fringe benefits from this, but you take my main point I hope. Being into the Smiths meant the normal subject matter of teenage boy meets teenage girl was strictly off the agenda. The boys preferred moping alone in the attic rooms or halls of residence. The girls just looked bemused and began to consider the virtues of relationships with would be yuppies or geeks. That's not what rock and roll is about. It's not even what pop music is about!

So that's why it's a big deal even after all these years for me to host a Smiths' video on my blog. But fair's fair, the song is in my novel, even if it is associated with the anti-hero!

Look Who's Stalking

This week I'll be doing one-a day posts about songs included in my latest novel "Time After Time", how the music fits into the narrative and where the band or the song fitted into my life.

The first is "A Figure Walks" by The Fall. This song announced itself very early on in the process of writing the novel during a comic stalking/pursuit scene I was writing. The assassin has finally sighted his target and starts following her, while he himself is being pursued by a gang of youths with murderous intent in their eyes at this outsider to their estate. The drumming and bassline are suitably menacing for that horrible feeling that you're being followed, but don't dare turn round and engage their eyes...

"Is he following me? Can't be!... He is! Matching me step for step. Oh god, now you've done it girl. You and your big mouth. They got websites full of that sort of thing. Pregnant is the new virginity in the sicko stakes... Don't... turn... around. Keep walking. Don't break into a run. Just look straight ahead. Clenched fists and tight buttocks. Just wants to put the wind up you a little... and he's succeeding... well, cross the road then you bastard! Oh god, sounds like there's a whole pack of them now."

Ah The Fall. Probably the band I saw play live more than any other. They used to play absolute toilets of venues as per Mark E Smith's legendary perversity. I saw them a few times at a North London Polytechnic, in the days when they were still called that rather than Universities. It wasn't even a campus, just some Hall owned by or attached to the Polytechnic. We were all sat there on the pavement waiting for the doors to open, when Marc Riley, erstwhile Fall guitarist (before a vicious falling out with Smith so that the latter changed the lyrics to a song and baited Riley from the stage at a later gig I attended) and the man who would later be known as "Lard" as Radio ! DJ Mark Radcliffe's sidekick, anyway that same Marc Riley approached us from the shops on Holloway Road with his placcy bag sagging under the modest weight of what looked like a fourpack of convenience store beer. No fancy riders backstage for The Fall as Riley cut a path through our outstretched arms and legs on the concrete. No one bothered to salute or even greet him, for that was The Fall and their fans. Unrock and roll as you could get.

I once saw them in February, when they played a set of unfamiliar songs as was their wont. These songs then turned up on the new album released a week later, so fair enough you think, they were showcasing the new album just ahead of time. Then having worn the vinyl out playing that album and committing every song to the pith and fibre of my body, I was ready to belt out the anthems full voce when they returned to the same venue a month later... Only for them to unfurl a completely new set of yet more unfamiliar songs that would later go on to form their next album. Not for The Fall to bother plugging an album less than a month old! And that cussedness towards the record business endeared them in our hearts forever I would suggest.

SlipMatt - Friday Flash

this is an 800 word extract from my new novel "Time After Time"

Even when not armed with a pictorial pocket guide to the urban archetype, you could still tell he was a DJ. He had one hand clamping a headphone can against his ear as if it were a conch shell and he was divining for an ocean of sound through it. He also had a pair of light-up rave glasses, which in his case was a double affectation. Seeing as he had an angle-poise lamp, well, poised over his shoulder. Plus that the battery in his specs had long expired, though he either hadn't noticed or just couldn't spare the time to change it over. In contrast to his changing the records on twin turntables in a blur of motion.

Though effaced behind the decks, console and transmitter rig in his bedroom, his T-Shirt was of a full-sized twin-tape reel and assorted dials, buttons and analogue gauges, picked out in metallic silver against a black background. It looked like the innards of a cyborg and more alarmingly perhaps, in the dull, spectral light of the room, that they formed part of his own actual anatomy. Around his neck was a bandana, while on his head squatted a baseball cap at an incline that defied gravity.

It was said by those who caught rare glimpses of him, that it must have been the static electricity that surrounded him all day which held the hat fastened in place. It bore the imperative 'No Requests'. However, since the cap was perched backwards on his head, in the unlikelihood someone did advance upon him armed with a musical request, the pre-emptive prohibition wouldn't be visible to them. Therefore the headwear's broadcast could only fail in its purpose. But then the whole rigmarole was perhaps somewhat redundant. By reason of there being no one else in his box room. And, that given its dimensions, nor was there likely to be. Any self-respecting turntablists had played clubs with bigger DJ booths than this room. But then it was questionable how much self-respect DJ SlipMatt possessed.

The wall mounted clock was in the shape of a record turntable, the numbers marked along its circumference. The clockface dial was what revolved, whereas its hand in the form of a tonearm stayed fixed in place. Armed with just this one pointer, the clock only counted off the hours. Which was somewhat odd for a DJ reliant on getting his split second timing right as he transferred from one deck to another, or mixed in a beat.

He adjusted the angle-poise lamp so that its glare didn't flood wash his bank of monitor screens. The hacked feed from all the CCTV cameras on the estate fed into here. He clicked the bulging eyeball sat in a bloodshot sclera that was his computer mouse, in order to change the selection of cameras on his screen. Instantaneously the grid filled with sixteen new images at different slants of projection, like a Cubist painting. SlipMatt silently pronounced himself content with what he witnessed and slotted the headphones over both ears, with the headband hanging down from the back of his neck like a yoke. He started bobbing his head to the private rhythms, as he scrabbled around on the desk in front of him for something.

The room itself was a garret beneath sloping eaves which ate into the habitable space. SlipMatt could only properly stand up in the very centre. Otherwise he had to hunch over. Which seldom presented any impediment, since his natural bearing was sat stooped over the electrical equipment on his desk, as if he were hoarding it into his chest. Every single square inch of flat space was submerged beneath some electrical kit or other. CDs, cassette tapes, Dictaphones, Discmans, Walkmans, mobile phones, pagers, mini-discs, cartridges, DAT tapes, spools of magnetic tape, hard drives, RAM memory, flash memory, microphones, microphone stands, cabling and a wide array of batteries of every shape and size. The embodied history of sound recording lay mummified yet uncatalogued here. If Noah's Ark had preserved the length and breadth of the animal kingdom on earth, this room was its audio equivalent. Only none of these voices were ever likely to re-emerge into the light of day, consigned to the depths by the obsolescence of their storage vessels. Some people retain their teddy bears or significant other soft toys as a link to their childhoods. Some of those teddy bears are so old they have their cotton stuffing leaking out. Electrical audio equipment were SlipMatt's cuddly toys, his transitional objects and many had their tape or other innards leaching out of them.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

For more on the novel: The Origins lie in "The Terminator" movies or 

"How Barbara Windsor played a part in this novel seeing the light of day"

The website for "Time After Time"