Tuesday 4 March 2014

part 11

[This one goes up to eleven... We had been pursued as the Hoons, beaten, reviled and busted, baited, blasted, bruised and bartered for worms, by the neo-horrific, wall-like creatures, by the notorious, over-organised, intellectual, wall-eyed fruit-bats and savage plastic monkeys with hideous furry arses and Mechanical Lamb-Substitutes and Clay Pipe-Herons, that were the minions and principal boys of the sinister... Etcetera, Etcetera, Horror-Etceteras... of the nano-notorious Art Squad (who ya's heard of!). Hey, I'm enjoying this "Hoons" stuff, how 'bout you? You have The Entire Top Shelf to thank for most of this, with some Lamé input along the way. Now, re: Don]

SHELF-LIFE OF THE HOONS (The Third Fragment)

...and had only escaped by promising not to exist in any form, individually or collectively. Our manager, Slippery Moe Katzoth, had thought it would be a bit of a stigma for a band of up-and-coming megastars, if they weren't allowed to exist. How could we sign a lucrative contract, if we didn't exist? Would the public come to gigs given by a non-existent band? Would people buy records on non-existent vinyl?

We had a meeting with Moe, in an un-dug Underground station, east of Neasden, in complete secrecy. We didn't even use our credit cards to buy platform tickets, from the ticket collector fossilized six-feet deep in the primordial granite of the potential ticket booth.

"Well, lads, how are we gonna get 'round this non-existence clause?" said Moe. We sat in silence, as befits the non-existent.

"Couldn't we get together a record with session players and a guest singer and release it as The Group That Isn't?" suggested Gib Yob.

"Nah!" said Geel Cunn, "The Art Squad would see through it! Remember - all record company executives are members of the Art Squad!"

"What we need is time," said the Niagara Slug Chum, "To get our heads together... like the groups in the old days, in a cottage in the country!"

"Yeah, but wouldn't that be existing?" asked Am-Resin. That was a SNAG!

"Of course!" said our faithful manager, "You'll have to go somewhere that doesn't exist... because, as any idiot knows, being somewhere non-existent, you can't exist yourselves!"

We returned, elated, to our penthouse suites in unbuilt hotels in negative Dorset villages, to pack and get ready for the trip to Nowhere.

...But how do you get to Nowhere? Nobody ever came back from Nowhere, there was no shuttle service, Nowhere wasn't even on the Circle Line... was it in the middle of the Circle Line?... Nah!... Could we travel to Nowhere inside the tubes of Anti-Matter Tandems? Could we fly there in cancelled-orders Concordes?...

Nah!...

We gathered, next morning, at the Holographic Dinghy Show over Oxford Street and, of course, Moe had the answer again.

"Okay, grab a pair of laser-oars apiece and get into the holographic lifeboat. I've bribed the operator to turn off the power in a moment and then we'll be on our way to Nowhere!"

HOORAY! WE'RE OFF TO NOWHERE!
[now that IS spooky... I was listening to the Talking Heads as I put this bit together! We call that a Synchro Nicety!] Suddenly, there wasn't a flash... Oxford Street disappeared like a tooth pulled out of existence's jaw... reality imploded, like a used lightbulb in a drawer... there was a cosmic grunt of disapproval, as we disobeyed the laws of physics... and we saw a huge, blank roadsign at the entrance to Nowhere...

"Quick, lads! Pull for the sign!" yelled Jenta the E-Zee-Dee.

We bent our backs to the laser-oars, causing our boat to cleave its way with ease through the invisible marginal reality which, presumably, swirled away in our wake. We had reached the entry to Nowhere in record time. Our craft slipped easily out into Nothingness... or, at least it looked like Nothingness... there wasn't any Thingness to speak of...

"Are we in Nowhere now?" asked Big Bete Ridong. The question hung, like a septic vulture in a Knebworth latrine, in the non-existent silence.

"Yes, or perhaps No!" replied our manager. We didn't understand, but we knew what he meant.

"Shall I tell you about the time I was stabbed by a Norwegian dwarf?" suggested Resin.

"Nah! Let's eat," replied Dirt-Muse, "Let's eat ourselves!"

"Okay!" said Ice-Trip, "You eat Am-Resin, Slug can eat Amocalug, I'll eat Ridong, Enamel Kelt eats Katzoth, I'll eat you, then you can eat me, then Slug can wash the dishes and the drown himself in the overfalls of timeless non-existence. If my theory is correct - and it's only a theory, mind - we should all reincarnate, somewhere in existence... D'yah dig?"

We all replied, "Yeah... but No! You daft triangle!"

"I'm sick to the eye-teeth of Nowhere... I want to play before a live audience of living, breathing, shitkicking, bouffant-banging punters!"

"Can't you use that thing in your pocket?" demanded one of us.

"If I use the thing (I'll emphasise that... THE THING!), if I use it, we could end up where we are at the moment."

"Well, use the bleeding thing, then!" blurted Ice-Trip, "It's our only chance!"

"Paint me, inputrescent paint, I wanna grow stones!" interjected the Goose Enamel Kelt. We all ignored him, the poor guy was beginning to become meaningless. He toyed silently with an idea - this was something he did when he was nervous, to keep his hands occupied - it fell to bits and the shards lay, like a forgotten disgrace, in the bottom of the boat.

Katzoth pulled out a piece of string with no ends and no middle. "What we have to do is tie this to the anchor, then rope ourselves together with it and then heave the anchor overboard," he postulated.

In the non-situation, it seemed better than nothing... and there was plenty of nothing to compare it to. We roped ourselves together, feeling like mountaineers at 29,0003 feet, and connected the anchor...

At this point, you have spent all your pocket money on Marmite spiders and couldn't afford the next episode of the Hoons story... Tough Coathangers! The episode you have missed was printed as a stop-press in the following week's edition of The Leech Fancier. Our anti-heroes build a very-detached house on the abandoned lot behind Nowhere, in which to rehearse and plan their comeback.

The Goose Enamel Kelt twanged sweet-and-sour nothing on the fabled uranium gob-axe, Shitsmelter. Spiral arpeggios twined through the holes in the intricate ceiling-rose and flattened themselves against the gleaming fingerplate of of the Geel Cunn Ice-Trip's expression unit. The Geel Cunn's howling feedback (controlled effortlessly by toe-vibrato and by sticking the strings down with bubblegum) threatened to powder the walls... Am-Resin pounded his tubs so fast, that it became a single humming sound... the terrorbop sex-a-phone attacked like a puma in a hamster farm... rhythms scattered like startled lovers before a combine-harvester.

Gib Yob Amocalug was learning to play the bass and didn't know enough about music to be frightened. He continued tugging at the open E-string to compliment the abstracted blues-riffing of the Niagara Slug Chum, who had been a chartered agouti for long enough now to be almost immune to terrorbop sax attack (and who had earned his name when he had played a basic twelve-bar while lashed to a Marshall combo over Niagara Falls).

The Chum walked over to the ex-Bay House School Orchestra trumpet (which was built into the fireplace, at mouth-height, for his convenience), pursed his lips to an eight-thou' gap and spat post-operatic calypso, in jagged, brassy, regal shrapnel fanfares, as if to announce the arrival of Jack The Ripper at a Tupperware party.

Am-Resin recovered his composure and gingerly grasped the dreaded nightingale. This was our ultimate musical weapon and we only used it during our most desperate jams.

The Exist Zardile Dirt-Muse had peaked and was beginning to go red in the face, lying on the floor, trying to writhe breathlessly in time with his rhythm-transcending, blood-ionising flash-flood of methane-powered high-lift "Charlie Parker In Heat"-isms.

Niagara Slug Chum was playing lightning-fast rhythm bits and pieces on his Woolworth's copy semi-acoustic, but was beginning to slip back into playing phrases of Purcell, backwards through wah-wah. The Goose Enamel Kelt couldn't hear himself playing. He knew he was playing solid-bone alien glissandos, with supernatural efficiency and flair, but HE COULDN'T HEAR HIMSELF above the others' solid-gone trauma-editions.

Am-Resin had stealthily attached the nightingale to our entire stock of reserve Marshall amps'n'stacks... and the eighty-three Vox AC30s we used when playing acoustic... and the PA we used when playing an outdoor gig in Belgium to an audience in Italy...

...but somehow, we never noticed, until there was a monstrous Mang Mang Screlt-coloured explosion of noise, a gigantic brass raspberry crushed us against the walls and our brains shrunk to the size of electro-microscopic walnuts, under the pressure of hidiously impure DIN! Bone-marrow oozed out into our socks and our fingernails were impacted right up our arms and into our shoulderblades. The flattened Am-Resin slumped forward, unconscious, the nightingale twisting from his nerveless grasp. We saw, with horror, that it was falling towards the base of the microphone stand... which is made of METAL!... which would react with the hyper-amplified nightingale to produce a sound that would make the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bolt like startled baby shrews!

Our lives flashed past our eyes, like Concorde in a night-jacket, as we scrambled towards the door to escape. Luckily, our playing had so heightened our awareness and physical sharpness, that we were all able to pile out, in a scrabbling, self-preservation-obsessed, macrame-owl tangle of limbs and buckskin jacket fringes and we were outside, fumbling in nothingness, by the time the nightingale clattered against the mike-stand.
For a moment, the amplification system couldn't understand the unprecedented sound it was being expected to input/output. It produced a sound like a macaw scoring a goal in a cup final and then, with an unmuffled roar, as if all the toilets in the world had been flushed in one tiled public lavatory, it built up power, the valves became like intense arc-lights, the speaker-cones drew back a full six feet and there came forth NOISE...

...which dissolved the house into microscopic dust... which formed a blossoming KERRRRAAAANNNNGGGG!... that expanded at the speed of sound, engulfing us and flinging us like jet-powered skydivers into the distance... past the distance, then beyond that, through Nowhere as if it were a tissue-paper hoop... we passed through time and then, theoretically, stopped... but actually kept on, like surfers pushed along by a two-thousand-million horsepower, supercharged bulldozer of drop-forged cacophony...

...in a period of time, which was actally, infinitely short, but which seemed at least long enough to whittle a corset-bone into an Eiffel Tower letter-opener with a guitar pick, we span head-over-heels through an infinitely-longer-than-infinite distance...

...and we underwent evolutionary transformations, too rapidly to notice, even with our expanding brain capacities. We did notice that we became superbeings at one point, but then we became amorphous and non-molecular for a bit and noticed other Gods waving from paddle-boats.

I was so small, I fell into the minute holes that you can't see, even with an eye. I was so small, even non-existent things that were so small, they existed on the other side of existence, were big enough for me to put in bags. I was so small that I could see the other side of a blancmange.

There was a flash of black as we passed into the universe. We began to slow down at last, as we approached a green, blue and white planetary body. The Geel Cunn Ice-Trip shouted, "I know that planet! I wonder what's been happening while we've been away?"

We fell gently to earth, landing on the roof of the Citizens' Advice Bureau in Bromsgrove.

"Ever heard of The Hoons?" shouted the Niagara Slug Chum, to two old ladies with shopping bags, who were chatting nearby.

"...so I says to 'er, I says, you can't make a marshmallow sundae without bending marshmallows... What do you mean, The Hoons?" said one of the old ladies.

"You know, Effie, The Hoons!" said the other lady. "Gawd! I remember seeing them at the Scunthorpe Hippodrome when I was fifteen... I was into Hyper-Existent Strazz Jambone music then... and they were the best there was!... first time they ever got fifteen-million people in that old theatre for a show... each person had to send in five-pounds and a fingernail clipping... The Hoons played to fifteen-million fingernail clippings 'cause they couldn't get that many actual people in... I've no idea what the concert was like or what happened, but it must've been great!... I read in Fab 208 that they'd mysteriously ceased to exist about fifty years ago... the paper printed a special memorial issue, last week, printed on cosmic egg-tissue, ... They reckoned they'd retired and become successive Presidents of Albania... but it was never proved... Anyway, what's The Hoons to you, sonny?"

"First, are there any Art Squad around?" asked a very wary Geel Cunn Ice-Trip.

"Cor blimey! They haven't existed for years!" said the second old lady. "They finished the job - no more art to deal with! - and they went back to Venus in a rocket... and they killed themselves, trying to get the insignia off their uniforms with cleaning fluid, in a badly-ventilated room."

CHAPTER FOUR, I THINK - IN WHICH WE SAY "STUFF THE STORY"
Stuff the story - here, instead, are some more pieces of Miscellaneous Conversational Phenomena spoken, at various times, by members of The Hoons... For example, someone once said, "Drink Ovalblood - The Only Drink For Clots!". Aren't they funny, children?

SCRATCH MY BOX WITH A TELLYFLOWER SEED
Wire frogs loosen their ties with the underworld and fly, like ropes with moth-wings. Sister Cocklebrain and the Travelling Supermarkets have two magenta wages in a laughing sideboard, drifting on a sea of luminous sex-murderers. Crooklok clan members wore sugar-bags on their heads and rubber pantries on their loins and brothers.

And always drink Brobat
At bedtime!
At bedtime!
At bedtime!

Look Mummy! It's a three-legged robot sailor!... No! It's a pottery dragon salesman!... No! It's a sobering cordon of wet butterflies!... No! It's a battery-driven ocean in the guitar-pit and a spokesman for water-buffalo! (Now you hook Mummy to a tree-bleached rabbit, but don't whistle down stunted orange groves of boot-polish)... District Attorney By Numbers - The capable combination of gravel can't. KAMOOB! (anag.)

Across the sea of vastness, winged the cigarette-straight body of King Richard. No one could foresee the enormous circus tent that would envelope the politco-scientific backdrop of the eary Mezzoterrific Age... But it's a whole new scene, man, cutting up water-buffaloes with a circular saw! Don't knock it till you've tried it!

And always drink Brobat
At bedtime!
At bedtime!
At bedtime!

My dear, you've just made an old man very bilious... Stylistically, I don't mutilate and draw multicoloured spots more than I have to... Suicide's a rotten way to make a living... The boat's scull was made of feeble-grass and its Master was in Salem for a Rhymoceros - You know how it goes! They played cosmic tunes, just like they used to, in The Van Allen Belt Youth Orchestra. But now, it meant more... all was different now, more meaningful, deeper. It's a shame the plaster fell off, when we re-decorated them. Send me the pillow that Gertrude Stein was sick on!

Me wife's the apple of me eye,
She's a proper smasher...
It's a wonderful life
If you pick a good wife,
But a bugger
If you pick a wrong'un!
If she'll shampoo yer Jag
With a clean piece of rag,
Then yer marriage will sure
Be a long'un!
Because... (and this is the chorus, so all join in!)

Out through the hole in your organisation and three times round the special albatross, on a warthog named Desire... Joseph The Superstar Cat And The Amazing Technicolour Phantom Of The Argentinian Express... so ran the Golden Voyage of St Augustan, adapted for television by throwing it in a bucket of pianos. So the summer of Argyl was spent lion-bathing, behind withered spruces of Crawford's Shortcake. We drained the Kyle of Lochalsh of its green energy and ran to the wax cupie-doll in the castle's arrow-slit... Och! Shine your light my way, m'kilted haggis!

I'm in a gang
And we ride motorbikes!
We're tough as old boots,
Yeah, we does what we likes!
We fight baby squirrels
And really dig crime
And we always drink Brobat
At bedtime!

The polythene cord adaptor struggled uselessly in the grasp of two rubber jellies, but I can't explain. Rock steady, Mother! Groove to the Eggae beet, as you do the whooshing up, weaving tales of working purple yesterdays, by the rude light of a plasma torch. Axminster carpets recede slowly, pretending not to be ashamed.

"Hey Carol! Are those Rocky's leggins you're wearing?"

Candied Camera has a snag with his bodice. I've forgotten everything but how to peel the cables off a final lemur in a lean-to... Griptight and the Sta-Pists are crushing themselves in their holiday-opinion holders. You are speaking in tightropes of strong material wealth, Dickens. Re-write your essay on Dickensian Blotto Recycling and tear off that stupid oblong, Wart!

And always drink Brobat
At bedtime!
At bedtime!
At bedtime!

Quick! Get me a pen! I feel a sudden overwhelming burst of creativity... er... er... um...

WHITE MEN IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SUITS

The Belt-Driven Crucifix - call her Despair... To begin with, we must grasp in both hands the concept of "That It Do/As/In/Will/Exist/e.g./So The Esquedo", as in "Limpet Will Bite The Fuckin' Lodger, Houbigant"...

Pensive - for grading different sizes of pen.

You must wish for the Golden Star that lies under the Rug of Life. At first, the razor edge that parts Madness and Genius was a total blank, but, as we watch, we see pale figures on both sides... two mirror images of the same figures, one side with blood and bone hanging from their fingernails, the other side, smiling... Two mirror images, no mirror, no image, no identity, No No No!

...Do you know that myrrh is a type of polish? Well, you must have heard of a Myrrh Sheen? Wandering like amoebic blotting paper, through the black and white of Grey... just a lump of cosmic crap, being wiped and flushed from this sewer to that sewer, through the Drain of Infinity.

Q. What is the largest kind of moth?
A. A Behemoth.

I, Avant-Gardener, I am the riddle that cannot be answered, I am the question that cannot be asked. They are the life on the skin of the mountain, they are, they are! He ain't here, but when he arrives, we's gonna know 'bout it! He's gone through a transformation and we have yet to RELATE!

Grey summer evening skies unfold unknown dreams of rain-stained days into reality sandwiches... Sinse when did it take four bloody hours to get to the Buchenwald of the East Coast? I felt a trifle peeved and required speech to be spoken without the merest hint of guilt! I mentioned it, but not in that particularly samey housewife fashion... and then I said, "Okay, you Aquatic Somnambulex, where's the john?"

Egalitarian - Someone who only eats eagles.

She replied with the coolness of any Mediocratron that has been trained by an expert, "Okay baby, if I'm not good enough for you, try my Byzantine breastplate!" Neon Okapi escapes from someone's novel and I get sued for copyright... "But Mr Himmel, I ain't not got no carbohydrate!" spake the Trouser of Genesis, nuclear Roman candle to the stars. Glittering lame thrushes sing heavy metal riffs from the tree-tops. The little Earth, dark brown and bustling, has been relieved of cosmic-latrine duty, from this day on... relieved, but not forgotten! To me, or not to me, that is the ingestion of radiation-proof souls, Man Ray and the Sugarplum Fairies!

Meteoric - Hamlet in the graveyard.

And feeling thus, he felt he had found the almost animal-like naivety that had driven him on for so many years... On having this thought, he winced at the formidible task of trying to resurrect the totally Prehistoric carnage and put it on paper... The feeling, that now gripped his soul, seemed, instead of taming him, to drive him on, with a force his normally lethargic spirit would have found difficult to comprehend, not unlike this sentence. Send me the pillow that Gertrude Stein was sick on!

Ramification - The process of being turned into a sheep.

Would his clique of narrators and their possibly unfathomable depths, from which, all of their encouragement gushed, shun this new Stylex, or bask in the reflected glory that would, if he succeeded, surely shine?

I'M MAKING HERBAL CEMENT OUT OF LIQUID MILK

It was raining
On the day The Human Nail was born...
Raining strange rain,
Strange staining rain,
On the day The Human Nail was born...
Illusive wall-eyed gilgamonkeys
Played tag in glades
On the day The Human Nail was born...
It was raining,
Raining champions,
Raining monarchs.
Shepherds watched their flicks by night,
All seated in a foyer,
With far-fetched reels of oval light
And cartoons of Charles Boyer.
It's a Nail!
It's a Nail!
A bouncing Nail!
A dribbling Nail!
A baby Nail!
Never trust a Pope
Who wears a blue tour-mitre.
It was raining
On the day The Human Nail was de-umbilicled.
A host of golden accordions spat fiery noise
On the day The Human Nail was released
From baboid bondage...
Pass me that bandage, Carson,
I've seen The Human Nail!
Searching for rattles,
Exploiting his youngness,
Craving milk,
Receiving Square Crisps, Discos...
Crying for attention,
Attempting speech.
It was raining
On the day The Human Nail discovered bowel movements...
Welcome to Earth, Human Nail!
I'm sure you'll fit in just fine,
We're a friendly bunch, here on Earth.
You must meet the Siberians...
And this is a pangolin,
You may call it Biffo!
A child must have a pet...
And crayons.
When you grow up, Human Nail,
You will be considerably taller than you are now.
Fine lime
Sometime
Gas
Custard
Brick
Shirt
Rosamund
Travel
Food
Crane...
These are your first words, Human Nail,
Say them wisely
And you shall be rewarded
With coconut shillings.
Never trust a lamp shade,
It steals light!
Koochie Koochie Koo!
How do you do?
What?
You need the lavatory, Human Nail?
Syrup of flags
Transparent fog
Tame lions
Basingstoke
Pimples.

Ah! That ancient, pleasing sound... The sound of willow against Nigerians... What dreams do we have to dream, to walk 'neath the white, pearly cowboy truss? Does Idaho hold total-secret Crell vibes? When will the shopping help my world become their world?

The timeless stridings of an American president o'er the meat-fields of an over-everything continent, on its knees to hold Time in its trunks, on Niagara Beach. Send me the pillow that Gertrude Stein was sick on!
What intricate metal blade doth tell our sheets to pronounce sentence o'er all the blades that ever were? What tape doth hold my name in endless magnetic-spool hi-jinks?

Laughter the Goldrush. Only one more episode to go, people, then we can thank everyone properly! There'll be tags and hyperlinks and everything! And jellies if you're good. See you neck sweek.


 

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