Irish Club

Peter was on the door at the Irish, chatting to Carol and Alan. For free entrance and as many drinks as he could handle, the big biker made sure that no-one would sneak in without paying.

The Irish Club was situated above the Hillbrow Squash Courts, on the corner of Pretoria and Edith Cavell streets. There was no signboard. No fluorescent lights. No indication to the casual passerby that there was anything at all above the courts. Except maybe for the rabble spilling out onto the street in between sets, a heaving, sweating mass of hair and tattoos, denim and leather.

The place had started off as a social hangout for Hillbrow’s Irish community. Until one of the members in Pentagon had mentioned to his boss at American Express that he played in a band. The boss happened to be on the Irish Club managing committee, and it just so happened that they were looking for a band to liven the place up. One quick audition in an empty club later, everything had changed. Friday nights, it was still a bar. You could take along your favourite bootleg tapes, and listen to them while having a drink or two with your mates. But on Saturdays…

On Saturdays there was a stage built out of beer crates. Two or three of the heaviest bands in Joburg would be sure to turn up. There had been festivals, starting early in the day, where a dozen or more bands would gig one after the other, through to the small hours of Sunday morning. Desecrated Altar had played a few times. Midget Submarine. 2 Dogs Funking. The Blast. And Stretch had blown everyone away during one of these festivals with his table hopping guitar shredding extravaganza.

Ragnarok was on stage now, all attitude and swagger, ripping through a GBH cover. Everybody loved Ragnarok. Loud as fuck, no posing, hair flying as they banged their way through the set. And they’d brought their fans with them, bouncing around in the moshpit, waving their beers in the air and playing air-guitar. The rest of the audience stood or sat around, nodding their heads to the beat. I had to smile when I saw that Dean was back on vocals, performing double duty as he pounded away on the drum kit. Dean could have performed as a one man band if he had enough arms and legs, being more at home on guitar. But the current guitarist, on loan from Helter Skelter, played note-perfect AC/DC and Maiden covers, so Dean had opted for the back of the stage in this particular grouping.

Ragnarok’s regular singer was still recovering after he’d seen a patched biker stash a gun inside the cistern of a toilet in a Rockey Street bar. He’d snuck in to take possession of the weapon after the stranger had left, only to bump into the same stranger and a few of his patched brothers on the way out. Even if the gun had been loaded, it wouldn’t have helped him during the short but intense lesson in personal property that followed.

“Howsit going?” Damien handed Pete a couple of tickets and slid me a beer, grabbing another one for himself. Molly sold tickets from her cage at the door, and these were exchanged for drinks. A simple way to get around licensing laws. Of course, an entire roll of tickets had been liberated during the first metal night, and anyone who was anyone now had a bundle of them stashed in an inside pocket.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

With thanks to Gary Walker, for both the history lesson and the Club.

Those who were there might notice that I’ve taken a few creative liberties with timelines and the years in which various overlapping bands existed. Had to squeeze them all in somehow.

Till next time. Cheers.

Tarot

“Carry on.”

He turned over the third card, and the strangeness barometer went up a few more notches. The card without a number. The Green Man of the Celts. The Fool stared up at us, wearing the horns of Bacchus. The moment of divine consciousness.

Beers were raised. Throats were cooled. We both studied the scene in front of us.

It was possible that the cards were completely meaningless. A random series of draws, just pieces of card laid out in a pattern. Toss a coin often enough and heads will match tails eventually. Or – the popular alternative – maybe they were actually trying to tell us something, and we just weren’t getting the message. Or – the only other option – this was all some kind of game.

“Assuming that you’re not fucking with me,” I said, slowly, “what the hell does this mean?”

Rafael had turned pale in the moonlight. No longer smirking, no more laughing, he was playing his part to the hilt.

“Four major arcana, West? When we’re looking for places and times? You’re out of your depth.”

My turn to laugh. “Right. Now you see why I’ve never liked divination. Bunch of old women scaring the crap out of each other.”

“Are you going to take this seriously?”

I looked at him from a couple of feet away, trying to decipher the look in his eyes. From the tiny bits of his eyes I could see behind the fringe of black hair that covered the top half of his face. They’d always had a manic look about them. A darkness. But a playful darkness. A lunatic playfulness. But a reasonably functional lunacy. Except for the time we’d tried playing chess after smoking buttons. Not to be recommended.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

Psychobilly

They kicked straight into “The Boogie Mansion”, a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. I left my companions discussing the new world order and made my way to the front of the stage, taking a position next to the drummer. No fancy drum kits for these guys. Just a simple two drum set, which was more than enough for Boy McLoud. James Flames complemented this with his old fashioned double bass on the other side of the stage. Then there was the lunatic in the mask.

Much has been said about the band’s lead singer and guitarist. He claimed that there was a little bit of Martin Rocka in everyone. Or that at least there should be. And anyone who had seen them live would inevitably end up with some of their twisted swamp music stuck in their head for days.

“There are only three kings,” he proclaimed with his hand held high, now that their first song had ended. “Drinking.” He raised a finger. “Fucking.” Another finger. “And Elvis.”

With which they launched into their version of “So Square.”

The Beast appeared at my side. “I like this bunch,” he rumbled, loud enough to be heard above the band. “My kind of music.”

He looked closely at some of the people around us. “You know, I always wanted tattoos myself. But obviously I couldn’t find anyone who could see my real skin to get them done.”

An unusual problem, I thought. I’d always taken tattoos, T-shirts and back-patches for granted. Being a normal, unpossessed kind of guy. I couldn’t imagine going through life with no control over how I dressed or how I looked.

“Now admit that you’d rather be here than back in that flat I rescued you from.”

I turned to query this, and I would have raised an eyebrow if I’d been genetically predisposed to doing so, but he’d already moved on, sliding through the crowd to get a more central view.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from http://www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

Sacrifice

I showed him a finger. Then reconsidered and showed him two.

“Has this got anything to do with that bullshit earlier, about Satanic sacrifices?” I asked. “Are you involved?”

“Not this time, believe it or not.” He looked sincere. “None of my crowd even know the details. But whatever it is, it’s big. Sounds like the real thing. Darkness. Blood. Death. The same kind of rituals we’ve been fucking around with for years, but these people know what they’re doing. They’re really going to do it. And the rest of us are crapping ourselves, wondering where we can hide until it’s all over.”

“Really? If you don’t like it, why don’t you just step in and stop it?”

He spread his arms. “Stop who? We don’t even know who all the players are. The Horsemen are probably involved, but they don’t have the juice for this kind of ritual. The MTC might have had the juice once upon a time, but Vernon doesn’t have the balls, or the connections you guys used to have. Maybe the witches, but Morag would’ve heard something.” He gave me a sideways glance, squinting his eyes. “Tell you the truth, you’re the only person actually confirmed as being involved, especially after that business earlier tonight at the Station bar.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” It was becoming more and more difficult to follow his train of thought, which had entered a long dark tunnel and was in serious danger of derailing itself.

“You didn’t tell me that old fart was sacrificed in an alley behind the bar. I didn’t think you had it in you anymore, West. I’m impressed.”

I just looked at him. There were no words.

“Heart ripped out. Still missing. Lying in a pool of his own blood and intestines. You need to learn not to skimp on these little details when you tell a story.”

I shook my head. He seemed to be living in a graphic novel, probably something Victorian by The Original Writer.

“Look, I might have done the same thing in your position. Did you get the little bouncer to help you? Maybe hold him down for you?”

“How do these things get inside your pointy little head? Do the Voices put them there?”

He laughed. Not with merriment. This was the laugh of someone balanced on the edge of the precipice, determined not to scream in case the dark shapes below looked up and noticed him.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

Urban Assault

The set was intense. I threw myself into it, starting a thrash session that saw some of the younger crowd stagger back away from the front line, dizzy and looking for air. The older regulars took their place, relishing a chance to cut loose and push the limits. After the first few songs, jackets and shirts were discarded, leaving a wall of hair and tattoos with the odd set of colours here and there. The band rose to the challenge, Dirk and Sven pushing the rhythm section so that the guitars had to race to keep up. And keep up they did. Riff after riff. Hook after hook. Verse. Chorus. Solo. Repeat. It became a sweating, panting, screaming animal with 50 heads, all thrashing in time to the thunder that poured from the stage.

And the beast would not die. When it was over, we yelled for more. They delivered. Original songs exhausted, they ripped through some more covers. Generals. Big Women. TNT. Lean On Me. Then they threw out their own challenge. Seek And Destroy. Played even faster than the original. Mike broke a string during the intro but played on, ignoring the pain from his tortured fingers. This obviously wasn’t Horseman Mike. Or the owner of Mike’s Tavern. This was the Mike who had held the scene together at one point, driving round in his battered car looking for venues, keeping a list of phone numbers so he could let everyone know about upcoming gigs. Not the only person who contributed. There were others. I could picture Mike growing old, losing his hair, settling down with a wife and kids, probably planting vegetables in his back yard, and still trying to keep the old crowd together.

Cliff launched himself into the pit after the second chorus, joining the front row in a frenzy of insane air guitar playing as we formed a solid wall to keep the mosh pit behind us from erupting onto the stage. Then he was back up there with the band for the last verse, struggling to keep his damp hair out of his face as he closed with the final chorus.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from http://www.amazon.com/author/burning

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Till next time. Cheers.