Simple Headphone Mind
Oh man I am enjoying 1997. Probably because I doubt anybody in the history of the entire world had as much fun as I did in the 1990s, not even the Rolling Stones, not even the Emperor Caligula. The second half of the deacde was particularly enjoyable and, in the parlance of the time, I thoroughly larged it and 'ad it and 'ad it large. It wasn’t unknown for me to go to a club like Marvellous on a Sunday night and then go straight to work after a quick shower. Unthinkable now – the very idea is anathema, repulsive, even - but when do you just get too plain old? As it always does, going through all the songs of the year brought the memories flooding back and most of those memories are good. Like the day I got my tattoo at Into You in Farringdon and bumped into Jock on his way out, nursing a great big plaster over where he’d just had his Wigan Casino Heart Of Soul done.

Right up to that point I’d been in two minds and seeing Jock there looking a little green around the gills, I almost decided on going straight back home. Really, I was concerned it would become infected, go gangrenous and I’d end up having to have my arm taken off like an old sailor. But everybody said don’t worry it’s a good place, the best in London etc., - and all the famous people like Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence went there (mind you, look what happened to that pair).

Bittersweet Symphony was playing on the radio as I had an old-fashioned anchor gouged into my bicep, or in my case what has to pass for a bicep. I chose it from one of their big display wallets of traditional designs because I thought / think it had / has a certain gravitas and historical weight. I was never a Celtic band kind of man. Did it hurt? You bet it did - especially the green ink for some reason - but I did not faint, something I still find remarkable because I can’t even look at needles on TV. I recall the smell of antiseptic and the elaborately decorated calves of the Aussie bloke who did me. Surfer dude - bit of a type really in his baggy shorts and heavy metal T-shirt but really nice all the same. "Be gentle with me", I said, and I was not even joking: and he was, very gentle, talking me through the entire process - "I'm just loading up the red ink, he-yah. Just a litle prick. You OK?".

After, I arrived home to find the flat in a terrible mess with the speaker pushed over and a smashed ornament and upset vase and Roy Kitten (tabby) and Shorace Kitten (black) chasing one another up and down the stairs and round and round the furniture. They were a very boisterous pair of boy kittens and most trying but very beautiful as all kittens are. Possibly my favourite things in the world. We hadn’t yet named them at that point – they were known as Itchy and Scratchy for ages. Soon after this, Scratchy/ Shorace was driven up to Edinburgh by Fints and Diane to be Moira’s family’s cat. We figured three cats is OK (we already had bad McGregor and knocked up teenage slut mum Evie) but four would have been a little weird. It broke my heart when they went off but we got to keep Roy who by now had thankfully stopped doing the worrying and odd thing of butting his head against the skirting board over and over. Anyway, just hearing today that one song from the spring of 1997 reminded me of an entire sequence of events all those years ago. Ain’t that the power of music.

Actually Jock would have been a primary influence on the music I heard that year. We were new friends, awww. The stamp of his exquisite taste, unfailing curiosity and penchant for exotica is all over the list, with many of his favourite bands from the time - Arab Strap, the Beta Band, Pavement, Mogwai, and crazy electronic records like Pierre Henry’s Psyche Rock, Laurent Garnier’s Crispy Bacon, and Come To Daddy by Aphex Twin. He probably turned me on to all of them. He certainly did buy me what I still think’s the best single from that year – the Sterolab / Nurse With Wound collaboration Simple Headphone Mind - ten and a half minutes of groovy, spooky strangeness with the power to utterly transport. I love the bit where everything stops and a woman says ”scuttle” and it all gets going again. The 12” came in a vaccum-packed foil bag with a surreal, slighthly disturbing picture of a man doing what? smoking? eating? smoking a cherry? on the cover, which somehow absolutely represents the unsettling sounds within. It’s what all good sleeves do, don’t you think? Like Ziggy Stardust - you can just tell.



if you're feeling sinister

It wasn’t all straight-in-at-186, handmade-sleeve, only-available-from-Rough-Trade though: Daft Punk, Suede, Radiohead, Belle & Sebastian, Massive Attack, Chemical Brothers… and some of the biggest hits were really great - Professional Widow, Song 2, Novocaine For The Soul, Blueboy’s Remember Me and that beautiful freak / weird Dodo of a Number 1, White Town’s Your Woman. Heck, I even have a sneaking affection for Texas’s Say What You Want and Torn by Natalie Imbruglia. All in all, a very grown up year, like 1979. Druggy, too. Most of it sounds either smack-y or coke-y or dope-y or speed-y or E-y. Primal Scream's Kowalski, Star and Burning Wheel sound like the lot put together, washed down with a few tins of White Lightning.

Whoops, I’ve done it again. I came to talk about The Tenth Victim at the ICA with Tash, Joe and Fanny Rat, and Sparks with Fints and Gareth, and Oxo Tower drinks with everyone and DJ-ing at Jez and Pan’s night at the Tiki Bar in Kennington, and curry and Duckie with Jelly but I’ve ended up instead in a memory hole, rambling about kittens and Stereolab. Now I’m tired and must to bed. Like I said up there, I’m not the man I used to be.