#sadogasm

[funkcutter]

[deathsexbloodbath]

Twenty-Fortean Tour Diary: Part One

DAY ONE: VENUS

“This is real good wheatgrass,” said Caitred Alabaster. “Do you want some?”

We were on a train to Venus, on a stopover en route to Alderaan. We had had to badger the venue several times to give us some directions to Alderaan, as we couldn’t find it on Apple Maps; eventually we were told to go to platform 23 at Coventry train station and catch the last train to Venus. We had no idea what that meant but, suspecting magick, we turned up at midnight on May 2nd. Between platforms 2 and 3, there was platform 23, with a train waiting to collect us. I guess that all you need to make the impossible possible is to believe in it.

The journey was crap. The cosmic wonders of the universe, the realisation of the insignificance of man in the face of the infinite – all that’s great, but perhaps doesn’t sustain a four-hour journey. The length of the journey was exacerbated by the driver constantly slowing down in order to reposition a GoPro camera he’d installed in order to capture an asteroid shower. The effect of all of this was directing the train directly towards said asteroid shower, creating trepidation. You know what these space trains are like. Crap.

I surveyed my band. I had been obliged to liberate all of them from dire straits to do this tour. Masokiss, my musical punkmate (‘soulmate’ seems wrong), had her laptop out. She was pecking deftly, no doubt programming a laser show, or composing electronic music. The algorithms she was programming seemed alien to me. “Fucking 3159!” she’d occasionally say, and I’d nod in agreement, assuming she referred to some complex time signature or something.

Masokiss had been sentenced to 100 hours of community service in March. She’d been ordered to visit schools and lecture on physics. The community service had been completed unusually quickly; anyone would think that two people had carried out the work. I hoped that the British government would forget about it by the time we returned to the UK.

Sororicide, our drummer and violence magnet, had also drifted into trouble. She had been asked by a Japanese crime lord to smuggle some banned East Asian DVDs into the UK in a suitcase. She was then instructed to go to Bromsgrove train station and exchange the suitcase with an identical one, yielded by a man who answered to the phrase “I think the winds are blowing from the East.” This suitcase would contain her pay for the transaction. She met a man and said the phrase. Suitcases were exchanged. However, when she returned home and opened the suitcase, she found a load of weapons of the interstellar variety and no money. Somehow, she had exchanged suitcases with the wrong man. Panicking, she disposed of the suitcase by throwing it over an embankment in Kidderminster, but she had failed to deliver the money. This attracted the interest of the Yakuza and the international arms dealers. Deep shit indeed. I smuggled her onboard the Venus train hidden in a hollowed-out speaker. I then forgot about her for an hour until I idly checked my Facebook and found one hundred messages of escalating obscenity. She glowered at me over a copy of a Valerie Solanos biography from which she was pointedly reading excerpts out loud. I turned to Caitred.

Caitred’s old record label had been pestering her lately. Their argument was that Caitred still owed them another Alabastard album, citing dreary things like “contractual obligations”. We’d been deflecting the issue with the excuse that Cait wasn’t well enough to perform. The label called our bluff by sending her to a health spa, all expenses paid. Posing as label executives, Masokiss and I busted her out two weeks later. I couldn’t tell if we’d made the right choice. Caitred seemed happier in the health spa, despite my reservations (about, not at, the spa). She’d conquered, or at least tamed, her anger with a gruelling regime of meditation and tennis. She looked in great shape, physically and mentally. She didn’t tan – her Celtic roots condemn her to a life of ghostly pigment – but she exuded a radiance.  So of course we were abducting her to do a Deathsex Bloodbath tour.

Caitred and I needed each other though, I had come to realise. What else could explain the endless cycle of attraction and repulsion? I had booted her out of Deathsex Bloodbath because of a Winehouse-ish refusal to enter rehab; now I was doing the opposite. Being in a band was like being in a relationship. To DSB, Caitred wasn’t so much an old flame as an inextinguishable inferno.

“Do you think they have smoothies on Venus?” Caitred asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I hope so. I’ve got this great recipe. Broccoli, asparagus, sprouts and parsley.”

“...oh.”

“Seriously, you should try it.”

I made some non-committal noise while hoping there weren’t any blenders on Venus.

Clouds of sulphuric acid tickled the train playfully as we pulled into Aphrodite Terra at a saunter. I couldn’t tell whether the roar I heard was a crowd erupting into applause or a volcano erupting.

Our contact in Venus was an indigo-haired, cerulean-skinned babe with the exotic name Sienna Detroit. She explained something or other about how only our first three albums had been released in Venus and how the fans liked Nicolas Harlot, who drummed on those albums. I mumbled some lies about his departure while my eyes drifted towards her pneumatic chest as if it was her chest talking. Then I realised it was: her mouth was in fact on her left breast. This just about excused the objectification, although it didn’t excuse the evil thoughts in my head.

When you go on tour, like when you go to sea, you spend time with your loved ones first, promise your heart will stay true and wave a teary farewell. But. Well. When you’re on a tour bus with only each other and your tour manager for company, the fabric of reality starts to slide somewhat. As long as you do the shows, the line of acceptable behaviour is barely tangible, if indeed it exists at all. Peccadilloes become more obscure, habits more extreme. Tensions fray. Nobody gets any sleep, everyone parties constantly, there’s never time to eat properly. Eventually you have to fuck or fight, with whoever’s willing. Fucking is easier because as long as you have consent and they’re of legal age, it’s less trouble. Either way, make sure it’s not one of your own band and remember, tours are tours are tours. What happens on Venus stays on Venus. Mainly due to the gravitational pressure, but you get me.

Of course, as I write that, Sororicide is writing a 90,000 word love letter to her fuck-again, fuck-off-again boyfriend, rock narcissus and never-was Mysin Solong, so maybe it’s just me.   

We loaded our equipment into the back of a buggy which Sororicide had agreed to drive. We used to have our own driver. We used to have a lot of things. Sienna led the way in a buggy of her own.

In order to get to the venue, we had to drive through a forest. The forest had been planted by first-generation colonists of reaching Venus, so you’d imagine they’d have at least faintly resembled Earth trees. The Venusian weather and atmosphere had had a weird effect on the trees though. Immense trunks reached up like skyscrapers, scorched by volcanic activity and granted a sort of opalescence by sulphuric corrosion. The overall effect was a darkness like suicide: impenetrable and final, yet oddly alluring.

“This wood is messed up, man,” said Sororicide. “There could be enemies hiding everywhere.”

“Sororicide, try not to panic,” Caitred said beatifically. “All that draw you’re blazing is making you paranoid. Try to contemplate your oneness with the universe.”

“Fuck that, mate, I can’t start meditating,” Sororicide retorted. “One, I’m driving. Two, every time I get into the tantric position and close my eyes, I imagine that there’ll be a gun against my head when I open them.”

Eventually we exited the forest and reached the venue. The room was in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle, decorated in spectrum-defying colours. The stage was backdropped with odious zebra print wallpaper. Despite the intergalactic otherness, some standards remained: the room was too small, the bogs were shit and the soundman was stoned. There was nowhere to put the laser Masokiss had brought, so we had to project it onto the ceiling.

During a ten-minute version of ‘Mutant Dancing’, our smoke machine set the fire alarms off. Refusing to evacuate, Sororicide played the Amen break over the top of the alarm, transforming it into a euphoric drop. This is why she is the best drummer around. Some of the audience thought that aliens were invading when they looked at the ceiling during ‘Lovecraftian Monster’ to be confronted by HR Giger beasts in laser form, created by Masokiss while tripping on acid. The gig was a success.

The after-party was at a club called Eros Childs, I guess named after Cupid. The Del Boy aesthetics were here, too: cheetah-print carpets sleazing across the floor. Piscine masks and ceramic bananas adorned three walls. The fourth, meanwhile, appeared to be set up for a screening of some sort.

“We thought you might want to chill out, watch a movie,” said Sienna, dropping onto a couch and beckoning me to join her. “It’s an Earth film, ‘Red Herrings’.”

The name rang a dim bell. “The contraband Japanese film?”

“How did you get that movie?” Sororicide asked, pale.

“Oh, we got a weird delivery recently, it was in that,” Sienna said vaguely.

“It’s meant to cause psychedelic journeys into the inner psyche or some shit,” Sororicide said. “I mean, I dunno, I never watched it.”

“Sororicide, don’t get sucked in by that hysterical media shit,” Caitred said. “You’re better than that. I mean, look at ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Kubrick banned that for years. When it was finally released, no-one gave a fuck.”

“Besides, a journey into the inner psyche isn’t a bad thing, is it?” Masokiss asked rhetorically, faffing with her phone.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sororicide said. “I dunno, whatever. Just put it on.”

Sienna, though, wasn’t listening; she was walking around on her phone. Caitred, meanwhile, had been distracted by a teenage nymph wearing angel wings.

“Is this a ‘Flash Gordon’ reference or a ‘Party Monster’ reference?” she asked.

“I think it’s just high camp,” he said. “I have something for you.”

He offered a test tube containing an indeterminate liquid.

“Oh, uh, thanks, but I’m pretty much clean. Despite what you might have heard.”

“Well, it’s all natural ingredients,” he said. “It’s named after you: it’s called Lahevhev.”

Caitred and Sororicide had been in a pre-DSB band called Lahevhev. Caitred’s appropriation of Lahevhev songs for DSB and later for Alabastard had been a bone of contention between them.

“How did you know I was in Lahevhev?”

“I read it in ‘String Theory’.”

“You read my autobiography?!”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, knowing where this was heading. “Four, please.”

Meanwhile, Sienna had finished on the phone. She sat down carelessly and ended up sprawling in my lap. This, I thought, was over-familiar, but I wasn’t complaining.

“Vermillion, put the film on,” she instructed a flunky. “Sorry about that, guys. I’m tired of that Beatrice Portinari calling me.”

Masokiss looked up. “Beatrice Portinari?”

“She’s holding her own party in another room here,” Sienna said. She shifted her position, but didn’t get off me. “A very exclusive one apparently. She was going on about how she’d give any of you the secret to 3159 if they visited her.”

“What the hell is 3159?” I said. “I don’t think-“

“The solution?” said Masokiss. “Where is she?”

“Oh, you just go up and left.”

“Is that the solution, or is that her location?”

“Um...”

“Can we get some more Lahevhevs?” Caitred asked.

The film started. It seemed to be a Japanese adaptation of ‘Trout Mask Replica’. By the point of ‘Hair Pie: Bake 2’, I no longer had any grasp of what was going on. Partially this was because of the complicated structure of the film, partially because of the psychotropic effects of the Lahevhev and partially because Sienna had slipped her hand down my trousers. I had only realised at that point that she had six fingers on each hand.

Masokiss had vanished in the direction of Beatrice Portinari. Caitred was loudly chatting up the angel-winged Lolito between swigs from a bottle of Jim Beam. Sororicide, meanwhile, was looking over her shoulder every two minutes before finally deciding,

“We’re leaving.”

“What the hell? Can’t we wait until the film ends?”

“Nope.”

We didn’t know what to do, but felt as though we had little choice but to follow Sororicide.

“Can Sienna come?”

“No.”

“What about-“

“Look, fucking just come will you?”

We picked up Masokiss, who was wandering around somewhere in a corner of the building. The three of us sat in the back, glowering at Sororicide.

“Are you going to explain what the fuck just happened?” I demanded.

“I wasn’t going to sit in that bullshit club while you indulged your whims. I mean, that girl Sienna was just a groupie, man, who ran a gig in a sex club. Caitred, that guy, really?”

“He had anxious eyes,” Caitred explained, slurring, “you know I like that.”

“Masokiss, what were you doing upstairs?”

“Oh, I got lost. I kept being told, ‘go up and left’, but eventually you run out of ups and lefts to go, right?”

“Well, we got up and left, thanks to Sororicide here. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

We were somewhere in the middle of the wyrd wood. Sororicide stopped the buggy.

“Masokiss, where am I going?”

“I don’t know. I told you before, Apple Maps doesn’t support Venus.”

“Can we get Google Maps?”

“No, I lost my phone,” said Caitred.

“Those arms dealers will be here any minute,” mumbled Sororicide.

“Is that what this is about? We’re on Venus and you’re worried about Worcestershire gangsters?”

“How else did ‘Red Herring’ get to Venus?” Sororicide screamed.

“All sorts of ways!” Caitred shouted.

“This is bullshit. Turn back,” I demanded.

“I don’t know the way,” Sororicide wailed.

“Sienna would have known the way, but you wouldn’t let us bring her,” I said, unable to stop myself.

“Alright guys, calm down,” Masokiss said. “It’s clear we need a magical invocation to get us out of here.”

“Is it?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

We mumbled acquiescence.

“I’m going to point the laser over there to act as a beacon to the gods, and make a prayer that the cosmos can send us a guiding light.”

Nothing happened for a moment. We silently joined Masokiss in prayer, throwing petition to any spirits who’d listen. Then,

“Shit, look over there!”

“It’s them!” Sororicide yelled.

“Oh, no, that’s just a Brocken sprite,” Masokiss said. “It’s an optical illusion. The light refracts in a weird way which makes it look as though there’s a figure in the middle.”

“If it’s a Brocken sprite,” I said, “why’s it moving?”

The shadowy figure was coming towards us. Sororicide fumbled with the buggy keys. We dithered over whether Masokiss had summoned a benevolent or malevolent spirit. We concluded it was malevolent at about the same time as it knocked on the window.

We screamed. The figure, though, didn’t flinch. It was human, with black curly hair. It was wearing shades, despite the darkness.

“It’s alright,” I said. “It’s only Lou Reed.”

Sororicide rolled down the window.

“Hey man. You got a light?” Lou asked. Sororicide mutely handed over a lighter. “A bit lost, I see,” he added.

“Yeah.”

“Have you come from Heaven to save us?” Caitred asked.

“That’s what it looks like,” Lou said.

“Can you get us out?”

“I can,” Lou said, “but the route is complicated. Leave the buggy here.”

“Oh, but-“

“That Sienna will collect it for you in the morning. Now follow me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Beyond the stars.”

(The tour diary continues tomorrow)