Almost Sober

(The experiences recounted herein are constructs and composites, with names changed in order to protect the insolent, pre-empt litigation and prevent the pouring of pints of beer over the author's head in public houses.)

Before I knew it, I had become a turncoat. A Judas. A snitch. I went from being a musician to the musician's arch-nemesis - a r**k j*****ist - in a matter of months. I began writing for hotpress magazine in the late summer of 1996, reviewing records, attending gigs and seminars, interviewing rock stars.
But I was still pretty new to the game and had yet to be inducted into the cult of The Junket, so when I got offered a cushy number - three days in London with the minimum of work - I thought Christmas had come early. ECT Records' European departments were trying to break an American Grateful Dead-type hippy band called Terradactyl, who were massive in the states, but didn't mean tuppence anywhere else. Indeed, the label were so intent on broadening this combo's market, they were prepared to pay for a half dozen Irish hacks to fly over, catch one of the gigs, and hang out in London for three days. There wouldn't even be any formal interviews.
It was a licence to get ill.
Our little hack-pack met up at Dublin airport for a mid-morning flight out. My travelling companions were a bunch of seasoned burnouts by the name of Harry Hogg, Willy Jennings and Johnny Tort. Harry was the oldest, an emaciated freeloader of about 60 with an inflamed opinion of his own opinion. He was tall, sported a goatee, and wore such copious amounts of sulphurous cologne it was hard not to hear Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana' in your head every time you came within thirty feet of him.
Johnny Tort worked for one of the dailies. He was fluent in rock-crit slanguage, peppered his conversation with a lot of French expressions, and did his damnedest to look suave. Unfortunately, his bad haircut and even more badly cut suits gave him more the look of a slightly overweight New Romantic rather than the James Bond effect he was obviously shooting for.
Willy Jennings was the least outgoing of the lot, a human squint who, according to local legend, had once written a 20,000-word biography of Paula Abdul. And got paid for it. WJ laughed at the others' jokes, had an unnerving habit of cupping his hand over his mouth when he spoke, and an even more unnerving habit of vanishing for hours at a time, then reappearing suddenly at your elbow.
We were being accompanied by the label's babysitter, Bo-Peep, a perpetually flustered but not unattractive woman of about 30. By boarding time we were still missing the Daily Dargle correspondent, a bumbling ninny by the name of Butterfingers, but Bo couldn't cancel his seat until she knew whether the guy was late or just not bothered. When it turned out to be the latter, she grumbled a bit, then wrote it off on her whopper expense account.
This whole business, the all-expenses-paid, the sense of being spoiled rotten and having only to write it up afterwards, seemed uncannily familiar to me, but it wasn't until we were over the Irish Sea that I finally twigged the reason for the deja vu. I had done this before!
Let me explain. Back in 1986, the teachers in the Vocational School in Enniscorthy entered me in a young writers' competition run by the EC, or the EEC as it was still known, back in the days before everybody started dropping 'E's. The task was to write an essay on how Europe could best help the Third World (somewhere I can still hear Chuck D roaring, *There ain't no Third World! There's only one world!*). I was locked into a small room with pen and paper, furnished with reams of research material, and instructed not to emerge until I had completed the task.
I did as I was told, but on the second day, in the throes of boredom, could take no more, and decided to spice up this dry journalese by canvassing two or three of my furry freak brothers for their more outlandish theories, and included this space-cadet waffle amongst the more orthodox material. Incredibly, I won the competition.
Anyway, one of the ore out-there ideas in the essay advocated irrigating water on a massive scale from the Atlantic in order to rejuvenate the barren desert plains of North Africa. Ray McSharry raised an amused eyebrow at that one, but many years later, cramming for an interview with former South African president FW De Klerk, I discovered this:
In 1987, PW Botha's press officer Jack Viviers was desperate to rehabilitate South Africa's dreadful reputation amongst the international community. He formulated a plan to send tugboats to the Antarctic, capture icebergs and tow them to the west coast of Africa. These huge blocks of fresh water would be used to revitalise the arid wastes of the western Karoo, earning the SA administration the envy and respect of the world. Reading about this, I concluded that either Viviers stole my report, or my hairy brethren were a year ahead of their time.
Anyway, that summer of '86 myself and the three other winners, all girls, were wined, dined, and whizzed from Brussels to Luxembourg to Strasbourg to Paris and back. It was good grounding in how to visit foreign countries, ogle foreign women, eat, drink and go apeshit on someone else's tab. Indeed, the most significant foreign word I learned on that mission was *minibar*. My room service intake so alarmed our scout-leader, a pasty faced schoolteacher by the name of Tom O' Connell, that he took to delivering six-packs of beer to my room in an attempt to keep me from raiding the grossly over-priced fridge. I invariably ended up getting tipsy on the beers and hitting the vodka anyway. Indeed, 'twas then I learned the value of diplomatic immunity - O' Connell intervened as we were coming back through customs in Dublin, and got me off the hook as I strolled through the checkpoints with a ghetto blaster bought on the black economy in Strasbourg.
Back in hack-land, my colleagues wasted no time in hitting the bar as soon as we touched down in Gatwick, and I, tender lamb that I was, tagged along. The boys were making all kinds of, *Stick with us and we'll show you how it's done, son,* remarks, but I decided to play along. They were a bunch of middle-aged bachelor boys who brought their washing back to their mothers at weekends. I was still in my 20s and a father of two. Who was the greenhorn?
Three pints and one cab-ride later, we arrived at our hotel, an obscenely expensive hostelry in Kensington. Bo-Peep had taken another car across town to liase with the local branch of the record company, leaving us to check in on our own. We looked like a bunch of bums, all dirty runners, free ECT carrier bags and oversized tour t-shirts, and predictably, there was trouble. The rooms were booked and paid for in advance, but the beaurocrats on duty at the desk refused us our room-keys until we first produced a credit card number or fifty quid cash deposit as collateral for goodies we might consume, or televisions we might throw out the window. Our party were aghast. *No way,* protested Johnny. *I've only got #40 sterling on me, and I need that for tonight!* He was lying of course, but it was a matter of principle. *It's because we're Irish, isn't it?* Harry roared, not doing our cause any good whatsoever. Willy shuffled uncomfortably. I twiddled my thumbs. The staff remained poker-faced. No cash, no access. It was a Mexican standoff, and we were on the verge of being ejected from the lobby when Johnny reluctantly produced his Visa card and agreed to vouch for the lot of us. *I'm telling you lads, if you mess me around on this . . .* he warned, his words trailing behind him as he strode purposefully toward the lifts.
20 minutes later, having stowed my gear, I was back downstairs drinking coffee when the barman approached me, and in a thick French accent, whispered conspiratorially, *I think one of you gentlemen has a leaky bag, no?* For one horrible moment, I thought I was being propositioned. Then the barkeep indicated an incriminating trail of cheap red wine leading all the way from the reception area to the lifts. The hapless staffer winked, then set about eradicating the evidence with a towel that looked like it cost more than my snazziest suit.
An hour later, we rendezvoused with Bo Peep at the West End theatre where Terradactyl were playing. Inside, the band were already getting stuck into the first lap of what would turn out to be a four-hour ordeal of noodly Bay Area jazz, nerdy Frank Zappa routines and blues jams long enough to accommodate the reading of a reasonably lengthy trash-novel and the viewing of the film adaptation of same. The most interesting aspect of this creepshow was the audience (commonly referred to as Terraheads), a bunch of stringy haired, malnourished flower children who looked like they'd been beamed down direct from Planet Monterey Pop. The blokes were doing that peculiar hands-on-hip-shake frug-dance that resembles nothing so much as a constipee squatting over the toilet bowl trying to force a result, while the girls waved willowy arms in the air. At the back of the hall, ex-pat American college students compared set lists from the previous night's show and discussed the significance of the drummer's Sun Ra t-shirt. Liam Mackey later titled my article 'Bring Me The Rest Of Jerry Garcia'.
I did my best to take some notes, but every half hour I'd have to nip out to the bar for a breather. During one of these breaks, I happened upon Harry. He regarded me blearily for a moment, made to speak, changed his mind, got a refund, then changed it back and bellowed into my ear, *D'ya want some speed?*
I thought about it for maybe four seconds, then shook my head. I figured amphetamines would only accelerate my head, not the show, and the faster my mind went the more in the moment I'd be. And I didn't want to be in the moment. I wanted to ride out this tie-dye nightmare as swiftly as possible.
But alas, there was an aftershow shake 'n' fake, in the function room of yet another posh hotel. Record company folk queued up to lie to the band about how much they'd enjoyed the gig, and the band accepted the fibs with good grace. Bo-Peep bought us all several rounds of drink, and complained to me about Harry, who was getting steadily louder and more obnoxious, demanding large whiskeys all round.
*Fuck him,* I slurred, full of piss and vinegar. *He's a leech. We're all leeches. You're a leech. ECT Records are leeches. Even the fuckin' band are parasites.*
*I suppose you're right,* she sighed. *What are you having?*
*Tequila and orange juice.*
*I'll get it.*

The next day didn't dawn until about four in the afternoon. I couldn't quite face breakfast, so I showered, dressed and headed for the bar. More drink. The plan was to go for a meal and then check out a gig by another ECT act, The Roswell Conspiracy, a post-grunge band whose last album I liked a lot (I was in the minority). We all adjourned to a local Italian restaurant, but no sooner than we'd ordered wine and starters than Johnny began telling IRA jokes at the top of his voice. Bo-Peep stared miserably at her garlic bread and fidgeted with her napkin, clearly wishing she were somewhere, anywhere else. The other two guffawed loudly at Johnny's jokes, winding him up. Other diners began making their excuses and leaving. The food arrived, but I wasn't hungry. I had hit a slump. What the fuck was I doing here? I could've been at home having a meaningful conversation with my kids about Spongebob Squarepants, not here listening to Johnny Tort talking about the grain of a good Guinness shite. Then, just as I was about to get stuck into my lasagne, Harry began talking about his cock-cheese. I excused myself and went to the little boy's room.
Sitting on the can, smoking a cigarette and savouring the solitude, I pondered the injustice of it all. Somewhere in the middle of Buttfuck, Idaho, some ECT act were stranded, penniless, cold and starving, having run out of tour support, while we sat in this London bistro gabbing and gobbling and guzzling up enough money to subsidise a triple album. It was a queer turn of events. As a musician, the source of the music industry's revenue, I couldn't get arrested. But as a rock journalist, a creature regarded as occupying a place on the evolutionary ladder somewhere between a tapeworm and a blowfly, I was coddled rotten.
When I returned to the table, my colleagues had gotten totally out of order, and had Bo-Peep not ushered the lot of us into cabs called by the only-too-happy-to-oblige headwaiter, I think we'd have spent the night in chokey.
At the gig, The Roswell Conspiracy were pretty good, but hard to hear. Not even a wall of Marshall amps can match Harry Hogg at full throttle. Once again, I retired to the hotel bar and spent the small hours pounding down the beers.

Next morning, I woke late and hared it downstairs to eat before check-out time. Unfortunately, I had wolfed down a full English breakfast before realising I was in no state to digest it. Within minutes, the greasy bacon, eggs and sausages coagulated into a hot ball of cholesterol in my gut. I rushed back up to my room and threw up three times in as many minutes. Bo-Peep called to inform me that the cab would be ready in 10. I frenziedly packed, but on the way down to the lobby had to stop the elevator and exit on the second floor to puke again. Except I couldn't find the men's room amongst the anterooms and broom cupboards and dead ends - I felt like Jack Torrence on the rampage in The Overlook.
Eventually I located the toilets, spewed, then washed up in record time. I was so ill I couldn't even bear the smell of cigarette smoke and spent the whole cab ride to Gatwick with my head out the window, a whiter shade of green. When we eventually reached the airport, I made my excuses, checked in alone, and then hurried into the restrooms to vomit yet again. Rinsing my face, I surveyed my reflection in the mirror, noted the crapulent complexion, the red eyes, the fur-coated tongue, and said aloud: *Pig*.
The suit-and-tie at the hand-drier shifted uncomfortably, but I was beyond caring. I had become everything I loathed.
I had become One Of Them.