Meet the Cairns

My boombox is fucked. This time I think it’s finally fucked. The same blaster I bought in 1996.

It always comes on tour with me and gets shovelled off the bus when I do. It’s seen hundreds of dodgy backstage areas, dressing rooms, festival sites, hotel rooms, tour buses and recording studios. It’s been heaved on and off ferries, planes, vans and taxis, manhandled by butt-clevage flashing roadies, dropped down stairs and, by the misfortune of mere proximity, consumed wayward cans of lager, roaches, amyl and crumbs of amphetemine. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had gotten blown off backstage at some point when we were on tour in Germany.

But here it is on its last legs, dying, not in a sweaty post gig cloakroom full of rock scum but on the floor of my own living room. The assassin, the ‘boom-box killer’ is not an enraged biker or a wayward member of Raging Speedhorn, nor, for that matter, myself, after losing an argument with two bottles of red. It’s much worse. It’s my two and a half year old son, Jonah. My own fault I suppose.

You see, the wife’s away for the night staying at relatives leaving our beautiful son in the hands of El Bagpuss, “the soft one”.

He really should have been in bed hours ago, as is agreed in the parental rule book Kiddie Kurfews – Tough But Fair but I was distracted from time by an Australian garage rock compilation I’d bought earlier; besides he did seem contented just to look bemused as his ageing rocker of a father headbanging to Radio Birdman.

However, hopped up on E numbers, fizzy drinks and the disturbing graphic violence of the Cartoon Network he proceeded to fashion a home-made assault course out of the sofa, chairs and table. It all seemed harmless enough: Hop, Leap, Titter, Flump, Giggle, Hop, Leap, Titter, Flump ,Giggle... watching him tire himself out.

I hadn’t figured on his grand finale though. A gravity defying half turn involving an astonishing leap off the arm of the sofa with a mid twist, gaining momentum as this feat of gymnastic majesty took him spiralling down to earth with a thrilling bang. Right on top of the boombox.

There was a short silence as the shock of landing on a piece of audio equipment and not the fluffy carpet began to register but then he dusted himself off and returned to the circuit again. Stunned, I looked at the wonky lid on top of the machine and the CD that had skidded painfully out of it and on to the floor. I tried to get it going to no avail. This day, the music had truly died.

I made a feeble attempt at being an assertive father. I grabbed him mid-dervish, sat him on my knee, looked him in the eye with all the conviction of a naff social worker and said with as much empathy as I could muster:

“Jonah, that was naughty, you’ve broken Daddy’s Music Machine.”

I finally exhaled, waiting on him to say “sorry” (not a word he’s unfamiliar with as he seems to say it on a half-hourly basis when his mother’s around).

“Wanna watch Scooby Doo, Daddy.” He gurgles.

Obviously this wasn’t the acknowledgement of regret I was expecting. I’ll try a stern approach, yeah why not, I think I can do stern..

“Now Jonah, breaking peoples things isn’t nice and…”

“SCOOBY DOO, SCOOBY DOO, SCOOBY DOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Realizing I was fighting a losing battle, I suggested a compromise. If he could bring himself to say “sorry’ he could watch ten minutes of the ghoul dodging canine and then he really would have to go to bed. Not unfair really, I thought. it was, after all, midnight at this stage, four hours after his normal bed time. Barely concealing his glee, he muttered the little word and that was that.

After I put him to bed I returned to the dying boombox and the ejected CD which had landed at the side of a bookcase. When I went to pick it up I noticed a lot of stuff seemed to be tightly crammed down the back of it. On closer inspection this turned out to be a notebook of recent lyrics which I thought were lost or accidently thrown out, some CDs and cassettes which I presumed I’d left behind on tour and a cassette of four track song sketches that I was relieved to find until I saw that the tape had been pulled out and tangled up in knots. Ah, well.

I love being a father, I love it.

If you’d talked to me six years ago I would have told you there was little chance of me being married, never mind entertaining the idea of kids but here I am just another figure to apply the mean, median and mode to in all those surveys the Sunday supplements conduct every now and then.

The boombox murder is just one of thousands of incidents that have happened since Jonah was born. Having a child is like having an atom bomb go off in your life.

Trying to balance being a working, touring musician as well is very hard going. You miss them like mad when you’re on tour and then when you do come home they’re tripping over your exhausted, lazy arse 24-7.

Getting space to write can be difficult at first but eventually I found myself getting a little routine to deal with it. At least now when he’s not wrecking stuff he sleeps through the night. The first six months my wife and I never slept. I looked even worse than Johnny Thunders.

And for me, that’s quite an achievement.

Rock on.