(Mad): 16-18

SCENE 16: Joe’s flat, Hulme

Joe, Lucy, Alisha & Clint Boon arrive, fresh from the Warehouse Party

Lucy
That was fucking buzzing that was

Alisha
I know
Walking home from town in a solar beam
The Roses & the Sunshine in our souls
& what a time to be alive this morn

Joe
Welcome to my gaff, Clint

Clint Boon
I like yer art

Lucy
Joseph’s a student up at Manny Met

Joe
Being here’s my life’s practical praxis
Ideas all exploding oer my walls
I came to do it, I’m here doing it

Alisha
What’ve yer got to drink, spitting feathers here
This party’s only semifactus turn’d

Lucy
Me too, I’m thirsty as fuck, & my throat’s
Rough as those wartime cigarettes Gauloise

Joe
I’ll knock up a gaggle of Manhattans

Clint Boon
A what

Joe
A Manhattan, it’s a cocktail

Clint Boon
What’s in ‘em

Lucy
Whiskey, vermouth & bitters
Invented in New York’s Manhattan club
Sometime back in the nineteenth century

Clint Boon
Classy

Lucy
Where’s the weed, I’m gonna skin up

Joe
In that box on the coffee table, babe

Clint Boon
That was such a brilliant plethora
Of brilliant songs play’d brilliantly

Joe
Brilliant!
What’s your name again

Clint Boon
I’m Clint
Clint Boon

Joe
I’m sure I’ve seen you play somewhere

Clint Boon
You might have, I play keyboards for The Mill
I’ve built a studio out at Ashton
In a cool old mill call’d Guide Bridge, its great
You should come out to check it out sometime

Lucy
How did you get to hear about the gig

Clint Boon
I was at the Hacienda one night
& stepp’d outside for some fresh air relief
When someone thrust a flier in my hand
To call the number on the night inside
Music, mystery & the Stone Roses,
A matchless, Manchester combination

Alisha
Anyone fancy Aztec Camera

Joe
Put them on

Alisha
I love this new album, Knife

Clint Boon
I haven’t heard it

Alisha
Side Two’s the best one
It starts with ‘All I Need Is Everything’

Joe
I love that new wave guitar, funky, jangly

Lucy
They’re not the Roses tho

Joe
{passing round drinks}
No, far from it
How does one compare incomparable
That party was the holy cow of cool
A bewildering, crowded mix of youth cults
Punks, Goths, Perry Boys, skinheads & students
The tribes were all united, sang as one
The choruses of one young gorgeous group

Lucy

It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many
People having such a buzzing party

Alisha
That Reni was on superb form last night

Clint Boon
I heard destiny’s thrum in those drums

Alisha
I fuckin love his style, a mix’d phalanx
Of jazz & rock & reggae, what a star
He’s an entertainer in his own right

Joe
He can sing as well, another level
To the Roses secret weapon unleash’d

Lucy
The way he presses that contralto pitch
Like a dagger against Ian Brown’s throat

Clint Boon
I’d heard he’d taken speed tonight

Alisha
Had he
Talking of which, anybody want some

Clint Boon
I’ll have a line, yeah,

Joe
Me too

Lucy
Not me, babe
I’ve got to be in work by 12 o clock

Joe
Do you want me to call in sick for you
We could even have a little lie in

Lucy
Ehhh – o fuck it, go on, chop one out
For us will ya, I’m due a day off

Alisha
Sure

Clint Boon
Tonight felt intense, innovatory
Important, the Roses first proper gig
In the hometown; Ian, sonorous voiced
As Seriemas Amazonian,
A legend in the making mark my words
He’s not aggressive but has balls of steel,
Makes full eye contact iggipoppean
Where we see dizzying vistas opened
By a sincere all–powerful belief
His music in that room will change the world

Lucy
They are naught by Herculean boy-gods
& by God they’re bloody good
{passing the joint to Clint}
Here you are

Clint Boon
Nice one

Joe
I really wish that Factory
& the Roses would make up, Manchester
Has potential ingrain’d to be massive
But all this fractious infighting achieves
Is dissipation of our genius
If the city was united

Alisha
Eh, Joe
Its half blue mate

Joe
You know what I’m saying
It’s a very sectarian city,
Well, village really, we should all get on

Lucy
Factory are abslutely crackers
An aloof bedlam of rulefree mantras
They should never have let James go, for one
What a band, that Tim Booth is brilliant

Alisha
Bloody vegans – you can’t play rock ‘n’ roll
Upon Lady Grey, blue cheese & beetroot

The door opens – enter Donna with Mani, Cressa & Johnny Marr

Donna
Alright guys

Lucy
Donna!

Girls hug

Clint Boon
Alright lads

Mani
Clint

Donna
I hope you don’t mind bringing my new pals

Lucy
Sure, the more the merrier, whats yer names

Mani
I’m Mani

Cressa
Cressa

Johnny Marr
Johnny

Lucy
I’m Lucy

Joe
Hey babe, that is Johnny Marr from the Smits

Lucy
Fucks sake, shit, so it is, I’m sorry mate

Johnny Marr
Eh – what are you apologizing for

Lucy
I don’t know

Joe
I’m Joe & this is Alisha
Make yourself at home, we’re doing cocktails
Manhattans, you want one

Johnny Marr
Nice one

Cressa
Yeah

Mani
Sound

Lucy
I’ll make them, babe, give us a hand Donna

Donna
Certainly

Cressa
Were you all down the Flower Show

Alisha
We were, proper tops that was

Mani
I love em
I’d love to play bass with Reni, he’s mad

Joe
You play bass?

Mani
Yeah, mate

Joe
Have a look at this
I’ve had it for years, but don’t play it much

Clint
Fancy a toot on this anybody

Johnny Marr
Don’t mind if I do, Clint, nice one matey

Mani
What kind of bass is it

Joe
Eh, a blue one
I don’t know

Mani
Hah, its in tune

Joe
The one thing
I’m actually good at a musically
Pitch perfect, but I cannot play a note

Donna
{giving out drinks}
Manhattan for Mani

Mani
Cheers

Cressa
Hey Johnny
Wanna blast on this

Johnny Marr
What are ya smoking

Lucy
Its from the Netherlands, its call’d Blowfish

Johnny Marr
Sure, when in Hulme, do as the Hulmeites do
In these effervescent edifices
This spirivalving demi paradise
{gets the joint}
Anything goes & everything is found
A grassy tussock in rough & muddy ground
To grip when life’s path tilts with jilted fate
{inhales}

Woah, this stuff is mental – want some Mani

Mani
Deffo

Johnny Marr sees an acoustic guitar, grabs it & tunes it

Donna
Hulme looks like Blade Runner after the Blitz
Civilisation’s untidiest scrawl
To walk around dangerous, but beauty
Blooms out from a thousand booming -windows
Dance track here, dub twenty meters later,
As students, dolies, artists & junkies
Conglomerations, even, of all four
Blended in a bohemian gold rush
Walls torn down, in flats enlarg’d & spacious
Art galleries & rehearsal spaces
After-pub venues focuss’d on jamming
Re-energised the crumbling detritus
Of post-war planning’s transient disaster

Lucy
The council would rather just nuke the place

Joe
Can I have a toot on that mate

Johnny Marr
Of course
Its fucking good that, fancy a blow back
Its down to the roach almost

Joe
Why not, yeah

Joe
A blowfish blowback, gonna be mental

BLOWFISH

I got the Blowfish in my mind,
Alpha brainwaves taste like poison,  
There’s a party in her mind  
For the fish & all her kind  
Wanna swim, I’m gonna join ‘em.

Got the mermaid in my soul,  
Sure ain’t seen it’s like since Texas,  
There’s a party in her soul  
Gonna lose my self control,  
Comin in I hope she lets us…

There’s a time bomb tickin in my mind  Trippin in her soul,  
There is a siren singing her love songs,  Making me fall,
So what’s the use in going home  
When everything it feels alright good night
 
Got the demons in my mind,  
Got them living in my bloodstream,  Dionysys going blind  
All these fishes I will find  
Doing backstrokes thro my dream  

Got the Mermaid in my soul,  
Gonna lick her fishy fingers,  
Let the demon take it’s toll,  
Gonna join that funky shoal  
& I’m the king of all the singers.   

There’s a time bomb tickin in my mind Trippin in her soul,
There is a siren singing her love songs, Making me fall,
So what’s the use in going home
When everything it feels alright good night

SCENE 17: A Cave in Morocco

Norman, a middle-aged man is pottering about his cave-home – rugs & brightly coloured woven blankets draped & scattered about – there is a little kitchen & a radio playing music – a flares wearing Bez is asleep under some rugs – he wakes

Bez
Wear the fuck am I

Norman
A simple question
That has never been easy to answer
Navigators use stars – but in this cave
The night skies rough block’d from mine astrogaze

Bez
Who the fuck are you

Norman
My name is Norman

Bez
Norman, Norm mate, am I dead or a dream
Or what, I thought I was in Morocco

Norman
You still are young man, tell me, what’s your name

Bez
Eh – Bez, Mark, Mark Berry, they call me Bez
You’re not one of the botty boys, are you
That dug young lads & have their wicked ways

Norman
No, no, nothing like that, you had collapsed
In awful heat doubl’d by thy fever
I had you brought here, to my home in the hills
Away from this world’s deaths & destructions
You’ve been feverish for the last three days
Saying all sorts of things in regression
Gibbering in broadest Mancunian
Strange conversations to a phantom stream

Bez
Woah – I remember, yes, that was mental
I was wandering thro past lives, not mine,
Communities gather’d upstream, downstream
& me beside the river rolling spliffs

Norman
You might have drunk some dirtyish water
When bodies yield to the poison’s effects
Enfollows three days of fever-sweating
When from such precarious positions
Does Human Health return like sorcery

Bez
Mate, you got anything I could drink now

Norman
Here’s some water –

Bez
Cheers
{drinks}
I’m American, from a little place
Call’d Duval, on the fringe of Seattle
Seattle, Jimi Hendrix & Bruce Lee

Norman
That’s right son

Bez
So how dy’end up living ‘ere

Norman
I was really stoned, just came across it
& knew I’d found what I’d been looking for
Fuck government fashion’d realities
Create your own, I say, so here I am

Bez
Its very nice – what did you do back home

Norman
I was a psychiatrist, but, I think
A tad too empathic for the project
Needing peace & seclusion, so escap’d
Everybody else’s brainwaves, ya dig?

Bez
You got anything to smoke

Norman
Help yourself
Do you want a joint, a pipe or a bong

Bez
All three if that’s alright, mate, I’m gasping

Norman
There’s paraphenelia on the table

Bez
{starting to skin up}
Nice one

Norman
& yourself, Mark, why Morocco

Bez

I’m not exactly sure, it just feels right

I have a life-role indefineable
Beyond my grasp of reckoning just yet
But tantalising starling on the branch
That beckons Berry upwards to the top
Of unlit trees, there sunlight fills the skies
& so I left Manchester in the rain
Upon the legendary Magic Bus
My first time ever Britannia beyond
Buzzing down the B-Roads of Europa
Travailler les vandanges for two months
From Corfu town to Torremelinos
Working piss’d-up discos, under neon
One night, smoking some mad Moroccon weed
The strongest dope I’d ever come aross
I was ston’d instantly, myopic mist
Deliciously descended, as e’erwhile
I felt the urge to go indigenous
& trace the THC back to its course
Where somewhere in the mountains of this land
Valleys full of dope plants blew my mind
Swarm’d with miraculous geomancy
As if them sprung from Na Atibu’s spine
This vision, every level blew my mind,
& that pungent bud’s unquarried manna
Filling up lungsacs my last memory
Drifting twards ecstatic oblivion

Norman
I know the place, its call’d Ganja garden
Well, you survived, that’s the main thing young man
So what’s your plan, you can stay a few nights
Get back to full fitness, but then I must
Return to my solitude & studies

Bez
I’m going home, mate, Manchester beckons
I’m rested & repurified, & dreamt
Last night, whole cities of people dancing
In weird & wonderful ways, twisting
Writhing, incessantly to a soundtrack
Of loud, crazy, mesmerizing music
Arms waved in rhythmic union wth beats
While eagerly weaving round streets & shops
Its time to do one, but I’ll have this first

{Bez has a long draw on the joint}

Woah, o fer fucks sake, not this shit again

Bez passes out – Norman takes the joint from his hand

Norman
You English never handle the good stuff
Anyway, allow your subconscious
To listen to these words, son, if you write
Thy name in sand the tide soon rubs it out
But if you take the effort, son, to carve
Your name in rock, the next day it remains
& so on & forever til the end
To stand above the crowd you must engage
With the spirit of Expressionism
Be bold, distorted, represent with force
All of your emotions, be big, be bold
& don’t forget to bite the dog

Bez
Do what
When a dog bites a man, that isn’t news
But when a man bites a dog that is news

Bez
What, ah man!

Bez passes out again

Norman
This joint’s not even that strong

SCENE 18: Tiffany’s, Leeds