I.
“They took the stage in shawls and hacking jackets. Their brutal, short set (“we never play longer than the average male sexual performance”) was full of the kind of punk energy I thought had died with the hydra.”
Dead Rails at the Astoria, October 2004, The Stool Pigeon.
I first met her at a gig in the upstairs of the Horse and Groom. On stage, she sat on a bar stool, a single-octave toy Casio on her knee, a microphone duct taped to its tinny internal speaker. She played just two notes that – from where I was standing at the side of the stage – I could see had been labelled with sticky back plastic. The first, a D, read: Who’s that over there? The second, a G, was labelled: It’s nobody.
She looked on as her two band mates army-crawled around the bar, singing an excerpt from Paul Simon’s You can call me Al. Every song had the same lyrics: If you’ll be my body guard, I will be your long lost pal.
The first thing she said to me, before I had chance to say that I had enjoyed it, was: “Glad you enjoyed the show.”
She had a skin tone so smooth that, when she was looking straight at you, you had to really concentrate to see her nose.
I bought her a pint.
“Have you guys got a CD?”
“We don’t record.”
I was surprised to see that the lead singer who, moments before, with his eyes rolling back in his skull, had been doing roly-polys along the bar, was now methodically packing away the gear. He wrapped up the mic lead in loops around his thumb and elbow. He removed the rectangular nine-volt batteries from his FX pedals. He shut down the laptop, packed it in a hard case. His eyes had regained a clearness and – although he was still wearing tennis shorts and a cravat – he had an officiousness about him.
“What’s his name?”
“Mooky,” she said.
“What does he play?”
“He’s the song writer.”
Mooky came over.
“Indu, can you give me a hand?”
Then I knew her name. Indu gave me back the beer with only a couple of sips gone and disappeared out through the pub’s fire exit, carrying one side of a school desk.
II.
They’re next gig was in a chapel, at a cross-disciplinary arts night called Compulsory Bingo. The pews were full and some people leant against the pillars. It cost a quid to get in and for the same again you could buy one of the ancient board games stacked up on a tea cart near the entrance: Careers, Equality, Squatter.
At the start of their set, Dead Rails came down the aisle. Mooky in a suit, the two girls wearing battered wedding dresses. Their first song, a six-second a cappella number, was called: We do.
After that, Indu sat on a high stool and played the tiny keyboard. The stool was hidden beneath layers of gauze.
At that time, I was trying to get in to music journalism. Watching the gig, I tried out similes in my ring-bound notepad.
Dead Rails sound like a gas leak at a children’s party.
Indu played a three-note arpeggio. The laptop gurned and stuttered. The other band member, Anna, a boyish-looking girl with red hair, sprayed Mooky with American mustard.
It was pretty bad.
Their sound is somewhere between the ice cream van’s jingle and the firebombing of Dresden.
After their second song, there was some limp applause and a heckle: Get a divorce!
Most people stayed seated in the pews.
Their kick drum will unearth your childhood trauma.
At one point, the music cut out and there was an error message tone. Mooky knelt on the stone flagging in front of the laptop. His wives watched him. Mustard ran a slash across his neck.
During the middle-eight of Trial Separation, Mooky went under Indu’s dress to do the singing. When he emerged his face had gone red.
I made a note in my book: Mooky under Indu’s wedding dress: gimmick.
In my early years as I writer, I believed it was more important to be emphatic than accurate. Bands, as far as I knew how to review them, were either the best or the worst.
“Dead Rails, Union Chapel, 23.4.04
By Krang
Dead Rails are the worst.
Beginning the show in wedding gowns, they proceeded to live out a short, unhappy marriage of mangled trash-electro and tum-te-tum arpeggio’d synths.
At one point their female Bez (band member who does nothing but vibes) was down to her underwear, writhing in mustard on the steps of the pulpit. It wasn’t just dull; it was also depressing.
Their final song, Together for the kids, started well, with a Black and Decker guitar riff, and frontman Mooky deigning to sing, but it quickly descended into practiced chaos. The show ended as they sprayed each other in blood. Another regret: the blood was fake.
2/10”
Here’s what Indu said to me after the show.
“I saw you making notes. Who do you write for?”
“I was just jotting down some thoughts.”
“That was a really bad show,” she said. “The laptop kept breaking.”
She looked beautiful in a gore-soaked gown.
“I’m just having some ideas,” I said.
She seemed embarrassed, her hands tugging at her corsage.
I said: “it was a very different show to last time.”
“We try not to repeat ourselves.”
Mooky was packing up. The other one was in the transept putting her normal clothes back on.
III.
Beneath my online review - where I hid behind my pseudonym Krang - there was a reply from Mooky:
“It was a difficult gig for us. We had the laptop mess up repeatedly and it wasn’t our usual crowd.
I felt this review was cowardly and unnecessarily cruel. If Krang wants to talk to me about my band then I would be happy to speak with him (him, right?).
I hope this review doesn’t put anyone off coming to see us. We try and make every show different and, for that, we are going to have some more successful than others.
Cheers,
Mooky”
His response to my review was unnervingly balanced. I didn’t think journalists were supposed to feel guilty so I was surprised when I did.
The third time I saw them was at a squat party in a derelict old person’s home. From the garden, I could see in – through large floor-to-ceiling windows – to what must have been the TV room. There were two people jousting in wheelchairs, bins over their heads.
By the time Dead Rails performed – in the dining room – it was half two in the morning. The police had been there since midnight but, for reasons unknown, had not shut the party down. They stood back from the building, in the car park, at intervals from each other, just watching. This gave the whole event an energy and self-importance that it might otherwise not have had.
Dead Rails were dressed in the clothes of the recently deceased.
Mooky, wearing a rough wool cardigan and a threadbare hospital-blue shirt, came on stage and said: “We went to Oxfam for the stench of death.” His trousers were tied up with string and he was standing on a mustard-coloured armchair.
Indu wore old man’s pyjamas – pin-striped red. Her black hair was dyed with streaks of grey.
Anna, their performer, was in woolen tights, a flannelette skirt and cheesecloth blouse.
That night, Dead Rails played as loudly and as aggressively as any band I have ever seen.
Their set was fourteen minutes long, it went:
Important TV Quiz
Posterity Schmosterity
Krang Has No Girlfriend
We can’t grow old
And who among you remembers the war?
The crowd were responsive: some jumped, some clapped, stared, played air-drums, many danced and among the ones that danced, there were numerous sub-categories.
It was, to use a reviewer’s cliché, Triumphant. A home-coming gig without the coming home.
I saw her as they were leaving. She seemed happy. I could see, where her pyjamas were unbuttoned, she had freckles on her chest.
“Hey, you came!”
She was holding a bag of leads and we were being buffeted by people trying to get by. She was pleased to see me.
“Amazing show!” I said.
“Glad you thought so,” she said.
We stood in the near-dark, goons streaming past.
“Where’s your notepad?”
“In my pocket.”
“Give it me.”
I didn’t think about it. If I’m honest, I thought she was going to write down her phone number.
“Do you need a pen?” I asked.
She flicked through the pages, held one up to the light. It didn’t even cross my mind.
My only regret: the blood was fake
She leant close to my ear, like people do at parties.
“You coward.”
“Say again?” I said, automatically, even though I’d heard her.
“You fuh-king coward.”
She was still showing me her teeth. What I might have called a smile.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“Give me your pen,” she said.
I gave her my biro.
She wrote the word twat in neat handwriting on the front cover.
Then she turned it over and, on the back cover, wrote do something else.
IV.
It was in the function room at a working men’s club. They were supporting the world-famous contortionist: Alberta Mercator. She was Czech. On the poster she made the capital A of Alberta: bent over backwards, with her head as a cross bar. The crowd was a mix of the normal art-music scenesters and people who had expressly come to see contortion: mainly men in their early middle-age. They were polite and stood up to watch Dead Rails perform but I could see them getting distracted by Alberta, who was warming up, stretching behind the speakers at the side of the stage. There was no changing room.
Dead Rails were starting to get some decent press and I’d had a pitch accepted to review them for the Metro. I was determined not to get out my notepad – at least not within view of Indu. I wanted my good review to surprise them – and for it to be in my real name.
I was that kind of journalist: preparing to write a good review before the band had started playing.
Dead Rails pulled back electro-punk’s foreskin, ignored the stench and discovered something golden.
At the back of the stage, there was a giant heart, lit around the edges with red light bulbs.
Mooky was dressed as Merlin: in an electric blue robe, sleeves like wind socks.
Dead Rails set was like reading an ancient book of incantations: dangerous, transformative and too powerful to understand.
Indu was a kind of genie: a turban, Persian trousers and shoes with bells on the end.
Anna was a ring master: gunpowder moustache, top hat and cane.
They set the laptop up on a school desk. Indu took to her stool. Mooky had that blind-eyed lost-it-ness I’d seen the first time they played. He seemed pale and a bit ill.
Dead Rails are electro-shock therapy for the music industry.
I occasionally looked across to see the contortionist, testing some unknown muscle, a leotard full of car parts.
I had one-hundred and fifty words to make them forgive me:
“Opening with the redemptive Krang Has No Girlfriend, then straight in to the prospector’s eureka of Oil! Dead Rails brought buckets of spontaneity. During their opener, Mooky, their lead singer roared, lassoing his microphone lead: by turns, both cowboy and bull. Indu, dressed as a sauce-pot genie, made her twelve-note Casio do things it did not want to do. Anna, meanwhile, was on the speaker stack: doing the worm.
Dead Rails gigs are always one-offs: at least one song written for each venue, and new outfits for each gig. Which is why I can only offer my commiserations if you missed them here, supporting the world renowned contortionist, Alberta Mercator.
Dead Rails squeezed more in to their supple seventeen minute set than most bands manage in a career.
In their break-neck finale, Posterity Schmosterity in to a new one, Pah! Pah! Pah!, they made contortionists of us all – joints popped, shoulders dislocated – it was zombie disco mayhem and, by God, we wanted more.”
I’d expected Mooky to get off stage and, as before, sober up. To start packing away the gear. But he didn’t. With people still applauding, he jumped off the stage and made his way straight toward me.
“Hey Krang!”
He had his hand up in the air, the sleeve of his gown falling down to his thin arm.
“Hey Krang-o!”
“Hi Mooky.”
“You wrote that shitty review!” He said this loud, so a few people turned to look at me.
“Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay. I found it very upsetting.”
He kept moving his weight from foot to foot. He smelt of costume shops.
“I’m writing you a really good review in the Metro.”
“Don’t do me any favours Krang!” he said, looking around at the crowd, as though he’d just noticed them.
“My name is Breean Render.”
“Whatever you say, Krang.”
He kept the volume of his voice up.
“Krang’s my pen name,” I said.
It was supposed to be a joke but he just looked at me. His eyes didn’t connect with mine – he seemed to stare at my chin.
“Spell your real name,” he said, and he turned and bent down so that his ear so was right in front of my mouth. I was staring into his crew-cut hair, could both see and smell the beads of sweat.
“B, R, double E, A, N.” He was nodding slightly as I spoke, as though hearing a song he quite liked. “R, E, N, D, E, R.”
“Again!” he yelled.
Some people were watching.
“B, R, double E, A, N, R, E, N, D, E, R.”
“Once more, with feeling,” he said.
I said it again.
“Golden, Krang. Golden.”
Later on, while learning the alphabet with Alberta Mercator – who was in the middle of forming an upper case H – Indu appeared next to me.
The crowd cheered as Alberta shifted from h to G. Somewhere out of sight, there was a snare roll going.
“Hi Breean,” Indu said. “You met Mooky.”
“I met him.”
“You just keep coming for that electro punishment.”
“I’m writing another review.”
Indu had put on a big white T-shirt but was still in the trousers and shoes of a genie. She was wearing blusher and lipstick, which gave her face a clear geography.
Alberta made a capital J and the crowd groaned.
“I’m worried for her wind-pipe,” Indu said.
“Look. I’m a big fan of your band.”
Alberta’s perfect O provoked a woop. All her ribs were there to count.
“You’re starting to get some good press, I noticed,” I said.
Alberta squeezed her upper case O in to lower case.
“And this is a big venue,” I said.
“Look,” she said.
I turned to Indu but she didn’t turn to me. She nodded toward the stage. I looked. Alberta strained for P.
“I can see this woman’s bones,” she said.
Alberta was shaping up for Q.
“How old do you think she is?” Indu asked.
“It’s hard to tell. Young.”
The Q was the same as the big O, but with her head as the tail.
“She’s thirty-three. Her real name is Helen.”
R was just P with a leg out.
“Helen told me that people like contortionists to be either Asian or Eastern European,” she said, still watching the stage.
S and T were a bit of a let down. But then there was U into V and we were both clapping.
“Wow. Is this her day-job?” I asked.
“She teaches contortion.”
W was the first time I’d seen Alberta wince. Some people tried to start chanting her name.
“I’d love to learn,” I said, which was a lie.
X.
“You should stop lying so much,” Indu said.
Y.
“What?”
Z.
“You should stop lying.”
~
V.
The review came out on a Tuesday. I was worried that they wouldn’t see it – too cool for Metro – so I cut out a copy and took it with me to The Famous Pig. It was an old pub under young management. On the back wall, there was a large gilt picture frame; a projector shot banned films on to its blank canvas. When I arrived it was Straw Dogs. Then later it was Gimme Shelter. I didn’t notice what was on when I left.
They were in the upstairs room, on a small, raised stage. Watching them play – to a packed, attentive crowd – I felt the familiar ache of sharing a band you love.
A. I liked this band before anyone else did; I liked them when they weren’t very good but I saw what was good in them.
B. Now they are better, well-practiced and loved by many, including some people who are not like me.
C. Why hasn’t my foresight been acknowledged?
D. It is the band’s fault; now I resent them.
I had hoped to grow out of this.
They wore tall, eighteenth-century powdered wigs, black shoes with gold buckles, breeches and tights.
Half-way through their set, I heard their first sing-along chorus: B.R.Double.E.A.N.R.E.N.D.E.R.
Mooky was swinging on the fake-crystal chandelier. It was a good song. It would turn out to be their first single. The verse went:
Every time you try to get us dow-own
I feel a stir beneath my bridal gow-own
Now every time you hate me I feel light.
I won’t let you sleep alone tonight
For their finale, they played Together for the kids. Indu and Mooky kissed all the way through the middle-eight.
I fiddled with the review I had in my pocket.
At the end of their set, Mooky
stage-dived. You could only locate him by a hump of powdered white hair, poking out from among the crowd.
I bought Indu a pint and we sat on the edge of the stage.
I said: “I preferred your early stuff.”
“Yeah.”
She took her wig off. She had been sweating – her hair retained a cross-hatched pattern.
“You had more purity of vision back then,” I said.
She took a long sip and nodded.
“There’s a sense of dilution to your performances now.”
I thought about showing her the Metro review.
“A cynicism,” I said. “Like with the stage kiss.”
“That’s fair,” she said.
She was watching me. I was just saying what I wanted. I was channeling every musical disappointment of my youth – Morrissey’s solo work, Frusciante rejoining the Chili Peppers, that drum and bass was not the future – and blaming it on her.
“And your sets are getting longer. ‘What happened to the sexual performance of the average male?’”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“A stage kiss. Talk about gimmicks.”
“You can call it that,” she said.
I stopped talking and drank my beer. I held the liquid in my mouth. She brought her face right up close to mine. Like someone who wants a fight, her eyes hardly blinking. She waited for me to swallow.
Then we stage kissed.
We were on the stage.
“That’s a gimmick,” she said. “I do that for journalists.”
“Did you read my review?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You got what you wanted.”
“I’m an ambitious girl,” she said.
She leant in and we kissed, this time with tongues. And this time it went on and on. I had to find somewhere to put down my pint. I started to feel self-conscious. I could hear all her fans chatting away around us. But she kept going. Eventually I couldn’t feel self-conscious anymore and I just went with it.
Indu lived with three others in a gated cul-de-sac. A circle of detached houses, closed off from the surrounding estates. We went up to her bedroom. It was small and tidy and she had a TV in the corner. There were a couple of Japanese puppets hanging against one wall.
I was nervous, expecting her to involve me in some performative sexcapades that I wouldn’t be able to handle.
Instead, she got under the covers to take her clothes off, kicking her breeches out from under the duvet.
The smell in her room was of recent vacuuming.
I had a sense that she had been expecting me.
Her duvet cover was patterned with instruments: saxophone, drum kit, cor anglais.
“Come in,” she said, and held up an edge of duvet.
I took my shoes and socks off. Then I got in. I discovered Indu’s notorious circulation. Her body was oven-fresh.
Our sex made not-being-subversive subversive.
We had glorious missionary sex.
This was all at a time when I found it hard to turn off that commentary voice. I tried to make everything a phrase I could use in an article.
The new honesty, I thought, hoping to pitch a feature with that title.
I gave our night together nine out of ten.
Eventually, I quit music journalism and got in to artist management. I managed the Dead Rails for a while, until they broke up.
After the sex, we talked about music and I told her that I liked all the bands she liked. I am still fond of lying.
“Is this all going to appear in a song?” I asked.
“I’ve already written lyrics,” she said, which was the truth.
“What’s it called?”
“Critical Responses To My Last Relationship.”
“Okay,” I said.
“It needs a chorus,” she said.
So we went at it again.
