Transmetropolitan
Black only had to hear the first few frenetic chords
strumming from the very first track on Red Roses for Me and he was back
in Kilburn in the mid to late eighties, a bottle of the oldfortified wine in
his pocket with visions of Kerouac playing out through his mind… the poor bastards
in the squat, all stoners crashed out on a night smoking Hashish looking at Paddy
totally uncomprehendingly, for he is on pure alcohol and cigarettes while they
are caught up in the sweet early morning languor of the cosmos, but Paddy is
unforgiving, he just hears the pumping bass lines of the riff and the snare drums
rattling while Shane puke talks and sings about storming the BBC…
What
willya have?
I’ll
have a pint
I’ll
have a pint with you, Sir!
His feet tap tapping on the old wooden floor, carpet motifs all paisley in design half faded their exotic eastern promise just as jaded and misspent as Said had so eloquently said, all oriental visions of the Other stoking mere subjugating White power fantasy. Though looking around him Black could tell that his own hours an even minutes were ticking off to finitude, the surrounding bodies around him having long ago since lost patience with his Mad Irish in London fantasies. Well, fuck em’ he thought. He had always known that it would be the case with most of them, mere sheep for the most part their mutton like minds fuelled with ecstasy tabs and House Music. Raves mon. That’s where their minds were at, what was left of them at least, depraved hedonistic cunts that they were; all cheap sex, betrayal, violence and alcoholism. Fuck it, he thought leaving them lying there on the morning carpet sun streaming in illuminating the debauch like a poem by Baudelaire or possibly Rimbaud. Who the fuck cared anyway, Paddy Black was long gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBJ8C6jWhVA
( Lyrics Copyright, Shane MacGowan, The Pogues, 1984. )
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