Jumpin' Jack Flash

But it's all right now.
In fact, it's a gas.
- The Rolling Stones, 1968

Shit, we're on. And there we were (now we know we are), ambling across the stage to an encouraging swell of noise from our small, but enthustiastic - or at least not entirely disinterested - audience. Let’s dooo the tiiime waaarrp again: The Duffer, perched aboard his kit with the giddy enthusiasm of a little kid on a Harley at his first Motor Show; I was mildly concerned if he got too excited he'd wet himself. But there he was, tossing and twirling his sticks in ostentacious ‘80s poodle-metal fashion, loony grin under his floppy fringe, just like hundreds of times before. Marty Monster, nodding, zen and focused behind his keyboard stack, though parked further forward and lit more prominently than in the Gasket days. Me, front-left, all loud shirt and drinking pants, pheremones and beer - how had Lena described it back in the day? - “…looking like he just climbed on stage after knocking back a few with his mates in the beer garden, as usually the case…”

And, to my right, our designated McCarthy for the night. Even though his entire on-stage playing career with the Gasket had amounted to one song at Livid 2000 and half a set at a pub in Airlie Beach a few years before that (on Swap Meet night on the inaugural Tour de Pants), the Jeff had been part of the Gasket landscape as guitar tech, gopher and all-purpose pisshead for so long, since day one almost, he didn’t seem out of place parked at front-right with that lovely sunburst Les Paul slung informally over his shoulder, regardless of the fact he was standing in for one of the originals. His own nerves had faded away as the lights had come up, as they always did; all of a sudden, there was a rather McCarthy-esque evil smirk across his face, and he looked like he was about to enjoy himself a hell of a lot. He was also about to play a loud B chord with that lovely sunburst Les Paul, set up to sound like Keef Richards. Or Keef’s guitar at least. (Also a sunburst Les Paul, as I recalled.) Well, we figured it was as good a way as any to begin playing Jumpin' Jack Flash, and we figured he was the least over-the-hill of our two guitarists so he was probably a more reliable prospect for kicking proceedings off.

I took the supporting role - Ronnie Wood with more bum notes (if that’s physically possible) although fewer bookmarks on RussianBrides.com - and rode shotgun for my bro as he declared in a suitably Jaggerian drawl:

“Ah was bawn, in a cross-fahre hurrah-cayne…”

Actually he sounded more like old mate Howlin’ Pelle out front of the Hives, but we’ll run with it.

“An’ ah howled, at mah ma, in th’ pow-ran rayne…”

Cue the fat bastard on harmony for the ‘all right now’s:

“But it’s ALLLL… RAAHHT… NAAHOW… 'n fact it’s ah GAS!”

Gah. Christ that’s awful. Angus, old son, you’re rustier than the Titanic. Try again?

“But it’s ALLLL… RAAHHT… NAAHOW… Ah’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a GAS GAS GAS!!”

The Jeff looked across at me with a grin on his face, while I tried to pretend I was preoccupied kicking out the Chuck Berry jams, and certainly not on the brink of giggling about how truly appalling my first vocal effort had turned out. He leant across, off-mike. “Hey, Andrea Bocelli,” he chided, “you wanna take it from here?”

Ah well. Noone paid more than fifteen bucks to get in, they’ll be getting their money’s worth out of me…

“Ah was raised, by a toothless bearded hag…”

“Oy, that’s my mother you’re talking about,” the Jeff scowled.

“Ah was schooled,” I giggled, “wit’ a strap rahht across mah bahhk…”

But it’s all right now. In fact, as it turns out, it’s a gas. I’m Jumping Jack Flash. Allegedly. Anyway, by the end of it, I’d managed to chip off the rust and would humbly submit to not sounding totally shit. I’d prefer second opinions were not sought, however.

“Hey folks, thanks for coming out. We’re the Australian Flange Gasket Show, Woodburn’s leading Gasket tribute band…”

“Thought we were Spam Filter and the Waterford Crystal Method?” queried Marty.

“Yeah, them too. Anyway, Gasket started as a covers band, and most of us have finished as a covers band, so because we couldn’t agree on which of each others’ songs to play, we’re going to play a bunch of someone else’s.”

“At least until the real band turns up,” offered the Duffer, chiming in from the cheap seats.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Philip More-Than-Enough Duff, on the skins, on the money, and probably on the piss at some stage, if he’s not already...”

Rimshot from the Duffer.

“Of course, what you’ve just heard us play was a song from the Hives…” Might as well see if anyone else gets the in-joke. No one, of course. Not a fucking sausge. “You might remember the Hives, they were a punk rock band from Sweden who reinvented rock and roll in 2001 by sounding exactly like the Stones in 1966… carrying on a great tradition of Swedish exports.”

“Yeah,” noted the Jeff. “Volvos… IKEA… pickled herrings…”

“The Swedish Chef from the Muppets…” Marty was buying into the banter. A good sign, it usually foretold a good show.

“That Playboy playmate…” said Phil.

“Which one?” asked the Jeff.

“The Swedish one. You know, the blonde one. With the tits.”

“Yeah, I know the one.”

“I meant musically,” I corrected, as Marty started laying the rolling bassline from the Gurus’ prehistoric set-opener Let’s All Turn On underneath, just in case anyone had the impression we’d forgotten we were here to actually play music. We’re getting around to it, honest. “The Hives, the Hellacopters…”

“Millencolin,” proposed the Jeff. “No Use For A Name…”

“Jeff ‘The Jeff’ Young ladies and genitals, our resident skate punk aficionado who can’t skate and isn’t punk,” I introduced. “Apart from that he’s more skate-punk than Blink 182.”

“Phil’s mum is more skate-punk than Blink 182,” Marty pointed out.

“That’s true you know,” nodded Phil agreeably. “Hey what about the Sahara Hotnights? They’re Swedish. And fairly cute. Was that part of the criteria?”

“Sold to that man,” I declared. “Good pick. Particularly the lead singer, she was fuckin’ hot.”

“And intelligent, too,” Marty pointed out.

“Why do you say that, Marty,” asked Phil with a smirk. I sense a set-up here.

“She was smart enough not to be having any of Angus, wasn’t she?”

“Cheers, Marty. You lot, your friend and mine, Martin Antonio di Biagini, vaguely famous for writing ad jingles.”

“Hey, at least mine didn’t end up as a bloody Ford Territory commercial like Lloydie’s…”

“You mean ‘Safe Hands’ Lloydie?”

“Yeah. Old Iron Gloves at the back… you realise noone in the room is going to get that.”

“That’s OK, they’ll all fuck off back to the beer queue in a second unless we actually start playing something…” Minor cheering. “This is an old rock song, about even older rock songs. It’s by the Gurus and it’s called Let’s All Turn On…”

That’s what I like, that’s what I like. A few years ago The Wrights, which was basically a random assortment of Aussie rock folks at a loose end (the Cester brothers from Jet, Kram from Spiderbait, Davey Lane from You Am I etc) recorded a cover version of Let’s All Turn On for the Gurus’ Stoneage Romeos tribute album Stoneage Cameos. The Duffer had put me onto that album recently, it was fairly decent - particularly the Bait’s thrash-fuzz remake of My Girl (reminiscent of something McCarthy tried many years ago at one of our very early gigs.) This was the sort of collaborative shit I'd missed being part of. Had I been invited of course.

Ah well, it was good to be back. And we seemed to be appreciated. Even if Jeff’s axe spat a string barely one and a half songs into our set.

“Cheers, folks. You’re too kind,” I protested.

“…Not that we’d want you being less kind, of course,” Phil piped up.

“Hell no,” I concurred. Don’t throttle back on the kindness just on my say-so…”

“Hey, missed a briefing here, but are we talking total bollocks for any reason, or just to pass the time?” Marty asked cheerfully. Marty was doing a great job, I thought, of filling the bantering void - replacing McCarthy’s Roy to my HG (or was that the other way around?)

“No Martin, I’m seamlessly buying time while my brother restrings his nice shiny sunburst Gibson Les Paul for our next exciting adventure in sound. How’re you going there, Jeffrey?”

“Almost done. Talk more bollocks,” he advised.

“Ah, that’s the skills that made him our guitar tech for years…” I remarked wistfully. “Until he fucked off and we got someone better.”

“Are we allowed to use rude words, Angus?” queried Marty. “With children about? It is an all-ages show, of course…”

“I’m sure it’s nothing they haven’t heard their teachers use to describe the quality of their HSC assessments,” I offered dryly, to localised amusement around the room - those who were in on the joke (if you could call my teaching career a joke.)

“What, really… fucking… good?” the Duffer proposed stiltedly.

“That’s the one, Phil.” I glanced at the Jeff, who was looking increasingly sheepish, but was pretty close to finishing his task. Just needed a few more moments. “Marty,” I said, “you’re our philosopher, say something profound.”

He cast his eyes over the masses, and pronounced solemnly, “The only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage.”

“Oooh, deep. Who said that, Noam Chomsky?”

“No, Panic At The Disco. Where the hell have you been for the last five years?”

“Good question,” I nodded. “Not listening to songs like this.”

It was that Arctic Monkeys one about the band of wankers who claimed to be from San Francisco but were actually from Rotherham. Those Northern Monkeys had a decent way with lyrics. I was hoping not all of them were applicable to our show tonight - such as the line that ran:

As the microphone squeaks, a young girl's telephone beeps
She's dashing for the exits, oh she's running to the streets outside
“Oh you’ve saved me,” she screamed down the line
“The band were fucking wank and I’m not having a nice time.”

The Monkeys were pursued by the Finger, something from Bernard and the boys’ album from the previous year which I hadn’t bought and hadn’t listened to, apart from their inevitable panoramic-scale ballad which ended up getting spun on the pop stations Bethany’s car stereo presets frequented. As with the other new stuff we played that night (i.e. anything from the past five years) I didn’t know the words and had only a vague notion of the chords, so I generally hung back at stage left throwing suitable rock shapes and trying not to attract too much attention. Though I knew Jet’s Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is well enough to participate in the banter re whether imploring ‘Show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ of the girls in the front row was a great idea as it was probably going to get me arrested.

Which was ironic, as the Jeff’s original suggestions for our ‘covers band’ setlist included such efforts as Motorhead’s Jailbait, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Catholic School Girls Rule, and even our own Fifteen’ll Get You Twenty, for our ‘Gasket set’ later in the evening. Anyone detect a very subtle emergent theme in that lot? Not to mention the support he threw behind one of Phil’s picks, Spinal Tap’s Tonite I’m Gonna Rock You Tonite, which probably had nothing at all to do with the lyrics:

You’re sweet
But you’re just four feet
And you’ve still got your baby teeth
You’re too young
And I’m too well hung
But tonite I’m gonna rock ya
(Tonite I’m gonna rock ya)…

But the idea of singing cheerfully about sex with potentially underage girls to an audience of potentially underage girls, while blackly amusing in concept and seemingly As Per Programme for established Gasket morality, would have probably ended my teaching career for good, so we carefully vetted (read ‘gutted’) Jeff’s suggestions. He put forward AC/DC’s Jailbreak as an alternative, but I pointed out that we weren’t all born yesterday (unlike our prospective audience) and could all see the potential for disaster, or just the potential for Jeff to start bellowing ‘Jaaaaail-bait’ over the closing lines. We knew him too well. (And, in hindsight, I probably still had issues with belting out lyrics about a guy seein’ his lady being fooled with by another man. Particularly because if I’d had a gun in my hand, bullets would have started flyin’ round everywhere, people would have started to scream, and there would have been a big man lyin’ on the ground with a hole in his body where his life had been. Yeahhhh. Good times.)

So, instead, because any covers band with two brothers called Young is contractually obliged to play something by AC/DC, the Jeff put forward the rarity Love At First Feel, from the US version of the Dirty Deeds album. It adhered to the Gasket’s old modus operandi of playing covers obscure enough to be potentially confused with our own originals, as well as having a great swaggering riff, a sing-along chorus and some heroically off-colour Bon Scott lyrics - the theme of which were set out in the opening lines:

You never told me where you came from
You never told me your name
I didn’t know if you were legal tender
But I spent it just the same…

Ah well, we had to let him get one dodgy song in, just to keep him quiet. And Too Drunk To Fuck by the Dead Kennedys. That was one of mine, and an absolute non-negotiable. I chose to claim it was in the set as an educational fable for the kids.

The topic of brothers in bands brought us forward a few more years. “Folks, as you may realise, we’re all children of the ‘90s…”

“So are this lot, Angus. Difference is, we grew up in the ‘90s, they were actually fucking born then…”

“Stop pointing out how old and sad we are, Jethro, it’s affecting our cred. Just because you’re not getting laid tonight you don’t have to balls it up for everyone.”

“Oh look folks,” remarked Phil with Christmas-panto acting skills, “brothers in a band from the ‘90s who fight a lot! I wonder whatever could be next?”

“To be fair,” the Jeff pointed out subsequently, “we only fight because he drinks all my fuckin’ beer when he comes down to visit.”

Cue Oasis’ Cigarettes and Alcohol, with that big fat T-Rex riff - lyrically, just about the least appropriate Oasis song we could come up with for an underage audience. As per programme. And it got a great response, as did Too Drunk To Fuck, mainly because it had swearing in it. Dammit, we totally should have gone with Jeff's grubby selections.

There was a fair bit of ‘90s stuff in there - an odd reminder of the last ‘covers gig’ I’d done, McCarthy and my impromptu acoustic set at our ten year high school reunion. Don’t Call Me Dude by Scatterbrain - we loved that song, didn’t give a bugger that noone ever remembered it. Bomb the Bass’ surf-video classic Bug Powder Dust, one of Phil’s picks which the Young Ones had heavily endorsed - which I introed by turning to Phil and casually dropping the opening line, a sample from the movie Naked Lunch, “Phil, it’s time to discuss your philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavour.” And then proceeded to fuck the lyrics of, because it had a lot of lyrics and I'd had a lot of beers. Wynonna’s Big Brown Beaver from Primus even got an airing - we’d tried to cajole Marty into making an early escape from behind his keyboards and busting out his shiny new Fender bass, but he wasn’t too sure he could actually duplicate Les Claypool’s slap-bass insanity on strings, so he stuck to the keys. Still went off. There’s some fantastic lyrics in that song, it’s great fun to play live - something which unified most of the stuff we’d picked to play.

Obviously, we cranked a lot of our old Gasket standbys from our covers-band heyday, stuff that had lived on into the Spam Filter setlist, stuff which yours truly - the inevitable limiting factor in the equation - would have a chance of remembering, or at least picking up again sharpish. Zappa’s My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama - the bluesy version he usually cranked out live. Our patented Motorhead remake of Lady Marmalade (though no actual Motorhead, oddly enough.) The Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen - the definitive version of which we’d heard Hayabusa crank out in a pub in London years ago, after making all the locals present stand for their national anthem. Choice eh bro.

More recent stuff? Maybe something written after the kids in the crowd started going to school? Yeah, awright, if we gotta. We swaggered through Electric Six’s Danger! High Voltage! with Marty drawing the short straw and having to do the Jack White girlie vocal part (YES IT IS JACK WHITE. Don’t listen to anything Lena tells you.) We full-throttled the obscure-but-brilliant Godzilla Attacks by the Stalkers, a garage punk side project from half of the Gurge and bits of the Hard-Ons. Godzilla Attacks was the song I would have had played when walking out to bat for my country in a one-day international, in case you ever wondered. It took a great mind like the Tractor from Hayabusa to see the need for such a question as that to be posed, several beers into a one-dayer at the Gabba one lucky day when we and the Hayabusa lads had managed to rort our way into a corporate box for the duration (with thanks to their label’s Australian distributors). The Tractor had been aghast (or as aghast as the Tractor ever got) that I’d not picked an Acca Dacca song. His, surprisingly enough, wasn’t Back In Black - he had a similarly evangelical approach to that song as I did, having had a similarly religious experience with the Live album version in his youth - but Night Prowler off Highway to Hell. It was all about the first 30 seconds, he maintained, which was all that you’d get to use anyway when striding out to bat giving it the windmills and shit. He’d clearly thought about this a lot. Possibly too much, but that was the Tractor, a great philosopher of our time.

Of course we had to get a ‘Busa track in there - I’d wanted us to bust out my all-time favourite, Wookies Don’t Live On Endor, but Marty couldn’t remember the words and nor could I, which was a bugger as they were the real highlight of the song. So we played their breakout hit Alpha Bitch instead - which was actually bang-on as it was all about the archetypal hottest girl in school, the unattainable thermonuclear goddess all the lads drown in drool over. The irony of that being only one of the ‘Busa lads - the Bear - actually went to a co-ed school and experienced that questionable joy first-hand, the rest of them got packed off to all-boys schools. Poor bastards, they missed out big time.

“Thanks folks… Any alpha bitches in the audience?” I inquired cheekily.

“Well,” interjected Marty, “what about your little friend from the beach last time we were here?”

“Don’t even fucking start,” I directed. Christ, these guys were going to get me disbarred, or whatever it was that happened to disgraced former teachers. I hadn’t spotted Annalise in the crowd, which figured; I wouldn’t have been surprised if her claimed Gasket numero uno fangirl status was entirely talk. Hadn’t spotted Bethany either, surprisingly enough.

“Hey, we’ve been Marty Monster and the Elaborate Hoax…”

We’d been back-announcing ourselves as more and more ridiculous bandnames as the set had gone on. Hey, it worked for the Presidents of the United States of America - and we’d played one of theirs as well, as it turned out.

“As Phil said earlier, we’ve got to get out of here before the real band turns up, so this is our last one.”

I glanced around the room, now at least half-full (we were a ‘room-half-full’ kind of band tonight) of mostly shining, captivated faces, enjoying themselves. I leaned back over the mike; my voice was low, conspiratorial, almost apologetic.

“I’d like to dedicate it to a special girl… a special blonde girl… who I used to share my life with, and who I cared about a lot. Things were great with her.”

A little ironic, confessional chuckle.

“This lot couldn’t believe I’d been fucking dumb enough to break up with her, and they’re absolutely right. I can’t believe it either. But what’s done is done…”

The frisson that was currently flickering through the audience, or selected bits thereof, was gratifying. I waited a beat before slyly delivering the payoff line.

“Her name was Jessica,” I added, and smirked a little at the looks of confusion among the locals I'd clocked in the audience. “Her fault all of this shit happened, you know. Ten years ago, I was doing teaching at uni, these two were doing music, this one was at Gatton Animal Molestation College so fuck him, and our MIA, Uncle Sam, was working for the local paper, getting fuck all of no action and generally hating life. Jessica was an enviro science student who happened to double as a super-hot barmaid. Optimal. Anyway… this story has a point, I promise… we were all despairing of our man Sam the miserable bastard and whether anything could be done for him. Whereupon Jess had the idea of telling her cute friend who he had his eye on that he was lead singer in a band…”

“Course it didn’t actually get him fuckin' laid, did it?” the Jeff pointed out.

“Not a hope,” I concurred. “Nor did it help these other two bastards pass their audio engineering assessment task set by their vindictive arsehole of a lecturer…”

“You mean our former manager,” Marty quipped.

“You mean our current manager,” the Duffer corrected, speaking for himself and the Jeff.

“You mean THAT GUY??!!” I declared, as I recognised the shiny head at the back of the room, ducking for cover as he was pointed out by those around him. He hadn't been sighted at curtain-up, but Kretin had made it after all. “Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Kurtin!” Cue rimshot from Phil. “Someone buy him a drink! Something cheap, preferably.”

“Yeah. Fourex Light,” suggested the Jeff.

“Fuck yes. In a plastic cup.”

“With an umbrella and a curly straw. And a bit of fruit.”

“Yeah, citrus. He needs vitamins,” noted Marty. “Looks a bit scurvy ridden.”

“Anyway… to Jessica.” I raised my alarmingly warm Heineken in a toast to the audience. “Without whom we quite literally would not be here today. Careful what you wish for, it just might come true.”

“Anyway Angus. Enough about your tortured love life, you self indulgent prick…”

“Isn’t she married to some bloody enormous Queensland rugby player now, Angus? Like, really really huge?”

“Yes. Quite. Thanks for that Marty. Before I get the Jesus suffering fuck beaten out of me, shall we get on and play the song now?”

The song, as per programme, was Faded, by Ben Harper. A good set-ender. Which was good, because it was the end of the set. And we had half an hour to ourselves, which was tops.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” I asked Lena.

“Not bad for crusty old has-beens,” she noted. I’d actually meant the McCarthy stuff, but if she didn’t want to discuss it, fair enough. It might have been ten years ago, but she still remembered pretty clearly why McCarthy was hating life at that point.

Backstage was buzzing. The dust hung in the air in the dingy little band room - all band rooms were dingy and little at venues like this - and as the light shone through it the place had a hazy, almost ethereal air to it. So many familiar, surprisingly friendly faces - it seemed like half the Brisbane music scene had trekked out to Straddie to come see Marty and the boys (but mostly Marty) wobble around one last time and get their belated send-off. Not just industry people of course, but our mates as well, who Danno from Exocet had begun shoulder-tapping with backstage passes on our request - Mad Mick, Dr Cletus and Disco Stu of course, Kretin (presuming he counted as a mate?), Jono from the Box and sundry other 'identities', and in almost as surprising an appearance as Stu, our old neighbours Bill and Ben, who’d been sure to remind us of their key role in our success, having put Marty and Phil’s failed assessment task on high rotation on student radio.

“Yeah,” I conceded, “but neither of you are anywhere near as hot as Jess was, so no song dedication for you.”

These days Bill and Ben did the morning shift on a Sunshine Coast commercial FM station - the mere thought of those dissolute and shabby bastards from the Stoned Roses enthusiastically back-announcing Shakira or Beyonce at stupid o’clock in the morning simply boggled the mind, even setting aside the prospect of either of them wilfully getting out of bed at even-stupider o’clock to drive to the studio for work. They’d clearly cleaned up their act for public consumption, but I got the feeling they still smoked a fair amount of weed. Probably from the fact they joined Phil out the back in the loading bay during set break and smoked a fair amount of weed until we dragged him away by his toenails to play our ‘Gasket’ set. To be fair, that was Phil’s setbreak ritual, and had always been; Marty’s rituals seemed to have changed - these days he appeared to be channelling Moby, curled up cross-legged in a corner, fingertips to temples, eyes closed. “Helps me find peace, find my centre,” he explained once I’d buggered it up for him by asking what he was up to.

“It’s somewhere around there I think,” I suggested, pointing to his chest.

His approach made vague sense though, it was usually a zoo backstage at Gasket gigs, though I’d always imagined his were more restrained and lacked some of the rawk ‘n’ roll intensity (read debauchery) that ours had, particularly late in the day when McCarthy was running around with his fuckwit scenester entourage. Jeff’s ritual, such as it was, was to indulge in a text conversation with his significantly better half while he soothed his throat with a chilled ‘Mika Heikenen’ from our rider (yes we had stupid nicknames for Heinekens as well as Extra Drys).

Mind you, if anyone’s vocals were feeling the pinch, it was mine. I’d forgotten to what extent a good solid set could rip the shite out of your voice. The way this was going, I’d be mute tomorrow. Not that any other bastard would have sympathy for me, of course. Ah well, long term pain for short term gain; it’d mean I could better pull off that gravelly, seedy vocal which I’d built my live presence on. And it gave me an excuse to chug down a few soothing ales in the name of thirst aid.

“How you travelling, big fullah?” Jeff inquired, pressing SEND and flipping his phone shut.

“I’m there or thereabouts,” I mused philosophically. “Should be a good night, if my voice holds out.”

“Ah well,” he remarked, “you’ll probably find it easier to pull with no voice. Can’t fuck it up by saying anything dumb like usual can you?”

“Thanks for your support, arse burgler,” I thanked him. “Shouldn’t you be at home reading bedtime stories to children? You’re a shit parent. I’m calling DOCS.”

“Yeah, tell ‘em I’m here trying to stop you interfering with the children around here…”

“Oh fucking Christ,” I remarked.

“What?” Jeff hadn't thought it'd been that bad a call, but I hadn't been referring to his line.

“Fuckin’ poser in the muscle shirt and ripped jeans. With the earpiece.”

“Yeah… he’s security isn’t he?”

“Nah. Plain-clothes fuzzy muff. Colour of a two cent piece, dirty fuckin’ copper…”

“Faaaarrk… that’s your man?” the Jeff remarked, peering through the backstage melee. He meant 'your man' in the Irish sense, not in the sense that Brad Toogood was in fact my man in a 'significant other' context. I’d forgotten for a moment that he’d never actually met his potential brother-in-law (though that potential had dropped to near negative levels in the past few weeks.) “Mate, seriously, he looks like he wants to start a nuclear war, spend all your money and has something to put in you.”

It seemed Danger! High Voltage! wasn’t the only Electric Six song that Spam Filter were familiar with.

“Yeah, it’s a bit metrosexual…”

“Mate, that’s well beyond metrosexual,” the Jeff retorted. “That is.. man… who does with… another… man.”

“Was that supposed to be Borat?”

“Ah get fucked, you’re not exactly man of a thousand fucking voices yourself. One if you’re lucky, the way you’re travelling.” He nodded over my shoulder. “This belongs to you too I guess?”

I turned. 'This' was a dark-haired girl, late twenties, well-tanned. She had shoulder-length tousled, wavy hair - the last time I’d seen her, years ago, it’d been straightened and hacked into a severe bob like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction - a clingy, sleeveless Killers-emblazoned tanktop which revealed gym-toned arms, and three-quarter (probably closer to two-thirds) capri pants that revealed sleek, muscular calves. I hadn’t picked Kas Casoli as a gym junkie, but we all have our failings. Mine, seemingly, was still being disturbingly attracted to old flames and flings. Damn she was looking good… She gave me her usual devious smile. Two-faced, untrustworthy and manipulative… girl, we could have been soooo good together.

“Hey,” she said. That sardonic, seen-it-all smirk. Battle had been joined. “Thought this was Schoolies Week, not the Where Are They Now Files…”

“That asexual Mormon wanker’s OK with having his fuckin' New Romantic band being plastered across your rack then Kas?” I replied. “False advertising, surely?”

“You’re all class, Angus,” she smiled. “As always.”

“Jeff, you remember Carola Casoli, from the Murdoch toilet paper printery?” He didn’t, but then again they’d only overlapped for a brief time in the Gaskosphere, and even then she used to change her look more often than Jeff changed his jocks. Weekly, at least. “She was the one who used to get scooped by Lena all the time…”

“Helps if you’re fucking the lead singer I guess,” she remarked cattily.

“Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Oh hang on. You did try it, didn’t you…”

“Gee thanks, remind me of my mistakes.” A smile curled the corner of her mouth; she was enjoying this just as much as I was. “And since when did you count as lead anything?”

“I’ll leave you guys to it,” the Jeff declared, surprisingly uncomfortable, as his phone’s text alert triggered. “You clearly have a lot of catching up to do…”

He disappeared, and before I knew it, those lovely brown arms were around my midriff. Was this a hug? From Kas Casoli? Does… not… compute… I reciprocated as best I could, with confusion in my mind and Toogood’s accusing glare in my peripheral vision. My eyes met hers; they offered possibly the first genuine smile I could remember. “Hey, it’s great to see you guys back,” Kas admitted, almost apologetically.

“I thought you hated our stuff?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, with a smile that indicated she was utterly unconflicted by the idea of missing the Gasketeers as people, though not in any way as musicians. “Where’s your twin?”

She meant McCarthy, I presumed. I shrugged. “Indisposed,” I replied non-committally.

That remark had piqued her journalistic curiositites, but equally, she seemed to get the drift that I wasn’t going to be any more forthcoming than that. “Ah well,” she remarked, “your brother’s better looking anyway.”

“He’s also married,” I noted.

“Hey, don’t jump to conclusions…” She held up a rather dramatic engagement ring; given my relatively recent experience in the field, I’d have said two or three gorillas at least. “Spoken for,” she declared proudly. “Makes me qualified to comment objectively.”

I was actually disappointed. Actually I was probably more disappointed by the fact that I was disappointed she was spoken for, than by the fact she was spoken for. Uh, yeah. That made sense when I thunk it.

“Poor investment decision on someone’s part,” I deadpanned. For which I scored a sour look. Wow, I’d actually managed to overstep the mark. After all these years of barbed banter and insults, I’ve finally managed to offend her. Should have been cause for celebration, but somehow I found myself apologising, wondering inwardly why I was suddenly so keen to placate her. Not that there was much wondering required; I knew she was hot, I knew she what she was capable of, and I also knew it’d been many, many months of drought and despair across the previously fertile landscape of my romantic history. And I’d not had sex in fucking ages neither. All the temptation around here was doing my fucking head in, and even the outsidest of outside chances of bedding Kas this evening was worth a face-saving apology to protect.

“What about you?” she inquired tartly. “Still the biggest slut in the industry, even five years removed?”

“Not so much,” I replied. Bloody mind reader. “As it happens, my fiancee dumped me last month…”

I was expecting a little pity, maybe even a sly jibe at my expense. What I wasn’t expecting was… laughter.

“Oh no you don’t,” she declared, with that room-splitting cackle of hers. “Not twice in one lifetime, boy. You’re not trying THAT stunt again, Andy.”

“Stunt?” queried I, all innocence.

“Don’t play games with me, boy,” she offered tartly. “I’m not an endless repository of sympathy fucks, you know.”

“And there I was thinking it was true love,” I offered, playing at hurt feelings.

“A momentary lapse of reason,” she replied, most amused. “Afraid I don’t make a habit of sleeping with anyone in the industry, unlike certain of my un-professional colleagues…”

“Didn’t realise you had a choice...”

“…Or at least if I do I don’t let it affect my work,” she finished, sidestepping my quip.

Did I mention she and Lena didn’t get on? They couldn’t have been more different, despite both being music journos and both being of Italian migrant extraction - Lena was Polish-Italian, melancholy and ironic; Kas was Swiss-Italian, metallic and abrasive. The steel wool of music journalism.

“Yeah,” I recalled. “You still gave us appalling writeups… even after I got you off more explosively than you’d ever done before, at least so you claimed at the time.”

“Sure I did,” she replied dismissively, but she wasn't winning this. This bullshitting-loudly-about-shagging thing was great fun; at some stage in this battle I was bound to embarrass her into defeat.

“Didn’t the rooms on either side end up calling hotel security to complain about the noise you were making?”

We were beginning to draw attention to ourselves. The ground was sliding out from under her, I was winning. Damn this was fun. I’d forgotten how much enjoyment could be gained by baiting Kas Casoli. Probably the second most entertaining use she could be put to…

“Yeah, well, you have to have some redeeming skills. You’re disgusting, you’re crass, and you’re a shit musician. Being such a massive slut has to mean you’re good at something…”

I laughed. “Can I get that in writing? That’s the best review I’ve ever gotten out of you.”

“Hey,” she said, momentarily serious, “is that why you… I mean, your fiancee…”

“Nup,” I replied. “And that’s the irony. She left me because she thinks I slept with someone.”

“And you haven’t?”

I shook my head wryly. “Scout's honour.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Were you ever a scout, Andy?”

“Oh fuck no.”

She laughed. “Hey look, I’d be sympathetic, but that’s just years of massive slut karma catching up with you.”

“I’ve heard about you being sympathetic,” I remarked. “Very interesting ways of expressing your sympathy…”

“Fuck off,” she suggested. “So was there anyone in particular who you were alleged to have slept with?”

“Alleged… very court-reporter of you, Kas,” I commended. “Yeah, there is, actually. Lena.”

Kas nearly exploded. She’d been taking a sip from the straw in her Jack-and-postmix-Coke, and I swear, there was almost liquid-out-the-nostrils action. Which would have stung.

“You didn’t, right?” she wanted to know.

“Of course not,” I replied, a little defensive. Hadn't expected her to be so strident. “I’ve known her half my life, for most of which she’s been Sam’s girlfriend. Even with him not around, it’d be like sleeping with a sister.” I mused further. “Well, maybe not a sister… Maybe a cousin. A second cousin I hadn’t seen for a lot of years…”

“TMI. Don’t wanna know,” she declared. “You are from the country after all. Hey, good luck for the next set, hope you don’t suck as much. You going to keep playing other people’s songs?”

“Nah, going to start playing crap we actually wrote.”

“Cool,” she nodded. “Works for me, I was hoping to get the early ferry.”

“Ah fuck off Carola. I hope your wedding gets rained out, your husband runs off with the guy who waxes his bikini line, and your children grow up to be Scientologists.”

I was still grinning long after she’d waved me a cheery, if slightly ambiguous farewell, and disappeared back into the throng. The Jeff re-emerged from reporting back to base. I couldn’t let his abrupt bailing go without comment, and made some gentle inquiries. “The fuck happened to you there?” I inquired gently.

“Mate,” he told me, “there’s a lot of things wrong with the world. She's pretty rooted. But somewhere near the top in all time fucking wrongness is the mental image of you and Little Miss Capri Pants on the fuckin' job…”

“Ah come on,” I quipped. “She’s pure evil, but you can’t fault her looks.”

“Nah, not my thing,” he replied flatly. “Looks too much like Rafael Nadal.”

I spluttered into laughter. Ah bollocks, she did too. Talk about fucking it up for everyone.

“And by the way,” he added wryly, “are you sure you really needed to have that conversation loud enough for the entire room to hear?”

He actually seemed half-serious. I tapped his shoulder and beckoned his ear close enough for a quieter answer.

“How else am I going to make sure the Senior Cunts-Table over the way there manages to take good enough notes to report back to HQ?”

The Jeff’s response was equally consipiratorial.

“Great, but there’s a certain Nigella Lawson lookalike out the back who’s not exactly looking thrilled with what she’s been hearing, yeah?”

I winced. Walked into that one, really.

“Look, she’s been off the air all day.” I waved a hand dismissively, like it wasn't my shit to solve. “There’s gonna be some deep seated McCarthy issues surfacing there. Whatever shit Kas talks about her has nothing to do with me.”

“If you’re agreeing with it though…” He shrugged, slapping me on the shoulder. “Look, you run your own business, but you don’t have to be a cunt all your life, you know.”

I was busily joining the dots in the background. The only picture I came up with was one in which Mrs Rebecca Young and her offsider here were playing Cupid to try and pair up their hopeless, miserable single friends so they could all live happily ever after. The level of sympathy I was receiving after breaking up with Bethany, considering she was meant to be my life partner for ever and ever amen, was a little on the under-fucking-whelming side. It didn't take a genius to figure (which was just as well) my family and friends had pretty much been expecting, even secretly hoping for it all to go pear-shaped, for whatever reason - probably just not liking Bethany, which probably because she’d never made herself available to so much as meet them. I’d have been pissed off about it, but I had trouble developing enough energy to be even mildly miffed, given that I didn’t like Bethany much any more either. Let’s face it, our relationship was still twitching on the slab awaiting post-mortem - it hadn’t even been formally bagged, boxed and buried - and I’d already turned my mind to new things, so I could hardly expect anyone else to see things differently.

But Lena? No. Jeff had that flat-out wrong. Sure, Lena might be pissed at me for declining to install the verbal smackdown on Kas over her comments about sleeping with people in the industry etc; I thought I’d done plenty to point out the hypocrisy there, but maybe she had something to be unhappy about. Same with Kas’ fairly obnoxious incredulity at the mere idea of me lowering myself to sleeping with Lena; if either of us would have been lowering their standards there, it wouldn’t have been me. But I couldn’t see anything else in that conversation which Lena had a right to crack the shits over. My denial of having slept with her, and my reasons why - that we were old friends who’d never, ever, thought of each other sexually, with McCarthy around or not - were cast iron fact, and I knew 100% that Lena felt the same way. The only person who could possibly be unhappy with that would be someone who wanted us to end up together because it made them feel good to think we’d end up together. Because noone on earth could possibly be happy if they weren’t in a relationship, could they?

Fucking couples. Fucking interfering bastards they were.

I’d been single only a couple of… days? Weeks? Trouble was there wasn’t a nice neat ‘end date’ that could be quoted. I’d not had a conversation with Bethany for five weeks, other than in my head, so let’s say no more than that. Anyway, I’d been single again not very long, and already I hated couples as much as I used to as a ‘confirmed bachelor’ (or, as Kas would have called it, a massive slut). Interfering, matchmaking, patronising bastards, couples were. I wasn’t this bad when I was actually part of one, was I?

But I was enjoying myself far too much to worry too much about that kind of rubbish. Lena was having a few Sam issues, but that wasn’t unexpected, or even unreasonable. Kas, like most of the industry faces here tonight, would fade back into oblivion again; it’d been five years since any of these people had mattered to me and they were hardly going to now. Jeff Beck might have their own agendas, but that was their concern. My agenda was one goal: fun. The night stretched out ahead of me like an endless horizon of opportunity. I had beers to drink, bollocks to talk, songs to sing and riffs to crank. Simplify your life, people. You’ll thank me for the advice someday.

Actually, that’s simplifying it a bit too much. Truth was, I hadn’t told Kas the truth. Maybe it was because I didn’t respect her enough to tell her the truth, maybe because I didn’t think it was important enough she had the whole story. Whatever. The fact of the matter was, I’d looked her straight in the eye and lied to her.

We weren’t just playing our own songs in the second set.