Snippets

Here are some extracts from the first part of JookBoxFury.

Disc one, track one – God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll to You

Five minutes later I was wedged in the corner of Quine’s area, an open-plan bunker that he had fashioned out of office equipment.  I half leaned on a filing cupboard in the corner, next to a shining green shrub that looked plastic but had dead leaves scattered round the pot.  They were probably plastic too, nothing there was real.  Quine had a poster behind his desk showing birds swooping over a cliff with the words, ‘They can because they believe they can.’  Every time I got called in to see him I had to grit my teeth not to tell him, ‘They can because they’re birds, you tosser.  Sit them behind a desk and ask them to produce a spreadsheet, then you’ll see a bit of doubt creeping in.’

If it was good enough for Rik Peabody, it was good enough for me.  ‘You’ve sold it to me, cheers.’  I took a long swig of the Jook and then had to clench my teeth, suck my cheeks in and gulp hard to keep from spraying it back out.  One way or another, with a taste like that it was almost certainly going to make an impact on the alcoholic beverage market.

Rik knocked his Jook straight back.  I took another careful sip to see if it really did taste as bad as I thought.  Then I took another.  It actually tasted green.  It wasn’t pleasant, but it was compelling, like picking a scab.  I took a couple more sips.  It got easier with every mouthful.

Disc one – track three: Rock Island Line

‘I will ignore that,’ Pony Boy said, ‘and tell you about the other big prize, and it’s a bit special this one.  Whoever picks the individual song that gets the highest score wins the Zeitgeist Award.’
            ‘Whatever that means,’ Babs said.
            Dr Rococco said, ‘Strictly speaking, I’m not sure it’s being used in quite the right context here, but it means the mood of the times.’
            ‘Who’s in a mood all the time?’ Babs snapped.
            ‘No-one’s in a mood,’ Dr Rococco said.  ‘It’s the zeitgeist.  It’s the mood of the times.  I’ve always rejected the concept of the zeitgeist myself.  The notion that you can represent an era through a simplistic media category is an anathema which ignores the real diversity of individuals and communities.  The idea of the Sixties as swinging, for example: were the Sixties swinging for girls who were driven away from their homes by an inflexible patriarchal society for ‘getting into trouble’?  Were they swinging for kids leaving school at fourteen to work in unsafe textiles factories?  Were the Sixties swinging for…?’

Rik had been reading the programme but he looked up and said, ‘Oh, it was swingin’, man.  You know those were swingin’ times, baby, you know it.  Look at this...’

Disc one – track four: Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

Vin got up from his stool and headed towards the toilets.  As he passed me he stopped and said, ‘This is bollocks.  You know where it goes, “Smoke and drink and screw, cos there’s nothing else to do”?’  I nodded.  ‘Well it should be, “Fight and smoke and drink and screw.”  There should be bloody fighting in it.’  He stared at me, ‘Don’t you agree?  There should be fighting in it.’  He kept staring, so I nodded again.  Vin carried on to the gents.
            Pony Boy said to me, ‘Nice feller.  You seem to have struck up a rapport there.  Music is such a marvellous way of bringing people together.’

Disc one – track five: Perfect Day

Those new initiatives came along every few months to transform the business.  If you missed one new initiative it didn’t matter, there’d be another one along shortly, hyped up even more than the last one to cover its lack of substance and the fact that it was actually what we used to do before the previous new initiative changed everything around in the name of moving the business forwards.  New initiatives were the emperor’s new clothes – if you couldn’t see their wonder, then you obviously weren’t on-board.
            ‘We’ve all got to be on-board going forwards,’ Quine said.  ‘I need to know I can rely on you when the brown stuff hits the twirly thing.  Christ, if I put in a sixty-hour week at the moment it feels like a holiday.  There’s no slack – I need you at your desk right now.  Take a couple of paracetamol and I’ll brief you on the new process change process at the ten o’clock huddle.’

Disc two – track one: Candle in the Wind

Babs had her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.  She looked up and said, ‘What do you want me to do?  A song?  Cool.’  She took a deep breath and started.  ‘I was going to say Sorted for Es and Whizz ‘cos when I heard that at Glastonbury it was amazing, wicked, because I was kind of sorted at the time and I heard that and I was buzzing around like I was running around inside the song then it got to the line at the end “What if you never come down?” and God, what a bummer there I was high as a kite and Jarvis says, “What if you never come down?” and I was like “no way” and apparently started crying loads and got on a real downer and everything and it really freaked me out and we had to go back to the tent to chill out and missed loads of stuff – so I’m not choosing that.  My tune is going to be Can’t Get You Out of My Head, especially with that New Order backing track, I go mental on the dance floor whenever I hear that.  If you want a song to get you up on the floor, that’s the one, it’s wicked.’

At the back of the bus, Rik and Babs had started up on the Jook chant, clinking bottles together and chanting, Clink, clink – clink, clink, clink – ‘Green grow the Jooksie-oh.’
            Nye nodded towards Rik and Babs, ‘You see why the press get accused of making stories up – sometimes you have to.  You never would with these four ways of handling the pop/rock press conference though.  Let’s start at the beginning, number one, obviously, you’ve got the Elvis approach.  Always polite, almost deferential: “Yes, sir.”  “Well, sir, I’m just making my records, I don’t know why they like them really.”  “I’m just a country boy, sir.”  “I was driving a truck and on my lunch break I went into a little record store to make a recording for my momma, that’s all it was, sir.” 
            ‘You know, you watch films of Elvis talking to the press and to Ed Sullivan and those other TV hosts in the Fifties, and it’s hard to understand why people found him so shocking.  His music was being denounced as the work of the devil, and his records were being smashed in protest, but it didn’t make sense because he was so polite: “Yes, sir,” “Well, thank you very much for having me on your show, sir.”  He was a real nice boy, good to his folks, loved his mother.  But then you look at what he’s wearing compared to the TV host.  The host looks like he just got home from the office, his hair’s neat and tidy, like he’s come straight out of a board meeting.  In comparison, Elvis looks like he’s landed from another planet – Planet Cool – in some crazy checked jacket, and even in black and white his shirt’s pink.  He’s got a strand of hair falling over his eyes, which are very dark – “Is that boy wearin’ make-up?” – and he looks out at the audience and the girls start to scream because… because, what else can they do? – “He looked at me.”  Because even though Elvis is saying, “Yes, sir, thank you for having me on your show, sir,” his look and his smile, and – “Good lord in heaven’s name above, do you see the way he’s shakin’ his legs?” – it says that he knows something that the TV host and all the other squares don’t know.  He’d got a secret that only the kids understood, and they wanted to be part of it.  That’s why he was so thrilling and threatening.  But he was polite – “Yes, sir.”  So you’ve got your first approach to press conferences right there: polite, deferential, but with a smouldering threat.’
            I nodded, ‘A smouldering threat, right.’  I wasn’t sure whether it was the kind of media training that Laurence had in mind, but Nye was on a roll, and I was getting to hear him virtually perform one of his articles straight at me.  I wasn’t going to stop him.

Disc two – track three: Rhiannon

Fran said, ‘There she goes again, attention seeking.  It’s not my way – there’s no place for waterworks in the office.’
            ‘There fucking is if you work for the Water Board?’ Rik said.
             ‘It wasn’t me was it?’ Pony Boy asked.  ‘I was just trying the item out.  That’s going to be a great phone-in.  Has anyone else got a story to tell because if you have then – Ex-plaaa-in Yo-uuuu-rrrr Naaaa-me.  It’s got a great ring to it.  Who haven’t we had, anyone who’s got a bit of a happier ending perhaps?  Ray, how about you?’
            ‘There’s not a lot to explain.’
            ‘Oh, come on, mate, there must be something interesting about you.  Were you named after a cricketing legend or a star of the silent screen, anything like that?  There must be something.’
            ‘Maybe your name was inspired by the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray,’ Nye said. 

Disc two – track four: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Rik carried on, ‘They tell you to eat your greens, there’s no need to eat your greens when this stuff’s around…’
            Fran coughed loudly.
            ‘… you get all the bloody green you need from the Jook.  It’s like that old joke – what’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?’
            Fran whispered urgently to Laurence and pointed at Rik.

‘…You can roast beef but you can’t pee soup.  I tell you, a few of the Jooks and you’re peeing like the bloody soup dragon…’                                                                               

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