Dancing Madly Backwards
Now, the question was; why was Terry looking for that scum bag King? The Poet clearly remembered how he and the rest of the Post Moderns had planned on getting rid of King in various graphic ways, most of them not suitable for print. Terry had even gone as far as to suggest that they’d get him high and trick him into doing a chicken race with the band. King’s car’s breaks would be tampered with of course. Never happened, but the question remains. Could he be planning some sort of comeback himself? The Poet always knew that Terry could sing lead and write good songs and hated to be in Jimmy’s shadow. He might even be a better singer technically, but he could never deliver the way Jimmy could, and he didn’t possess the imagination to write the kind of lyrics that Jimmy wrote. Even so…
The Poet left the Gopher Hole with a bitter taste in his mouth. Matt wasn’t much use and he could tell in an instant that reforming anything with that guy would be a total waste of time and space. Is there even a point in looking back at something that wasn’t even that great in the first place. Sure, the songs were great, but the chemistry was only there for the first few months, and Jimmy and Terry never could agree on style and presentation. And Matt and Pixie never really said anything. “A bit like dancing madly backwards” the Poet thought as he walked along a narrow side street leading down to the river. “Old Fish Street Hill, that’s a strange name” he said out loud to no one in particular. A hill full of old fish. Only two things smell of fish and one of them is this hill, ha ha! He could smell the river now, damp, rotten, muddy, but still strangely fresh. His mind brightened as he entered The Town Of Ramsgate for a quite drink before heading home.
Jimmy had been writing a lot in the past years living in the city. Some of these songs were among the best he’d ever written, or so he believed. “They need a great band, not a bunch of has-beens that never should have played together in the first place” he thought. While he was busy peeling off the label of his Bud, a girl in her mid 30’s comes over to his table and says: “aren’t you Jimmy Buxton of Burning Desire”?
“No, I’m Jimmy the Poet of here and now, and who might you be”?
“Nancy Lee, pleased to meet you, but why so hostile”?
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to be, it just came out that way. Why don’t you sit down”?. Jimmy gazed at the girl while she went back and got her bag and coat. “She looks really nice” he thought. Could this be my lucky day after all?
Nancy Lee sat down and Jimmy ordered her a drink, some hip thing consisting of Red Bull with a shot of Jaegermeister at the bottom, The name escaped him. “So what brings you down to The TofR at this time of night”?
“Well, I was meant to go out on a girl’s night out, but they wanted to go to some posh club, and I wanted to go the Gopher Hole, but I ended up here instead”.
“Alone, but not lonely” the Poet thought. “Well, I’m glad you did, cause I really need someone to cheer me up”.
“Why did you react that way when I mentioned Burning Desire? You were a great band and you should be proud of that”.
“I am, I am, but what gets me is that ever since that plane went down, all people ever talk about is the Rooster and how great he was and that it was his band, and his songs”. The reason for all this was that the Rooster, or Johnny James as his real name was, had a been the singer in a very political punk band prior to forming Burning Desire with Jimmy. He pretty much carried on that tradition as a duo with Maggi, a bit like an anarchist White Stripes if you like, up until the plane crash, and the rest is history. Jimmy, marginalized, even though he wrote and sang fifty percent of the songs, and for the Rooster: apotheosis! This generalization was probably not fair to the Rooster either, because he always made it very clear that he considered Jimmy to be the reason he was turned on to power pop and well written love songs, and to dressing up for the gig. And he was dead…
“I’ve been thinking about putting the Post Moderns back together”.
“Yeah? Really? Why would you do that?
“Well, I dunno really… I’m just so fed up with the cover circuit and I had this idea that the Post Moderns was unfinished business so…”
“And playing the old songs again? Wouldn’t that be just another tribute act? I don’t believe for a second that this is what you should be doing. I know you’ve been playing covers for years and do it well, but you should really get back to writing songs again. That’s what you are, a Poet, a songwriter, a style icon. You don’t need to reform an old band that no-one has heard of! It would be like dancing madly backwards instead of moving firmly forward”!
“Hey, thanks, and funny you should say that. I have been writing a lot lately and I have songs for at least two albums. They’re all a mixture of what I love, what i grew up listening and got me started in the first place, and also influenced by what I’ve done in the past. I have been thinking of singing them myself instead of getting a singer.”
“Yes, yes that’s it, but don’t shut other people out! You need a band of friends to lean on and…”
“Hey, stop, how come you know so much about me anyway and have all these opinions about my career?”
“Well, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ve been watching you from a distance for quite a while. To be brutally honest, I was in love with Terry Oliveri for a while and we dated, but he turned out to be totally messed up and full of himself, so that didn’t last. During that time he always talked about you and how you were his hero and how you got him into music, and how he couldn’t fathom why you didn’t write songs anymore. To be even more honest, he talked so much about you that I slowly started to develop an interest in you, maybe even have a little crush. I knew I had to meet you in real life and I have been waiting for this chance for a long time. I saw you leave the Gopher Hole and followed you down Old Fish Street Hill to this place.”
“You’re joking! You and Terry? I was just talking to Gopher Matt about the Post Moderns and about what happened to Terry”.
“He runs the Gopher Hole, doesn’t he”?
“Yes, and he’d heard that Terry was looking for Godfrey King”.
“As it happened, he didn’t disappear, he just stayed with me to get away from the divorce. After a while I realized why he was in a divorce and “divorced” him too”.
“Do you know why he was trying to get hold of King”?
“He wanted to make sure that the rights to the songs you two wrote together stayed with you guys and not King. Also he wanted to find out if the name “Post Moderns” was owned by the band or by King”
“Oh, was he thinking of reforming the band with himself as leader”?
“No, he wanted to make sure no one could reform the band with that name”?
“Why”?
“Because he wants you to make a comeback as yourself”!
“Wow, I’m gobsmacked! Why hasn’t he contacted me? We could have talked about doing something together”.
“No, you don’t get it! He doesn’t want to play. He’s happy doing advertising and writing jingles for radio and TV. He wants you to do it alone. Can’t you see? He wants you to make it again. He wants you to be the big star you were always meant to be. He remembered the first time he saw you, stepping on to a bus, where he was already sitting, and how the air stood still when you entered. You have always been his hero. What happened when you moved down to London all those years ago was just a youth thing. Insecurity. Kids stuff. He still loves you man, and so do I”. And with that Nancy Lee and the Poet left the Town of Ramsgate and headed for Jimmy’s flat in Hoxton.
What happened that night will not be described here, simply because that is not what this is about. Jimmy never really considered himself much of a lover anyway. He just accidentally rode along with whatever came his way. A desperate romantic maybe but no dancer!
