The Hot City Symphony: With the smell of oily steel riffs, pit–pony drumming and wooden icons, Alex manages to rearrange our frenzied heads with this monumental offering. Unlike Vambo, we were merely a vibrant collection of elemental little insects, morbidly thrashing out an uninhibited truth. It was just what Alex had dreamed of: a hero all to himself. Vambo started out as a demo with Jeff Beck producing. For some reason he freaked out at the band’s sheer intensity and decided instead to jam around some Stevie Wonder stuff with us. Halfway through Z burst a string and decided instead it was time to sit back, get shit–faced and admire one of his all-time heroes.
The Man the the Jar! it read, pasted on a high billboard above the tunnel to the prison. The Man In The Jar! TV chat show! Live at the theatre! Tonight’s guest… The Faithhealer.
‘Is that Mr Faithhealer or just Faithhealer? You’re not The Sensational Faithhealer or anything like that, are you?’
‘No – that’s someone else, a kind of tribute Faithhealer, I suppose. An impostor.’
‘Just introduce him as The Faithhealer, okay? Just th-eee Faithhealer.’
‘Th-eeee Faithhealer it is.’
‘Pronounced “The Man In The Jar.”‘
Then came his catchphrase.’Stay with the power, cry money! Tourists in a world of pain! Cry money, from the test tube to the grave! Cry money!’ Someone screamed like a baby.
Up went the lights and out went the need for anything but mindless TV.
‘Get me a sponge – I just love this,’ said the Impregnator, dusting himself off.
‘What the fuck do you mean?’ said the Man in the Jar. ‘When you set out to make such an impact, half alive and half mental, you must have thought the wisdom of the world was with you?’
The Faithhealer bent forward as if he had an ulcer and grimaced, tough–guy style. ‘Sorry, I don’t ever remember being that perceptive.’
‘On air in five…’
The falsetto voices of the beginners in the audience suddenly battered into his head.
‘So this is being famous,’ he thought.
‘You misunderstand me,’ the Man in the Jar said.
‘Tricky this, isn’t it?’ Whispered the Faithhealer. ‘Never believe anything that conditions your mind to behave as though you have an ego.’
‘Oh! That may be difficult – you see, I’m a paranoid schizophrenic,’ The Man in the Jar stated. He looked at the crowd then snatched a test smile at the camera. ‘I’m more interested in Tomorrow Belongs To Me,’ he whispered. ‘By the way, you’re not a Nazi, are you?’
‘Listen, you turd, if I were a diving bird, and all the world was a sea of ghostly waves, and I could swoop long enough to divert my attention away from my purpose and swoop again into the falling foam to capture just one moment of truth from your mouth, you dilapidated, predacious fuckin’ nailbrush –’
‘Okay! We’ll be right back after this break.
Don’t go fingering your favourite gal!’ The Man in the Jar swept out the studio to the sound of distant cheering…
River of Love: Game excuse for a pop song.
Check out Magnus the Swede’s version – great!
Long Hair Music: What starts out as a pastiche suddenly gets terribly serious and, with a little bit of dressing, could have been a contender. Repetitive lyric is just Alex getting bored with reiterating the theme of shagging something. This time it’s cherry pie!
Hey… Is That You Pissing On My Leg: Glen Benson, the housewives’ favourite.
Sgt Fury: I’m not sure if I really like this sort of thing. And if the two remaining Tear Gas fans, now contemplating suicide, still hated Alex that much, this is all it needed to start them hacking at their wrists.
Weights Made of Lead: Compliant blarney.
Money Honey/Impossible Dream: Now I can think about it dispassionately, what’s the point of dragging yourself all the way to Vibrania to end up pissing in the wind with this crap?
The Tomahawk Kid: He switched on the TV and watched someone hoovering and then something having sex; someone teaching Vibranian and then someone delivering a quantum cause for the crucifixion. He heard people laughing; laughing at all of this, from gasping, unmerciful corridors and beyond… The Kid felt his eyes balloon from his head, as the rope stiffened around his neck. He heard nothing of the snap – and nothing of his last breath. By the time the patrols arrived the harbour house had been emptied. A service lift brought his body up from the cellar and it lay at the back of a small room, draped in his favourite fur coat. Soon the room filled with a strong–smelling dust, as the body was first sprayed and then sealed. It lay covered like the purple pupa of an enormous moth, completely surrounded by a thick gel.
Anthem: In a circle of friends, within the space of a single song, Alex grapples with the opinions of his forebears. From a limpy–legged fool dragged through the ritual of supply and demand, he manages, in the end, to commit the afflictions of a whole nation to history… And in a way SAHB was born! Somehow, after cringing about sleeping seven to a room, the idea of being sensational, of showing off gleefully, suddenly reminded us how to be proud without bragging about it.
