Mixtapes

Audio / Video files of songs mentioned in this story

It was the driver's Charlie Pride tape that put me to sleep, 

not that I mind Charlie Pride.  In fact I think he's very good.

Balls called it dreary old country shite and put on his Walkman to listen to some fuckin' noise he picked up in college, 

Simple Minds or some shower of cunts like that.

The gloom was interrupted, softly at first by an Indian man dressed in a suit singing a calypso version of 'Down by the River'.

At about ten past eleven that night I found myself above in the Lock Inn well I’m with at least half the town. It was very noisy, the usual combination of a Take Your Pick live quiz show, lots of shouting and piped heavy rock music, Rory Gallagher I think it was. ‘Messing with the Kid.’

I must have fallen asleep for awhile because when I woke up Rory had been replaced by some marching band playing the National Anthem.

One night we went to the Mirage, a great nightclub about five miles from town, to see Johnny Logan, the fella who won the Eurovision.

Meat Loaf, the very large singer most famous for his bestselling 

Bat Out of Hell album, played there one time just after his heyday 

but he only lasted five minutes before some fella called him 

a big fat bastard and threw a bottle at him.

‘The Mirage, this place, deadly isn’t it?’ 

I shouted over Ram Jam and Black Betty.

That was Queen and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love. “  

Especially for Julie and Shane ...

... from Julie, here’s Spandau Ballet with “True”.

God, she was gorgeous, even if she did look a bit like 

your man the lead singer out of Soft Cell.

I put one hand on her waist and steered her away from anybody I knew.  She put her hands loosely around my neck.  

(It was Adrian Gurvitz again on the turntable.  He's very popular around here.  The DJ plays it at least once during every slow set and fair play to him.  

It is a deadly song.)

'And that was "Once Twice Three Times a Lady" by The Commodores .... lady's handbag has been handed in ... lipstick and a snub-nosed gun ... special request for Patricia Scully ... from Plunkett McKenna ...'  

That was Balls' idea of a joke.  He does it everytime.

We disengaged and walked over to the side of the floor. 

(Oh my God! and "Whole Lotta Rosie".  Just in time.)

 You lurch and leer through 'Wonderful Tonight' by Eric Clapton and the other remaining sonnets, utterly convinced a girl who yearns just like you awaits forlorn in lustful dreams by the door of the ladies' toilets.  In vain, of course.

You're still soliciting during the National Anthem in the full glare of the house lights, at odds with the statuesque solemnity of your fellow revelers, and when the DJ plays 'New York New York' by Frank Sinatra 

- for some strange reason the venue's signature tune - 

as people leave in noisy droves, and staff hurl empty bottles with violence into trolley bins, you loiter with intent, determined, confident, cocksure, trying to catch the eye of the girl who nearly got away in the queue outside the cloakroom, eyeing departing couples enviously, while you reassure yourself, They come here to meet men, don't they?

But like the deadly Santana song, she's not there.

There was a great excitement within due to the announcement of a certain song.  Everybody had their hands up in the air, like a bunch of charismatics praising the Lord, or basketball players, 'Here give me the ball you cuntya.  I'm unmarked.'

'Hands up , baby hands up ... give me your heart.'  A really deadly song.  Ottowan I think it was, the kind of song that got absolutely everybody out on the floor seeing as how you needed no rhythm whatsoever to join in.