A Small Side Quest
1.
Black rain is coming down over Cologne. It is June 1973. Do not imagine Cologne cathedral. Remove the image of Cologne cathedral in black rain in 1973 from your mind. Forget the image. You cannot see the image. No. Don’t allow it back. No.
Sally pulls away from Wolfgang. Wolfie he likes to be called. They are in the back of a Citroen DS. What colour is it? The car is black. Any colour is bad. “Your attitude is counter-revolutionary,” Wolfie complains. He has a whining nasal tone.
“My attitude?” says Sally. “You are complaining about my attitude? You know what my complaint is, Wolfie? Your dick is small.”
“That’s unfair,” Wolfie complains. “I haven’t even had a chance to…”
“Yeah well, your mum told me.” Sally pushes the door open and she is out in the rain. The rain is black. Don’t forget the important details. She sprawls across the pavement in bottle green platform boots and pushes through the door of the Sozialistische Jugend Verein, into a fug of cigarette smoke and sweat, and a miasma of Kölsch fumes. The place is rammed. Schlager polka beats thump against the wooden floor.
She peers around looking for a sign. The bunting doesn’t help, it is just printed with a single German expression that describes the relationship between the working class and their cultural solidarity in the face of the capitalist oppressor and their lackies who are unaware of their class identity through an alienation process that has been as intrinsic part of the ruler’s characteristic strategy of divide and conquer that remains the same as it was when the divine right of kings was an unchallenged prerogative.
She spots a guy with long free hair in slightly damp flares pushing through a door to the left, and follows him.
He walks with a steady sway of good marijuana and a small regular family stipend. Sally’s pretty sure that his demographic is exactly what she needs to be following. He pushes heedless through another door at the end of the corridor. Someone is tuning their instrument too loud.
“I cannot be dealing with this shit, you arsehole!” A woman in an art nouveau print dress is taking no shit. “You switch off all of the reverb or I will be handing your teeth back to you in an envelope, you understand?”
Her interlocutor shrugs a little, takes a sip of wine. “It may make the whole sound landscape integrate less strongly, but under the terms that you have made explicit I feel that it might be a new avenue to explore, Renate.”
Sally was pretty sure she was in the right place. In the damp dark of the space, a few kids ambled here and there aimlessly. Four sets of people with three step ladders were attempting to spread a white blanket across the back of the stage for projections. She spent a little time examining their strategies, counter-strategies and attempted to balance their strengths against their failures. She was pretty sure that by the end of the month they would have a viable solution in place.
It is June 1973. Don’t start thinking about Cologne cathedral again.
A man with a mutton-chop ‘tache steps backwards carrying a large radio receiver. He stops before he collides with Sally and turns. “Are you an Englishwoman?”
“English?” says Sally. “Thereabouts, I suppose. Woman?” She fishes a Rothmans from her bag. He carefully puts the radio on a nearby table that can hardly support its weight. He retrieves a box of matches from his jeans. Lights one. It goes out in the damp. The next one breaks. His third match flares up successfully and he lights Sally’s cigarette. “Woman?” she repeats. “Well, it would be complicated under such short acquaintance to suggest that you were entirely out of the ballpark…” She looks at him carefully. “Why exactly did you want to know?”
He smiles a little. “I was hoping that you might know the frequency of the BBC World Service.”
“In Cologne?” she asks.
He looks around himself for a moment and tries not to imagine black rain over Cologne cathedral. “Yes, or those environs in general.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Holger.”
He nods, picks up the radio receiver from the unsteady table and carries it out through a beaded curtain on the other side of the space. Sally was pretty sure she was in the right place.
2.
An hour later and Agitation Free have played their set. Was it a good set? It was an excellent set, but since you went out into the dressing room with a lady with a rather shady manner half an hour ago, you missed out, man! No, you totally did, and for what? She gave you what? Ah yes, your pupils actually look massive. Look, just sit down here!
Do you even know what month or week it is? Okay good. Weird how black the rain is though, right?
Sally is chatting with Lüül as he comes off the stage. He’s dressed in white and Sally reckons he probably washed his hair before he came out for the gig. Vain bastard. All of that notwithstanding he has Gibson tone for as long as anyone could possibly need it. Having said that, the band started on time, played thirty minutes and then left. Some girls asked them to play an encore, but they just smiled boyishly. It was really cool that those chicks asked, but that would have set back the schedule of the awards ceremony.
“There’s a fucking awards ceremony?” Sally says rather too loudly. The room goes quiet, other than some radio tuning sounds from beyond the beaded curtain.
“Well yes,” says Dieter, “that’s the point of all of this? Didn’t you read the title. It’s The Krautrock Awards – 1973, and that’s why we’re here. And while I’m on that subject, I’d like to say thanks to Agitation Free for opening the proceedings.” A warm round of applause fills the room, and the space is filled with a new sense of purpose. “And I’d like to thank everyone for coming out tonight in this rainy night, and it’s not so important what colour the rain is, and let’s not dwell on the major ecclesiatical architecture of this year’s host city.”
“Ha!” a slightly frankified shout barks out from the left.
“Also,” continues Dieter, “on behalf of everyone here tonight, I would like to thank the guys and girls who are totally not in any way involved with the Red Army Fraction for their excellent work in erecting the projection screen behind the stage. I think you’ll all have to agree that this is a very white backdrop.” He peers over his shoulder. “Maybe in the next… however long it takes, we will have the projection equipment set up,” he laughs, “but I think there are probably at least a few of you out there tonight who are already watching a whole Maharabharat of movies on that screen.” He winks and the audience applauds warmly.
“Ha!” a slightly frankified shout barks out from the right.
A hairy man wearing… well actually nothing other than his hair and an intense expression backs across the stage. “Stereo test complete!” he announces.
“Which brings us to our first award of the night.” A lukewarm patter of applause fills the space. “And it is, of course, the award for the least effort on an album cover this year.” The audience know what is coming and many wander out to the bar or around the back for a smoke. “And as many of you will know, we’ve been here before with this band before.”
“I’m so sorry!” Falk-U Rogner shouts from the crowd. Some laughter.
“Yeah,” says Dieter, “one day we will complain that Düül didn’t put in the homework, but it’s not this year, ladies and gentlemen, even if…” The projectionists have arrived and the cover of Vive la Trance appears on the backdrop. “Even if you literally put a red clothes peg on the album cover and… who is that? Is that Renate looking moody?”
“Fuck you, Dieter! You will fucking die!” A smoky voice rasps from the crowd.
“We all will, Renate,” says Dieter, “we all will! But no, Düül weren’t even close to the laziest with their less-fun-than-Duchamp styling. And indeed last year this year’s winners got the same award for a cover that was so minimal that we might say: how much more like the Cologne weather this June could it be?”
“Ha!” a slightly frankified shout barks out at the centre of the stage.
“Yes indeed! It’s Faust with their album entitled IV, which is pretty unimaginatively titled too, and they’ve given us two rows of blank manuscript paper! My God, that must have taken maybe a minute to execute. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Faust!”
3.
“You fucking wankers!” Jean-Herve is livid even before he is on the stage. He is wearing a slightly worse for wear white shirt and… oh, thank God, he’s also wearing underpants. For now. “You fucking wankers did this to us last year, and why? For a beautiful, elegant, black album cover!” He turns to someone who is laughing their arse off in the audience. “Yeah? You think this is fucking funny? You think this is funny? No, you are the one who is funny, because in ten years time having a cover that is just black and can be… none more black, will be considered cutting edge! But you know who did that first? Yes! Faust!”
Dieter hands him the trophy. It’s a lot like a minor darts trophy but had a piece of manuscript paper sellotaped to the front of it. Jean-Herve drops it like it’s infected. “It took you how long to think of this joke?” he says.
“It took you how long to think of this cover?” says Dieter. The audience are beside themselves with hysterics.
“Oh, funny funny,” says Jean-Herve, “so funny! Are you all having a good time?”
“YEAH!” the audience roar as one.
“I said, are you having a good time?” Jean-Herve repeats. He shuts the audience down fast. “Well, you wouldn’t be if we were playing! You would be experiencing the intensity of the void!”
“Bring back Agitation Free!” A girl’s voice shrieks.
“Agitation Free!” Jean-Herve hold his forehead. “You want Agitation Free? The band’s name says everything: free from the struggle; free from the fight! Is that what young ladies like you want from the experience? I give you six months, a year, and you will be messed up on heroin. That’s free from agitation, you bitches!” A chorus of booing reverberated across the audience. Jean-Herve stamps his bare foot against the stage until he has silence. “This is why we have always fought against the bourgeoisie and their demand for mere competence, and against the prettiness of the romantics!”
“Get your hands dirty in the developing lab, Jean-Herve, and then we can talk.” Falk-U Rogner shouts. A flutter of informed laughter barely has time to settle over the audience.
“I got my hands dirty in your dear mother, you arsehole!” Jean-Herve spits over the front row. “You come up here and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out!”
“Hey, no thanks, man” says Falk-U. “Renate already offered to do that to me earlier and she’s scarier that you… oh, and more talented too!”
“Ah, talent is it?” says Jean-Herve. “That launch pad of the bourgeoisie: talent! As if some tasteful, comfortable measure of value could be applied to the regular nose-bleed of raw experience that every single day I, and indeed some of my conspirators in this ongoing project…”
Seizing the moment, Sally projected her voice and put two words into the centre of the room: “Polydor Records.”
Jean-Herve’s defence became more feverish at this point, the underpants were discarded, the expletives deployed at other musicians he recognised became increasingly fervent, his German became less exact, his spittle spread more profusely across the front of the stage and the audience retreated according. Dieter checked his watch. He’d expected this to drag on somewhat, but not to this extent. The lads had been watching and waiting from the start, but it was time to let them free.
They weren’t vicious, they were efficient. “Now we see how the bourgeoisie deploy the running dogs of fascism to…” Jean-Herve fought off the heavies. He was wiry and energised but they had a sheer weight advantage over him. “They will never listen to the voice of freedom! Fight against the oppressive state!” The audience watched him curiously as he was dragged off the stage by the big guys who had very politely extracted him from the centre of attention.
“And now for our next award…” said Dieter, before Jean-Herve pushed him away from the microphone.
“You arseholes wouldn’t recognise the revolution if it fucked your mum!” He shouted. The heavies nodded to each other, walked back up on the stage and lifted him back down and into a cheap but well-constructed wardrobe. Once they had, with some difficulty, closed the door and locked it, they went out to get another Kölsch. The audience applauded ready for the next award.
4.
Sally leads you outside into the cool air. The black rain comes down over Cologne. It’s almost impossible not to imagine the cathedral under the current conditions. “Imagine the cathedral, imagine the mosque, imagine whatever you like. It’s not like it will make much difference either way.” She puts her last Rothmans into her mouth and leans aside as a guy in white overalls lights it. She catches a look in his eyes. “Don’t be a dick, Klaus!”
Uli wanders by in an orange overall, both of you wave at him and he nods back. “Guru Guru had many iterations, some less successful than others, but yes, I have a soft spot for the whole period he was on bass. Shall we go back inside?”
Some younger guys, also in overalls but with something of the new glam attitude are assembling equipment on the stage. Dieter is working towards the conclusion of a long monologue about Stockhausen. Worthy and relevant, to some of the more earnest young men in well-tailored jackets and polo-necks stroking their chins, but Holger is also giving it some polite attention, if perhaps with a slight smile.
The young turks on the stage make a few swipes this way and that, Dieter steps back, and it begins: an ongoing typewriter clatter of oncoming rhythm. The keys come up, mostly cheap organs, but they have borrowed a string synth from somewhere, and they know well enough that their equipment doesn’t sound professional, but the layers of flangers and phasers are sufficient to keep the audience locked in.
And locked in they are.
The curious factor is that when the fuzzy lead player kicks in, he is sitting down at the back of the stage, not looking at the audience. “He might as well be gazing at his shoes,” Sally whispers.
It grinds down, it works down. Maybe one day this sort of music might have an audience.
“Thank you! Thank you!” Dieter absorbs the band’s applause. “Which brings us to our next award: the 1973 award for a band who failed to get away from 4/4 time: this award goes to Neu!”
Some laughter, some applause, but both die out as the introvert lead guitarist takes the mic. “Thank you, it’s a honour to be here at this fictional award ceremony. And thanks to all of you in the audience, especially those of you who have been locked in as the second person narrative to feel that you need to stay until the end.”
“It’s rock’n’roll!” Klaus shouts from behind the drums.
Sally turns to you with your huge black pupils. “Would you? I mean, any of them. Me? No, it’s too much of a sausage party, but having said that Renate has some pretty good energy. She terrifies those lads, right?” Holger drops another pack of Rothmans on the table and Sally nods thanks to him. She unwraps the packets, turns one cigarette around, puts it back into the pack, and looks back at you. “Where do you want to go next?”