Read Online Down and Out on Murder Mile by Tony O'Neill - Free Book Online

silently for a while. I had made sure not to get too high before the interview so I could remain alert and enthusiastic about this new employment opportunity. Our money was low. We were facing the choice of heroin or rent this week, and I wasn’t looking forward to being homeless again.
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    â€œDo you like country music?” he asked me eventually.
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    â€œOh sure,” I lied. “I like all types of music.”
    â€œI mean real country music. Not the shit that they’re peddling in Nashville these days. The real stuff. Bluegrass. That kind of thing.”
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    I started to warm up. I have an amazing ability to bullshit potential employers when my back is against the wall. My father went through a period of listening to old country. The Irish like country; they even have their own horrible “country” bands who play an unholy genre known as country and Irish—watered-down country standards mixed with Irish folk, usually performed by a perma-grinning fool in a tuxedo, wielding an accordion like an instrument of musical destruction. Suddenly my mind was able to pluck out a few of the names my father had mentioned.
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    â€œOh sure, I know what you mean. I can’t stand new country. The stuff I know is Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Charley Pride…those kinds of people.”
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    â€œThat’s right!” my potential boss enthused, warming to me. “The new stuff is nothing but pop music! Real country couldn’t get played on Nashville radio these days!”
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    â€œMy father is a big country fan,” I carried on, “so that’s the music I listened to growing up.”
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    Although not strictly a lie, this was a tremendous exaggeration. My father’s country period lasted a year or two. At heart my father didn’t really like music any more than he liked any of the arts. I recall him visiting a cinema once in my childhood, a trip to see a matinee of E.T ., and even then he left halfway through to get a beer next door before returning for the credits. My father can proudly say he has never read any book apart from instruction manuals and how-to books. And music was just something to be on in the background when there was nothing to watch on TV.
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    Brian was asking me, “So you just got back from America, you say? What took you over there?”
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    â€œWork,” I told him, the lies falling from my mouth effortlessly. “And an urge to travel. I worked at a music magazine in Los Angeles. It was a fun time, but I missed London. It was time to come back.”
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    Brian got up, excited, and put a CD on. It was possibly the most excruciating music I had ever heard. It was a 1920s field recording of the “world-famous” yodeling cowboy Chip McGrits. I grinned and bobbed my head enthusiastically. Brian sat down and half-closed his eyes, dreamily listening to the crackly recording of the old dead bastard yodeling over fiddles and banjos. I was hit with the revelation that if funk was the logical conclusion to black music, then here was its white counterpart. After suffering through a couple of songs Brian informed me that I had the job and could start straight away.
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    I was employed for the first time in years, and it did not feel too great.
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    The hustle was this: Stoker produced a magazine that had various reprinted (without permission) articles from American country magazines and a few slim efforts penned by himself and some of his other wheezing, gray-haired friends in the London country scene. But the main body of the magazine was taken up with advertisements and reviews. It was my job to call people up and get them to advertise. I made a base salary, cash in hand, and a percentage of the advertising revenue.
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    Even for this kind of hustle it was despicably small-time. The only money the magazine made was in the reviews. Every day piles of CDs would arrive at the house for review in the magazine.