Read Online The Singer by Cathi Unsworth - Free Book Online Page A

here at the altar of greasy optics: the old git with the motorised wheelchair, banging on its horn and poking at you with his stick, yapping Jack Russell cavorting at his side; the black lady with the big blonde wig and the even bigger Russian fur hat, selling voodoo candles from a bagthat trailed human hair; Jangling Jack, a twitching, angular heroin addict, doing the withdrawal shuffle across the floor. And the cast of old timers who considered this their front room, dozing in the dark corners, studying the racing pages or just staring into their pints in search of visions.
    Not for the first time, I beseeched myself: Why didn’t we move here instead of Camden?
    Granger haddone so well. He’d bought his pad in the eighties when this was still considered an undesirable district. Now he could look out onto the park behind his garden flat on Elgin Crescent every morning knowing he lived on the very road that signalled Martin Amis’s definition of success.
    The photographer took another swig on his Hoegaarden, wiped the foam off his lips and gave a wry grin. ‘I dunno,mate,’ he sounded uncharacteristically pessimistic. ‘I tried to do one before, with me old mate Mick Greer, but no one was bitin’.’ He gazed into his glass sanguinely, swilling the last of his beer into foam.
    ‘When was that?’ I tried to keep my tone light, but already I could feel beads of sweat pricking my forehead.
    Granger swivelled round so that his back was against the bar now, leaned backand gazed into space as if trying to see back through time. His arms cut graceful arcs through the air to illustrate his points as he spoke.
    ‘Lemme see now, about four years ago? Yeah, 1997 it was. Year that Exile did the CD remasters. We thought there might besome renewed interest off the back of that, but we were way off the mark. All everyone wanted to know about then was bloody Britpop.’
    This last sentence said loudly for the benefit of those responsible for that atrocity here present.
    ‘Mick Greer?’ I feigned interest. ‘Isn’t that the guy you used to work with on
NME?
What’s he up to these days?’
    ‘Moved back to Oz,’ Gavin finished his dregs with a final swig. ‘Work was gettin’ too thin on the ground for him here. It’s not just that good bands get forgotten. Great writers do too.Yeah, Mick got tired of the weather and tired of living like a student. He’s doin’ much better now back home.’
    I nodded earnestly. ‘I can imagine.’
    A wave of relief swept over me. Poor old Mick Greer, back on the other side of the world. As far away from me as possible.
    ‘It’s a bloody shame ’cos it would have been good to do that book,’ Gavin continued, pricking a new vein of paranoia. ‘Mickhad all the great interviews from the early days, plus he still keeps in touch with all the guys.’
    He leaned back round to catch the barman’s eye. ‘Same again please, mate,’ he called over, then to me: ‘What about you?’
    ‘Yeah, uh, same again here.’ Another thing I liked about Gavin, he never seemed to notice it was always his round.
    As he handed the folding stuff over, he asked: ‘What makesyou think we’d have any luck with it now?’
    I could see the flicker of hope in his eyes and the sly curve of his mouth, and inspiration hit me like a sudden boner.
    ‘Well, Britpop might have got in the way of your plans four years ago,’ I said, ‘but in case you hadn’t noticed – and I’m forced to notice, living in Camden – we’re in the middle of a goth revival. There’s hundreds of little MarilynManson clones sprouting up all over the place, there’s that Slipknot band walking around like the cast of the
Evil Dead
and
Kerrang!
is selling more than
NME
. It’s taken a fuck of a long time, but it’s actually happened. The childrenof the night are back and singing. You should do a search on the Net. Actually, last night I did, and I found three goth websites straight off that had all postedup those very features