Wednesday night was dance night. Allie and I would head for a local Blues club where they’d have live blues and soul bands and bop the night away. They specialised in stuff like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, Jethro Tull and Geno Washington but sometimes it was just some local band.
Usually it was so packed you all just squeezed in close to the stage and bounced around for a few hours. Bouncing to Clapton, Green and Webb was a good way to spend a Wednesday night.
Next day I went down town to check out the scene. I was hoping I might bump into a few of the ladies or catch someone that I could score a little dope from. There was Buzz and a few of the lads posing around eyeing up the girls. Buzz sold me a half ounce of Moroccan pollen for a fiver. Assured me it was good stuff. It oughta be at that price. The stuff was light brown and powdery and didn’t smell too much so I was a bit sceptical. After the experience with Jack’s stash I was open minded. This looked a bit powdery but I was up for it. Whatever – it was better than nothing and worth a try. I knew Buzz and he was OK.
“You going to the Harper gig tonight?” Buzz asked.
“Didn’t know he was on.”
“Yeah out at Merton Poly.”
“Should be good” I enthused, carefully sliding the stash into my boot and considering the gig. I was always careful when I was carrying dope. The fuzz had a habit of shaking me down and I couldn’t afford a bust. “ He’s really hot at the moment – that’s certainly worth a trip.”
“Yeah – take care, man.”
“Too right.”
I bought myself the latest IT off the Hippy vendor by the park. He flashed me a V and I waved back conspiratorially. These were the days of belonging, the days of companionship and togetherness in the dawning of the new age revolution. This was truly us and them. The establishment must have been scared shitless. The old world was crumbling. The new world was crawling out of the shadows. A little stoned maybe but it was gonna be a whole lot kinder and deeper.
Then I bought an NME to check out the gig guide. Sure enough Roy was on. I nodded with a smile. It was about time that I caught another Harper gig. I hadn’t seen him for a whole week. I needed a shot of sanity an’ you couldn’t get much saner than a blast of Harper ‘off the wall’ ‘straight in ya face’ confrontation right from the lunatic that speaks sense. It might waver around all over the place but you were always assured of something thoughtful.
I rolled one up when I got back and was pleasantly surprised at how light and buzzy it was, kinda of clear and a bit trippy. I found myself giggling uncontrollably at the thought of getting such a buzz off buzz. It set me off for a good ten minutes. Tears streaming – I couldn’t stop. Wow, good stuff.
That’s the power of good shit. Makes you feel good.
Jack and I made the gig early and got front seats. It always seemed to be seated these days since he’d got big, but that was cool. The guy deserved some recognition.
The gig was right on form and Roy was up for it. Not only did he do storming versions of all the heavy stuff like ‘Whiteman’ and ‘McGoohan’s blues’ but he was on a real groove with the gig-talk – it just seemed to flow and what’s more the audience was getting right into it. I like to think that it had something to do with me. I was busy rolling the odd jay or two and passing them up to him on the stage. He guffawed and chortled almost as bad as Jack and between the two of them it was a riot.
At eleven they dimmed the lights to signal the end. Roy immediately started an elongated version of ‘Highway Blues’ and went on from there. At half eleven the caretaker came on stage and remonstrated with him but Roy was in one of those moods and was getting really into it. He was not to be moved.
They turned the power off.
We roared.
Roy continued in the dark and played on acoustically. Nobody left.
At one a.m. the police arrived and Roy was physically lifted up and ejected from the hall to much howling and caterwauling from all of us.
Even that didn’t deter him and he continued out on the steps with us all gathered around his feet like disciples in the gloom. Jays were passed around and a great feeling of bonhomie settled over the group. This was something special – something that you didn’t buy with your average gig. This was living up to everything you could possibly hope for in a Harper gig. You didn’t get this with your slick Cliff Richard performance. This wasn’t a performance at all so much as a sharing with a bunch of friends.
At the end we all shook hands and went home. This was something to talk about even on the Harper scale of things. This was an epic that took even a Harper gig to new levels of sharing. It somehow transcended showbiz and epitomised the whole feel of the new age. This was how it was meant to be!
My passion was reading. I loved Sci-fi for the sheer scope of ideas it contained. There were no limits to the imagination. I loved Kerouac, Miller, Lawrence, Mailer, Steinbeck, Burroughs and a million more. The greatest ideas of the wisest people were in words that sat at your very fingertips. There weren’t enough hours in the day. There weren’t enough days in the week. How could you fit it all in?
I was reading a book a day but visitors constantly interrupted you when you were really getting into it. Not that I minded that. Our flat was a meeting place, a drop in centre, a talking shop, a coffee-house. You’d walk in to find it full, friends, acquaintances, strangers, rapping, laughing and rolling jays. You find yourself launching into heavy discussions that had to be argued, that were vital to the very existence of the planet. They were meat for the mind. They screamed questions to be grappled with. No ideas were beyond dissection.
“So if infinity exists then finity cannot,” I argued.
“I don’t see that, man,” Jack would bluster. “You can have both.”
“No, man, infinity is absolute. You can’t cut it up into bits. You can’t have a part of infinity. How can you measure anything in an infinite system? Measurement is nonsense.”
“No, no, you can have things that are measurable within an infinite system. Everything doesn’t have to be measurable.”
“Not if you look at the infinity within objects, man.”
“If something is finite then it doesn’t have infinity in it.”
“Yes it does, man. Within an inch there are an infinite number of points.”
“That’s just semantics. Points don’t exist.”
“No. Finity is an illusion, man. We only appear to live n a finite world with space and time. But the illusion of distance, mass and duration are things we have accepted because they seem to work in this mundane world. They aren’t absolutes at all.”
“So what are they? How do we have recorded history? How can we build things? Judge distances and stuff?”
“Yeah, as I said, in a mundane world they seem to exist. They are practicalities we need. But we all have experienced periods when time speeds up or slows down. I mean, man, if you get up to the speed of light it all goes haywire.”
“Yeah, man, but it still follows the same laws. Einstein explains it all, man. It’s all mathematically accurate.”
“Not all. Einstein only explained some of it. Nobody has a unified field theory.”
“This is all sophistry, man. It’s learned stuff going nowhere. How can you prove it?”