Originally published in the Acid Duelling Fanzine: Bare Limbs, 1988
It's maybe 1987, maybe 1988. 3 AM. I'm 17 years old and lying on my back with a face full of liberty caps and Mysiak's homebrew (polish descent, Marmite consistency, woe-full); waiting for UFOs at the base of the monument at the top of Ham Hill.
I'm trying to smoke a cigarette but the space-time between inhaling and exhaling is eluding me.
Someone puts on Kevin Ayers. We all hate it before we hear it. It's hippie-shit; akin in our minds to the Rick Wakeman or late Pink Floyd. We're into Psychic TV (yes, the irony escaped us), The Shamen, Spacemen 3, Coil, The Butthole Surfers, Acid House. For us, the hippies got everything right but the music; Kevin Ayers and all that shite couldn't begin to describe our acid experiences, which always seemed more about frothing and spinning down pitch-black farm-drain ditches, mad-fast industrial techno and the Nova Police than the peace, love and flowers that the hippies kept trying to push.
I had a large psychedelic mural on my bedroom wall with an upside down CND symbol and the words NUclear W@r NoW written in 2' letters. That'll show them.
No one has the energy to turn it off. Someone half-heartedly mumbles something about Throbbing Gristle. Someone in the far distance is running around the hills yelling about thinking in binary.
And then Irreversible Neural Damage comes on.
Kevin Ayers - Irreversible Neural Damage
It builds slow: repetitive strumming, looping and looping, echoes bursting in at the edges. It's dub-folk but we don't know it yet. The vocals start; slurring, front-masked, multi-tracked, spooky. They seem to fill the air. Kevin sounds like something from the bottom of the well. A girl's voice fades in and out. Everything in my field of vision is waving. Everyone's silent.
Who or what I am escapes me
Every changing minute shapes me
What I get is what I yearn for
Dreams are what I gladly burn for...
Soon, someone will use the word 'dig' with no irony. Later, we'll all buy some Kevin Ayers records and we'll let him in. Later still, I'll get into all kinds of hippie nonsense. I'll buy Gong records and get back into Hawkwind, maybe even Pink Floyd.
Cheers for that then Kev.