*Track 12

Monkey on My Back - 10th July 2018

“How come Elon Musk’s got involved?” Joe asked sarcastically, “can’t see a Tesla being much use.”

“He got his SpaceX engineers to build a mini-sub, from rocket parts,” Stuart replied, sharing his son’s cynicism, “maybe they could get Blue Peter to make one from egg boxes!”

“But he’s there now. In Thailand. I’ve just seen him on the news Mum’s watching.”

“Yeah, he insisted on delivering the sub himself. Despite the divers, who seem to be doing fine on their own, saying they didn’t need it.”

“It’s just a PR stunt then,” Joe suggested, “no such thing as bad publicity and all that.”

“Well Tesla shares were up 3% yesterday, so draw your own conclusions,” Stuart concurred, but then felt an obligation to steer Joe back to the real, humanitarian story. “Anyway forget Musk, it’s good news. They’ve got eight boys out safely, and the divers are going back down this morning for the last four, plus their coach. Pretty impressive, considering they were stuck in an air pocket, on a tiny ledge, a mile underground, and had to get everything done before the monsoons start.”

“It might be good for them, but it’s bad news for me,” Joe claimed.

Stuart knew he was being reeled in, but invited Joe’s punchline anyway, “why’s that?”

“Well Mum’s so preoccupied, following the rescue on tele, I’ve had to make my own breakfast. Not good enough really!”

Stuart, accepting his allotted role in this charade was to defend what didn’t need defending, did so with some retaliatory sarcasm of his own, “it’s a hard life for some. You’ve been home less than a month, not had to lift a finger, been to Moscow and St Petersburg, to see the World Cup, and then, in a few weeks, you’ll be off to Hawaii, via Budapest. But in the meantime, I accept, it’s entirely unreasonable to expect you to pour your own cereal and put a slice of bread in the toaster!”

Joe’s broad grin confirmed Stuart had played his part to perfection. Once his catering arrangements were sorted, he switched to a less sardonic tone, “seriously though, it must have been bad, stuck in those caves for so long, in the dark, without food and water. But I still don’t understand why Mum’s got so caught up in it all?”

This was a good question. While the Thai rescue bid had become one of those classically addictive twenty-four hour rolling news stories, on its own that couldn’t fully explain the unwavering commitment Anne had been showing to the minutiae of its unravelling.

Stuart had his suspicions however, which he shared with Joe, “I think it’s because they’re a football team. Ever since you were four you’ve been part of a team, just like them. Every time they bring one of the Wild Boars players out safely, Mum just thinks how relieved his mother will be. How grateful she would have felt if it had been you and your U13s Wasps team that needed rescuing.”

Joe seemed to acknowledge, through his silence, the potential truth of this observation. Stuart could sense him absorbing the explanation, digesting its meaning alongside his hearty breakfast (self-service having proven no barrier to volume). He was confident Joe wouldn’t let the saga rest completely though without attempting one final come-back, so he hung around for it to arrive.

“That’s fair enough,” Joe concluded, after some lengthy consideration, “if there had been any caves close enough to Chester, Mark would definitely have got us stuck down them!” A little unfair perhaps on Joe’s former, often unpredictable, junior football coach. But, “only a little,” Stuart thought.

It was great to have Joe back home again for the summer, albeit accepting that his stay would, as usual, be a transitory one. As Stuart’s earlier mock tirade had hinted, their son was never keen on staying in one place for too long. He seemed to have wanderlust flowing through his veins.

Having completed his Sophomore studies in Ohio, achieving good grades and a ‘sweet sixteen’ national ranking for his soccer team (another ridiculous Americanism), Joe had decided to employ the common US student tactic of moving colleges halfway through a four-year degree. Having resourcefully sourced a scholarship transfer to a new university in Hawaii he would be flying there in August to start his Junior year.

It seemed likely Joe’s new soccer team would prove less competitive but, showing an increased maturity, he had willingly sacrificed this for a college that met all his other criteria; located in a bigger town with more going on, a chance to explore a different part of US culture, within striking distance of a beach (which in truth had been top of Joe’s list), and offering a quality business degree that would look good on his CV.

Honolulu had ticked all of these boxes. Particularly the one for beaches!

Stuart had initially been sceptical of Joe’s proposed move, primarily due to the extra travelling time required (a further six-hour flight beyond California), but once Anne had pointed out that two years of visiting Hawaii, in substitution for Columbus, might prove no bad thing, he had quickly come around to the idea. Their travel plans were already well advanced for October.

Before returning to the US though (via Hungary), and building on their recent Russian excursion, Joe already had two further trips organised, to visit his girlfriend, in France, and one of his ex-pat soccer team-mates, in Germany.

“I was thirty,” Stuart had wryly reflected, “before I’d seen as many places as Joe is fitting in to a two-month window,” but he couldn’t really argue with Anne’s simple, “good luck to him,” response. She had always encouraged Joe’s cosmopolitan attitude to travel, and the benefit derived from it, his admirable worldliness, was clear to see.

Adding further to this already (over)packed itinerary, Joe had also managed to track down flights to Honolulu from Budapest (by changing at Berlin and LA), that would allow him to join them for the first three days of August’s Sziget music festival before he needed to fly back to start his pre-season training.

As if telepathic, Joe chose this precise moment to move their discussion on from the Thai caves, “so, who’re you looking forward to seeing at Sziget?” he enquired.

“Gorillaz I think,” Stuart replied, “never seen them before. They’re supposed to be great live.”

“Yeah, I’m glad they’re on before I leave. Lana Del Rey should be good as well, and Stormzy. I’ll have to go to that one with Tom though. Way too cool for you guys.”

This was harsh, though probably true. The beauty of Sziget, which had now become a regular overseas pilgrimage (fast approaching a tradition), didn’t just lay with its unique island setting (just outside Budapest), or the broad variety of acts on offer, but also the wide generational span of its audience. Going with a big group of friends, many with kids of a similar age, meant Joe could easily avoid the potential embarrassment of watching Stormzy, or Kendrick Lamar, with Mum and Dad.

Anne, having temporarily broken away from Breakfast TV, to provide another cave diving progress report, now joined in with this gigging Generation Game by declaring, “It’s Liam Gallagher for me, even if your dad’s not keen. And Arctic Monkeys on the last night, though I’ll be missing my boy by then.”

“I’m really not looking forward to the ‘Challenge’ clash on the Friday though,” she continued, “if we get through today. It was bad enough in Saltaire. Can’t imagine how stressed your dad will get if we can’t solve the clue before the Festival gets going.”

“It’ll be fine,” Joe promised, “Charlie and Ed will be there, they can help us. That’ll be our biggest quiz team yet. You’re right though, we need to sort today first.”

With the deadline now just sixty minutes away, July would be their first triple-handed ‘Challenge’ outing since January. Joe had been keen to get back involved, his interest heightened by Stuart’s briefing about last month’s warning to, “expect changes.”

Their earlier conversation, around Sziget preferences, had also suggested to Stuart that he could, while they were waiting, revisit another longstanding musical debate, “the best gig you’ve ever seen?” The makeup of his entries in this category changed almost as infrequently as they did for his largely static list of perfect pop songs:

5) Echo & the Bunnymen, Sheffield Limit, Oct 1980 – McCulloch at his arrogant best, with the band eerily playing from behind camouflage netting. All the better (for bragging rights) that this had been a gig Charlie had to miss to take his driving test.

4) The Cure, Sheffield Lyceum, Nov 1981 – Forever infamous now for Ed’s magic mushroom enhanced observation that the night had all been, “so green.” Even absent hallucinogenic enhancement though you could still sense a great band at their height.

3) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Lucca, July 2013 – A great Tuscan ‘walled city’ setting in which the Bad Seeds romped majestically through ‘Push the Sky Away’, their set highlighted by ‘Jubilee Street’s repeated, triumphal instruction to, “look at me now!”

2) Buzzcocks/Joy Division, Sheffield Top Rank, Oct 1979 – Shelley’s incessant acapella set ending repetition of, “there is no love in this world anymore,” was memorable enough, but unerringly upstaged by Ian Curtis’ unforgettable, mesmeric performance.

1) The Triffids, London ULU, May 1985 – Stuart repeatedly reminded Ed and Charlie this was his quintessential example of a ‘one perfect moment’ concert. In 40 years of gig going he had never seen McComb’s innate self-conviction that night bettered.

While Stuart was suspicious that mavericious may not be a proper word, it still felt an entirely apt way to describe the extraordinarily free-spirited show David McComb had displayed at the ULU, earning a permanent spot at the head of Stuart’s top table.

Much like the earlier set of minimum requirements that Joe had drawn up for his University transfer, Stuart had a similar checklist of non-negotiable maverick criteria. But the late lamented Triffid leader comfortably met all of these:

- A truly poetic songwriter, with an unmatchable legacy of evocative imagery, set to an oddly eclectic collection of melodic tunes,

- A remarkably expressive vocal range, equally at home in evoking quiet personal reflections, or raging incendiarally at injustice, and

- An obsessive, almost arrogant, stage presence that Stuart had witnessed at its self-assured height (in 1985) and never since seen surpassed.

If he ever needed reminding of these many attributes, Stuart had a ready-to-hand, much loved, Triffids vinyl catalogue to choose from:

• Their ‘Treeless Plain’ debut showed effortless promise, and still, years later, left Stuart pondering what dark deeds had gone on, “behind the hanging shed,”

• ‘In the Pines’, recorded in a Western Australian woolshed, showed the band’s playful side, cultivating a new musical hybrid from their rock and country roots, while,

• Their two masterpiece albums, ‘Born Sandy Devotional’ and ‘Calenture’, were packed to the seams with so many of his favourite songs.

In common with a lot of Stuart’s favourite artists though, it was those moments when The Triffids became raucously annoyed (better still spitefully so), with the charge led by McComb, that they were at their best, and for Stuart the true Triffid pinnacle arrived on the flip side of their ‘Field of Glass’ EP, recorded live (for a Peel session) in 1984. With a running time of just under eight minutes this, by happy coincidence he now realised, perfectly matched his remaining pre-‘Challenge’ window.

‘Bright Lights Big City’ and ‘Monkey on My Back’ are twinned tales of tragic, fated romance, told in exquisite couplets of gothic, religious imagery, and driven by the relentless rhythm of the live band. What Stuart loved most though was the clever counterpoint between the two lyrics, showcasing McComb’s role-playing virtuosity.

‘Bright Lights Big City’s relationship fault-line lies firmly with a temptress that the song’s protagonist is desperately seeking to forget. He talks of rinsing out his blood, to clean away her mark, yet accepts this is a futile quest, knowing, come what may, he will, “follow her round like a lap-dog,” and, “eat up her lies like a sap-hog.” Stuart had always regarded this song the perfect aural equivalent of a Lynch movie.

Yet in ‘Monkey on My Back’, which follows, this blame game gets role reversed, with David now shouldering the full neurotic responsibility. Written like a quasi-religious confession, he first admits to, “ascending your sister,” then concedes his culpability in, “attending her breast,” and finally, pleads guilty to, “murdering her ghost.”

There was simply no other paired set of songs Stuart loved lyrically as much as these two, and it had largely been the band’s unforgettable ULU renditions of both that guaranteed the concert’s continued pre-eminence on his ‘live performance’ podium.

Regrettably, much like their fictional, apocalyptic namesakes, these Triffids dissolved and died soon after, with David McComb sadly succumbing to a never fully explained (if undeniably addiction worsened) heart condition in 1999, aged just 36.

Stuart still felt the huge void of all the unwritten McComb songs he would never now get to hear, softened, occasionally, by the odd crumb of discovery, like:

• Tracking down ‘Love of Will’, David’s painfully overlooked 1994 solo album, on which those songwriting skills, feared lost, had risen like the proverbial phoenix (with the mournful ‘Heard You Had a Bed’ being his highlight),

• Continuing to follow The Triffids website, which lovingly sourced and shared David’s offcuts and rarities, and intermittently organised tribute concerts,

• Reading ‘Vagabond Holes’, an anthology of David’s lyrics and poetry (and reminiscences from his friends) which was published in 2009, and, best of all,

• Treasuring Bleddyn Butcher’s 2011 biography, called ‘Save What You Can’, which admirably filled the gaps in McComb’s story. This book never secured a UK publisher, but Stuart still had his copy courtesy of Anne who, amazingly accepting of her partner’s idiosyncrasies, managed to get it despatched by airmail from Australia.

Nick Cave penned a humorous, heartfelt tribute to McComb in ‘Vagabond Holes’ (intriguingly outing him as a fellow list maker!), but given Stuart had already let Nick have the last word on Elvis, he would leave that honour here to one of David’s erstwhile bandmates.

According to ‘Evil’ Graham Lee, his old friend had always argued, “if a song doesn’t contain mystery, it’s not a complete song.” If that were true then, measuring him against his own yardstick, David McComb had surely written the completist of songs.

Raised from his Triffid reverie, Stuart heard David concluding that the monkey was, “scratching its track, in the small of my back, cutting me right down to size,” as the needle neared the EP’s run-out groove. It was time to convene today’s ‘Challenge’ crew.

“That was all a bit noisy,” Anne commented mockingly, as they began to gather.

“Maybe it was, but mysteriously so don’t you think?” Stuart replied obliquely, while simultaneously logging on. The by now familiar password/enter routine unusually delivering, by return, an unfamiliarly presented clue:

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(To be continued, at 10am tomorrow. Can you solve ‘Challenge 43’ in the meantime? If you think you have got the answer, then please reply direct to this email post, to help keep the ‘challenge’ open for other readers.)