*Track 21 (continued)
As with most things Ealing, The Haven Arms had been gentrified over the intervening years and now advertised itself as, “a Gastropub featuring a secret courtyard garden.”
It still featured some of the architectural nooks that remained lodged in the crannies of Stuart’s mind though, allowing them to sequester themselves away in a quiet corner, but with sufficient room for three pints and the reams of ‘Challenge’ papers Stuart had brought along.
“I’m a bit worried about this,” Charlie declared, as they took their seats, “a pre-drinks drinking session, starting at three! We might be in trouble later.”
“We could be wasted by the time they play ‘Wasted Life’,” Ed agreed, “best get down to business before we get too pissed.”
Stuart handed out his three information packs, each containing every past clue and solution collated in chronological order, whilst ignoring Ed’s piss-taking (“have you always been such a nerd?”), and set out some ground rules. “I’m hoping we won’t need to go back through all these, they’ve not yielded much so far, so let’s start with last month’s ‘motley crew’. Which, if I remember rightly Ed, was your nerdy suggestion!”
After several subsequent conversations they had stuck with Ed’s initial proposal, relying on his theory that the unusual choices behind last month’s nine disparate groupings of artists, and their works, might provide some unintentional linkage that finally opened a window into the ‘Challenge’ setter’s mindset. This was a tactic more likely to prove productive, they had all agreed, than re-treading old ground.
Charlie took this as a prompt to hand out his own paperwork, similarly ignoring an Ed barb (“it’s like being at fucking work,”), starting with a reminder of those solutions:
‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ by Leonard Cohen,
‘The Second Coming’ by W B Yeats,
“Piss Factory’ by Patti Smith,
‘Hairstyle of the Devil’ by Momus,
‘Silent, Silent Night’ by William Blake,
“We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning’ by Gram Parsons,
‘The Light Pours Out of Me’ by Magazine,
‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik Ibsen, and
‘How I Wrote Elastic Man’ by The Fall.
He had then converted these (which was verging on the ‘sad’) into a colour-coded spreadsheet, showing the three sets of forty-four cross-referenced pairings he had individually pre-assigned and distributed for research. The required output from this consultancy exercise, Charlie had decreed, was for each of them to arrive at today’s review armed with the, “two strongest linkages,” they had been able to uncover.
“So, who’s going first?” Charlie asked, and from the way he emphasised it Stuart realised there were two tasks at play here. Their primary purpose might be to finally unlock the ‘Challenge’, but there was also, undeniably, going to be an additional, underlying competition over who had managed to unearth the strangest, most entertaining, juxta-positional coupling.
“I’m starting with Leonard Cohen and William Blake,” Ed led them off, “a right pair of Romantic poets! There’s loads of stuff online that compares the two, but most of it’s unconvincing, self-indulgent, academic bollocks. Not based on much more than Cohen having published poetry as well as songs.”
“Were there Romanticism links with anything else on the longer list though?” asked Charlie, keeping them focused.
“Just Patti Smith, for the same reason,” Ed conceded, “none of the posturing poetry professors even seem to have noticed Mark E Smith. It’s probably time to move on.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” crowed Stuart, “I found a connection between Blake and The Fall. Did you know (Ed pleasingly didn’t) they once recorded a version of ‘Jerusalem’ for a Michael Clark ballet, called ‘I am Kurious Oranj’. It uses Blake’s original words, but with added ranting!”
“It’s not bad,” he continued, “I might even give ‘The Last Night of the Proms’ a try if they used this version for the finale. Before you ask though Charlie, there was nothing else cross-referencing ‘Jerusalem’, no sun to ‘shine forth upon our clouded hills’.”
“I ended up down a similar scholarly rabbit hole with Momus and Ibsen,” admitted Charlie. “The name Momus comes from the Greek god of mockery, first used as a pseudonym by an 18th Century theatre critic. There’s a review of his, reproduced online, for ‘The Doll’s House’, which I thought might suggest a wider theatre link, remember we had The Dominion and The Crucible in earlier clues. However hard I tried though, it was a blind alley. Must be your round Stuart.”
With their drinks replenished, they started a second run through of linkages, sticking to the same order.
“It’s probably the most Momus has been Googled this century,” Ed resumed, “although he’s still making music, and writing novels. I did get a big hit between him and Magazine. He once released a song, written in tribute to Howard Devoto, called ‘The Most Important Man Alive.’
“A straight tribute?” asked Stuart, “sounds more like a piss-take of Devoto’s self-importance?”
“A bit of both,” Ed replied, “it seems he genuinely liked Magazine, calls them an influence, but there is a great bit in the lyrics where he imagines a chance meeting with Devoto, at some country club retirement home for ageing rock stars. Howard’s dressed in some crap golfing gear, and non-punky sensible shoes, and claims to have spent his years in the entertainment wilderness on Mount Olympus, teaching his god-like song writing skills to Aphrodite and Zeus.”
This was clearly turning into Ed’s tilt at the ‘most entertaining’ title, and he ploughed on, “the best bit though is Devoto, responding to the song. He called it ‘wonderfully amusing’, but couldn’t help adding, ‘but I haven't played a single game of golf in my life’. The pompous git doth protest too much, methinks, which justifies the end of Momus’s song, where Howard admits he may well be ‘the most pretentious man alive’.
“OK, think you might be winning best story so far,” Charlie conceded, “but was there anything else to help with the ‘Challenge’?”
“Fuck all!” Ed chuckled, leaving the floor open for Stuart to start the next dance.
“I did get excited for a bit by my search between W.B. Yeats and ‘Piss Factory’,” he started, “it took me straight to some text from Sylvia Patterson’s autobiography, about her time as a music journalist. She told this story about Tony Wilson describing Shaun Ryder’s lyrics as being on a par with Yeats.”
“We could be in danger of overdosing on pretentious wankers now,” Ed observed.
“And then I got a cross-reference, for the one and only time,” Stuart continued, ignoring the interjection, “with a second site, listing Yeats as one of Patti Smith’s heroes. She played a gig in Sligo in 2006 apparently, just to visit and photograph his grave. I tried expanding on this further, but just dug myself into a hole.”
“You didn’t really find anything there, did you?” Charlie pointed out, “your initial link with Yeats came from Wilson, not from ‘Piss Factory’ at all. That’s cheating.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t spot that,” Stuart admitted, but knowing that his race was run, realising attack was his last remaining form of defence, he threw the ‘Challenge’ back at Charlie, “so smartass, can you do any better?”
“It’s not as colourful as yours, or Ed’s,” Charlie responded, “but I did find Emmylou Harris could link Gram Parsons and Leonard Cohen. She sang loads of duets with Parsons, including this ‘Sweep Out the Ashes’ song, and then covered a Cohen song called ‘Ballad of a Runaway Horse’.
“Don’t tell me Country Music is the link,” an exasperated Ed interrupted, “if it is, I’m giving up now. The prize will just be some shit nobody wants.”
“You’re OK,” laughed Charlie, “I did try, but the queen of Nashville hasn’t got any more links to poets, Romantic or otherwise, and she never duetted with Mark E Smith. And, before you both point it out, that does mean my country road has reached a dead end, which puts me back in the chair!”
Once Charlie had arrived back at the table (with further replacement pints), Ed summed up their ‘Challenge’ progress, or lack of such, so far, “if those six links are the best we can come up with, then really this is just a veiled excuse for a piss-up.”
“And where’s the harm in that?” Stuart replied. “You’re right though, there are just two weeks left until the final ‘Challenge’ and we’re no closer to working it out. We may need to change tack. Again!”
“Maybe we’re trying too hard,” Charlie suggested, not entirely sounding like he believed it himself, “it could be like that old ‘don’t think about a white bear’ problem. We keep imagining a polar bear, but if we just stopped thinking about it, a different answer, a grizzly perhaps, might pop into our heads.”
“Oh look,” Ed mocked, “the 4.30pm bullshit express just pulled into the station!”
“On the positive side though, given we’re between bears, so to speak,” Stuart suggested, accessing Notes on his phone, “it does leave me time to get your input on my top twenty albums of all time.”
Overall, they both gave him an easier time over his list than he had feared, though Ed did argue that selecting ‘Faith’ over, “the clearly superior,” ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ just completed their afternoon’s, “pretentiousness count,” while Charlie accused him of, “an overactive imagination,” regarding his retrospective interpretation of Morrissey’s 1984 lyrics as today’s reactionary rhetoric.
They each then, as he had expected, made their own ‘best album’ counter bids. But with the time fast approaching that they would need to leave for Stiff Little Fingers, both restricted themselves to a top three.
Ed kicked his selections off with a knowingly ‘left field’ entry for Tom Waits’ ‘Swordfishtrombones’ (at which Stuart resisted a strong temptation to give a Fawlty Towers’ response of, “Pretentious, Moi?”), placed ‘The Boatman’s Call’ second, and finished with ‘Entertainment’ as his top pick. “I did consider ‘Inflammable Material’,” Ed concluded, “but I was put off by the prospect of a pensionable Jake Burns later.”
Charlie started with an unexpected selection, The Editors’ ‘Back Room’, claiming he felt obliged, “to pick something from the 21st Century,” only to be met by a unanimous put-down of it being, “second rate Joy Division.” He then agreed with Stuart, placing ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in second, just behind a triumphant ‘Seventeen Seconds’, thus delivering a combined clean sweep of shout-outs for The Cure’s first three albums.
With Ed now keen to depart for Kentish Town, to change venues for phase two of their pre-gig drinks, Stuart found himself getting harangued again (“why do you have to be so anal?”) for meticulously gathering the ‘Challenge’ papers they had used earlier but since abandoned. Spotting an opportunity to ramp up his friend’s irritation count another notch, he chose to delay their departure even further, insisting on reordering the separate sheets (for each clue/solution) in strict chronological order.
As he completed this task, placing the original launch wording in its rightful place, at the top of the pile, an overlooked detail from the one document they had studiously ignored for eighteen months, given its absence of a numbered clue, suddenly stared out at him from the page.
… to win a one-off copy with no likeness
No sooner than Stuart had belatedly recognised this might actually be another clue, previously neglected, he had taken a second subconscious bound forward (thankful once again for his cryptic apprenticeship) and solved it.
Unexpectedly, he had found himself ambushed and ravaged by Charlie’s proverbial grizzly, with the previously unfathomable solution, whilst not consciously thinking about it, simply leaping unannounced from the surface of the paper.
Stuart retook his seat, adding further to Ed’s already critical level of frustration, incapable of explaining his action beyond a heartfelt, if less than loquacious, “fuck!”
“What’s the matter?” Ed asked, his agitation switching to concern, having misinterpreted the look of extreme shock on Stuart’s face as a sign of tribulation, rather than celebration.
“Nothing. Quite the opposite,” Stuart replied, “I think I’ve bloody sorted it. Look at this top page, there’s another clue here, it’s been hiding in plain sight from the start.”
Charlie and Ed, suddenly realising this was serious, also sat back down again, looking at Stuart expectantly, demanding a more complete explanation.
“We’ve always said some of these clues seem outdated,” he started, “so what did we use to call a copy, before The Editors, back in the last Century?” With no immediate answer forthcoming, and his own impatience now growing, he blurted out an additional clue, “think Fax machines.”
“Facsimile,” Charlie responded, but it was obvious from their unchanged, blank expressions that neither of them had yet made the further, crucial cryptic jump.
Stuart could hold back no longer and spelled it out for them, “so what’s a facsimile without a likeness?”, and after a short, teasing pause added, “without a simile?”
“God, they’re FAC numbers,” Ed exclaimed, “don’t tell me it’s been Tony ‘Bloody’ Wilson all along. But when did he die?”
“10th of August 2007,” Charlie confirmed, moments later, looking back up from the Wikipedia page on his phone screen, “fits your timescale speculation perfectly Ed.”
“Which,” said Stuart, pointing back at his top sheet, “was exactly ten years to the day before this was released. Launched on his anniversary, that can’t be a coincidence.”
Being an avid student of all things Factory, Stuart had one final fact (or FAC) up his sleeve. One that sealed the deal, “it also explains the ‘Challenge 69’ title. The elusive ‘one-off’ prize has to be whatever Wilson allotted the missing catalogue number to, FAC69. It’s a gap in the label’s numbering system that’s never been explained.”
“Shit,” said Charlie, having fully absorbed the import of Stuart’s revelation, “that could be something extraordinary. A long-lost Factory recording?”
“Presumably all the randomly numbered clues, and their solutions,” Ed was working through his reasoning out loud, “link back to each relevant FAC number.” He was about to Google this, to substantiate his supposition, when Stuart stopped him.
“No, don’t look it up,” he instructed Ed, “given the way these ‘Challenges’ have been set, we should confirm our theory in an old school way. I need to phone Anne.”
A further piece of the jigsaw, one that had sat unplaceable for so long at the edge of his mind’s board, with sea meeting sky in one confused, indeterminate blur of blue, had suddenly become crystal clear. Stuart now knew precisely where the piece fitted.
“We promised to call her anyway,” Charlie reminded him, “if we made any progress. Not that we needed to until now.”
Anne answered on the second ring, “have you cracked it then?” but Stuart could tell it was a question asked more in jest than expectation. Just like Ed had hinted earlier, he knew Anne suspected their much-heralded ‘Challenge’ review was little more than a smokescreen, allowing them to start their pre-gig drinking earlier than they would otherwise have felt able to justify.
“Think we might have done,” Stuart surprised her, “but we’re leaving it to you to connect the final dot. Can you go to my singles box and dig out ‘Time Goes by So Slow’ by The Distractions?”
While they waited for Anne to complete her task, Stuart shuffled his papers again, bringing ‘Challenge 12’ and its solution to the top, drawing this to Ed and Charlie’s attention.
“I’ve got it. Never knew they were on Factory,” said Anne, without realising the three broad grins she had just prompted, “what do you need it for?”
“What’s the song called on the B-side?” Stuart asked, confident he already knew the answer, although kicking himself that he had missed its importance for so long.
“Pillow Fight,” replied Anne, simply reading it off the label, until the realisation hit her, “bloody hell, that’s one of the solutions.”
“And, for your final question,” Stuart continued, savouring every precious moment of his slow reveal, “what’s the single’s catalogue number?”
“FAC12,” Anne confirmed.
Even though she must have had a growing understanding of the direction in which Stuart’s questions were heading, Anne couldn’t have been prepared for the riotous reception her answer received. Nowhere near as unprepared as the innocent clientele of The Haven Arms though, who, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, were suddenly faced with three fifty-something men jumping around and hugging each other, as if they had scored the winner in a Cup Final. In many ways, of course, they had done just that.
“We’ve not won anything yet though,” Charlie tried to bring them back down to earth as they walked to the tube station, “we know there are at least two other ‘Challengers’ who have already worked it out.”
But this was never going to be enough to dampen their mood. “That may be true,” Ed conceded, “but we’ve got a lot better chance than we had half an hour ago.”
The rest of their day seemed to go by in a haze, the sense of headiness inflicted in equal measure by an overwhelming sense of achievement and an excess of alcohol.
Under normal circumstances they all had big reservations about attending ‘reunion’ tours, or those marking the anniversaries of much-loved albums. It was hard to deny that any real pleasure derived from hearing old songs again, however vintage, became inevitably diluted if the band delivering them now looked more like clapped out wrecks than classic models.
For one night only however their ‘Challenge’ breakthrough managed to carry the day. They all agreed afterwards, over one final, unneeded beer, that the Stiff Little Fingers’ gig, celebrating forty-years of ‘Inflammable Material’, had, much like their own earlier success, proven an unqualified triumph.
Jake Burns might now resemble a man more inclined to be angered by ageism than sectarianism, but a gravel-voiced ‘Alternative Ulster’ had never sounded sweeter.
###
(‘Track 22’ will follow on 22nd July at 9am. In the meantime, it’s good to get reader feedback, so please add a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 21’)