Three hours’ sleep in forty-eight, three beers and loud music: I’m in a fantastic realm of dazed desperation, each joint creaking and each breath potentially the one that sends me tumbling to slumber, and peripheral vision blurs. All about me children play with elephants’ trunks, slapping each other’s polka-dotted faces like pillow-fighting bananamen; a number 29 bus slides up beside me at the bar and requests an oil change, and all I can do is empty my pockets in the hope I’ve fare enough to ride its way. Rock and roll bumps and buzzes in the room next door; I can hear it but it hasn’t yet registered; instead, the barman’s at his register; “Seven pounds what?”; okay, take my money; it’s only money; the bus backs up and heads downstairs.

Where are we now? Ah yes. Rock and roll.

The ICA jumps and shouts to Archie Bronson Outfit; I ponder my position, buffeted by passing attendees wanting a piss, sparing no thought for whatever valuables might be on my person; I reposition and ponder further. Does rock and roll need to be as disposable as the pop that punctures my dreams each morning, a loudmouth DJ and sycophant crew bookending each slice of inspirationally-vacuous instant-hit buy our best-of for Christmas music with inane chatter? No. Of course not. The smell of booze in the air, and sweat and smiles and fun, it’s intoxicating. Or perhaps that’s just the beer. I don’t know.

What time is it? ‘Cherry Lips’? That stage is on fire…

Behind the three men of ABO – fleshed to five when the song suits – a projected image is slowly torched. As it burns, so too does the band before it – not literally, you understand, as in this haze and fug and thick freaky air everything’s a metaphor. Except the mighty power of rock and roll: ABO harness the fiery, flailing beast and make it their bitch, reins and lassos and chains and buckles preventing the animal from savaging us all. Thus we dance and stamp feet and clap hands – we play up to the players in the only way we know, the music the strings that shakes our arms and legs into a frenzy.

This room’s getting darker. Or are my eyes unable to keep up – take that both ways – with what they’re seeing? How come you’re okay? Have you eaten? I have? Oh good.

I imagine this is what so many of those… what do you call them… gonzo… no, no, that’s a tour… those writers that penned their prose in fashion that riled and amused and inspired and bedazzled and frustrated and offended in roughly equal measures were watching and hearing when getting remarkably higher than the sun all uppers enough to have any sour-faced miserablist you’d care to mention dancing on air ‘til the moonlight burned his face like a week spent un-lotioned in Ibiza. Something like this: rock and roll that needs no name to connect; no palms need pressing and no pleasantries require exchanging. This isn’t a friendly encounter – there is no passing of gifts nor handshakes at full time. Rock and roll like this operates on a level those radio disc-jockeys can’t see nor hear: it’s under your skin before it’s started, it’s in your veins like liquor drunk from noon ‘til night through ‘til dawn again, it fuzzes buzzes and tickles your ear like a wasp bee fly whatever. All swiping at it does is irritate it, and then it stings you hard and deep.

Son of a bitch spilled my drink. Bitch bastard son of a… nod head and let hair fall into face and cover eyes – they’re closed, anyway – and drift away entirely. Go go go, where the wild roses wear tattoos upon their petals and the ‘Dead Funny’ joke’s neither funny nor dead – it beats, thump thump thump, like a heart in your hand forcefully torn from a chest. Look inside the organ’s empty space: all yellows and blues, crimson sunsets and flaming guitars, primal drums telling of a sacrifice an hour from now, an hour ago, right fucking now.

Wake with a jolt two stops from home, fall off the bus step and fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow. My head. My pillow. Put the trunks down, you little bastards. Where are we now? Ah yes. Rock and roll…

Great, isn’t it?