Oh heck. This isn’t looking good. This isn’t looking good at all. Our resident columnist is on THE DRUGS again…
There are lots of things of which I’m not proud. My pie addiction, my collection of vintage fingernails, my London Boys tattoo. Which is why this column was difficult to write. What you’re about to read not only makes me shudder with shame, it may well get me arrested.
Thing is, I found some drugs. You’ll know about them, being an electronic music fan. You snort them with your tear ducts until your eyes melt. Something like that anyway. Drugs turn ravers into gorgeous, erudite human beings, if by “gorgeous” you mean “gum-chewing” and by “erudite” you mean “dribbling”. I once saw someone have a conversation with a telegraph wire. This is what drugs do to people. And I found some.
The drugs were bundled up with a bunch of old gig tickets and took the form of a powder, yellowed with age and probably deplete of any potency. It might have been Beecham’s Powder, but I recognised it immediately. It was a pinch of speed. Amphetamine. Billy whizz. The kind of thing that once had Pulp plastered over the tabloids. I don’t even smoke these days, never mind pummel my brain cells with exotic chemical substances, but the instant acidic rush of memories told me the drugs were mine.
These are the images from the 1990s that flashed before my eyes on discovering my old stash. Read this like a montage and add your own soundtrack. Perhaps Lemon Jelly, Bentley Rhythm Ace or Ronan Keating’s Zumba Instrumentals. The images are: tripping the light fantabulous in the meat aisle of Safeway’s; using a Vimto bottle I found on the pavement as a bong; thinking I was late 80s Cher; dressing like late 80s Cher; and being so mashed at a Black Grape gig that I thought my mind was Shaun Ryder’s backside.
I would have taken anything to get through the 90s. It was a kaleidoscopic nightmare of Robson & Jerome, Screaming Celine Dion and Noel Edmonds’ Crinkly Bumhole. Bedroom techno and jungle tore the wigs off NME journos, but most people consumed dance music as a tube of disgusting Euro-cheese chunnelled directly into their pathetic skulls: 2 Unlimited, Dr Alban, that flipping ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ track. It was hell. I’m surprised I wasn’t injecting cyanide.
I’m looking at the drugs now. Do I burn them? Do I donate them to medical science? Does Jarvis Cocker want them? I can hear police sirens. I tell you one thing: reading this makes you an accessory. If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me, you skag-chugging junkonaut.
