Carruthers - Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands

We are getting ahead of ourselves here. Very far ahead. Almost to the end, in fact. Time was neither a straight line, after all, nor memory an exact science

I was standing next to a man who had burned a million pounds. This was a rare pleasure in itself. Having occasionally burned money in public myself, as an experiment in defiance and occasionally for my own amusement, I was well aware of the reactions it might provoke in people who could think of money as nothing but good. I had never been near enough to a million actual pounds to set light to them but I had practised on the odd fifty here and there and I certainly had respect for the convictions of anybody who could strike that match and live with the consequences. We live in a time and place where the idea of money is an all-consuming fever, with very few real challengers. To destroy the symbols of the idea of this material religion is considered the ultimate heresy. Literally. Heresy. Even to question the concept of money puts you on shaky ground. If poor people question the great green god they are generally accused of jealousy and envy. Nobody could accuse someone who burned a million quid of being envious. That was an act of war. I mean, its not an act of war like a cruise missile or something (which also costs a million quid), but it certainly annoys people. Although money has no conscience, it can be a blank canvas upon which we may reveal our worst vices and trace the shapes of our desires and dreams. Money is the nothing that seems like everything when you dont have it. The problem is, perhaps, that people begin to mistake the way for the destination. Money and fame are not happiness in themselves and if you doubt that, ask the zombie hologram of Michael Jackson for its opinions on the subject. Regardless of the void in these idols, they have become popular ends in themselves and, as such, perhaps need to be destroyed occasionally if only to limit the power they hold over our lives. It is telling that the ultimate goal for anybody involved in the creative arts is to be remembered after their deaths, by which point, hopefully, one might imagine their priorities will have changed somewhat.

The man who had once (allegedly) burned a million pounds was explaining what it was that he was trying to achieve and why. I realised that recorded music had become trivial and meaningless when I got my first iPod, he said. It just didnt mean anything any more, so I tried to imagine a world where no music existed and it had to start again from scratch.

There was something eternally hopeful in his nihilism.

I too had fallen out of love with the idea of recorded music, although my personal epiphany had arrived on an easyJet flight. I was looking at the back of the seat in front of me and I saw a vibrant picture of a can of Coke and a bag of crisps. It was a flight, so it was perfectly acceptable for them to advertise this junk food at some extortionate price. Thrown in as an incentive to buy the crisps and Coke was ten free downloads of songs. Why would anyone want to spend their lives making something that was given away free with junk food? The worth of music itself had been challenged and debased and perhaps the only way to get people to appreciate it again was to withdraw it. Of course this was impossible, but it didnt mean it wasnt worth a try.

The man who had burned a million quid went on. He said, Music just didnt mean anything any more. So now, I only want to record the sound of the human voice.

Relishing the obvious irony in the upcoming possibility of recording music (albeit only with the human voice) with a man who had just explained his belief in the pointlessness of recorded music, I nodded and agreed. I had occasionally entertained myself with the idea of a big red button that would eliminate all recorded music from the world. Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Abba, and the Spice Girls, freed from overwhelming zombie culture to exist only as memory in the mind of musicians everywhere. No copyright. No restriction. No more just pressing play. Only the possibility of musicians playing music. Would you press the button? Would you press it to save music? I cant remember who it was that told me to remember to forget.

I was driving my Land Rover, listening to the sound of the engine, he continued, explaining the concept further, when I heard voices from the back seats. There was nobody in the vehicle with me, but I could hear singing behind my head. It seemed that our old friend, the drone, had manifested once more to weave its imaginary magic, like the musical equivalent of a random pattern of tea leaves in the bottom of your cup that might speak of the future to those who concern themselves with these things. It was very strange, he continued. It seemed to me like there were three Vikings in the back of the Land Rover and they were singing along in tune with the engine.

Then, while showing us the film of the recreation of his journey, he made some imaginary Viking sounds to better illustrate the sound of his vision. There he had been, driving through some unpopulated landscape in Northumbria, or the Scottish borders, or somewhere in between, and then from somewhere between the sound of the engine, the wheels on the road, and his fevered and solitary imagination, three Vikings had sort of materialised in the back of the Land Rover to sing along with his journey. Being a curious sort, he had joined in with this unexpected choir rather than thinking he had gone mad. He now wanted us to approximate the sound of the (possibly) imaginary Vikings.

I was also standing next to an incredibly hungover and amenable Australian with a voice like a thousand late nights, who had, perhaps, burned a little money in his time but not in any way that had produced smoke and flames. There is more than one way to not give a fuck, after all.

We had been chosen purely for the quality, or lack of quality, of our voices, which were as deep and sonorous as old bronze bells housed in picturesque and decrepit towers. Although we were green with the verdigris of time and other intoxicants, we could somehow sing in tune with the hum of the sleek forces that keep the world from wobbling off its axis and flying through space at a tangent to time. Or something.

The producer played the actual recorded Land Rover sound and we began humming and omming along, in a low-sounding mechanical rumble that worked in sympathy with the engine and the Vikings. The drone was in the key of B, I believe. Everything has a key. Vikings, engines, lampposts, cats, you.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

The man from The KLF sang along and I tried not to feel intimidated by his presence. Somewhere deep inside, a ghostly voice was echoing a memory of a dimly remembered bacchanal. MuuuuuumuuuuuuMUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, it sang.

I dont think it was a Viking.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

We went across the borders, imagining imaginary Vikings, and embracing the sound of the engine that drove us and our marauded voices. We sounded like hungover and considerably road-burned musicians, standing around a microphone, impersonating Tibetan monks, pretending to be imaginary Vikings, in the back of a real (but now recorded) Land Rover, for a man who had once recorded a song with Tammy Wynette. I suppose I had reached that stage in my career where these things no longer seemed implausible.

I had finally become a proper session musician.

I was also going to be paid by a man who had burned a million quid.

The three of us ran through the song a few times.

I dont think my Viking is low enough, said Bill. You two do one together.