When The Somethings and the Something Elses ruled the world - Part 2

(Con'd)

Fuuuuuck man we thought the Swanlinbar gigs in '71 were wild out but we found the real mountainy people down in South America. And boy did we put the rock into those mountains. Listen, there's too many mental highlights to list and most are just half-drugged mirages anyway, but a definite standout was the charity gig we played for a team of sexy Uruguyan synchronized swimmers. Apparently those fit n'funky well-timed babes had been trapped in the snowy mountains for nearly three months after a plane crash and, in danger of starving alive, had resorted to eating each other. And not in the good way, as John Joe said when he heard.

Anyway, the moving tribute song we played them, (penned by heartbroken bassist Tossy McMonagle about a former lover of his called Debra who wore oversize animal-print bras), touched all who heard it that night. We'd borrowed the tune from Abracadabra and crooned tenderly: "Them bras, them bras of Debras, they bounce like two humping zebras.” They lapped it up. They didn’t understand a fucking word of it mind you, but they loved it anyway. They clapped in perfect unison, as you’d expect.

We got back from South America after a decade of debauchery, via Greece, where we played final summers of glory as Alfie and the Omegas. We found a changed world on our return, however. Deprived of us for the better part of 15 years, all our fans had deserted us; moved on, grown up, grown out of us. Fuck man, grown pubes. The night Hughie Walsh booked us to play on the back of a lorry at the Animal Husbandry festival in Blacklion, and were only the support act to Declan bleedin’ Nerney, we knew were fucked.

We stood there that wet night in 1986 for all the world like trepidatious Princes in our private Purple Rains, facing down a bemused crowd that had either fallen out of love with us or plain just didn't know who we were. The wet weather tap-splatted a grim drum beat on the roof above us. Time slowed down. And just like we did in the study hall at school all those years before, we took one look at each other and we just knew. It was done. It was over. We just plugged out our equipment right there and walked off stage for the last time, accompanied not by the fervent torrent of underwear we'd always known, but by a piercing protest screech of feedback from the disconnect of the speakers.

So there we were. So there it was. The night the magic packed up and fucked off. The era of the Somethings and the Something Elses was over forever, not just for us, but indeed, all across our scene. Big Tom couldn't pull a crowd any more in Monaghan, Spittin’ Seamus and the Shoeshine Boys lost their record deal too.

But was it truly the end, or just the beginning?

I remember lifting the tarpaulin out the back of the lorry that last night and the lads trooped silently past me, heads down. Tossy clutched himself in anguish and had tears in his eyes. I put a steadying hand on his shoulder, but he brushed me off telling me not to be gay. Turns out he wasn't upset at all, he was just hurting because he'd sat down too quickly earlier that day and tourniqueted his balls in his thong.

I took a deep breath and walked down the rickity steps, and bumped right into a lone autograph hunter with tears in her eyes and black mascara streaks on her face. All the hordes of babes, the money, the fast cars, the drugs, the fast sex, the babes, paying money for the sex in the fast cars while taking the drugs, and the hot nights in the Carraig Springs Hotel, and the sex, well, this was what we were reduced to now.

But wait. She was a fox man. An absolute fucking ten. What a chick!

"Tell me it's not over," she sobbed. "Tell me you’ll be back! Please! Make a come back like you always do, change your name to Spuddy Ollie and the Hornrims or something!"

"Babe," I said, leaning into her eyes, "when the magic goes, it goes. You only chase it away forever when you try to get it back and it doesn't want it. It's over babe."

She handed me her autograph book and said "Jeez Terence, you know, sniff, you really were something you know."

"And you," I said, handing her back the book with an impish grin, "really are something else."