Tall Tales And True - the confessions of a former music critic, part one

I woke up, and my face was floating in vomit.

Now, this wasn’t so strange in itself. What was odd, however, was that the door to my hotel room was half-open and my possessions nowhere to be seen. My bag, with its collection of Daniel Johnston drawings and Gameboy and passport, and exclusive interview tape featuring Beck talking to Lou Barlow – it was gone. My shoes were gone. All that remained was a dull familiar ache at the back of my head, and an amorphous, sticky substance coating half my body.

A man entered. Another man entered. They were wearing police uniforms – and me with no shoes. They asked me to come downstairs, and out into the street with them: they gave me a slip of paper instructing me who I was and told me not to lose it. They had no idea where the Daniel Johnston drawings were, or the Gameboy. But at least they knew what the latter was. So I walked back along the streets of Chicago, with no shoes on my feet and a slip of paper in my hand stating who I was. Look! Here I am! It says so.

My companion was waiting for me, back at the hotel. What shall we do now, he asks – and I say, let’s drive to St Louis, it’s only 10 hours away and we’ve nothing better to do. Look, I know who I am. People won’t be giving me such strange looks once I show them this slip of paper. Let’s go to St Louis, home of that crazy-ass big McDonalds archway and river cruise boats where gambling takes place on the opposite shore. He says, you’ve got no shoes on. I say, I know.

So we drive to St Louis. It’s evening when we arrive, and what do you know – there’s a big crazy-ass rock show taking place there, with lights and noise and people and everything. I say, let’s go to this rock show. So we do. The guitarist sees me, and he grabs me, and he says... and I say, I know. But look, there’s a slip of paper here saying who I am. Here. And he says, take this bottle of whiskey and this video camera with no batteries and go down the front of our crazy-ass rock show and video us. (I didn’t know that the video camera had no batteries in, and it was probably his way of losing the spare. But I’ve always appreciated politeness.)

So I’m down the front of this rock show, and I’ve got this video camera in one hand – whiskey in another – and I’m filming the singer up-close, even with all these crazy-ass lights and noise and sound and crowd screaming, when suddenly she sees me down the front, and starts freaking out. I guess.

“TURN THE HOUSE LIGHTS ON NOW!” she commands. “NOW! Shine them on this man here, with the video camera – this, ladies and gentleman, is the man that discovered Nirvana, the man that discovered Pavement, the man that discovered my band, the man that invented...”

And so on. The lights are turned up bright, and I find myself stared at from all sides, like a red-arsed baboon with owl vision. I lean forward and grab the singer, and say, “Hey you want me to come up on stage and sing a few numbers with you? Sure, I’ll come up on stage and sing a few numbers with you”.

So picture this. Someone’s given me a microphone, and the crazy-ass rock crowd are screaming with something approaching delirium because they figure that I must be someone famous and even if I’m not it’s always good form to throw a rusty spanner in the works, and the lady-singer has her guitar strapped on, and my companion’s snapping away taking pictures, and she’d down on her knees in front of me, and she’s unzipping my trousers...

And I’m like, “Isn’t there some sort of crazy-ass rock show going on around us?”

And she’s like, “sure”, and smiles...