Thursday 25 March 2010

Opportunity Costs



Nineteen Sixty-Three. The summer I went to Sweden, hung about Stockholm, gave a blonde a lift, I had my home-made guitar with me, she said, “Let’s go to Kaos”, that was the name of a night-club, maybe her name was Margerita, I played a kind of flamenco in those days, they offered me a contract, a Spanish family thought I must be Spanish too, what happened next?

Customers got a cloakroom ticket on entry which entitled the holder to a 300ml glass of soapy liquid with zero alcohol content, so there was nothing for it but to surf the adrenaline and give the situation a bit of hyper-arousal. Afterwards, the night-club owner was impressed enough to offer me a contract to play for the rest of the summer, and there was a little queue of people wanting to speak to me, including the homesick Spanish family and a slim red-haired girl of about 18. The lacrimose Iberians were surprised and disappointed when they realised a Scotsman was responsible for all those rasgueados and rapid sequences in phrygian mode. The girl didn’t say all that much at the time, although we communicated pretty well, later on.

Ha ha. I wonder, was there anyone there from the future EBBA, an 18-year old Eva perhaps, watching from the crowd, ripping off my techniques? I try to recall the scene, the faces in the crowd. I remember tables, maybe fifty or sixty people, but a spotlight is blanking out most of the faces.

Remember Eva on Super Trooper, beams are gonna blind me? Or Winner Takes It All, Agnetha’s incredible face looking like a smacked bap…. but now, watching on YouTube, I’m thinking about the forms of the human mouth, how meaningful they seem, yet maybe women see womens’ mouths in a different way from men, maybe the information rather than the forms?

But Anni, as ever, is looking out to sea. I don’t know what she’s thinking about any more, nor why her suitcase is already in the rowing-boat. But as I hear the words I admire the beautiful shapes, smooth elisions of form and phrase, glossy warm surface over nimble muscle, orbicularis oris, filtrum, nasalis labii superioris, how sweet the expression of emotion, the semiotics of meaning. Any one of these gliding moves may be what flips that switch, that circuit of love or desire that connects us to all humanity, as it connected Anni-Frid and me that night in Stockholm in 1963.

Bitter-sweet, Super Trooper. Heavy beat, a spangly jingly-jangle, then the voices misty, mixing and separating, the sound like a smooth matte surface shredded and re-joined, gleaming like sun that glitters between ice shards on water, the girls with tight Scandinavian vowel-sounds in close close harmony, the high male backing su-pa-paa su-pa-paa, strings in layers yingayangayangyayaya, bass dry and stringy rom papa, paparom papa, drums choonk choonk ting ting ting ting

As the music fades I hear her oars dipping in the freezing water.

Copyright © Donnie Ross 2010
This story first appeared in www.rammenas.com.nl

No comments:

Post a Comment