And I also recall that, at the time, I wasn’t convinced.
But I did like the idea of a city of gold, buried probably in a desert somewhere, Sumeria, most likely. And the exploring, and the digging up of the city, and the availing oneself of all the wealth.
None of which, if I am altogether honest – and I might as well be, as this, I suppose, is ultimately my story – none of which wealth would I be handing over to the poor.
‘Let them steal their own treasure maps,’ was my comment on the matter.
But I did like the story and I did like the sound of the Sumerian Kynges. I thought it sounded like a jolly meaningful name for a rock band. Although rock hadn’t really been invented then, so I suppose I meant a pop band.
And the other guys who comprised the embryonic entity that was The Sumerian Kynges Phase 1 liked the sound of it, too.
There were two other members back then that I haven’t mentioned – Michael and Keithy. They were Sumerian Kynges too at the time. But only for about five minutes. Because they had their own ideas of a name for the band. And when the rest of us didn’t agree with their suggestion, they got all huffy and left. I understand that they did get their own band together and give it the name they wanted. But whatever happened to the foolishly named ‘Rolling Stones’, I have no idea. [5]
Which brings me to the night of the school dance.
And the launch of The Sumerian Kynges.
We had been doing a lot of practice. And I do mean a lot. Well, you could, you see, in those days. It must have been something to do with it being the nineteen-sixties. If you took up a musical instrument at school, you could take time off regular lessons to have tuition. And that, as I soon discovered, meant time off all lessons. I agree now that perhaps I cannot string words together as well as others of my age and literary persuasion, the Johnny Quinns and Mavis Cheeses who win all the book prizes and inspire the young. But, man, can I play the ukulele!
We’d start our musical tuition at nine-thirty on Monday morning after assembly and prayers and conclude it at three p.m. on Friday. With breaks for lunch, and going home at tea time, of course.
My fingers got a bit sore, I can tell you.
But it got the job jobbed and by the time the school dance came around, we were masters of the finger-pick, the cross-strum and the scale-run. Not to mention the chromatic.
Which I never did. Because I did not believe it to be necessary.
Now, there is a lot to performance. A good performance, that is.
A lot!
‘A great performance is better than life itself,’ Iggy Pop once said. But that was many years later. But it is not just down to playing well. You have to emote and you have to look good.
You have to have an image. And a cool image at that.
I would love to take all the credit for the original image portrayed by the original line-up of The Sumerian Kynges, but as I am trying to be honest here, I cannot and will not.
Rob is to blame.
Now, I use the word ‘blame’ here not in a derogatory way. Because I personally believe that it was a good look. A cool look.
A cool image.
I think, again in all honesty, that it was simply ahead of its time.
The girls of Southcross Road School, class of 63, were simply not ready for Glam Rock.
Glam Rock and cheese.
It wasn’t a great combination.
We had to get changed into our stage clothes in the boys’ toilets. This wasn’t a big deal at the time, or later. Bands on the way up always have to get changed in the gents’ at gigs, until they are big enough to play bigger gigs. Gigs that come with changing rooms. And with changing rooms come groupies and champagne and riders on contracts and all the fun of the fair. And we knew this. Deep in our rock ’n’ roll hearts we knew it. That first performance, we were ‘paying our dues’. That’s what musicians did on the way up. And we knew it.
And so we got changed in the bog.
I recall, oh so well, what a struggle it was to get my lipstick on. Rob kept nudging my arm and going on and on about a ‘pop-cheese fusion’ and how we were ‘breaking through preconceived boundaries and crossing textual horizons’. That we were in a ‘get-some-cheese’ situation.
Neil was having some doubt about his outfit. His mother, who was very big on the local ballroom dancing scene, had run it up on her sewing machine and there were a lot of sequins involved. More sequins than the rest of us put together. So that would be at least five sequins!
Neil was having some doubts about the twinkliness of these sequins. He’d always thought of himself as going on stage as a kind of Roy Orbison lookalike – black shirt and trews and big on the big black sunspecs.
‘It’s pink,’ said Neil. ‘It’s all in pink.’
And it was.
Mine was all in green. And, according to Captain Lynch, green was a colour much favoured by the Sumerian Kynge Georgius.
Gold would have made more sense, but my mum didn’t have any gold fabric. ‘Gold is for toffs,’ she informed me. But she did have plenty of green. Because my father had recently taken employment with a company that manufactured billiard tables and was always coming home with a duffle bag stuffed with green baize offcuts.
And billiard balls.
And walking with a strange stiff-legged gait caused by the introduction of billiard cues into his trousers.
Regarding trousers, the flared trouser was only then on the point of becoming fashionable and I like to think that in our way, upon that night, which was the twenty-seventh of June in the year of nineteen sixty-three, that we, The Sumerian Kynges, helped the flared trouser to enter the fashion consciousness of the nation.
And indeed helped the mullet haircut, which we also pioneered, to gain worldwide prominence and acceptance in the days to come.
Mind you, if I’d known then what I know now, I would never have gone on stage that night. Because (and I know, just know, that you are way ahead of me here) that performance, that night, played its part in hastening the oblivion that would eventually lead to me almost saving Mankind.
Shall I tell you how it happened?
No?
I’ll tell you anyway.
6
The school hall smelled of plimsolls.
In the days of which I write, all school halls smelled of plimsolls. Plimsolls and the armpits of the young. Not that I have a preoccupation with armpits, or with the smells thereof. Don’t get me wrong – I mentioned mine in an earlier chapter because they were smelly. I mention armpits again now only because the school hall smelled of them.
Nothing sinister. Nothing weird. Please don’t get me wrong.
The school hall also smelled of teenage girls. And that is a smell most men of the heterosexual persuasion… warm to, as it were.
The Sumerian Kynges were warming to that smell. Which wasn’t easy as we were waiting to go on stage in the school kitchen. We had glammed ourselves up in the boys’ bog and now we stood, shuffling nervously (but looking cool), scuffing our winged heels (I would describe those but I don’t have time) and cradling our instruments.
And warming to the smell of teenage girls.
Whilst having our nostrils assailed by the stench of rotten cabbage. Why all school kitchens always smelled of rotten cabbage is anyone’s guess. Our school cook, Mrs Simian, never even served us cabbage, rotten or otherwise.
But I digress.
