Suuns - 2020

The club opened. I bought a ticket. It was perfect. A concrete slot in a highrise. Industrial beams. A home for rubber dogshit and plastic toys, long-gone. Everyone young and down dressed. I'm the only human not in a t-shirt. Thank god I didn't wear my black shiny boots. There are 20 people inside all smoking and holding beer cans. There are 3 seats, all empty. I go to buy a beer but all I can see is soft drinks and a sign on the wall saying, "No alcohol thanks to our fucking government". I say the word "beer" with a question mark tagged on the end. The smart smiling kid hands me a beer and points at a tin marked "DONATIONS". I love this. I sit in one of the seats. The place fills with maybe 100 kids and a handful of remnants like me. Converse, sneakers, second hand designer pumps, skinny jeans (low waist), sloganised t-shirts (no politics, no brands), thick rimmed glasses (everyone), tight cropped hair, small tatoos, man-bags, smart phones, chatter. Boys shifting around girls, hoping to be looked at, talked to, wanked off. Girls in huddles, talking and texting, hoping to be looked at, talked to, loved. A puff of dry ice, the lights dim and then flash. A squeel from a speaker so loud you can feel it more than hear it. A couple of limp cheers and the local support band come on. The lead singer can't sing but the bass line and riffs carry them along. I notice a baseball capped figure standing alone at the side of the sound desk. It is the lead singer of the Suuns and his beer is nearly empty. No-one has noticed him. I "donate" some more dollars and offer the singer a warm beer, "Warm beer?". I stand next to him, twice his age. Twice his age! He takes the beer. "Cheers, I haven't had this before." I have no idea what to say, luckily the music cuts back in and is too loud to talk over. In the breaks between songs we talk about Brighton, "Yeah played there alot. Nice vibe, laid back." The Montreal music scene,"God speed you Black Emporer started it off in the early nighties. Its really cool now." Touring, "6 months straight now. Going home for a few days soon, looking forward to it." Using one of their songs on a movie sound track,"It wasn't us, they just asked, we said yes and we have been getting loads of compliments about it." "Gotta go now and get ready. What's your name? I'm Ben nice to have met you" As he turned and went I patted his shoulder and said,"Enjoy yourself". I have no idea why I said that. Ben, my new best friend, and the rest of the band come on stage to set up. No-one notices them. He seemed so nice. Quiet. Soft-spoken. No punk driven angst or too-long-on-tour bitterness. No, too-bored to talk to fans (Am I a fan?). They started their set with a lengthy drone from a sound machine. Tweeked and pumped by the keyboard player. The bushy-bearded drummer then thrust the low-ceilinged room into a spaceship with a sniping drumbeat that made your blood bounce. The guitars slid in like thrusters and we were all in orbit. Ben snarled into the microphone, unrecognisably taken over by the music. What a gig, but I was biased, Ben was my new best friend!