Chairman Ax says: get in touch with your roots. Bold As Love has a soundtrack from the deep past, and it goes something like this:
Chapter One, The Saltbox: Fade in to 'Farewell, Farewell', (Thompson) from Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief, with Sandy Denny on vocals. Silence for the story of how Fiorinda met her father. Then the track of the same name from Axis: Bold As Love, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, when we get to the rainbow-tents of the festival where everything's allowed.
....she would find him, she would face him, she wasn't interested in anything else....
Chapter Two, Innocence and Experience: I feel stupid and contagious, it's got to be 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. Nevermind. Nirvana.
....There came, inevitably, a moment when it started to feel right... as the mob let rip with blowtorches and chainsaws... He had never wanted it to be this way, but maybe there was no other way, (they would put his Jerusalem solo on the soundtrack for the tv coverage, he'd made sure of that...)
Chapter Three, Cigarettes and Alcohol: Track of the same name from Definitely Maybe, Oasis. What the words say is successful coup against all the forces of repression. What you get (from the music) is dour, reality-checked resignation to the truth about that yoof rebellion stuff. Couldn't have put it better myself.
Chapter Four, The Straight Path: On paper, the track is the Grateful Dead's 'Dark Star', from Live Dead. However this is secretly the gender-politics module, and I see the Islamic Campaign, (the high-profile men fighting a bloody guerilla war, the nameless women and children who are getting killed as non-combatants) as the video to go with the Heads' brutal hit single 'Who Knocks', about domestic violence, which featured at the armistice concert.
...the whole hall drenched in red and slippery intestinal silver: distorted, excoriated images, that teased the eye with the promise of shuddering horrors, never giving you a straight answer...
Chapter Five, Who Knocks?: Where the bodies are buried. The story of how we had our noses rubbed in the fact that we'd been collaborating in something fucking awful, to save our necks. Try 'Dirty Work', Steely Dan, from Can't Buy A Thrill. Don't listen to the verse, just the music and the catch. But the damage is done, this is about forgiveness, so ideally it goes with 'It Is No Secret', (Hamblen, Leeds Music) from Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, Ras Michael on vocals, so sweet, so deep. Someone slipped and fell, was that someone you?
Chapter Six, Sweetbriar: The fairytale princess, non-Disney version. This would be Polly Harvey, (surely one of Fiorinda's rock-godmothers) singing some really gruesome blood-daubed English folksong, to thrash guitar, in a voice like broken glass from the bottomless pit. But we want a positive spin, so alternatively, from the deep past, make it Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick singing 'Somebody To Love' (Surrealistic Pillow)
Chapter Seven, Big In Brazil: The drugs don't work they only make things worse, but I knew I'd see your face again. Or something like that. Richard Ashcroft, singing 'The Drugs Don't Work' with Verve, Urban Hymns. The collapse of civilisation, how do you measure up, what do you have left, is it enough? For a deep past take, try 'Five Years' Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie.
Chapter Eight, Rock
The Boat : This is The Clash chapter, and it should be read
to the tune of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' Combat Rock, and
'This Is England', (this is how it feels) Cut The Crap. There
is a Big Audio Dynamite track, on No 10 Upping Street which has
even more apposite words (Don't anybody know this city was made out
of immigrants blood and money?) But it's too slow.
Chapter Nine, Rivermead: A Hendrixed-up guitar version of 'I
Vow To Thee My Country'...? Nah. Maybe not. That sort of novelty thing
can so easily get tired. Fade to Catatonia, Cerys Matthews, singing
the classic, valedictory 'Dead From The Waist Down' from Equally
Cursed And Blessed. Make hay not war... That's the right note.
And finally, as the credits roll, 'Baba O'Riley', Pete Townshend, Who's
Next?, The Who. The song is over.
Put out the fire, and don't look past my shoulder.
