In the Belly of The Mole
We had a problem. Chelsea and Bristol have made it clear that although they will pay the rent from their cheap champagne skin trade associations, they will in no way dish out souvlaki and hero money. Spinner had long since shot the remains of his Arts Council grant, generous boy, and There Was No Food. It had been three nights since Ruby the foot fetishist Jewish restaurant violinist had appeared with leftover chicken fricassee for us, the itinerant actors from New Zealand who listened attentive to his tales of New York, galumphing down the fricassee. Therefore it had been two days since any meal and driven to this point it was clear that we needed to get some. I cased up the Yamaha 360 (like the one Neil Young was playing in the poster on the hall wall of Salamanca Rd Drama School flat and I bought in ‘Frisco with my haymaking money on my way to Mexico City some 12 months previous). I blew out the A & C harps and checked the wingnuts on the harp rack. Rooster slapped on white face, his green velour smoking jacket a green bowler and armed himself with a tambourine and a box vivid marked ‘Donations Please.’ Spinner; appeared in full white full Pierrot outfit all flowing rags and jazz shoes. We made our way into the Manhattan streets and wandered. “How do you do this”? I asked. “You just find a spot and start,” reckoned Spinner. “Here will do” says Rooster. It was an empty doorway, a closed down HoJo’s just south of Times Square. It was a business day with the usual foot traffic of purposeful jerkers and the several wanderers just waiting for something to happen. I unleashed the Yamaha and thumped out a blues wailing like a tomcat on the harp secretly pleased for the protective barrier of instruments. The Rooster gets the tambourine rattling. Blues is a straightforward beat, but he could never get it, even with a full Country Flyer blowing up his arse, so I knew the a-rhythmical was gonna be our signature. Spinner goes out from the doorway and starts moving doing his Pierrot from Blackball routine with the begging eyes and beautiful limbs. Rooster starts to crow;
Nobody can say
This Isn’t a great day
The sun rose on the news
John Wayne’s got the blues
He’s on the way out
The west is gonna cry
Cos J Wayne ‘s got the cancer
Yea he’s gonna die
Old John Wayne is no longer free
He’s being eaten up by
The Big C.
Pedestrians crossed the street to avoid this awful sight and hideous noise. Some stood in rapt wonder at something so painful and shrugged a dime into the box. We faltered the 12 bar not quite giving us liftoff, it was a monodrawl, confused and forlorn. “Can you do something faster”? asks Spinner so I crank out of the 12 bar into the hometown chink-a-chink and sing as the Sailor Boys do “Cos I just want to lie to lie to lie in the sand”. Spinner is weaving now, this rhythm is part of him and he cruises through his learning to be street smart moves and even the rhythmically challenged Rooster gets in a groove as I pull back the vocal to a waa waa and Rooster launches into a Baudelairean rap on the existential ecstasy of crying for pizza in the grimy streets at the centre of the world. (If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere) The song goes on and on. We are getting a momentum, I waa waa do wop on the verse as Rooster crows and then I sing full tenor I just want To lie To lie as Spinner whirls a dervish in his clown rags; it’s a unique act. A small group forms on the sidewalk, we focus on them the juice is flowing we are finding our way in the greatest city on earth, the Mecca of all our dreams, you five idle passersby, can you feel it? There is the jangle tink of dimes in the box.
A pause. The small group of pedestrians move off. “Crippled Cockroach” reckons Rooster. Ah Jesus we only started that one last night, in the 5th floor of the Consulate Hotel west 49th I had strummed the Yamie as Rooster bashed on the Rossetti, window open at his elbow to let the hootch exhale drift into the night, banging strumming smoking up the blues, “yea lets try it, Crippled Cockroach.” Rooster dispenses with the tambourine and moves out into the foot traffic the long right hand raised to the grimy sky, his green velour jacket sticking to the sweaty meat of his torso he begins his prophetic incantation to the apocalypse. I fall in with his gonzo rhythm punctuating on the harp, Roosters great crow hurtling above the street as Spinner becomes that last organism, the Crippled Roach himself inching across the pavement each shuddering spasm of dance elicits higher howls from Rooster who is really in his stride. People stop and stare in dis-belief. Spinner falls onto his back his flowing sad clown rags falling about him like snow and as the blues builds to itself appointed crescendo he twitches in paroxysms of mime, the only cockroach left on earth is dying. If William Burroughs could see us now!! Rooster crows his final vision the roach mime is frozen like Mayakovski’s bedbug and I thump the final E chord. The 11 bystanders gawp in bemused wonder and ha! a dollar bill floats from a downturned brown hand, like a love note being dropped from an apple tree, into our humble box. We gape at each other, Rooster is licking his lips, I’m jigging from foot to foot the beat still pumping and Spinner is up and leaping with excitement full on begging a couple of gawping women, down on one knee, all pleading eyes and upturned palm. One of them resists the pulling at the arm by her companion and rattles two dimes and a nickel into his trembling grasp. Spinner spins yelping with the power of his street-smart seduction and flings the coins into the box. Standing as a triumvirate gazing down into the vessel of offerings, we view the smattering of coins and crumpled bills and start to laugh. We laugh so hard we have to lean against the empty doorway. I throw my hat off and Spinner pulls off his sweating rags and rubs them in his armpits, Rooster drops the green bowler into the box and mops his brow, I unhook the Yamie; we laugh until our sides ache.
There was enough in the box for pizza, coffee and doughnuts. After this busker’s repast, we go uptown and later that night upturn the box and count out 43 dollars on the bed. Dinner, a beer, a dime bag. It’s gonna be a long summer.