Beethoven

1 June 2009

He could still remember the grim, ugly room, with the net curtains choking the daylight as it bled weakly through from outside, the repeat-patterned wallpaper repeating it's pattern in all directions, the dark furniture everywhere and the terrorvision in the corner – a strange device something like a games console but in which the avatars were isolated, somehow beyond interaction with the outside world, trapped in a set of events, and left talking to each other. Life on the terrorvision seemed to mainly consist of pursuits or explosions, or gun battles or weeping and talking, a lot of talking and some car chases for punctuation and it was hard to imagine really why people back then in the oldendays liked the terrorvision so much,how strange they must have been as people, sat in front of that thing just watching and watching and watching, their eyes getting bigger and bigger each day… sad, inert and watching.

*

Meanwhile, at the hotel stuffed full of the roadies, bands, groupies, stray fans and others from the nearby Metal Music Festival the over-hearable parts of the conversation are strictly exchanges of 100% cliche.

At the top of the stairs in the brightly lit foyer one younger and one older rocker (both in black jeans, long hair, tour-tshirts, tats, piercings) linger, stood still at  2am, the older guy shorter, looking into space as he talks, the other looking straight at him.

It's different…

It is different. I mean it's not the 70's, it's not the 80's, it's not even the 90's… it's the 'noughts' as we call them… I think it's a valid album. It's, you know, it's where we're at now.

I liked this album just like the rest – it's got good songs on it and you know,  I always liked your live shows. I saw a lot of bands from the 70's and a lot of them a boring. But you guys

Two others slumped at a table, one says to the other:

It's a difficult time for us. People are saying, you know, can't you help him, can't you help him..Yeah.But he doesn't, he's got to want to help himself. You can't help someone that doesn't want to help themselves…?

Best of all in the bar, two blokes sat at the bar itself, your sight of them eclipsed by the pillar.

That's metal. It's not about guitars. It's not about drums. It's about attitude.

Yeah.

Beethoven. You could say that he was the first Heavy Metal really.

– Yeah.