THE HANDSTAND

august 2005

from ACE AND DEUCE - A Novel

by

Joe Ambrose

“They fear me!” Amen said as we walked from my Rathmines Road flat to his Ranelagh Gardens apartment. “They fear me.”

“The only person who can teach you how to play a musical instrument is yourself.”  He said, toasting the organic brown bread on which he would later spread pricey bananas. Apocalypse had been off the road for six years by that stage and he was reaching the end of money, stage gear, time, and a Zildjian sponsorship deal

The time that was in it. Planxty, Brush Shields, Mick Ronson, and me. That’s me, little old me. How lost I was from town to town. When I was sixteen I wore brown as my family moved from town to town.

Two witches waiting for me at the Irish Writers Co Op offices when I got back after lunch, something like 1982. She was still beautiful, legs cleavage and blonde hair. He, in white beard and witch-like robes, was the leader of a whole branch of white magic, Farrarian Magic, called after him. They knew The King of The Fairies - I could meet him anytime anyplace if only I’d publish their book. I’d seen him before in Easons and sometimes fastwalking through Rathmines.

But I made the snake’s farewell to the Emerald Isle.

I have a month long free trial subscription to AOL just coming to an end. I’m taking advantage of it on a laptop I bought a month ago with a dodgy credit card found in the exercise of my functions. When the trial offer ends I’ll be a blind man again, scurrying around in the snow, going from free hour-long sessions in the public library to all night deals in the cheapest internet cafe with the rickety chairs and clapped out computers. I will be with lesbians there, just off Times Square.

Then I can move to Boston, get a job in a small hotel. That won’t be the answer – I’ll still hear St Patrick’s bell.

I log onto apocalypse.ie and marvel at the lopsided look of the homepage. Since I last looked they’ve added a link to an allegedly independent site called comebackapocalypse.com which contains downloads of all manner of alleged indie-style cover versions of Apocalypse songs. If it’s so independent, then why is the graphic style the exact same as that which Charles used two and a half decades ago on Drive the Cold Winter Away and the same as the one he uses now on his kitsch antiques website?

Why is the humour that sort of gentle whimsy that the Beatles fan in Amen liked but which doesn’t seem all that funny to those of us too young to remember the 60s in vivid detail? How priceless it is that Amen should be the fount of so much whimsy and harmlessness when he is such an operator, not that he ever pretended to be otherwise. The first time he presented himself in front of me, masquerading as a witch, he made a stage entrance worthy of Apocalypse.

I was standing in Savins record shop in Limerick during December 2004, having just flown into Shannon from New York for Christmas. My mother used to buy me the new Apocalypse album every Christmas in Savins. Now the band has reformed in suits but I have to buy their new album for myself in combats. The money comes from the same source. “Always have an album out for Christmas,” he said to me, searching for that Freddy Fender LP with the photograph of Freddy posing outside the prison where he was once incarcerated, “Always have a black cover on it. Always put the best track Track One, Side One.”

Just before I entered Savins I went around the corner and stared at the Savoy Cinema where as a boy I saw Apocalypse and The Bell Brush Band and The Bay City Rollers (because my mother wouldn’t let my sister go on her own). The Rollers had already recruited the kid from the North who later departed with a sore arse.

Birds nested in the ruined Savoy windows and bushes grew out of the cinema’s awning.

In Savins I stared at a guy in this mid-Thirties guy who was staring at the new Apocalypse album. He was holding the black box in his hands and glaring at it like it contained his whole life and he was wondering if that life had been worth living.

I met the Apocalypse keyboard player in 1992 when we brought The Master Musicians of Joujouka out to RTE in Donnybrook to record a session. I was very busy with my life then.

At the Faggot Inn Dr. Guru Weirdbrain was holding a clinic while the Boy George Welcoming Committee were having a lark in the dark or a lark in the park

Where did they go? Who did they see? What did they do? They did a good band – that was something.

Joe Ambrose is the author of two novels, Serious Time and Too Much Too Soon. His next book, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, comes out in 2006 with Headpress. www.joeambrose.net.