There was this one night back in November last year and we were in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Gothenburg is one of those cities, you know the ones. De-facto cultural capitals where art roams the streets and ruthless hipsters regularly out-hip your wildest and most complicated hipster dreams.

¨Big city, dum da dum, big city niiightsss¨

Me and Le Baarone and Alexandra Cecile Bouche were at this sleazy/tastefull hole called Jazzhusset waiting to play a musical concert for the cream of Gothenburg youth.

Some skinny punk fuck-up called Jonk "Jonas" Haglund had booked us to play there, but he had called to say he was stricken with herpes or some such thing and couldn't make it.

Yes officer, that´s him in the middle there. Slap the cuffs on.

It was buuutttttt......ffuuuuuuccck .....freeeeezing outside, so after soundcheck we just hung around the bar lookng awkward and failing to be recognised. Are you getting a picture?

I was tired and irritable, and had stuffed myself into a dark corner of the bar, hoping against hope for some peace. I was lost in a reverie when I felt something slam into me, a human body of some sorts.

A sweaty, gin-soaked voice rasped in my ear.

"You better be good, fucker, because I told my fucking freinds to come here. Can you handle that kind of responsibility? Can you take the fucking pressure?!?"

Sweet Jesus, it was the awful Daniel Strandman, a dangerous drunk, sex-offender and celebrated Scandanavian fashion personality.

I instantly felt The Fear, but I tried desperately to conceal it. One whiff of panic and who knows what he'd do.

I decided to try and buy time by flattering this dangerous creep.

"Looking super-flexible there D.S." I gurgled "What's on the agenda of a swinging guy like you on a night like this?"

He gave me a blank look and tossed the rest of his drink down the front of my shirt. "I'm here, waiting to see your silly act, baldy".

"Nifty." I said, ignoring the Beefeaters and Schweppes soaking into my chest-hair. "Maybe we can take some girls out for pizza afterwards, and make them pay."

 A "good night out" for Daniel is an ugly and complicated thing.

But the Strandman was only half listening. He started tugging at the sleeve of my shirt and staring at something on the other side of the room.

I looked down his sightline, but it ended in an empty patch of wall so I couldn't tell what was bugging him. Maybe nothing.

But the look on his face was troubling and he leaned in, like a man with a secret to tell.

"Your buddy Aaron has got it coming to him!" He hissed. "It's time for that guy to pay the fucking piper!"

He elbowed me hard in the ribs for emphasis, then grabbed somebody's drink off the bar and threw it down his throat. No-one protested.

But his tone had a truly mean edge to it and I was genuinely shocked and afraid.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I wheezed, "The Baaron can't have enemies here."

 I mean Jesus. Look at that evil fucker. Who would want a piece of that??

Strandman just laughed at me and gave my cheek a friendly slap.

"He's got a talent for it, doesn't he?" He slurred. "There's schools of micro-shrimp in the North Sea that want to put the hurt on that fucker. There's particles of ice in Saturn's rings that hate his guts! This is Sweden, shithead. You guys are totally out of your depth."

His words had the ring of awful truth, but I just finished my beer and said nothing. Daniel smiled warmly and grabbed another drink off the bar.

"I'm going to go keep an eye on that poor skinny bastard. You go take a big shit, grandpa. You look like you need one."

He let out an evil, throaty chuckle and lurched over to where the Baaron was chatting to a local nerd of some kind. He jabbed his forefinger into the small of The Baarons back and Von Cuddles squawked like a chicken and spilled his soda-water all-over a bored looking proffesional couple who cursed him and shoved him away. Then Strandman thrust his gin-reeking mug into Von Cuddles ear and said something that instantly made The Baarons face turn grey. Then they both walked quickly out of the bar.

I never did find out what thorny doom was hanging over the Baaron that night, but I quickly decided not to worry. Anything that Von Cuddles can't handle is way beyond my capabilities, so why fret about it?

Both he and Strandman seemed loose and smug when I found them guzzling cooking sherry and telling ugly sex stories back in the kitchen. They were hanging around with a jittery Japanese guy who kept patting his pockets and mumbling and kicking things.

This was Strandman's hired-gun photographer, who had been flown in at short notice from Helsinki to take a few snaps of the Baaron and I in some Julian Red "casual" wears. He seemed angry and nervous for some reason, and during the shoot he kept shouting at us and smacking us with a long flat piece of wood. We complained to Strandman, but Daniel just kept necking that disgusting sherry and laughing at us and groping a leggy blonde model-type who had wandered in from the bar to check up on him. 

It all went pretty well, and we scored some fine JR clobber for our time and trouble.

 ********************

The atmosphere in the club was tense and there were lots of ugly scenes in the crowd that night.

Denis from Fucking Wherewolf Asso had gone into some sort of boozy judo trance and was fighting off many imaginary attackers. Sara Shakarchi had lost patience with a group of preppy tourists and laid several bodies out on the greasy carpet. Right in front of me two under-age shoegazer types where pushing and elbowing each-other visciously for almost the whole gig while their drunk girl-friends rolled their eyes and giggled and every so often Strandman would lurch hideously out of the front-row and yell something really rotten and insulting at us.

 The Baaron falls asleep, Mark Knopfler style....again.

 Shred and tweak and shred and tweak some moooorrrreeeee.

As gigs go it was strange, violent and troubling, but we plied our trade regardless, bagged as much booze as we could and made it to bed alive that night.

Just another day at the office, really.

 Slow morning on the floor at Chez Jonk.

The rest day was pretty laid back. Some slothery at Chez Jonk and a few hours tooling around the city pretty much took care of it. But once the sun went down The Baaron, The Bouche and myself were sucked into an all-night test of strength and skill against The Jonk, The Julia and Sara "Motherfuckin" Shakarchi. 

It was brutal and it started with bowling.

Jonk expresses triumph and contempt for social norms.

 Reinforcing what we´ve all known all along, the scoreboard decalres that The Baaron is a nameless error.

A furious Lady Alexandra picks a fight with Julia over her controversial technique, while Shakarchi chuckles into her tonic water.

 We managed to fit in a photoshoot for Shakarchi and the Baaron´s hot new darkwave act, Hoarfrost (touring January 2012. Contact fabrizio@supercoolbookingagency)

I wasn´t allowed to play fussball, because everyone said I smell.

 Poor Cuddles doesn´t get to drink much on tour, being the designated driver and all, so rest days are a real bonus for the little scamp.

 Creepy, boozy, homo-ironic Nazism really takes the edge off. Doesn´t it???

Anyway, you get the picture. Another 48 hours down the G-hole and we´re still none the wiser about what makes these weird northerners tick. Burn their idols and convert them all to christianity at the point of the sword, I say. That should straighten them out.

"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me".

Hello. My name is Ben, and I am a senile old crank with a head full of bile and many insane prejudices.

When I see a band turn up to a gig wearing short trousers of any kind, my snap judgement is that these people are either...

A. Fops

B. Jocks 

C. Nerds or...

D.

...and should be kidnapped and dumped in the outer suburbs of Cairo with no money, I.D or shorts.

Yep, it is my screwy and probably to be revised conviction that good bands do not never ever wear shorts ever*. 

Take myself and Baaron Von Cuddles for example.  One fine day in June of this year we arrived in a small village on the outskirts of Limoges, France, to perform a musical concert. On this particular day it happened to be 46 degrees Celsius in the shade. The tar on the road was almost completely molten and small birds were falling dead from the sky, but did we yield our dignity to the mindless onslaught of Mother Nature?  Fuck NO!

We were wearing jeans. 

Filthy black jeans, just like mamma used to make. 

Our legs were slowly being broiled inside their greasy denim casings, like big sweaty chunks of pork, yet we adhered to the fucking code, damnit!

Anyway, this all has little or nothing to do with the tale I'd like to tell. Make of it what you will and let´s move on.

Now this musical concert was to take place at a club called La Forumi, situated on the main street of the aforementioned French village. We pulled up out front and wearily loaded our crap inside, assisted by the cruel and devious Andyinglis and our booking agent, Almond The God, who were both travelling with us at that time.  We made a pile of gear on the stage and then did the rounds of the venue staff, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries and whatnot, but nobodies heart was really in it. 

"It´s so damn hot!!"

Like us, the staff were all listless and irritable due to the brutal heat, which made even standing upright seem borderline impossible. You could feel the hairs in your nostrils being singed with each intake of breath and whenever I bent down to tweak my pedals my belt-buckle would touch my flabby stomach and burn me like a soldering iron. 

But the venues' fridges were on full blast, so the beer was icy cold and on that solid footing we proceeded with the task at hand.

Checka checka checka checka sooound-checkin'!

After our sweaty soundcheck we retired back-stage to be interviewed by some local radio station. I don't remember the name of the interviewer (or the station), but I was deeply impressed by his professional methods.

Rather than asking a string of questions designed to familiarise his listeners with the band and it's music, he threw out a weird bunch of challenges, cynical observations and digs at our personal style which bordered on flat-out abuse. Our role in this little drama was obviously to become hostile and defensive and to mouth off about his stupid haircut, stupid public radio, stupid France ect.

It started out pleasantly enough.

Voices were raised and there was some pushing and shoving, but we all quickly agreed that  the unbearable dry-heat made poor fighting weather, so we turned our attention to the snacks and drinks and became freinds.

The hours passed slowly. Andyinglis slumped like a pile of Scottish offal onto an old leather sofa next to the bar and started moaning softly. Baaron Von Cuddles went out in the street and did one hundred push-ups on his knuckles for a small crowd of local children, who cheered him wildly and then pestered him for donkey-rides. Almond had gone to grab some food with Julian, the local promoter, and everyone else had gone home to stuff ice-cubes down their pants.

Feeling drained but restless, I wandered away from the club and after ten minutes of directionless rambling found myself at the banks of a broad, slow moving river.

Overjoyed at the opportunity to get wet, I stripped naked and sat down up to my neck in the slimey, muddy water. Aaaahhhhhhhh.

...and that's when it started. 

A fleeting shadow in the back of my mind. A wild music, as of ancient stone flutes half-heard at a great distance, behind which lurked some kind of terrible, brooding presence. I felt that a vast. cold intellect was scooping me up out of the water and drawing me into the blackness and terror between the stars.

I began to see things.

I saw a great city lying in ruins, it's monstrous idols toppled and their temples choked with weed. I saw a throng of people, a multitude, singing and walking slowly into the ocean to vanish forever beneath the waves. I saw.....

Suddenly my eyes refocused and I looked up at the sky. It was dusk.

Holy balls! I must have been sitting there for, like, two freakin'  hours!

In a fog of confused urgency I scrambled up the bank, dragged on my filthy black jeans and jogged straight back to the venue. There I found a motley collection of nerds, stoners, rural-hipsters and red-necks milling around in the street, babbling in the local dialect and eating long strips of jerky. 

I must have looked obviously out of place, because they jeered and laughed and shoved me around as I tried to get into the venue. One skinny girl with coke-bottle glasses and a Mudhoney t-shirt jabbed her forefinger up my arse so hard it nearly put a whole in my pants. I squealed but made it through the door with a great leap, while behind me the crowd whooped and cheered. The Baaron, who was just inside setting up a merch table, snorted in derision and called me a loser.

"You need to grow some balls, Green." He said.  "They can smell your type a mile away. You're like an open can of dog-food at the city pound."

I could see his point, but fuck! all I wanted was a few minutes of peace and five cold beers before the time came to hit the stage and entertain these dangerous French fucks. 

As the Baaron tweaks filters for Satan, a fearfull apparition appears at stage left and flies towards him. Is it the unspeakable Yog-Sothoth, trying to enter our world from The Beyond?

No, no it isn´t. It´s a confused bass player trying to squint the sweat out of his peepers.

I don´t remember this part at-all.

Despite my misgivings, it was a fine show. It was so unbelievably hot under the stage-lights that The Baaron and I drifted into a trance-like state and played the entire gig with little or no awareness of our surroundings. The crowd seemed to appreciate this and made us welcome, Some heckled us noisily, some danced like sick weasels and others just swayed to and fro in their individual pools of sweat and rancid air. 

I'm pretty sure we played at least one encore.

Andyinglis had emerged from his catatonic funk in rare high spirits, and was ordering rounds of strong booze for a clutch of locals who had adopted him as their mascot. A deejay started cranking some big, dumb blog-house through the sound system and everyone got down to the serious business of getting drunk and pulling "tarded" moves.

It was at this point, amid the noise and drunken confusion, that I once again started hearing the call. 

 

As it crept into a far corner of my head I knew it was the voice of our ancient father who dwells in the pitch dark beneath the waves. At first it was just a distant echo, a shadow too swift and pale to grasp, but it grew and grew until finally it filled my sweating brain to bursting and seemed to shake the walls of the club. 

I saw that Andyinglis and Julian were behaving strangely, twitching and baring their teeth. They too were being summoned by the horror in the deep, and in their minds could hear, as I did, that terrible, cacophonous whispering, as of waves crashing upon black shores at the far ends of the universe, where the very stars in heavens' vault tremble in naked terror of that which lies beyond.

The three of us lurched out into the street, immediately stripped down to our underwear and then loped like booze-crazed wolves through the village and down to the river. We were barking and moaning and flapping our arms in an all consuming fever, a hot madness sent from the bottom of the ocean by He Who Shall Not Be Named. 

Oh ancient one, who dwells within the cyclopean ruins of R'lyeh in the blackest depths of the sea, we come!!

The stars wheeled in the sky and were snuffed out. The dreadful music of the outer spheres rose in our brains like a great destroying wave, erasing thought and time and whipping away the last shreds of our sanity like wisps of smoke before the howling winter gale. 

Do you hear it?? The voice of the frogs!?! That terrible croaking??!! They are His children and they would summon Him!!! Oh unhappy mortals, flee and hide ye faces, for He awakes!!!!!!

NNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

I awoke next morning in an abandoned petrol station about a mile from the venue. My body was covered in small, purple bruises and I stank horribly, like a dead cat soaked in urine. 

It took me some time to get on my feet, because I had an overwhelming feeling that the instant I moved something terrible would happen, but the feeling subsided and eventually I emerged into the sunlight.

When I found the others I was told that during the night.... 

A: The Box had been elected village Mayor, running unopposed, and had outlawed the internet.

B: I had been tried (in-absentia) on eight counts of sodomy and arson but acquitted on a legal technicality even though my council was passed out under the stage ...

C: The Baaron had married a fine local horse (a three year old gelding called Nips who went missing shortly after the ceremony and has not been seen since). 

Good times, dear reader. Good times.

There are two keys lessons to be learnt from this sorry story.

A: Seek ye not the deep and submarine paths to ancient R'lyeh, where Cthulu, old and terrible beyond mortal thought, abides in the slumber of dark aeons and....

B: If you're in a band please wear jeans, or at least a nice pair of slacks. Shorts are not on.

Thanks to No Brain No Headache and the La Forumi posse.

Two of them live shots stolen from Laurent Legarde

"But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?" Howard Phillips Lovecraft

*Except various groups associated with "skate-rock" between 1982 and 1987