I was never a huge Alice Cooper fan. It’s not that I didn’t, not, like his stuff, I just never had any of it. See I grew up in a household where Pink Floyd, Led Zep, and Queen ruled the turntable. Not that I was allowed to go near dad’s stereo.
I remember once back in the early eighties getting my arse tanned for playing one of dad’s records. I’m thinking it was Queen’s “Night at the Opera”? I was trying to record it to a cassette for my hand me down Sony Walkman my sister gave me. There was always a certain charm in recording stuff to cassette. Maybe it was the element of danger that the magnetic tape would spin off the reels and get mangled inside the play mechanism.
Dad was out, and I had the vinyl spinning and volume cranked to the max. Then, dad came home. Man, I jumped so high I recon I would have made Michael Jordan look like he had glue on his shoes. I rushed to pull the vinyl from the turntable quick smart, misjudged it and, well we all know what the sound of a needle scratching across a record sounds like. That was followed by my old man shouting all kinds of abuse my way and his hand across my backside, and my mum trying to calm him down.
It was a few months later he got me my own record player. I guess it was a peace offering, and a way to stop me playing his one. It was some second hand, bright orange piece of crap, but it played records and I thought it was at the Bee’s Bollocks, Ducks Nuts and Cats Pyjamas all in one. I saved up my pocket money, then went out and bought myself a few albums of my own from the record store in town.
They were crap; of course. I chose them based on the pictures adorning the front covers, rather than the artists who recorded them. “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space” (I shit you not that was the first album I ever bought – man I wish I still had it), “Smash Hits Eighty … something” with a bikini clad chick in big sunglasses on the front and Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to my Nightmare.”
It’s Alice that comes to mind as I write this intro. As good as Leonard Nimoy was, his music from outer space may have to wait until I find some SciFi stories to write. You see, these three stories I have for you were all dreams, no, more nightmares that I have had. Each one woke me (in a cold sweat on one occasion) and when I checked the clock, it was 3 am. I’ve tried to keep as close as possible to the dream. To ‘write it true,’ as they say. I open the door to my head and invite you inside. Mind the cobwebs. And in the immortal words of Alice cooper. Welcome to my nightmare, I think you’re gonna like it.
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Mate, I would read it, be interesting to see if your nightmares can be as captivating as your sales spiel, good luck with it.
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Great story and can’t wait to hear you tell it on Northern Vibe.