A database error has occurred.
A database error has occurred.
A database error has occurred.
Shaun Ryder
X. The man with the rhymes.
Bez
A one man dancing vibe machine.
There now follow two unlikely but symbolically accurate events. The first begins in outer space, or Little Hulton, which is to say, a place where the atmosphere is rarefied and survival tough.
Little Hulton is outer space, the space on the outer limits of Salford. First you have Salford, the working-class city that does a Minneapolis-St Paul with big brother Manchester. The languid, bendy and generally filthy River Irwell holds the worked-in city and the lived-in city apart. But only just. And beyond Salford you get the suburbs of Salford, the Eccles and Swintons. No longer the soap-opera side streets, but clearly connected. Then there's Worsley, a polite, middle-class enclave with some half-timbered crap that reminds us that Salford is multidimensional, but then go further out, go further out into space, and we have Little Hulton. Not the back of beyond but the beyond of the back. Almost on the East Lancs Road, the classic 50s dual carriageway that connected the warring twins that were Liverpool and Manchester; Little Hulton, a place that was simply, 'on the way out'.
And there, one day, we see a sixteen-year-old Shaun Ryder walking down the middle of the street, 'cause he's off pavements today. He's off school too. In trouble 'cause his teachers say he cheated in a poetry competition. Not that his school is big on poetry, but they do try occasionally, and when young Mr Trouble handed in his it was clear from the strangely moving language and rhythms that Mr and Mrs Ryder needed to come in to school to be berated for their son, who had evidently moved on from stealing stereos and televisions to stealing literature.
Of course, Shaun had written it. He could write. His school didn't know it and the cool thing is, he didn't know it. Still doesn't.
He'd been barred for the day. Education is so uneducated. And now, wandering aimlessly of an eleven o'clock morning, he heard a whoosh, a swooch, a roar, and the estate tarmac began to tremble.
A flying saucer, approximately two hundred yards wide, hovered at the far end of the cul-de-sac. Hovered, but swayed a bit too. Side to side. Fairly rhythmic. The outside was all matt silver, that finish you get from Humbrol acrylic on Airfix plastic in an imaginary world sort of way. And where you would expect to see the numbers inscribed by a Starfleet stencil, instead three large bronze letters in perfect Helvetica type, B, E and Z.
For one second the saucer stopped its baggy dancing, and then a great clap of thunder like God farting and a flash of white neon filled all of Shaun's senses. And whoooooo the saucer reappeared in vision just long enough to shake its corners at young Ryder and retreat at a million miles a second into the furthest point of the sky.
And as sense and sensibility returned to our lad, he saw, twenty or so yards away, in the aura that the alien ship had left behind, another lad. Taller than himself, but of similar age and with an angular look, eyes perching forward like those of a bird of prey, looking for stuff. Searching for stuff.
'Fly me to the moon,' says Ryder and hummed the Truffault signature tune from Close Encounters. 'Do da do deee doooo.'
It is an alien. 'Do da da dooo deeeee dooo. Thunderbirds are go, buddy, going to the foot of our stairs.'
'Put those words back into my mouth, you thieving bastard.' Shaun grins broadly. They both sway. Walk together. Embrace. Connect. Walk away from the cul-de-sac, together. Grinning. Grinning.
From 24 Hour Party People, by Tony Wilson.
Click here to buy a copy
