Now here’s an interesting idea. Approach a bunch of high-profile musicians and persuade them to compose a short story based on a punk classic. Add a few proper writers too, just in case. Call it – of course – Punk Fiction, and present a percentage of the profits to charity. A simple but splendid plan.
The book is the brainchild of Janine Bullman, a music industry PR whose experience at gently persuading artists to do stuff came in handy over the slightly frantic five-month period of its creation. “Some needed a gentle ‘you can do it,’” she admits. “It was taking some of them out of their safety zone and trying something new.”
That said, she was hardly approaching the Cheeky Girls here, as “the musicians who took part are all very literary anyway. Some have written before. Billy Bragg and Billy Childish, for example, are well-respected writers as well as musicians. Some have taught English Literature like Paul [Smith] from Maximo Park and some have studied it like Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke. So I knew they had it in them, you can tell from their lyrics too. Paul Smith, for instance, has a wonderful way with words…”
Also involved from the music side are the likes of Alison Mosshart of The Kills, Lightspeed Champion’s Dev Hynes, former Long Blondes frontwoman Kate Jackson and The Pan I Am’s Edward Larrikin, who wrote an ‘Anarchy In The UK’-inspired tale entirely in lower-case. Meanwhile, such notable literary figures as Kate Pullinger, Cathi Unsworth and John Niven – whose music-biz-bashing novel Kill Your Friends caused such a stir – also agreed to take the punkinspired challenge. And Johnny Marr did his bit, too. “He was in New Zealand recording when he wrote the foreword and when it came through I couldn’t believe how much he got it,” says Bullman. “He had put the whole concept into words that I just couldn’t have expressed.”
Punk Fiction is on sale now, with a pound from each purchase going to the Teenage Cancer Trust.
For a taster of this worthy tome, you can read Lightspeed Champion’s offering, The KKK Took My Baby Away (based on The Ramones’ track), below.
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The KKK Took My Baby Away
Devonte Hynes
I was awake again. I could tell I was for sure this time. I had figured out the last three moments of consciousness were mere fragments of the part of my brain not frozen numb with a throbbing, extremely painful fear.
I rested my head upon the sharp metal corner of the front left window, trying to recall the twisted events that led me to this most unlikely of circumstances and with each road I re-visited in my brain, the more I pushed my head into the corner of the cold window frame. Ever since The Fuxzprator Regime gained control nearly thirty years ago now no one in the whole of Bazatof had felt safe.
The Fuxzprator Regime is led by a tall, slim, young man who goes by the name of H. He has a jet white head of short, slicked back hair, a pale face and dark, cutting, sunken-in eyes.
A glossy headshot of H is plastered on the walls all around Bazatof, and at the fourth minute of every 17th hour we must kneel down at the nearest picture and mutter the almighty prayer of H. If we don’t, we lose the next 16 hours, as in, they are erased, gone. Within a blink of an eye, you’re standing outside of a Fuxzprator station, knowing you have but an hour to find another head shot to kneel down too. With each time you’re caught, they add another hour, plus the previous hours. So first time – 16 hours, second time – 33 hours, third time – 51 hours.
It’s a ludicrous concept and I’ve yet to grasp its relevance.
No one seems to know much about H. Or remember the first time they even heard of him or even when they voted him into power. It just happened. But we grow more used to it with each passing day. It’s normal to wake up one day and have a new building fully erected across the road from your apartment. Such things are never questioned.
But I read. I read the stories of the old world, and I know that things took time. I know buildings take years to be made, for people to be inside, to be working . . .
The only constant I seem to have in my life is my family.
I’d do anything for them.
My wife is dead.
The woman I love is dead.
The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with is dead.
Reason’s unbeknownst to us an alien race called the Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalant (KKK for short) had been watching our planet for some time. I’m aware that I’m skimming over a lot of details, but please understand the torment I’m going through right now.
The KKK had been watching our ‘fair’ (fear) planet for some time now and I’m going to assume they must’ve had an ongoing feud with H.
I wish I knew the answers. I’m in a tiny space pod, crunched inside, speeding through space to what I think might be the planet of the Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalant. But I have no way to be sure until I arrive. It was the only vehicle I could find. I need some answers.My wife, my beautiful Lindsay, was taken away from me forever. And my son Jacob. Why must this happen?
I have no one.
I look outside this capsule and all I see is space.
I see black.
I should’ve given up. Will I even make it to this
planet? And when I get there, is it even going to be
where I need to be?
They took my son away from me. Just snatched him from my arms. Why my son?
I was in the wrong place as always.
Am I making sense? My mind is racing. I’m
skipping subjects. The point of writing this down is so that . . . what is the point?
Oh God . . . what am I doing?
OK . . . I think maybe a day has just passed since I wrote that last sentence. I can’t work out if my clock works fine, or if it tends to stop from time to time.
From time to time is an interesting phrase . . .
Technically I guess that would mean constantly right? As we are actually moving from ‘time to time all the time . . .
Or does it tend to stop constantly?
That would possibly suggest it’s just stopped altogether . . . and never continues . . . so I’d be stuck in time.
Which is precisely how I feel right now.
What’s the time?
Well it’s actually an irreversible non spatial continuum from the past through the present onwards t’wards the future . . .
*
I feel like shit. I wonder how long I was out for this time.
I dreamt of Lindsay. I dreamt of the moment they took her away from me. I dreamt of the look in her eyes before she was liquefied by that Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalant scumbag. I should have done something. I didn’t do anything.
I didn’t do anything.
I froze.
I deserve whatever torment comes my way, but Jacob? What did he ever do?
I was still frozen to the spot when they grabbed him and exited the apartment through the window.
It may feel like I’ve summed up the most horrifying moment of my life rather quickly. But that’s how it was . . . and that’s how it is . . . it happened quickly, there was no time to think, no time to question motives, no time to think about what’s right and wrong . . . and I am soul-less now because of this.
But I will get you back Jacob. I promise you. I will get you back, and the Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalant will all pay, with every ounce of my aching body I will make them suffer plights of which they have never ever suffered before.
I’m thirsty.
I didn’t think this through.
What is H doing right now?
Maybe he got taken in by the KKK . . . maybe they’re torturing him right now. I hope they destroy him, it’s his fault, I know this for a fact . . . his giant golden face being smashed to pieces by a . . .
What the hell is that?
OK, so I just looked outside the window. I think I can see the Planet of the KKK . . . I predict two more days roughly until I arrive . . .
Question: What’s the difference between a Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalant resident and a Bazatofian?
Answer: The Krahpatilt Kequa are Konsalant-ly annoying!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHhahahahHAHAHhhahahHhahahhHAHAHAHAHhahahahahhHAHAHhahhHAHHAHAHhahahhahHAHAHhahhahahahHhahahhHAHHhahhahahHhahahahhHAHAHAHHAhhahaah . . .
Time for more sleep.
Check List upon arrival at the Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalant planet:
1. Kill every Krahpatilt Kequa Konsalantian I see.
2. Keep one alive to show me where my son is.
3. Find food.
4. Find drink.
5. Remember where space pod is.
6. Find back up space pod.
7. Find weapon.
Wait, I think I’ve written these in an awful order.
I NEED A NEW BRAIN
Hello, if you’ll please humour me. I shall refer to the first book of the Cosmic Trigger Trilogy.
Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson teaches us a few things:
1. Self induced brain change is indeed, very possible. I shall look into this in a second.
2. Reality is definitely subject to change in the eye of the beholder.
I need to find my reality tunnel. As long as I stay on that path, nothing can go wrong, nothing. I have crushed the old filters of Bazatof and am now buildingnew walls within this pod. I am very aware of the confirmation biases of which I am setting myself up for right now, but I also believe because of the situation I’m in right now . . . I am allowing myself this little taste of inductive inference.
Was Leo Tolstoy an idiot?
It was he who said, ‘The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.’ Wait, but maybe that means that I’m the ‘slow-witted man.’ That is more likely than a 19th century Russian theorist being a fool. Oh Christ . . . I am standing at the gates of Hell 1 and looking straight into the eyes of Morton’s Demon
. . . there are too many overlays . . .
I seem to be getting closer to the planet whilst simultaneously becoming the LIMP in the LAMP. I’m worried now. I seem to be losing my mind. I’m neither hungry nor thirsty anymore. Every part of my body is pulling me towards this planet. We’re so close, we’re getting faster now. I can see the planet, it’s glowing, and the sparkling red beauty is filling my heart and stomach, both of which are racing and spinning. My breathing is going out of control. I’m sweating a lot . . . this must be the planet, this can only be the planet . . . surely . . . I see nothing else now.
Just red, such a bright vibrant blaze . . . my eyes are widening . . . this is it . . . I feel the capsule speeding more and more . . . my hair is starting to fall out . . . I can see it shedding . . . I’m going to cover my face with my hands.
