My mate, punk-rock blues guitarist Gary Lammin, witnessed a fine bit of irony at the public launch of the "Yo! What Happened to Peace" exhibition at The Foundry in trendy Shoreditch on Tuesday.
Some bright spark had decided that mood of the cafe upstairs from the collection of anti-war posters would be enhanced by the use of naked candles stuck into the necks of wine bottles.
This being the opening of the UK leg of the international tour, it drew a heaving crowd.
You know what happens next.
One young black woman in a long scarf and permed hair passes too close to a candle and the next thing her scarf's alight, her coat's alight and her hair's on fire. Everyone's gawping while she's screaming. Gary has the presence of mind to leap across the room and smother the flames, singeing his own fingers in the process, not an ideal situation for a guitarist about to head off to America and record with Pierre De Beauport, the Rolling Stones' guitar specialist.
She's in shock. Gary's in shock. No-one calls an ambulance and now the venue managers are apparently telling her it's her fault because she was wearing a long flammable scarf.
The cherry on the icing on the cake is the reaction from the yuppie at the bar. Before dashing over to save the distressed damsel, Gary had plunged his hands into the nearest liquid in the room: a pint sitting on the bar.
He returns to the bar and the disgruntled yuppie who says,
"Excuse me, that was my drink."
"Frightfully sorry. Would you like me to buy you another one?"
"Yes, that would be the thing to do."
Gary, his blood up, racing with adrenalin, and still with the smell of burning flesh in his nostrils, is commendably restrained for a diamond geezer. He says,
"I will buy you one, mate. But before I do, consider this. You won't be drinking it, you'll be wearing it."
Gary and his mate Mark leave the yuppie scum to their deathtrap jollities and head off to find one of the few remaining working-class pubs in the area where the clientele act like human beings and not Fellini grotesques.
3 comments:
I was there at The Foundry yesterday....looking at the G8 photographs in the crypt (basement but it looks like a crypt)and I meant to look at the anti-war posters. But i heard there was a couple of yuppie artists having a nose at the exhibition the other day and one asked, "Are you condoning violence"?..... They have noooo clue about the real world.
Having worked with rich kids who think they are artists, sweeping statement I know, but most of them are right-wing tossers (one berated me for organising a one day strike as "what about the damage done to the students"? and "you are selfish"...etc.etc.)
One bloke (who was a painter) I knew once said collectivism is a dirty word in art unlike individualism. Damn right observation....
Now that would have been a brilliant piece of video art, "Yuppie scum-bag wears a drink"
Entered in the Turner Prize and one for Nicholas Serota to mull over....
Did they still have the candles upstairs?
You know, I am sure they did!
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