“I think most of you can guess where this particular column is going – nowhere”

On one night not so different from so many other nights, my girlfriend and I sat down at our favourite table in our favourite bar. We ordered our favourite liquid refreshment and started to settle in when the manager came over to me and said, “I didn’t know you’re that funny cunt who writes all that stuff in bc magazine.”

I had to pause for a moment to contemplate this. I won’t say I’ve never been called a cunt before, but I believe this was the first time a woman called me that and I know for sure it was the first time it was prefixed with the word ‘funny’. Since she was British and I’m not, I put it down to some quirk related to the funny version of what used to be England’s language before it was officially taken over by Singlish and Chinglish. And, deluded soul that I am, I decided I would take it as a compliment. Especially as shortly thereafter she offered me a free beverage with alcoholic content.

I’m not a professional writer by trade, though I come from a family that has produced at least a couple of obscure professional authors. I’ve always enjoyed writing and have been doing it on and off for more years than I care to say. I especially enjoy feedback from readers – actually I’m always amazed people read my little words and some of them claim to actually like them.

Well, no, perhaps that’s false modesty. I think I’m a good writer. But sometimes I just don’t have the time to really put in the effort that I should. And when that happens, it’s glaringly obvious to me, even if it’s not always readily apparent to others. But I think most of you can guess where this particular column is going – nowhere.

Let’s face it, folks – these are the dog days for music and movies. Nothing of any note gets released in January (which is when I’m writing this, even though you won’t see it till February). Then there’s the massive internet screw-up from late December, and we’re still not 100% back from that. But to top it off, at roughly the same time that Mother Nature decided we would be okay for a while at the speed of dial-up, one of my hard disks decided to crash. A large hard disk. With a lot of stuff on it. A lot of stuff that wasn’t backed up. I’ve spent so much time trying to recover that data I haven’t been able to pay attention to anything more mentally taxing than the start of the new season of American Idol.

And yet, the deadline looms and my editor sends emails and SMS’s. I’ve tried telling him it would be an artistic, postmodernist expression to run a blank page, not unlike John Cage’s classic musical work 4’33”, which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. That composition, if I may call it that, is so famous it has been performed and recorded by a variety of artists, played on the radio, and John and Yoko even released a tribute called Two Minutes Silence. Philistine that he is, he remained unconvinced.

Then I thought about how other artists dealt with deadlines, and that led me to thinking about those who owed their
record company just one more record to get out of a contract. And I found my mind straying to those days when the Rolling Stones owed London Records just one more single before they could leave to start their own label, and gave the label a little ditty called Cocksucker Blues (featuring a chorus that roughly went “When will I get my dick sucked, when will I get my
ass fucked?”).

I found myself thinking about Lou Reed saying “Screw you!” to RCA Records by delivering an album called Metal Machine Music, a two-record set that featured 60 minutes of feedback. RCA said “Screw you!” right back to him and actually released it, and to this day some Lou Reed fans are insane enough to say they actually like it. And then there are the 31 songs Van Morrison recorded in one day to get away from Bang Records, including the immortal ditty Blowin’ Your Nose.

The Spike Award for best contractual obligation album of all time would likely go to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, who came up with the appropriately titled Contractual Obligation Album, although apparently that was just the title. Nevertheless, the first song on the record was called Sit On My Face, while other tracks included an ode to Henry Kissinger, a warning about not being rude to Arabs and the sound of John Denver being strangled. The song titled I Like Chinese included the lyric “They only come up to your knees”. Wikipedia mentions another Python album in the vaults, titled The Hastily Cobbled Together for a Fast Buck Album.

Things are bound to improve. As the year goes by, there will be some good movies and music to write about and someday I’ll finish recovering my hard disk so that I can focus on the outside world again. (And, yes, I’ve invested in a RAID array so I won’t have to go through this again.) Until next time, I leave you with this Spike’s Contractual Obligation Column. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you’ll still buy me a drink if you recognize me in a bar. It could have been worse. I could have devoted a column to current Thai pop bands including Big Ass Three, Big Ass Returns and the hit album Visa For Love from the all-ladyboy Thai pop group Venus Flytrap. They show the video constantly on Bangkok’s SkyTrain and the tourists love it. Won’t you please give it a try?