Archive for the 'London' Category

Rescuecat

Have you ever come across someone so messed up on drugs that just talking to them made you feel high? That happened to me the other night. It was a really strange feeling. For the first three or four minutes I thought I was the one who was acting really weird while the rest of the world was staring at me cock-eyed. Turns out I was just talking to two people deep in the throws of some mysterious drug experience.

We were at a place called Baggy’s down by the lake. The bar looks like it might have been swanky back in 1964 or whenever it first opened. Now it just seems like a smokey rec room with equal parts hipsters and vintage alcoholics. Baggy’s is pretty much empty most of the time, but this being a weekend there were about a dozen people in there. Still, we had no problem finding a few seats at the end of the bar with a commanding view of the sidewalk and the chicken and waffles joint across the street.

My friend Jon went to grab drinks while Scott and I sat down to watch drunks outside through the picture window. Next thing I knew, a young girl with a sideways grin and oddly practical shoes was standing uncomfortably close to Scott. Scott looked at me, then at the girl. Several awkward moments of silence passed with the girl just grinning at us, like she had been a part of our conversation since we got there - and like she knew Scott well enough to dismiss any thought of his personal space.

Finally Scott said, “Uh, hello?” - not greeting the girl as much as verifying that she was aware of her surroundings. She just laughed and said “yeah.” Then she smiled at us both. Scott asked if they knew each other. She offered a few words, although nothing that could be misconstrued as a sentence or coherent thought. She smiled again and sipped her drink. Then she said “I was just…yeah,” looking at us as though she was saying something that required a response. Scott started to ask another question, but she cut him off, nodding her head and agreeing before he had even said anything. It’s important to note that at this point, she was practically in Scott’s lap.

Jon had been gone for a while, so I started thinking that this was somehow a practical joke of his making. Like, maybe he knows this girl, saw her on his way to get drinks and told her to go fuck with his friends while he paid for the beers. So I asked her. “You’re fucking with us, right? This is some kind of weird performance art or something? Or your friends are secretly taping this for YouTube? Do you know Jon?” She chortled into her glass and came over to stand uncomfortably close to me.

At this point I realized she was actually at the bar with another guy. He was sitting behind us and staring at Scott like he had just fallen out of a tree. None of us said anything for a full 30 seconds. The girl looked at Scott, looked at me, smiled and said, “Ha ha. Yeah, I know…ha ha ha! Maybe.” Then she and her weird friend stepped out side and smoked at least a dozen cigarettes in a row.

Jon came back with beer and I tried in vain to explain how weird these people were acting. Actually, first I tried to convince him to hit on the smiley chick standing outside. But I guess I was a little too eager because he didn’t take the bait. He knew we were trying to mess with him, but he couldn’t understand what we thought was so weird about a smiling girl in a bar who likes to stand close to you. In theory, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing most guys go to a bar on a Saturday night to find.

Then he looked out the window. The girl was playing full on tonsil hockey with some stranger who seemed to have just been walking by the bar, while her friend was sucking down cigarettes and staring at us with his face pressed up against the glass. We waved, flipped him the bird, mimed the words “what the fuck?” Nothing. It was like he was staring into a mirror and seeing outer space.

Eventually the guy, the girl and her new found love interest made their way back inside. They were joined by a couple of creepy looking older dudes who were drinking gin and shaking pill bottles, with the same lewd grins plastered to their faces. One of them must have taken a detour to the jukebox, because the ambiance at Baggy’s suddenly took a turn for the worse. Whereas before we were sitting in a dark bar listening to the standard assortment of generic rock songs, we were now accosted by a slow mix of Leonard Cohen ballads and the most depressing songs from the Morissey discography.

Which brings us to the moral of this tale. If you’re going to get loaded on horse tranquilizers and go down to the local bar to harass strangers with your weird narcotic behavior, at least have the decency to put on some good drug music. It shouldn’t be that hard, considering that more than half the rock n roll canon would easily qualify.

Or, since you’re already expanding your horizons, why not try something new? I suggest “£10 Bag” from the North London artist known as Rescuecat. The song sways from church choir interludes to flamenco guitar riffs to bouncy-yet-menacing electro pop. More to the point, RC himself assures me that it’s “about 80s computer games, childhood and heroin.” Perfect for somebody at the bottom of a K hole and the guys sitting next to her at the bar, just trying to have a beer and talk about the best lines from District 9 (winner: “I will eat your arm and gain your powah!”).

Did you catch that, weirdos? If you’re going to get so high that you don’t care what other people think of you, at least understand that you should care what they think about your taste in music.

MP3: ‘£10 Bag’