Reasons To Be Cheerful part Nein Nein Nein

Radio Birdman – Hand Of Law

That introduction, the bass kicks off, the drum comes in and then the guitar riff… fuck me, it’s just about perfect really.   And here I am 40 years later still hearing that song and finding it fresh and exciting and it hits me right in the heart and brain and makes me smile still… all these years and still I can’t help but feel the power and energy and the moment. 

I still own the original cassette copy of Radios Appear that I bought back in the day when I was like 15 and discovered this band and a whole new world opened up.  1978/79 and my mate Mike and I would trek out to the caves with the Radio Birdman tape and my “newest” cassette player, the third one I’d owned by then. Another beat up second hand Sony I think, but unlike my second player, this one didn’t have dual decks but did have a working battery pack and didn’t need electrical tape to hold it together. (Always a bonus) The tape deck would rest on my shoulder and we’d listen to the rumble, the power as we trekked the couple of miles out of town through the pine forest to our hideaway one of many we’d had over the years, forts we’d built from fallen pine trees and branches, dug outs in the soil, old sheds lost in the forest, this time we had a pothole/cave we had made into a fort, a secret space, even putting posters on the wall down there and bringing candles and dirty magazines and food.  Radio Birdman would echo off the damp walls, the sound crashing and swooping all around us and it all made perfect sense.  It would be in the high 30s outside, so hot you could barely think but down here in our cave, accessible only by climbing down a tree branch, surrounded by rock posters and teen goddesses, with the music blaring, it was a cool low 20s and we would lay back smoking and laughing and listening intently to Rob Younger’s scream, Deniz Tek’s guitar, trying to decipher words and meaning, not caring about the heat or the flies or what the future held for us.  There were no thoughts of sawmills or log trucks, no petrol pump jockeys or supermarket shelves down here just cool air and loud guitar, rock and roll escapism and the sounds of birds up above in the trees, flies buzzing lazily waiting for us to surface, the world lazily waiting for us to come up for air.

And we’d always have to come back up, if just to piss but while we were down there, no one could find us or tell us what to do, there were no teachers asking for answers, no parents questioning our intentions, no girls laughing at us, no pressure, no purpose, just the blistering Detroit influenced rock and roll that promised a different world, that signaled the change that was coming, the possibilities… we just had to find it.  

Play It Loud!!