Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Crystal Passion ==============

   Bradley Stoke ============





   Chapter One ==========

   How well did I ever really know Crystal Passion?

   I ask that because everyone says that no one knew her better than me.

   And that's just not true.

   It's obvious why so many people believe I know more about her than the
dozen or so others who were with her on that last fateful tour.  I'm the
one who renowned American rock critic Polly Tarantella has elevated to the
status of Chief Guardian of the Crystal Passion legacy.  Of the rest of us
who were there, does anyone remember Bertha?  And what about the other
Simone, the one also known as the Harlot?  And I can't be sure whether
Thelma's real name was Judy or whether Judy's real name was Thelma.  Since
there were two Judys on the tour and she was the second to join the band,
because we had to call her something, the name we used was Thelma.

   Whatever Polly says, I can't be credited the honour she bestows on me on
the basis of my one and only English Top Forty hit record in the late 1990s
and the accompanying album that shifted hardly any units at all.  That's
not enough to make me the primary authority on the music, soul or history
of Crystal Passion.  For a start, my hit single, I'm Hanging Upside Down,
with its chorus of "Inside.  Outside.  Upside Down." can't be described a
musical masterpiece (even by me) and it's by chance rather than design that
this is the three and a half minutes of drum and bass by which Simone
Kopernik, better known as Pebbles, became famous as a solo artist.

   There was never a time when Crystal Passion was anything other than a
mystery.  She might even have been called an enigma, but when I was in her
band in the 1990s that was a word you'd associate with the German
electronic trio whose music was reputedly inspired by the Marquis de Sade.
And neither Enigma nor the Marquis directly influenced Crystal Passion.

   I don't agree with Polly Tarantella's view that Crystal Passion's music
was 'void of obvious influence' and 'forged from the vital essence of her
soul', whatever that means.  The music didn't appear spontaneously in a
vacuum.  I mean, you can easily tell what influences me and my music.  I
always loved 1960s West Coast pop.  I adored Love, Spirit, the Beach Boys,
the Mamas and Papas, and the sunshine and sand their music invokes.  That
was what informed I'm Hanging Upside Down and even more the other tracks on
my album The Way to San Jose.  The main difference between me and Crystal
Passion was that her influences encompassed just about everything and
everyone she'd ever seen, heard, read about or imagined.  And that was a
lot!

   Back in the 1990s, when we performed together as the Crystal Passion
band, Grunge was the coolest sound in American Rock and World Music was
beginning to open ears to new possibilities on both sides of the Atlantic,
but for us in the UK the sound that best defined the time was what the
Americans now call EDM but we just called Dance.  Mostly it was House
Music, but there was also Techno, Drum & Bass, Trance and a whole load of
shit that's since got lost by the wayside.  There was some kind of Brit
Rock scene emerging, represented by groups like Oasis and Blur, but the
most notable British Rock groups at the time were the likes of Ride, the
Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses.  If there was anything that could be
described as unique about Crystal Passion's music it was that its scope was
way beyond the usual set of boundaries.  It wasn't really Rock.  It wasn't
really Dance.  It wasn't really World, Folk, Jazz, Soul or Pop, but it was
somehow also all these things at the same time.

   God knows how Crystal ever found the time to hear all the shit that
inspired her.

   From a brief listen, you'd say that Crystal Passion and her eponymous
band was some kind of an electro-acoustic outfit.  The few critics who
mentioned her at the time referenced Nick Drake (obviously!), Joni Mitchell
and Tracy Chapman.  Her preferred instrument was the acoustic guitar and
her voice had a peculiar breathy quality that superficially placed her in
the Folk Rock tradition.  But it soon becomes obvious as you listened to
her that she was also inspired by a load of weird shit that included György
Ligeti, Edward Vesala and Oumou Sangare.  She understood twelve tone and
microtonal music.  She appreciated the essence of Krautrock, Cajun, Duduk
and Mugham.  She was as much at home with Nick Cave as with Stock Aitken
Waterman.  And if there was a musical legacy she most truly followed, it
was the anarchic, free-form aggregations of the likes of the Sun Ra
Arkestra, Funkadelic and Planet Gong.  It was never obvious what kind of
music Crystal Passion might play, what character of musician would play in
her band, and what new ideas and sounds she'd come up with next.

   There was much about the 1990s that was weird.  The best way to describe
the decade was as the period of time squeezed between the age of vinyl and
family television and the coming new era of mobile phones and the internet.
There were real expectations that a new defining chapter in the history of
recorded music was about to arrive-for American Rock critics like Polly
Tarantella-Crystal Passion's music sounds weird enough to seem to herald
that long anticipated musical revolution.  Perhaps sufficiently weird to
support Polly's claim that her music 'defies definition'.  But when Crystal
assembled together her amorphous band of miscellaneous musicians I don't
think her music was really that much out of step with the stuff you could
hear most nights in those days on John Peel's show on BBC Radio One.

   The truth is, of course, that not many people at the time much liked
Crystal Passion's music the first time they heard it.  But it made more
sense the more you heard it.  And then it got under your skin and you
couldn't get enough of it.  It must have made a real impression on me
because it persuaded me to abandon my studies in Marine Biology at
Bournemouth Poly and join Crystal Passion's ramshackle group for what
became a never-ending tour of crappy venues and muddy festivals all around
the UK and, on occasion, as far afield as Belgium, Denmark, Spain and
Sweden.

   But that last concert tour in the United States was just one step too
far.

   For that was the tour that killed Crystal Passion.

   Literally.

   And, until Polly Tarantella championed her legacy after decades of
obscurity, this was also the tour that killed off Crystal Passion's music
and pretty much all public memory of the woman who was, for me, not just a
colleague, an inspiration and a muse, but also a close friend and, most
important of all, my lover.

   You'd think-given the huge amount of attention now devoted to all things
Crystal Passion-that our arrival in the United States was like the Beatles'
British Invasion in the 1960s.

   In fact, it could have hardly been more low key.

   Our record label, Gospel Records, couldn't afford more than a partial
advance on the projected (modest) record sales of what turned out to be
Crystal Passion's final and posthumously released fourth album, eventually
to be entitled The Last Word.  So, to finance the tour, we had to dig deep
into our even more modest funds and Crystal's mysterious personal
allowance. I don't think anyone had even heard of us in America, but
Crystal's agent, Madeleine Tartt, managed to book us gigs on the basis of
America's continued fascination with British Rock and Pop music.

   Like everyone else associated with Crystal Passion, Madeleine worked for
her not because she believed that her uncategorisable, defiantly
non-commercial music would ever sell in the vast quantities that it
actually now does, but because she had an intangible faith in Crystal and
everything she seemed to represent.  And also because Crystal was so
generous with her body to almost everyone who got to know her.

   Madeleine's promotional material did well to advertise the facts that
the Crystal Passion band was an all-woman group whose appeal bridged a wide
spectrum of tastes, including House, Rock and Folk.  Madeleine could also
have mentioned Country, Jazz, Bluegrass and the Blues, if she'd wanted to
claim that Crystal Passion's influences would appeal to every possible
American palate, but she had to consider audience expectations.

   And, most significantly, her publicity slyly omitted to mention the main
reason why American Rock fans and their parents might get more than they
expected from a Crystal Passion gig.

   The flight across the Atlantic from Heathrow to JFK was on the cheapest
possible seats.  In the 90s, however, they weren't quite as cheap as they
can be these days, but at least the food, the luggage space and use of the
toilet was inclusive.  We all tried to get a good sleep on the plane,
because we knew that the five hour time lag between London and New York
could be a real killer.

   I don't know how many of us had ever visited the States before.  I
certainly hadn't, however much I'd fantasised about the West Coast and all
that surf, sun and roller blades.  I'm pretty sure Crystal hadn't been
there either, even though she'd travelled pretty much everywhere else in
the world.  But however much an experience India, Morocco or Thailand might
be, America was another place altogether.  Like me, I guess Crystal thought
we already knew what to expect given all the American movies and TV shows
we'd seen.

   But as it happened the differences between America and Europe were
greater than we'd anticipated.

   Most of us were pretty much shagged before we'd even got on the plane.
We'd all gone to an Indian Restaurant on Brick Lane the night before where
Crystal had booked a table for everyone and most of us had rather too much
to drink.  Well, I did anyway.  The restaurant was jam-packed from wall to
wall, so it was a miracle that Crystal had managed to book a table for so
many of us, but I guess she just called in a favour like she so often did.

   Crystal was obviously anxious about the coming American tour.  She sat
between me and Judy, and spoke pretty much equally to both of us.  She told
us that America was going to be the band's make-or-break tour and that she
was fairly sure our chances of breaking into the American music scene
weren't very good.

   "I just hope nobody's gonna split from the band during the tour," she
confided.  "That would really sink us." She seemed to address this to Judy
who was discreetly looking away out of the window.

   Crystal was right to be concerned about Judy's loyalty.  In many ways,
she was the most talented and most ambitious member of the band other than
Crystal and she wasn't the only one who thought that it was just a matter
of time till Judy left and went her own way.  She was nominally the lead
guitarist, but in a band like Crystal Passion she also played keyboards,
sax and bass guitar.  And in a band of so many colourful characters she
stood out as the one who best fit the description of a Rock Chick.  She
dressed-when she bothered to dress at all-in a black singlet, black leather
jeans and knee-high black leather boots with stiletto heels.  She had
tattoos down both arms and pretty much everywhere on her body below the
neckline.  And these tattoos included fragments of Biblical text (but not
the famous one from Ezekiel, as Pulp Fiction had only recently been
released and there'd not yet been an opportunity for Judy to get the words
engraved on what little of her skin could still be used as a canvas).  The
skinscape also featured images of Mythical Rock & Roll icons like Dragons,
Demons, Skulls and, of course, Naked Women.

   It wasn't like Crystal to even hint at discord in the ranks, so her
remarks shocked everyone who heard them.  But at the same time, everyone
knew that Judy had written several pretty good songs herself and had events
turned out otherwise, I think she'd soon have been recording her own album.
But whether she'd use her real name, Judith O'Hara, or her stage name of
Judy Dildo there's now no way now of ever finding out.

   After we'd paid for the meal and were presented our complimentary mint
sweets, a few of us returned to the shared house in Hackney that was
Crystal's rather basic digs.  This was where we intended to round off the
evening with a few restful joints, but we didn't expect Crystal to be more
than a passive presence.  She wasn't known to indulge in drugs.  She wasn't
even a smoker.  In fact I don't think I'd ever seen her smoke a joint
before, even though most of us, including me, almost always had a stash of
a few grams.  But on this occasion, Crystal had scored some potent Paki
Black which she crumbled into some borrowed Rizla papers and then rolled
into a modestly functional spliff.  And this she passed around with due
ceremony.  This was accompanied by a fresh bottle of red wine, which would
have been a potent mix in itself, although I'd already snorted some Charlie
and I suspected that Judy had sampled a tin-foil of brown.

   "This is the last dope and booze we'll have in England for at least a
while," said Crystal.  "I hope this evening will be one we'll all remember
fondly."

   "I'm sure we will," said Philippa as she took a long toke.  "This is
really hot shit.  I certainly won't forget this in a hurry."

   "We'll be friends for life," I said drunkenly, placing my hand on
Crystal's.  "I'll never deny you anything."

   "I don't think I can be so sure of that, Simone," said Crystal
mysteriously and then, again uncharacteristically, changed the subject. 
"Do you think we'll break America?  Or do you think America will break us?"

   "Whatever happens," I said loyally.  "We'll stick together as a band. 
I'll stay loyal.  Come what may."

   The plane from Heathrow was a Boeing 747 with space to seat almost the
whole band in a single row.  Crystal and I sat together in the middle aisle
beside Jacquie and Jane: the two sisters who made up the rhythm section of
drums and electric bass.

   Crystal was still not her usual self.  Normally, she'd be bubbling with
optimism, enthusiasm and energy, but on this occasion she was almost
despondent.

   "I'm really not sure about all this," she confided to me.

   "Sure about what?" I said, more intent on having a doze than a
conversation.

   "This tour."

   "I'm sure it'll be no worse than our gigs in Sweden," I said.  "That was
so bloody sweltering!  Who'd have imagined that Stockholm could be so hot
in summer?"

   "Indeed," said Crystal.  "Anyway don't worry about me.  I'll let you
sleep.  Just like the others.  But if you could first let me squeeze by, I
need to go to the loo."

   "Of course," I said.  "Shall we swap seats so you don't have to disturb
me when you come back?"

   "Feel free," said Crystal.  "Sleep on now.  Take your rest."

   And then she walked down the aisle towards the toilets at the rear,
nodding at whichever band members might still be awake.

   I guess I should have tried to talk more to Crystal about her anxieties,
but I was well and truly knackered.  I didn't have the energy for a long
discussion.  But not so tired, of course, that I didn't accept the
complimentary small bottle of Californian Red when the drinks trolley came
by.  And Crystal gave me her own complimentary bottle as well when she
returned.

   "Take away this cup from me.  You need it more than me," she said as if
it was actually true.

   I glanced towards Crystal as I took her cup and the small plastic bottle
of Californian Chardonnay.  She seemed totally bathed in sweat.  If I
hadn't known her better, I'd have guessed she was suffering from withdrawal
symptoms, but although Crystal didn't condemn other people's drug use,
especially not mine or Judy's, she rarely had more than a single glass of
wine or the briefest toke on a joint.  I don't think she'd ever even
dropped Ecstasy.  She was about as clean as anyone could be in the Rock &
Roll industry.

   Our trials began almost as soon as we touched down at JFK.

   It was inevitable really.  We looked pretty much like the usual
suspects, although the movie of that name hadn't yet been released.

   Of all of us, Crystal seemed the most straight with her long light brown
hair, her pretty and misleadingly innocent face, and a choice of dress that
owed more to Laura Ashley or Liberty Prints than what is more often
associated with Rock, Pop or Dance music.  In fact, she dressed like a Folk
singer with an unusually good sense of style and virtually no interest at
all in contemporary fashion.

   The rest of us...  well!

   In those days, Judy was probably the most startling.  Tattoos weren't
nearly as ubiquitous as they are these days.  Her peculiar hairstyle-a
mixture of short crop and long hair-belonged to a time when no one could
make up their mind where fashion was supposed to go.  I also stood out with
my shaved head (in the style of Sinead O'Connor), but my clothes were more
in the style of the Riot Grrrl movement; that is, a kind of gross
caricature of girliness.  The rest of us were dressed in a motley selection
of styles and fashions, hair-styles and body piercings.  I don't think
there was a single person on the plane and most certainly not at the
airport whose head didn't turn and stare at us.

   As we were about to find out, the United States of America, despite its
history of Liberty and Freedom isn't an especially tolerant society and
thanks to the efforts of Al-Qaeda it's even less so now.  In a sense, we
were already asking for trouble if we thought we could get through Customs
and Passport Control without incident.

   These days it's a much bigger hassle to leave the UK and enter the
States than it was then.  In the 90s, you didn't have to go through
scanners; you didn't have to take off your shoes and trouser-belt; and you
could carry your toiletries as hand luggage.  But on the other hand, a
bunch of weirdo women with rings in their noses, piercings through their
eyebrows and dressed in clothes which were only technically on the right
side of legal and decent: we were exactly what most Americans would
consider undesirable aliens whatever our passports might claim.

   And so it was that, with the sole exception of Crystal, the process of
getting through Passport Control was a lengthy and painful experience in
which everything I'd written on that antique green card was checked,
double-checked and crossreferenced with what the other band members had
written.  Yes, I was staying at the Gettysburg Hotel on 54th Street West.
Yes, the rest of the band had also all been booked into the same hotel. 
And yes, we were going to be staying in America for less than three months
while we toured a very miscellaneous list of destinations across the
Eastern United States: both North and South.  And I did play keyboards in
the band.  But eventually Simone Kopernik, more commonly known as Pebbles,
was allowed onto American soil.  And so too was Judith O'Hara (aka Judy
Dildo).

   Crystal was patiently waiting for us after the Passport and Immigration
desks balancing the cloth bag that doubled as an all-purpose handbag on the
lap of her kneelength floral pattern skirt and holding open a paperback
novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  We hovered around her, most of us smoking as
you still could in airports in those days, while we waited for the other
band members to get their passports stamped.  It was actually Tomiko
Morishita who got the most grief.  I guess they found it difficult to
believe that a girl who looked Japanese and dressed like a character from a
Japanese manga might actually be Irish.  I think the rest of us found it
incredible as well, especially as her accent was cut-glass English public
school.

   We thought the worst was over, but we were wrong.

   As before, Crystal had sailed through the Nothing to Declare channel,
but she chose not to rush onward to the airport lounge where we were
expecting to meet a guy called Kai Pharrel from Sanity Records, New York,
New York, which was Gospel Records' distributor in the States.  I could
envisage him standing out there holding up a cardboard sign reading
'Crystal Passion'.  He was so tantalisingly close.

   "Just a minute, madam," said one of the Customs Officers, a large black
woman with a massive bosom and no evidence whatsoever of a sense of humour.

   I ignored her in the hope that it had nothing to do with me and
continued to walk towards Crystal, but the woman repeated her demand and a
thin Customs Officer with a weird toothbrush moustache stepped in front of
me.

   "If you would be so kind..." he said as he gestured with an open palm
towards a Formica-topped table where Judy, Olivia and my sister Andrea were
also standing.

   I walked over, dragging my suitcase behind, while hoping that New York
customs didn't have sniffer dogs that could smell Ecstasy tablets and also
wondering whether it was an offence to import a copy of Viz into the United
States (I was especially keen on Johnny Fartpants and the Fat Slags).

   "Please place your bag on the table, madam," said the black woman.

   "This is fucking harassment," said Olivia, whose uniform of ripped denim
must have made her seem especially scruffy to the Customs Officers. 
"Why're you picking on us?"

   This was exactly the wrong thing to say, of course, and before long all
of us with the exception of Crystal and Tomiko were detained by the United
States Customs Service and our bags emptied in the search for contraband,
illegal drugs and firearms.

   It was typical of Crystal that although she didn't have to, she let
Tomiko go ahead with her bags, which were just a guitar case and a modest
rucksack for her clothes, and returned to stand beside her band-mates.

   "Can I be of assistance, officer?" she asked the large black woman,
whose plastic name badge displayed the name Kate Phillips.

   "How could that be, madam?" the officer asked as she held up to the
light a bottle of duty-free whisky she'd found wrapped up inside a towel in
Philippa's bag.  Perhaps she thought it might contain dissolved Lysergic
Acid.

   "All these girls are members of my folk group, Crystal Passion.  We're
on tour in the United States of America as you can confirm by talking to
our record company.  I'm sure none of my companions would ever break the
law, officer."

   "What you're sure of and what is the case, madam, might well be two
different things," said Officer Kate Phillips.

   "You have a lot of phials in your case, madam," the other Customs
Officer known as Miguel San Antonio said to Judy.  "What's in them?"

   He emptied half a dozen pills into the palm of one hand and theatrically
exhibited what I immediately recognised as White Doves.

   Fuck!  We were as good as bust.

   "Sweets," said Judy straightaway.  This was quick thinking on her part
given that they were too uneven and unpolished to have been supplied by a
pharmaceutical company.  "English sweets.  I've got a very sweet tooth."

   "A bit odd, don't you think, that you keep sweets in this kind of
container."

   "They're sold loose in English sweet shops," said Judy.  "I had to carry
them in something."

   "Hmmm," said the Customs Officer, who nevertheless returned the tabs to
the phial and therefore ensured that this modest flow of Ecstasy to America
from the Netherlands via England could continue unimpeded.

   Our suitcases, rucksacks and flight bags were emptied out onto the
Formica desktop, but it was actually our array of musical instruments that
the Customs Officers seemed most interested in.

   "There have been cases of drugs and contraband being smuggled into the
country in violin cases recently, madam," remarked Officer Kate Phillips
when Bertha challenged her about this.

   However, we probably wouldn't have been detained for much longer at all
if a small plastic bag of Moroccan hash hadn't been found discarded on the
airport corridor floor just before the entrance to the Nothing to Declare
channel.  A corpulent self-satisfied Hispanic woman with bizarre schoolmarm
spectacles waved the small plastic bag in front of us and asked
sarcastically: "Do any of you claim this as your

   own?"

   Although it wasn't mine-my stash had already been seen and disregarded
in the Tic-Tac container I'd popped them in-I was pretty sure I recognised
it.  It was the sort of sealable cash bag that Jenny used to carry her
dope. Along with Bertha, she was one of the two roadies and famously could
scarcely function at all without a joint either in her hand or mouth.  I
guessed that she'd panicked when she saw that we'd been stopped and just
let her stash drop to the ground.  A sensible plan, but not one that had
worked as planned.  The Customs Officers weren't so stupid as to imagine
that a bag of dope had appeared from nowhere.  I just hoped they weren't
going to fingerprint it, although in that regard if it was Jenny's stash,
her affectation of wearing little leather gloves might well protect her.

   "I think we're going to have to detain all you girls for further
questions," said Miguel San Antonio who seemed to be the most senior
Customs Officer.

   "Does that include me, sir?" asked Crystal.  "I've already been cleared
by customs."

   Officer Miguel San Antonio glanced at Officer Kate Phillips and the
Hispanic woman whose name-badge read Costanzia Rodriguez as if for advice,
and then, spotting Judy's surly expression, he said: "You claim this is
your Folk group, even though they look more like a goddamn freak show like
those Rock groups my son listens to.  If you want to represent them, my
dear, then I guess you'll also have to accompany us."

   And so it was that my introduction to America, and that of most of the
Crystal Passion ensemble, was to be in a bare detention room on the wrong
side of the United States border where we all had to wait together until we
were individually interrogated.  The waiting room was in the midst of a
series of corridors hidden well away from anything that international
air-travellers would normally see.  We had to sit on hard-backed plastic
chairs of the kind I'd only ever seen before in a dentist's surgery.  And,
of course, just like at a dentist's waiting room we waited apprehensively
for the drilling we'd inevitably get.

   I got the impression right from the start there was no real expectation
that we'd be exposed as international drug-smugglers and that the only real
hope the Customs Officers had of finding anything was if we incriminated
ourselves or if the stage gear the forensic staff were going to examine
happened to be crammed full of heroin or crystal meth or acid or whatever
else the Customs Officers were looking for.  Which thankfully wasn't
Ecstasy pills.

   "All our gear!" moaned Philippa, who'd only recently bought a new tenor
saxophone.

   "My Fender Stratocaster," echoed Judy.

   "And my Roland," I wailed.

   "Well, not everything," said Bertha, the other roadie.  "Tomiko's got
the gear she needs for the sound desk and she's got Crystal's acoustic
guitar."

   "Fucking great!" said Judy.  "So, our first gig in America is gonna
feature solo guitar and a huge fucking orgy of backing singers."

   And so we sat together in a decrepit waiting room that was pretty much
crammed full with the dozen of us including Crystal.  If anyone else was to
be interrogated that day they'd have to sit and wait in another room.

   As the most stroppy, Judy was the one to be interviewed first; leaving
the rest of us to sit and wonder what she might be saying.  I don't think
any of us had much to worry about really.  Our bags had already been
searched and cleared, and surely nobody was stupid enough to stash drugs
inside the musical instruments or electronic gear.  I knew I was alright
anyway.  I don't think it'd have been easy to hide much stash inside solid
state circuitry even if I'd wanted to, but I speculated whether there might
be drugs stuffed into the violin case, the drum kit, or even the electric
guitar.  And with Judy being interviewed first, I couldn't help wondering
whether she might be pushing her luck a little too far.

   "No sweat guys," Judy announced when she returned.  "The questions they
asked were so dumb I didn't have to lie even the teeny-weeniest bit.  They
don't know fucking shit about anything.  I guess they think 'cause we're
not like Joe Public we must be Public Enemy Number One."

   "And that's crap, right," chimed in the Harlot.  "All we want to do is
get out there and play our songs to the people of New York..."

   "...Or Brooklyn at least," said Philippa.  "So, what actually happened,
Judy?"

   "A lot of the questions were just about who we were, where we came from
and what we're gonna be doing in the States," said Judy.  "My guess is they
just want to find a hole in our story that make us seem like liars.  And,
of course, there's the issue of the dope.  They took my fingerprints, but I
know for sure that my dabs aren't on that little plastic sachet..."

   "Yeah right," said Jenny, who we all suspected was the real cause of our
suffering but none of us could admit.  "What would that prove anyway?"

   "Quite a lot, I suspect," said Crystal diplomatically.  She looked at
Judy intently.  "There wasn't any of that plea bargaining stuff you see in
American legal movies?"

   "What d'you mean?" said Judy.

   "You know, like in those films based on John Grisham's crime books,"
Crystal elaborated.  "You know: 'If you cooperate with us we'll make things
easier for you.'"

   "Nah!  Nothing like that.  They asked a shit load of questions about
money though, so perhaps they were digging a bit.  Y'know, how much an
electric guitar costs.  How much we each get at gigs.  Whether I've got
another job to make ends meet.  Just general questions on how we manage to
get by."

   "I think we'd all like to know the answer to that," laughed Philippa,
who in actual fact lived mostly off the generosity of her solicitor
boyfriend.

   "I guess what they want to do is find out whether one of us is so far
from making ends meet that she'd be tempted to smuggle drugs into the US,"
said Jacquie.

   "And who would we sell the stuff to anyhow?" said Andrea.  "None of us
know anyone in the States and I'm sure any Yank hip enough to be into our
music would be well able to score shit cheaply enough for themselves
without our help."

   There wasn't much of a wait until Crystal was summoned for questioning.
Her session was almost as long as Judy's, but no one after that was
questioned for more than five minutes.  My guess is that after they'd
questioned Crystal and Judy, the Customs Officials didn't think there was
much of a case to pursue, but that there was a small chance that one of the
rest of us might say something incriminating.

   "What happened in there?" I asked Crystal when they'd finished with her.

   "Nothing much to worry about," she said.

   "You look a bit shaken," Jane remarked.

   "I've never been interrogated by Police or Customs or anything like that
before," Crystal admitted.

   That was almost certainly true.  In most ways, Crystal was the good girl
in her ensemble.  Even I had once been pulled to one side and searched at
the Notting Hill Carnival.  And that was before I'd shaved off all my hair.

   "So do you think they've found anything to charge us with?" Bertha
wondered.

   "They asked about the band's political philosophy," said Crystal.  "I
guess they thought we might be anarchists or political extremists of some
sort.  I showed them the publicity stuff that Madeleine produced and
pointed out there was nothing in it about our allegiance to a terrorist or
extremist group of any kind.  The officers in the room are that Miguel guy
and a woman who looks like a specialist in interrogation.  The name on her
badge was Anna something.  'But you're all feminists, right?' Miguel asked.
I had to squirm a bit there.  I was about to say that I didn't think being
a feminist was like having a political affiliation, but I asked instead:
'Why do you think that?' He then looked at this Anna a bit sheepishly. 
'You're all girls, ain't you?  And you dress like a bunch of dykes.' But
before he could go any further on this line of interrogation, Anna said
quite firmly: 'I really don't think this is at all relevant to our
inquiries.'"

   "Sisterhood solidarity," Olivia remarked with a mock clenched fist
salute.

   "Maybe," said Crystal doubtfully.  "Anyway it was Anna who asked me in a
kind of sarcastic way.  'So, what kinda rock group, are you?  Are you the
next big thing?  The next British invasion?' So I said: 'You mean like the
Beatles?' And she said, which was a bit weird: 'It's been a while since you
Brits came up with anything worth listening to.  I've heard of this new pop
group called the Take That.  Are you like the Take That?'"

   This assertion split those assembled in the waiting room into two camps.
There were those who hated anything to do with Pop and immediately rolled
their eyes and said things like "Fuck yeah!" and there were those, like me,
who mightn't like Boy Bands as such but were seduced by the notion of Pop
success.

   "So what did you say to that?" wondered the Harlot who was the most
vocally anti anything that stank of commercial success.  "Did you tell her
where to stuff her 'British invasion'?"

   "On the contrary," said Crystal with a conspiratorial smile.  "I said
that we were a relatively new group struggling to make a living and that
our image was just a way to make new fans."

   "You what?" remarked Judy indignantly.  "What fucking image?  We just
dress the way we would anyway, Crystal Passion or no Crystal Passion."

   "In fact, I said more than that," Crystal continued.  "I said that our
biggest hope was to be just as popular as Take That and that we hoped that
teenagers who enjoyed their music might also come to enjoy ours.  I said
that if all went well on this tour, we hoped to sell as many records as
Elton John, Phil Collins and Rod Stewart."

   "Fucking Phil Collins!" Judy snorted.  "You might as well have mentioned
Val Doonican and Max Bygraves."

   "I would have done if I'd have thought either Anna or Miguel had ever
heard of them," said Crystal.  "Look, the more we appear to be a
non-threatening pop group and the less like Alt-Rock, Grunge or Punk the
better for all of us."

   "And how did this Anna react?" I wondered.

   "'Waaalll!' she said in that weird over-the-top way only Americans can
get away with.  'If you're even half as good as that Elton John, I'll be
coming to see you on stage myself.'"

   "Did that clinch it then?" Andrea persisted.  "Can we all go now?"

   "I don't think so," said Crystal.  "But if we play this cool, we might
still get to do our gig in Brooklyn as planned."

   My time for interrogation came not long after Crystal's and that was
when I again met Miguel San Antonio and this woman, Anna Walentynowicz,
who, like so many American women, was exceptionally big and bosomy.  She
was probably older than my mother and sported a distractingly large hairy
mole on her chin.  It was obvious by this stage that our interrogators were
just going through the motions and neither Customs Officer thought there
was much more to gain.

   "This Crystal Passion seems to have a reputation for having lovers of
both sex," remarked Anna Walentynowicz.  "Obviously, it's none of our
business what you do in private, but I can still ask whether you two are
what you might call 'an item'."

   She was right.  It was none of her business.  But I wasn't going to make
it an issue.

   "No, we're not," I lied.

   "You're not what?"

   "We're not lovers," I elaborated.

   "And you never have been in the past?"

   "Never," I lied again.

   "Well, so many other girls in your pop group have been, according to
what they've told me," said Anna Walentynowicz with a weary smile, "that I
assumed you would have too."

   "Well, I'm not and I never have been," I volunteered unnecessarily.

   And then the telephone rang.  Miguel picked it up and while he was
replying with "Yes", "No" and "Of course, sir", Anna waved me away almost
dismissively with the back of her surprisingly slender-fingered hand.

   "You can go now, dear," she said.  "I don't think we've got any more
questions for you."

   It was about an hour later that the last of us was interviewed and that
was Jenny Alpha.  It was then that Anna Walentynowicz strode into the
waiting room to address us, accompanied by another Customs Officer we'd not
seen before who appeared to be even more senior and was apparently somewhat
disengaged from normal day-to-day proceedings.  He was a relatively dapper
guy with greying hair and cuff-links that protruded from the sleeves of his
official uniform.  Unlike the other Customs Officials, his name badge was
discreet and difficult to read, but it seemed to say 'Peter Piper' or
something like that.

   He regarded us all with an indulgent smile.  "So here's the British Pop
Invasion of the 1990s," he said.  "The Beatles of the future."

   "We certainly hope so," said Crystal with a winning smile.

   "And none of you girls are smuggling drugs into the country or have any
idea where the marijuana we found on the floor might have come from?"

   "Absolutely not," said Crystal emphatically.

   It was Anna Walentynowicz who now addressed us.

   "The good news for you girls," she announced, "is that you can all now
proceed to your hotel in Manhattan.  I hope you have a good night and y'all
beware the muggers that hang around 54th Street.  It's not always safe in
the Big Apple."

   She paused for affect and let the smiles of relief sweep across our
faces.  We'd be able to do the gig after all.

   "However," Anna Walentynowicz continued after a pause, "the bad news is
that we'll be holding onto your musical instruments and electronic
equipment for at least until tomorrow.  We have some extra checks we still
need to carry out."

   The relieved smiles on our faces were transformed into alarm.

   "But we're due to do a gig tomorrow night," said Andrea, who hated to be
parted from her violin for even a matter of minutes.  "How're we going to
manage without our instruments?"

   "I guess you girls are just gonna have to find a way," said Anna
Walentynowicz with a smile.  "Contact the airport tomorrow and you'll know
then whether you can pick up your possessions.  In the meantime, y'all can
walk out through Departures.  Have a nice stay in New York, girls."

   And so it was that the least of all our worries came to be resolved.  We
weren't going to be deported from America and none of us were to be charged
with drug dealing (at least not yet), but the only equipment we had for the
gig was Crystal's acoustic guitar and the sound desk equipment Tomiko had
brought along.

   Judy was the most annoyed of all of us.  "What the fuck are we gonna
do?" Judy asked Crystal.  "Is it just gonna be an acoustic solo set.  You,
the microphone and a six-string guitar."

   "I think so," admitted Crystal.  "You'll all just have to sit it out,
though Thelma and the Harlot can help with the vocals.  I'll just have to
manage most of it by myself."

   "How the fuck is that gonna work?" said an equally aggrieved Olivia. 
"There's almost a dozen of us.  We're a big band.  How can we do a gig with
just you?"

   "My first album was mostly just solo guitar and vocals," said Crystal
reassuringly.  "For most of the first year or so of Crystal Passion as a
performer it was just me on stage.  I can manage.  It won't be as good as
it would be with all you guys, but it'll work."

   "The Yanks'll fucking crucify you," said Jacquie angrily.  "They're
expecting fucking Bob Dylan and the Band and all they'll be getting is Bob
Dylan.  It'll be more House of the Rising Sun than Like a Rolling Stone."

   "Well, at least no one'll be shouting out 'Judas!' like they did at
Dylan that time," Philippa remarked.

   Chapter Two ==========

   In her best-selling biography, Polly Tarantella makes clear that she
ranks the most significant days of Crystal Passion's life as those from
when she arrived at JFK airport until her fateful last day on American
soil. It's probably not surprising that an American writer asserts that
Crystal's few weeks in America should be her most important.  Although
Polly interviewed me for the book and we continue to exchange e-mails,
there's a lot in her account I don't really recognise.  And this is even
though I'm so liberally quoted: to the extent that I seem to be by far the
most important member of her band (with the possible exception of Judy).

   The Customs Officers who interrogated us at the airport were just doing
their job.  I don't agree that their actions were either unwarranted
harassment or a concerted effort to keep Crystal Passion out of the United
States.  The weeks we toured America were undoubtedly important but even
though this was where her career as a singer and musician came to an end, I
wouldn't say that this episode in her life is what defines her or what most
makes her music worth listening to.  Surely it's not the manner of your
passing but what happens before that exemplifies the worth of a person's
life.  I definitely don't believe that Anna Walentynowicz framed Crystal or
anyone else in our entourage.  I don't subscribe to the theory that the
drugs they found in the corridor had been deliberately planted as an excuse
to charge and prosecute Crystal.  I think they were dumped simply because
if they'd been discovered on the person of Jenny or anyone else in the
band, our tour would have ended before it even began.  And I don't believe
that Peter Piper the Senior Customs Officer was a reluctant partner in a
shadowy conspiracy to bar Crystal Passion from ever entering America.

   On the other hand, it would be difficult for Polly to make such
grandiose claims for Crystal Passion and her music if she didn't present
our disastrous final tour as one that had been deliberately sabotaged.  I
don't think she could have called the biography Crystal Passion: Saviour of
Rock and make so many bold claims if our tour across the United States
hadn't somehow been the victim of a deliberate policy of harassment rather
than just an unfortunate comedy of errors.

   Many people, including me, take issue with Polly's characterisation of
our music as being Rock at all.  In the United States in particular, but to
a certain extent in the UK and Europe also, Rock Music has become so
elevated in popular esteem for the older generation that almost any type of
music needs to be marketed as such to attract the attention of the wider
media.  It can then be marketed as being sonically accessible and
benefiting from a rich venerable heritage.  Crystal Passion's music was a
lot of things, but it probably can't easily be placed on a dotted line of
musical progression that begins with Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, rises to
its most lavish and pompous in the 1970s, and has ever since limped along
as the music of middle-aged Dads and Russian Prime Ministers.

   I don't blame Polly for how she's made such a big deal.  Nobody would
buy a book about Crystal Passion if they didn't think there was something
special and compelling about her.  Of course I do think she was special and
compelling.  It's just that when she was alive she attracted almost none of
the attention she's getting now.

   I think Polly addresses an apparent need to plug in the gaping hole in
Rock Music's myth of popular music's cyclical reinvention.  There's been
nothing especially significant since Acid House burst onto the scene.  And
that was big mostly in Europe and hardly at all in America: the original
home of House music.  Rock critics like to have a narrative to describe the
history of popular culture.  And Rock fans like to define their lives in
relation to this narrative.  1967 was the Summer of Love.  1977 was when
Punk shook up the musical establishment.  1988 was when clubbing went from
the periphery to the heart of youth culture.  Hair-length, trouser flare,
attitude, turn of phrase, and record collections all become part of
something bigger and more significant.  And even though British Rock
critics have a different perspective to those in the States, they all have
a shared faith in a similar mythology.

   And then come the 1990s, what happened?  Where was the next musical
revolution?  And into the 21st Century, what happened to that elusive next
big generation-defining event?

   My opinion is that teenagers and young people just switched the focus of
their attention away from music.  Now they've got the internet and mobile
phones and computer games and all that stuff, what's so important about the
music in the background?  Is it any coincidence that the last noteworthy
musical revolution (in Europe at least) came about in 1988 just before the
time PCs started to appear in ordinary people's homes?

   Nevertheless, if you're a Rock critic who's written for Rolling Stone,
Mojo, Q and the New York Times, you're not going to buy into the idea that
the history of Rock Music and its musical revolutions have just come to an
end just because you can download Angry Birds and listen to music on
Spotify on your phone and browse Google for previously rare records from
Guatemala, Azerbaijan or Detroit.  You're going to want a saviour of Rock-a
messiah who heralds a new Second Comingthat'll be as exciting as the
Beatles were when they cracked the American market; when Woodstock and the
other Rock Festivals were major cultural events rather than well-organised
weekend family outings; and when the future seemed bright, hairy and
sexually promiscuous.

   Polly Tarantella's thesis is that there was some kind of conspiracy on
our American tour to nobble Crystal Passion from the moment our plane
touched down in New York City.  Although I understand how it might seem
like that was what happened, it didn't seem so at the time.

   It was inevitable that once we'd finally got past Customs, Tomiko would
have already departed for the Hotel Gettysburg with her luggage.  There'd
been a guy from Sanity Records to meet us at the airport, but it wasn't Kai
Pharrel.  Even for a tiny New York record label, the boss was too big a wig
for the likes of Crystal Passion.  Instead, Tomiko was greeted by Barnie, a
lanky teenage kid with almost as many tattoos and piercings as Judy Dildo.
He knew everything there was to know about Rage Against the Machine,
Nirvana and Pearl Jam; and bugger all about Crystal Passion or what was
happening on the UK scene that wasn't the Stone Roses.  When it became
apparent that the rest of the band wouldn't be joining them any time soon,
rather than continue to wait Barnie drove Tomiko into Manhattan and 54th
Street West in a van that would have been a tight fit for all of us but was
pretty generous for just Tomiko and him.

   And knowing Tomiko as we all did, none of us were surprised to find her
in bed with Barnie when we finally got to the hotel well after midnight,.
He'd been under the impression that we were all just a bunch of dykes and
he couldn't have been more delighted to discover that Tomiko succumbed so
willingly and eagerly to his clumsy passes.  Mind you, even by the
standards set by the rest of us, Tomiko was always willing and eager.  It
took almost no persuasion for her to divest her clothes and suck off a
strange guy's dick.  However, with all the HIV and AIDS and stuff around at
the time, she normally preferred sex with other girls where there was much
less risk of a nasty surprise resulting from a night of unplanned intimacy.

   We weren't at our best at all when we finally checked in at the Hotel
Gettysburg.  Tomiko's evening had been by far the most enjoyable of any of
us-that was for sure.  Even the journey from the airport to the hotel was a
trial.  None of us knew our way round New York.  We didn't know anything
about having to buy tokens or whatever for the subway.  We didn't know
where the subway lines went.  First of all we detrained (as they say in
America) at 54th Street East on Lexington Avenue.  It was only after an
hour or so of wandering about hopelessly lost in a district that was a lot
posher than we expected that we discovered our mistake and somehow made our
way via Grand Central Station to 54th Street West.  At least, unlike the
London underground, New York subway trains ran well after midnight.  And
all the while we were terrified that we'd get mugged or shot or gang-raped.
All we knew about New York came from movies like Taxi Driver and we
expected there to be junkies, hookers and criminal gunmen on every street
corner.

   The Hotel Gettysburg lived up (or down) to our low expectations.  It was
just the sort of dive I'd imagined all of New York was like.  Clearly,
Sanity Records spared at least some expense for us.  This was definitely
not America at its best.  It was an America that smelt of cat's piss; where
the carpet was kind of sticky; where there was the constant musk of stale
tobacco smoke; where the escalator didn't work; and where the receptionist
informed us that rooms were also available by the hour.

   Despite it being so late, we had to decide who was sharing which bed in
each of the four rooms that had been reserved.  Only Tomiko knew where she
might as well stay the night and Barnie was already taking up precious
space.  As band leader, Crystal had first choice as to which bedroom she
could sleep in and I don't know how many of us were hoping that she'd be
the one with whom Crystal would share her bed.  On this occasion, she
offered to share a room with Judy Dildo and-despite being the one we all
suspected as being the cause for our detention-Jenny Alpha.  I'd be sharing
my bed with Jacquie, while her sister Jane pushed two beds together so she
could sleep with Bertha who was too plump for there to be space in just the
one bed for both of them.

   Jacquie was probably my first true love.  We'd been lovers well before
we first met Crystal and before I'd been given the stage name of Pebbles.
In fact, Jane, Jacquie and I had become a kind of threesome-two black
sisters with Zimbabwean heritage and a girl from Bethnal Green-who shared
not only our bodies but seminars and lectures in Marine Biology.  Jane and
Jacquie were twins, but not identical ones.  They also had African names
that were a lot more exotic than the names by which they were mostly known.
Jacquie's other name was Bonani and Jane's was Jabu.  Jacquie had the
bigger thighs and rounder buttocks, while Jane's tongue could reach places
inside me that never ceased to surprise me when we progressed beyond our
initial awkward Sapphic fumbling towards harder, faster and more visceral
lovemaking.  But that wasn't what I wanted tonight.  I was far too tired.
Jacquie had to content herself with just a kiss and a cuddle.  That wasn't
so for Bertha and Jane who were both loud and energetic.  But they were no
match for the trio of Crystal, Jenny and Judy, whose fucking in the room
next door was loud enough to be heard across the corridor and during which
Judy was as always the most vocal.

   Having gone to bed so late, it was no surprise that none of us got up
early the following day.  Uncharacteristically, it was Judy who woke me up
rather than the other way round.  She banged on our hotel room door, not
having bothered to cover her naked body, and it was Jane who eventually
answered the door.

   "The gig's off this evening," Judy announced without preamble.  "It's
been postponed till tomorrow.  And that's not all the bad news..."

   "There's more?" Jane asked.

   "There's still no news about our gear.  Crystal got in touch with the
airport and they said there were administrative reasons why we won't be
able to pick it up for at least another couple of days.  It's a question of
getting the properly qualified officer to check our property: apparently
because we'd designated it as valuable and easily damaged.  And whoever
that guy is, he isn't immediately available."

   "But the gig's still gonna happen before we've got the gear," said
Bertha who along with Jenny Alpha was one of only two of us who'd benefit
from having nothing to set up on stage.

   "And the gig's not even gonna be at such a good place," said Judy.  "We
got a call from Kai Pharrel: the top honcho for Sanity records, at least
here in New York..."

   "The record label's based in New York," Jacquie interjected.

   "OK.  He's the number one guy for the whole deal.  Whatever.  Anyway, he
didn't have much to say even though Crystal was the one who took the call.
There was a double booking or something at the club where we were supposed
to play.  So we've been muscled out of the way for a House DJ with a Latino
name and we've got a last minute booking at a club in Upper Manhattan..."

   "At least it's in proper New York," said Bertha.  "Not one of the other
boroughs."

   "Well, it'll still be a shithole of a dive.  And I don't see how we're
gonna get even a dozen people through the door with the amount of time left
to promote it.  Anyhow, we'll have the chance to talk about it with Kai
this evening.  He's invited us to his loft apartment in SoHo."

   "Soho's in London," said Bertha.

   "No, it's South Houston on the Lower East Side.  They call it SoHo here.
Weird, eh?  But we'll get to find out more about it tonight.  Kai's invited
us to a party at his place.  I guess he thinks we'll liven it up a bit."

   "Fucking right we will!" said Thelma who appeared from behind Judy in
the frame of the door.  She was also naked apart from a cowboy hat
incongruously balanced over her short-haired pixie face.  "This Kai guy's
obviously heard of our reputation."

   "Speak for yourself, girlfriend," said Andrea who was generally rather
more restrained in her appetite for drugs, drink and sexual partners. 
She'd slipped on a teeshirt and nickers, and looked almost decent.  She was
my younger sister and thankfully respected the taboos regarding family
intimacy rather more than did either Jacquie or Jane.  We'd both been
students at the same university at the same time and although she also
studied for a Biology degree her specialist subject was Botany rather than
Marine Biology.

   "Lower East Side party or not," Judy elaborated, "it's just another
fucking disaster.  Kai had better deliver on the drugs..."

   "...if not the Sex and Rock and Roll," said the Harlot, who liked to
live up to the reputation implicit in a nickname she'd earned because her
unpronounceable Polish surname sounded a bit like 'The Harlot' as well as
because she was at least as promiscuous as anyone else in the Crystal
Passion band.

   We didn't get to Kai's apartment much before midnight but we were still
amongst the first to arrive.  This time we navigated the subway rather
better than the night before, but it was remarkable how soon we got lost in
Manhattan.  We'd thought the city was all Avenues and Streets at right
angles to one another like in all those movies with yellow taxis cruising
down 5th Avenue.  It was nowhere near as simple as that in the district
around SoHo and Greenwich Village where we hung out for most of that
evening.  We quickly discovered that bars in New York are nothing like as
friendly or welcoming as even a London West End pub.  In fact, we were more
than glad for the lines of coke that Jenny managed to score.  That is, all
of us with the inevitable exception as always of Crystal who passed on the
offer and imbibed nothing stronger than still mineral water.

   Kai Pharrel and his boyfriend were both in their apartment when we
ascended to the top floor in an antiquated lift with iron-framed elevator
doors that was probably built before even the Empire State Building.  Both
Kai Pharrel and his lover were in their early 50s and I soon learnt from
them that Sanity records was mostly just Kai's expensive hobby.  While he
fussed around with bottles of Californian wine and gestured towards the
bowls in which he'd provided his guests with good quality Jamaican grass
and Mexican hash, he explained that he'd always been a big fan of music,
especially what he considered 'far-out' bands like the Velvet Underground,
Suicide and the Talking Heads.  So when he made his fortune from selling
the real estate in Upper Manhattan he'd originally purchased for virtually
nothing, he set up Sanity records in the hope of finding the next New York
Dolls or Television.

   "Instead what we've got," said Pedro, Kai's boyfriend, "is a bunch of
East Coast would-be Pearl Jams and a rather more lucrative line in House
and Techno..."

   "...And us," I said.

   "Yeah, you.  And a few other limey bands that Kai's pal, Zack, sends him
over from Gospel records in London."

   "...And Madeleine too," I said loyally.

   "Madeleine?"

   "Our agent?"

   "Oh, Maddy.  She's your archetypal fag hag, ain't she?  Absolutely
adorable!"

   Steadily more people began arriving and everything changed as they did
so.  Initially it seemed most likely that all there'd be was a polite
evening of passing joints round the room supplemented by glasses of rather
better plonk than we deserved and the background music of Cabaret Voltaire.
However, as more people arrived-most of them men and not all of them
exclusively homosexual-the mood began to change.  And when some kids
arrived who were younger than any of us, including Andrea, I began
wondering about the safety of Kai's abstract expressionist paintings and
the massive stereo speakers that were by no means yet cranked up to full
capacity.

   But that cautious attitude amongst other things also changes.  This was
going to be an evening that could be celebrated by Ian Dury's famous song
after all.

   First of all there was the Sex.

   This was one of the few vices-if it can be described as a vice-which
Crystal engaged in as actively as anyone else in the band.  She looked like
an angel and had the manners of a saint, but she fucked like the devil. 
She was equally as generous with her love in a physical sense as she was in
an ethereal platonic kind.  There wasn't one member of the Crystal Passion
entourage with whom she'd not had sex many times over, although Judy and I
were her most ardent lovers-with the possible exception of her husband,
Mark, who was exactly as ambisexual and carnally promiscuous as she was. 
But Crystal was only one member of the band.  All of us were lovers of
other women, although in some cases this hadn't been until Crystal
introduced them to the pleasures of Sapphic love.  Most of us also enjoyed
having sex with men, but to markedly different extents.  I'd always
considered cock to be second-best to pussy, but Judy was more inclined
towards men than women, even if she sometimes used her set of strap-on
dildos in ways a man mightn't expect.  Neither Jane nor Jacquie cared for
men at all, though they tolerated it in a group sex setting.  Bertha would
rather frig herself than let a man touch her.

   With all the new flesh arriving on the scene and so much of it already
buzzing on Ecstasy and coke, it was as inevitable as night follows day that
pretty much all of us would get naked and writhe around together on the
mattresses, sofas and rugs.  And as several of us had shed our clothes
almost as soon as we had the excuse, the opportunity for sex could hardly
have been more evident.  Crystal was never comfortable with textile against
her skin.  Her habitual nudity was really no more remarkable for her than
it would be for someone else to remove their overcoat and shoes when they
crossed the threshold to another person's house.

   Together with the Sex, there was also the Drugs.

   We'd all taken some Ecstasy tabs, which was about the only drug we'd
managed to smuggle into the States.  And, as we discovered, although a
taste for E had crossed the Atlantic to New York it wasn't nearly as
prevalent as in the UK where it was almost as popular as dope in those
days. So, everyone was E'd up with the customary exception of Crystal.  Kai
was generous with the coke, but there was also hash, grass, and sulphate.
And some of the other guests also brought smack and crystal meth along with
them.  That last was a drug that hadn't made much of an impact in the UK,
however big it was in the States.  I never touched meth, although I
occasionally snorted coke.  I can now take the opportunity to dispel the
misapprehension that Crystal Passion had even as much connection with
crystal meth as the Chemical Brothers have with illegal chemicals or the
Snow Patrol with coke.

   Kai's later guests were already pretty much out of it, especially the
gay men.  I don't know on what.  I guessed it was E, but it might well have
been poppers.  The younger kids all looked like your typical American
Grunge and Metal fan and were all totally out of it: generally more in a
messy than inspiring way.  It's a cliché that Americans know shit about the
drug culture, but I think that's only because the American scene is so
different to the British one.  These kids, mostly boys in their late teens,
weren't really much different to any you'd meet in London.  But then the
New York scene's more like the London scene than it is any other city on
the planet.  And these kids definitely liked to fuck.  There was a mix of
those with superhuman skill at maintaining an erection even if they were
less than skilled at using it and those who couldn't even slip on a condom
before squirting semen all over the place.

   Obviously, with the major concern about the big AIDS epidemic at the
time, condoms were very much the order of the day especially with so many
gay men there: including more Muscle Marys than there are in the
Chippendales.

   And to top it all, there was also the Rock and Roll.

   At first it was just music on the stereo, which mostly pumped out a mix
of Hard Techno, New York Disco and Nuyorican Soul.  But with so many kids
there in leather jackets, long hair and all that Metal shit that had been
around in the UK since the time I was a toddler, it was no surprise that
the music selection shifted away from club classics towards Grunge and
Alt-Rock.  And, also not surprisingly, it turned out that these kids had
been invited to the party because they were Rock musicians who'd been
signed to Sanity records and that instead of listening to CDs they wanted
to listen to live music.

   I don't know where the drum kit and the electric guitars came from. 
Perhaps Kai kept them in his apartment for just this kind of occasion, but
we soon found ourselves fucking, sucking and fisting not to the metronomic
beats of the New York dance floor, but to a discordant, painfully loud and
somewhat distracting set of Rock songs.

   Those of us in the Crystal Passion band represented a wide range of
musical taste.  Some of us, like Judy, Bertha and Jenny were Rock fans. 
Others, like me, Jacquie and Jane, didn't like Rock music at all.  And if
there was any kind of Rock that annoyed me the most, it was the kind of
unnecessarily loud, shapeless and (to my ears) cliché-ridden cacophony that
our Sanity record label-mates were performing and which served only to fuck
up the rhythm of the fucking.

   So, it was actually quite a welcome respite to me when the music came to
a sudden and abrupt end.  I was in a Sapphic huddle on a black leather sofa
with Philippa, Olivia and a teenage Goth girl with a ring through her nose,
studs through her nipples and my fist up her gorgeously receptive vagina. I
wanted to continue making love without the distraction of all that guttural
yelling and predictable power chords.

   But unfortunately this wasn't to be.

   The impromptu Rock group had generated a din that was loud and shrill
enough to upset all the residents in Kai's apartment block, so they called
the police to break up the party and allow them a peaceful night's sleep.
But when the cops arrived and unplugged the speakers, what they saw must
have made the eyes light up of any police officer who wanted to augment
their monthly tally of successful arrests.  With all the drugs and explicit
sex on display, this was surely the opportunity for a kingsize bust.

   Despite Kai Pharrel's attempt to defuse the situation with, I guess, the
offer of paying a generous fine to the three police officers, Crystal
Passion and her entourage would now have intimate experience of American
Law Enforcement just over twentyfour hours since our encounter with
American Border Control.

   "Right, guys," said one of the police officers to Kai's assembled
guests, while another stood by the door to make sure that no one slipped
away.  "We have a situation here.  We've had a report of a major noise
nuisance and we've now discovered that there's also been widespread
consumption of illegal substances.  However, there are far too many of you
for us to arrest and take you all into police custody for questioning.  So,
this is what we're gonna do.  We're gonna take Mr Pharrel to the station
for questioning and the one who's leader of the band that's been making
this ruckus.  What's the name of the Rock band?"

   "They're called Crystal Parcel," volunteered one of the young metal
fans. "They're a bunch of English Rock chicks."

   "Yeah," said another leather-jacketed guy who'd only a moment ago been
playing guitar but was now standing nowhere near a musical instrument. 
"It's the Brits."

   "Point them out, son," said the police officer who was old enough to be
the kid's father.

   "It's these chicks," he said, pointing towards the group that included
Judy Dildo, Andrea and a naked tattooed metalhead boy.

   "So, young lady," the police officer asked Judy almost kindly.  "Are you
the leader of your group?"

   Judy looked stunned.  I guess she was anxious about the drugs she almost
certainly didn't have on her person as such-as she was as naked as the rest
of usbut mixed up in the pile of clothes.  "I'm sorry, officer?"

   "Who's the leader of your group?  Who is this Christine Purcell?"

   "Crystal Passion," Judy corrected the policeman automatically.

   "OK.  Crystal Passion.  Which one is him?"

   "Her," Judy corrected him again.

   "OK.  Her.  Come on, young lady.  Could you please just point her out to
us?  Otherwise we'll have to arrest you instead."

   A little shame-facedly, as she was the one in our group least likely to
cooperate with authority, Judy pointed towards Crystal Passion who was
standing naked and slightly apart from everyone else.

   The policeman also pointed towards her.  "So, miss, this naked woman is
Crystal Passion?"

   Although the fact that almost all of us were still naked and therefore
Crystal was no different to any of the rest of us, it was obvious he meant
her.

   Judy nodded.

   "Is your name Crystal Passion?" the policeman asked.

   Crystal spoke up clearly and boldly.  "Yes, officer.  That's my name.  I
shall cooperate fully with your investigations.  I shall take full
responsibility if there's been a misdemeanour of any kind."

   The policeman stepped forward and placed his hand on Crystal's shoulder.
"Then you'd better get dressed, madam.  You'll be coming down to the
station house with us."

   "If you're taking Crystal, you should take me as well," I volunteered
with an act of courage that was untypical of me.  "I'm just as guilty as
her."

   "That's not true, officer," said Crystal in her most authoritative
voice. "Please just let everyone else go."

   "We shall do precisely that, madam," the policeman said.  "But not
before we've taken a note of the name and address of everyone here.  Now
please put on your clothes and accompany Officer Malcolm." He indicated a
young office with a strangely unfashionable moustache and rather longer
hair than would be expected for a police constable in London.

   And so, Crystal picked up the few clothes she'd set down in a neat pile
beside mine and rather absent-mindedly trotted out of the room without
bothering to put them on and had to be followed by Officer Malcolm who was
clearly embarrassed by her promptness.  "Excuse me, madam," we could hear
him say as he followed her to the escalator beyond the door.

   The more senior policeman shook his head with apparent disbelief. 
"Well, girls, I must ask you all to get dressed and line up against that
wall there.  Please be orderly.  We don't want this to take all night."

   So, we got dressed and lined up as requested.  And then, while the older
policeman stood by the door, a third officer pulled a small notebook and
pen out of his inside pocket.  He then asked each of us for our name, our
address in the United States and our address in the United Kingdom. 
Following Judy's example, we each gave made-up names and an equally
fictitious British address.  And after each of us was questioned, we were
allowed to leave the apartment.

   "Name?"

   "Tracey Thorne," I said.

   "Address in New York?"

   "Hotel Chattanooga."

   "Same as the other girls?"

   "Yes, officer."

   "Address in England?"

   "84 Charing Cross Road, London WC2," I said referring to the famous film
starring Anthony Hopkins.

   "Another one who lives there," remarked the officer, looking at his
notes.  "Doesn't Miss Katy Lang live there as well?"

   He was referring to Philippa who was something of a film buff.

   "It's a big house, officer."

   When I got to the ground level in the same escalator as about half a
dozen of the rest of the band and a few of the Metal fans who assiduously
avoided catching our eyes, I could see both Crystal and Kai Pharrel sitting
on the back seat of a huge police car.  Crystal was looking towards Judy
and me with a miserable expression.

   "Excuse me, ma'am," asked a man in a denim shirt with a prominent paunch
for someone so apparently young.  He was holding a notepad and pen just
like Officer Malcolm's.  "Can you confirm some things for me?"

   "Sorry," I said angrily.  "Who're you?  What d'you want?"

   "I'm a reporter from the New York Post," he said.  "You must have heard
of it."

   "No," I said.  "And I'm not gonna answer any questions."

   "Oh fuck, Pebbles," said Judy angrily and somewhat recklessly.  "What
the fuck difference does it make now?  I guess you just wanna know what's
happened?"

   "Yes, ma'am," said the reporter.  "That's all."

   "Well, that woman in the car's Crystal Passion.  She's the leader of our
band:
also known as Crystal Passion.  The guy with her is our record label

boss, Kai Pharrel.  If you wanna know more, just contact the head office of
Sanity records."

   The reporter made no notes.  I guess he already knew the answer to these
questions.  "And is she always naked, ma'am?"

   "Naked?" I asked startled.

   "She was butt bare naked when she got into the police car, ma'am.  Is
she always like that?"

   "Fuck off!" said Judy angrily.  "Just fuck off."

   "Do I take that as an answer in the affirmative?" asked the reporter.

   "Yeah, if that's what you wanna write in your fucking rag," said Judy
who strode off away from him with me chasing behind.  "Yeah.  She's stark
fucking naked from fucking morning to fucking midnight."

   Of course, Judy and I knew, as the reporter didn't, that this was no
exaggeration at all.

   We hung around the entrance door to Kai Pharrel's apartment block until
the police car holding Kai and Crystal drove off.  I wept silently and
bitterly as I watched Crystal's pale, apprehensive face stare through the
window of the car as it drove past us and along the West Side Street.  And
then we were once again grateful for the late hours kept by the New York
subway service that took us back to our hotel.

   It was weird to see Manhattan in the brilliant early morning sun.  It
seemed that even more than London this was a city that never slept,
although the night-time hours attracted a very different set of people.  We
caught our first glimpse of the seamy side of the city that we originally
thought would define it.  There were dark figures lurking in the shadows of
the streets just off the main avenues.  Some men selling drugs and some men
and all the women selling sex.  Jenny speculated how much these two
different types of merchant exchanged the proceeds of one trade with the
profits of the other.

   When we got back to the hotel, most of the guests and staff, including
the room maids, were getting up rather than going to bed.  We had breakfast
on the ground floor in the Hotel Gettysburg diner, which was all Formica
counters, sullen Spanishspeaking waiters and a jukebox that featured the
music of Bryan Adams and Meat Loaf on constant rotation.  The breakfast was
tasteless, soaked in fat and quite the opposite of what we wanted to eat
before going to bed.  And then I retired with Judy who was racked with
guilt and remorse at having, as she put it, 'ratted' on Glade.

   I told her that this was just a weird way to put it.  We weren't like
the noble gladiators in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus.  One of us would have
to tell Police Sergeant Callaghan which one was the band leader.  And
Crystal would have volunteered the information anyway.  Not surprisingly,
this isn't the gloss that Polly Tarantella latterly puts on the event. 
This is yet another occasion in Polly's biography where Judy Dildo is the
villain of the piece for having cowardly shopped Crystal merely to save her
skin from being busted for heroin and cocaine possession.

   We awoke late the following afternoon after a restless night's sleep to
find Crystal shaking our bed.  She seemed rather more perturbed than I'd
ever seen her before, but she was trying to disguise it.

   "Bad news," she announced, almost as soon as I was able to focus my
sleepstarved eyes on her.  "It's not going to be for a couple more days now
till we get our gear released from customs.  The woman I spoke to on the
other end of the phone wasn't very forthcoming, but she said there's been
some kind of delay processing our case."

   "Fucking bureaucracy!" snorted Olivia from the other bed.  "What d'you
expect?"

   "It means for sure that our first gig in America will be without almost
all our musical instruments," said Crystal.  "It doesn't bode well for the
rest of the tour."

   "Fucking shit!" said Judy angrily.

   "Never mind that, Crys," I said conciliatorily.  "That just can't be
helped.  What about you and what happened at the police station?"

   "Oh that," said Crystal dismissively.  "They just asked me a load of
stupid questions.  They didn't even take me into one of those rooms with a
one-way mirror you always see them interview suspects in American cop
shows. I just sat next to Sergeant Callaghan at an office desk almost
completely hidden by ring-binder folders and was asked to fill out this
really pointless form which had questions about ZIP codes and SSN numbers,
and had very little in it that was relevant to me as a UK citizen.  Then
this Latino woman police officer, Officer Benita Barbara, asked me
questions about the procedures we'd followed to book gigs and hotel
accommodation for the rest of our American tour."

   "Nothing about drugs?" Judy asked.

   "Nothing," said Crystal.

   "Nothing about noise nuisance?" I asked.

   "Kai was the one who had to deal with those questions," said Crystal. 
"He told me that he might have to go to court for that sometime soon and
that he expected just to get fined and that was all."

   "So why did they haul you in if they weren't gonna ask you about drugs
or being a public nuisance?" wondered Jenny who'd wandered in from her
bedroom.

   "I think it was to intimidate everyone," said Crystal.  "To set an
example so we'd respect the law in future.  Anyway, I didn't have to stay
long.  I got back to the hotel late this morning and snatched a few hours'
sleep before I phoned up Border Control at the airport."

   "Well, let's hope the worst is now over," said Andrea who was arm-in-arm
with a still-naked Tomiko.

   Unfortunately, what we discovered after an evening spent roaming the
local bars and restaurants and a third night at the insalubrious Hotel
Gettysburg, my sister's optimism was totally misplaced.

   Although it was by no means a front page article in the New York Post,
there was still the dreaded but expected lurid news story about Crystal
Passion (or Crystal and the Passions, as we were known).  The headline read
'UK Punks Trash SoHo' and the article was accompanied by a grainy
promotional picture of Crystal Passion singing on stage with oversized
black rectangles blocking out her crotch and nipples (and the same also but
rather unnecessarily for Judy who'd not been offending anyone's sense of
decency on the occasion the photograph was taken).

   "What's it say?" I asked Judy who was laying out the paper on top of a
bed and repeated choice phrases sprinkled with her own swear words.

   "You have a look," she said, standing aside and letting me squeeze
between Bertha and Thelma who were also reading it.

   A quarter of the article was the bold headline, a half was the
unflattering picture and the rest was the prose which served more than
anything else yet printed to herald Crystal Passion's arrival in America.
On the plus side, it was the first time an article about the band had been
printed in a national newspaper (even if in the States they pretend to be
locally based).  Until then, all the articles printed about the band had
been in British music magazines like Mojo, MixMag and NME.  But that was
quite simply the only good thing about the publicity.

   Just below the headline and to the right of the picture was the
following:

   Not since the Sex Pistols and the UK Punk Rock scene has Manhattan seen
the like.

   Wild London-based Punk Rock band, Crystal and the Passions, arrived in
SoHo from the UK and made such a ruckus the neighbours had to call the
cops.

   Crystal (24), the slender blonde lead singer of the Passions, was taken
for questioning to the NYPD 1st Precinct Station House.

   The Passions are an all-girl Punk Rock group notorious for their deviant
sexuality and wild drug habits.

   Their manager, Kai Pharrel (48), who lives in SoHo said: "Crystal and
the Passions are really going to rock New York State.  There's not been
anything like them since U2."

   But given the band's notorious reputation for wild lesbian sex, the
Post's recommendation is that you lock up your daughters when they rock the
Five Boroughs.



   "Why did they even print the article?" Crystal asked in despair.  "We
never made that much of an impact and most of what it says is plain wrong."

   "I guess the reporter must live locally," Judy hazarded.  "It was an
easy thing for him to roll out of bed late at night and write a few column
inches for the newspaper on a slow day."

   "But even so," said Crystal, "what do you think someone turning up to
our gig tomorrow will think.  They'll be expecting to see some kind of punk
rock group and all they'll get is me with a guitar and harmony vocals from
Thelma and the Harlot.  It won't be so much the Sex Pistols as Peter, Paul
and Mary!"

   Chapter Three ============

   However much I admired Crystal's song-writing skills when I was playing
in her band, I didn't really dwell much on the meaning of her lyrics. 
Certainly not with the intense attention to detail as Polly Tarantella. 
She quotes from Crystal Passion's lyrics as if it was poetry and uncovered
depths of meaning in them that had never occurred to me.

   I suppose it's natural to think you might glean everything about
Crystal's philosophy of life from her lyrics, especially since she never
explicitly expressed her political, moral or religious views anywhere else.
But what did she really mean in the lyrics of, for instance, Bread for the
Fisherman with its chorus of 'Where there was nothing, there's plenty
today. / The baker eats fish and the fishes eat hay.'?  It takes the genius
of Polly Tarantella to uncover some kind of a coherent statement of
Crystal's philosophy in such lyrics.  What I'd most liked about the song
was how the harmony in the chorus sounds as much like the Beach Boys as it
does sixteenth century polyphony.

   Something Polly doesn't elaborate on much is what a Crystal Passion gig
was like.  That's partly because the written record of our gigs is
restricted to a few brief and remarkably coy concert reviews featured in
contemporary Rock Music journals like NME and Melody Maker and now defunct
feminist and lesbian magazines like Quim and Lesbian London.  Maybe that
was because being an all-girl group, it just wasn't cool for a male rock
critic to be too obvious about the nature of our stage show.  These were
also the days when a mobile phone was the size of a brick and had no
facility to take photographs or videos.  And most cameras were generally
far too big to slip into your pocket and could only take still photographs.
This wasn't like today when cameras and phones are taken to every gig in
the world, for however big or small the band, and used to capture a
permanent record which is then uploaded to YouTube.  Consequently, there is
no video or film recording of a Crystal Passion gig that I know of.  The
nearest is an appallingly amateurish video we made for the single
Travelling Light that was lifted off the third album, Seventy Doctors.  The
video featured only our heads and bare shoulders over a backdrop of exotic
holiday locations that was probably stolen from Michael Palin's TV series,
Around the World in 80 Days.

   What this means is that Crystal Passion: Saviour of Rock and every other
book written about the group in the last few years omits to make clear the
simple fact that at almost every gig where Crystal Passion
performed-whether solo as in the early days or as part of her
ever-expanding band-she appeared on stage absolutely naked.

   In truth, this may not even have been obvious to everyone in her
audience at the time given that her long hair obscured the subtly aureate
nipples of her perky but medium-sized bosom.  And, as the fashion for
shaved or razor-sculpted pubes was nowhere nearly as ubiquitous as it is
today, her crotch was hidden under a verdant, even hirsute, light brown
mass of curly hair.  But naked she was, even if she did always wear sandals
or canvas shoes and very often a flowery broad-rimmed cloth hat.

   Crystal Passion wasn't the only one in the band whose stage presence was
less than entirely modest, but in Crystal's case her on-stage nudity was
pretty much just an extension of the fact that she rarely wore clothes of
any kind at other times anyway.

   She wasn't a nudist as such.  She never went to naturist resorts or
subscribed to a philosophy of naturism but in practical terms she might as
well have been one.  And since honesty and integrity were very much part of
her persona, either as a composer or as a performer, she probably thought
it would be hypocritical to appear clothed even on a public stage.

   Judy also hardly wore much in the way of clothes, but she used to stick
black tape over her large nipples.  And what she did wear was always black
and made from either leather or rubber.  However, with all her tattoos and
the guitar strapped across her chest and waist, Judy's nudity was even less
obvious than Crystal's.  The rest of us also experimented (rather more
self-consciously) with several degrees of undress.  At one stage, I took
the purity of my shaved head (along with my shaved pubes) to validate a
statement of pure nakedness but I never felt comfortable being unclothed on
stage, even behind a bank of keyboards.  It was often unpleasantly cold
while I waited to get on stage or even while performing.

   There was rather a mix of expectations in our audience whenever we went
on stage.  There were those who knew exactly what to expect and these were
mostly our lesbian and younger women followers.  And there were those,
mostly men, who didn't know at all, perhaps believing we were a UK version
of Hole, L7, Bikini Kill or Huggy Bear, only to find that this Riot Grrrl
group offered them a kind of guilty titillation and not very much of the
kind of music Rock fans usually listen to.

   I guess Polly Tarantella wants to maintain an untainted image of Crystal
Passion as the natural successor in a line that can be traced back through
the likes of the Beatles, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen.  And that this
ideal vision might be somehow tarnished if it was associated with the image
of nearly a dozen women on stage-far more than was ever strictly
necessary-all in various degrees of undress.  In any case, our repertoire
sounded nothing like what you'd hear in a Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones
gig.  The music we made was sometimes reminiscent of Hawkwind or Sun Ra and
sometimes of Sufjan Stevens or Neil Young.  Occasionally, the music strayed
into decidedly electronic, even dance floor, territory which Polly, like
most fellow American Rock critics, regards as the antithesis of whatever
she believes we represent.  Polly's image of Crystal Passion is exemplified
by her biography's cover page in which she sits almost romantically in the
middle of a floral meadow adorned in a bizarre mix of Laura Ashley, ethnic
chic and junk shop DIY.  This doesn't exactly accord with my memory of a
naked woman standing on stage with an acoustic guitar strapped over her
shoulders equipped with a deceptively powerful voice for such a classically
pretty girl.

   It was actually through my sister, Andrea, that I was first introduced
to Crystal while I was a University undergraduate.  I didn't often go to
live concerts even though Jane, Jacquie and I rehearsed together as a band
in the futile hope of becoming the next Faithless or Portishead.  We mostly
only went to night clubs.  Jane and Jacquie were my best friends and
lovers, so I was closer to them than to anyone else.  And that included my
younger sister.

   Andrea is different to me in more ways than we are alike.  Her chief
enthusiasm then and now is for folk music.  She played an acoustic guitar
as well as the kind of cheap violin that typically only folk fiddlers play.
She was an avid fan of the River Bank and of course their lead singer and
guitarist, John River.  So, it was inevitable that she'd want to go and see
Crystal Passion given her historical association with John River.

   "I don't know a lot about the River Bank and I've never heard of Crystal
Passion," I said when Andrea asked me whether I wanted to go with her to
the gig at the smaller of the two live venues at our university, generally
used for stage plays and classical recitals.  "Isn't there someone else you
can go with?"

   "She used to perform as part of a duo with John River," continued
Andrea, who can be fairly insistent when she wants to be.  "So she must be
good."

   "That assumes the River Bank are good," said Jane who was lying naked
under my bed sheets toking on the roach-end of a joint while my sister
perched at the foot of the bed.  I'd also have been naked if I'd not had
the presence of mind to pull a baggy jumper over my head and shoulders. 
Despite a free and open sex life at college, I still wasn't ready to appear
naked in front of my sister or anyone else from my family.  "They're a kind
of folk band, aren't they?  Won't this Crystal Passion be the same?  Simone
would be surrounded by folkies with chunky jumpers and beards..."

   "...And not just the men!" I joked.  "Come on, Andrea.  What makes you
think I'd enjoy it so much?  I'd much prefer to go clubbing with Jane
here..."

   "...And Jacquie!" said Jane loyally, even though her sister wasn't in
the room.

   "Why don't you all come to see Crystal Passion?" Andrea continued.  "I'm
sure you'd love it.  It's not just folk and singer-songwriter stuff she
does.  I heard she's into a whole load of the dance stuff that you like."

   "Like what?" I wondered sceptically.

   "Well, like House Music and Hip Hop.  I read somewhere that she's a huge
fan of Eric B and Rakim.  And other stuff like that."

   "A girl with a guitar doesn't sound like someone who could rock the
house," said Jane doubtfully.

   "Oh come on, Simone," pleaded Andrea.  "I don't want to go all by
myself."

   "And why can't she?" wondered Jacquie, when Jane and I told her later
about where we were going that evening.

   "She's my sister," I explained.

   "That's no fucking reason," said Jacquie angrily.  "Me and Jane don't
fucking do everything together, do we?"

   Jane and Jacquie both had something of a temper on them, especially
Jane, so I didn't want to give a reply that could set them off.  Although
they were usually quite calm and even gentle, there were occasions when one
or the other would fly off and I'd be caught between the two sisters
yelling and screaming at one another, usually in English but sometimes in
isiNdebele.  And it was extremely unpleasant if either of them were to
direct their fury at me.  Nonetheless, I could have easily pointed out to
Jacquie that in actual fact she and Jane more or less did always do
everything together-even when making love with me.

   "I promised Andrea I'd go," I said.  "You don't have to come, but Jane
said she would."

   "This Crystal Passion is a big soul and R&B fan," said Jacquie,
misquoting my sister.  "It's not just gonna be folk."

   "Is she black?" wondered Jacquie.  "Is she gonna be like Joan
Armatrading or Tracy Chapman?"

   "No," I admitted.  "She's a white girl and I don't think she's anything
like either of those two."

   "You don't have to come with us, you know," Jane challenged her sister.
"You can stay home and frig to fucking Tracy Chapman.  I bet she'd love to
lick your quim."

   "I bet she fucking would," said Jacquie, but not yet confirming whether
she'd come to the concert.  However, it was pretty much understood that
whatever Jane did, Jacquie would do too.

   And so it was that I went along to the Britten Room at the University
Arts Centre along with Jane and Jacquie and my sister and a few dozen other
curious students and rather fewer members of the general public.  There
wasn't even going to be a support act.  It would just be two sets from
Crystal Passion.

   At this stage in her career, she'd only released one album, Triad, and
that was the album she was promoting on this tour.  In those days, Crystal
Passion really was just Crystal and an acoustic guitar.  And, as I was now
to discover, not a lot else.

   And when I saw her, my heart almost jumped out of my mouth.

   I don't know whether I'd have been won over to Crystal Passion's charms
if it wasn't for her body.  But I just couldn't take my eyes off her.  I
only half-heard the voice and guitar that should have been the focus of my
attention.  She was so beautiful and wore her nudity so naturally.  Despite
entertaining us with digressive introductions before each song, not once
did she make a reference to her state of undress.

   With just Crystal on stage, there was as much to enjoy in the amusing
and somewhat surreal monologues between each song as in the songs
themselves.  It was like an intimate conversation: at times witty and
discursive and at other moments like listening to one of those stories
you'd expect to hear from a comedian.  She was open about her sexual
preferences, but not to the extent that those in the audience not sensitive
to the signals would notice.  There was an ethical core to what she had to
say but nothing to alienate any but the most prejudiced.  And then, even
while chatting and carrying the audience's sympathy along with her, she
would launch almost unnoticed into the next song.

   I considered myself to be pretty hip as to what was happening on the
scene.  I was a regular listener to John Peel's show on BBC Radio One at a
time when there was as good as nowhere else to hear the best new and
exciting music.  I thought I knew all I needed to about World Music, Hip
Hop, Dub, House, Techno and the like.  When I was in a record shop I would
rummage through CDs that were outside the predictable Pop and Rock
categories.  I listened to music such as Steve Reich, Fela Kuti and Miles
Davis that was way beyond the normal range of an early 90s clubber.  But it
was pretty much apparent to me that for Crystal Passion the outer limits of
what I listened to was just her jumping-off point.

   Yes, just as Andrea claimed, the music incorporated elements of modern
dance music even if it was set to acoustic instruments.  Yes, there were
elements of rap that might have had been inspired by MC Rakim or even
Salt-n-Pepa, but just as likely by Gil Scott-Heron or Blossom Dearie.  But
the references and influences were so diverse, so transformed from the
original source and somehow just so absolutely right.  Like many others in
the audience (but not the absolute majority), I was mesmerised.

   And more so than by the music simply by the vision of her hairy crotch
when Crystal stood up as she did for about half the concert and that
beautiful bosom briefly exposed when she brushed aside her long hair to
gain better access to her guitar.  And there was also the beauty of a voice
whose range was much greater than any folk singer I'd ever heard before,
but more intimate and inviting than that of a trained classical soprano or
contralto.

   So, for the two sets of Crystal Passion's concert, there was laughter at
her jokes, tears to some of her tunes and a profound fluttering of my heart
in between times.

   I was pleased to discover in the interval that I wasn't the only one in
my group of friends who was smitten.  Curiously enough, Andrea was the one
least enamoured of us.  I think she'd been hoping for a rather more
conventional folk concert.

   "Let's go and talk to her back stage after the set," Jacquie
volunteered. "See what she's about."

   "I'm not sure I'm so bothered," said Andrea.  "I've got an early lecture
tomorrow."

   As it happened, Andrea was right to make her excuses.  I didn't realise
then and I guess neither did Jane and Jacquie just how much our meeting
with Crystal Passion in her dressing room was going to fuck up our studies
the following day.

   It wasn't difficult to get to meet Crystal backstage.  It wasn't like a
Rock or Pop concert so there were no bouncers and no expectation that
musicians should maintain a good distance from their fans.  In any case,
Crystal even mentioned during her concert that she'd love to talk to
members of the audience afterwards.  I led the way with the two sisters
behind and simply asked the first year student who was working as stage
manager where the dressing room was.  In fact this student took us straight
there and knocked on the door.

   "There are some fans to see you, Miss Passion," she announced.

   And there was Crystal Passion sitting alone on a hard-backed chair in
the dressing room, still naked and sipping a cup of tea.

   "I'm really pleased to see you," she said with a warm welcoming smile.

   I guess I don't need to describe how things went from there.  Here were
three final year students one of which (myself) was utterly smitten and two
others who were swept along in the wake of my enthusiasm.  And there was
Crystal Passion who was charm personified and the most subtle and effective
seductress I've ever met.  She soon realised that here was a trio of women
united in love for one another and by the end of the night for a fourth
person whose double bed at the local Travel Inn served to accommodate all
four of us.

   It's more or less expected when you're a student that you boast of a
rather more full sex life than you ever actually had.  My sex life was
probably fuller than most students, but I'd enjoyed more sex with Jane and
Jacquie, either together or individually, than with all the other half
dozen sexual partners of my life so far combined.  And only one of those
had been a woman.  Most of my former lovers had been men and in one case,
Freddy, for several years while I was at High School in Bethnal Green.  In
a sense, we'd never officially split up and he was the boy I first had sex
with, but not very often and rather fumblingly.  It isn't that I don't like
boys.  I just prefer women.  And I most certainly prefer women like Crystal
Passion who are beautiful, sexually accomplished and somehow able to bring
me to orgasm more often than I'd ever had before (including with my two
Zimbabwean lovers).

   Jane and Jacquie experienced the same heights of ecstasy as I did.  How
could just one woman keep three others so satisfied and share her attention
so effectively between us?

   When I admitted that I played a synth, that Jane and Jacquie played
drums and electric bass respectively, and that together we were a sort of
band, it was Crystal who suggested we should audition for her because she'd
recently been thinking of expanding her solo acoustic set to a four piece.

   "But we've never played in front of an audience," Jacquie protested. 
"We've rehearsed together but that's all."

   "Record a cassette of one of your rehearsals," Crystal said.  "And let's
see what I think of it."

   "But don't you want musicians who've been properly trained and who've
performed with loads of other bands?" I asked.

   "That's precisely what I don't want," said Crystal.

   So following Crystal's advice, we recorded a session on cassette for
her. She advised us just to keep the cassette running for the 45 minutes of
one side of a C90 and then do the same thing for the other side.  She said
she was more interested in our interaction with one another than in hearing
a polished set.  But despite Crystal's suggestion that we do nothing
special, we put together a list of those songs we could actually play,
which were nothing like as hip and current and bleeding-edge as we'd have
liked.  And although Andrea hadn't joined us when we spent the night at
Crystal's hotel, she agreed to accompany us on violin.  Andrea was by a
good mile the best musician of the four of us and the one who most made the
cassette worth a listen.

   With Andrea's assistance and my limited knowledge of what do with a
Roland E-30, the set of songs we put together included an instrumental
version of God Only Knows, a not very funky version of Green Onions, an
extended violin solo on River Man, and, because Jane and Jacquie
desperately wanted House represented, a rather weedy version of Pacific
State and a plodding jam based on Voodoo Ray.  I can't say any of us were
particularly impressed by the results, especially not Andrea, but we popped
the cassette in the post with a gushing note I'd put together that we
posted to the address in Camden that Crystal had given us, which was the
one-bedroom flat she was sharing at the time with Mark.

   And the rest, as they say, is history.

   There could be no greater contrast between the earlier gig that so
gobsmacked me and Crystal Passion's premiere American gig at Candy Cream, a
run-down Manhattan night club located somewhere between Harlem and
Washington Heights.  This wasn't the kind of concert to herald Polly's
vision of a Rock group for the New Age.  Nor did it showcase the shambling
collective we usually were.  It was more like the type of folk trio gig
associated with Greenwich Village in the early 1960s than Upper Manhattan
in the 1990s.  And what was worse, Candy Cream was a venue that usually
hosted House, Techno and Latin nights.  The venue was clearly designed to
accommodate clubbers who'd dance to DJs spinning vinyl at upwards of 120
bpm and at the higher end of the decibel range.

   Not that this was the audience who actually came to our gig.

   Thanks to the brief news story in the New York Post, the majority of the
audience couldn't be more unlike what you'd normally expect at a Crystal
Passion gig, even if the number who paid to come through the door was much
greater.  There weren't many young women: the typical core of our regular
audience.  In fact, it was a predominantly male, Rock audience who were
just like the kids who'd cranked up the volume at Kai's party.  There were
more men with long hair than you'd generally expect women with long hair at
our London gigs.  And the leather jackets studded and patched with the
names of metal bands like Korn, Queensrÿche and Metallica were worn with
absolutely no sense of irony.

   The build-up to the gig already seemed likely to invite disaster.  The
Candy Cream's default background music was upbeat and bouncy, but the venue
was more than half full with young men who were vocal about how much they
hated 'disco shit' and wanted 'real music'.  However much I was enjoying
the Nuyorican Soul, someone had to enter the DJ booth and switch the
pre-recorded tape to something more to the taste of a Rock fan.  Tomiko was
the band member with the most technical expertise, but as sound engineer
she, along with Crystal, was one of the few of us who actually had
something to do this evening.  As it happened, it was Judy who volunteered
to take on DJ duties.  She was the only one in the band who could tell
Metallica apart from AC/DC and either of them apart from Slayer.  In those
days however, nightclubs still played only vinyl and most new metal and
rock records were released on CD, so the audience of head banging rockers
was treated to a selection of definitely old school rock from the likes of
Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi and Van Halen, which to a Rock audience was probably
a bit like playing music by Sister Sledge or Frankie Goes to Hollywood in a
London club.

   On the other hand, what the audience lacked in contemporary Rock music
they more than made up for with alcohol: which seemed very much to be their
drug of choice and almost exactly the wrong stimulant for a Crystal Passion
gig.

   As we all predicted, after Crystal Passion walked on stage to a huger
roar of approval than we normally got at any of our gigs, with this
audience the only way things could go from then on was downhill.  When the
rock fans saw a naked woman carrying an acoustic guitar and wearing only a
pair of plastic sandals, they must have thought that Crystal Passion would
be some kind of a pornographic live show.  However, when she was followed
by Thelma and the Harlot, who dressed for the gig in matching long flowing
white dresses and looked about as unprovocative as it was possible to be it
was clear to most of the crowd that this really wasn't going to be quite
the night of sexual exhibitionism and raucous Rock music they'd hoped for.

   Crystal had obviously put a lot of thought into the show.  She decided
to perform music from her first solo acoustic album, Triad, but also some
of the more accessible songs from the other three albums arranged for just
guitar and harmony vocals.  It'd probably have been perfect for a folk club
attended by about twenty folk fans in chunky jumpers and uncombed hair, but
it was received with total incomprehension by the present audience.  Tomiko
on the mixing desk tried to boost the sound into something that more
resembled Rock music by a subtle use of reverb and echo and a few sneaky
samples, but this was music destined to fall on the deafest of ears.  It
wasn't ear-bleedingly loud, it wasn't swamped by power chords and the
accompanying vocals were neither screeched nor bellowed.  And for those who
cared to listen to the lyrics, none of Crystal's songs celebrated Satanism,
hobbits or teenage angst.

   The first song, Roadside Blues, which to my ears resembles Billy
Holliday crossed with the Mamas and Papas was received with polite
applause. I've heard that Rock groups often moderate the intensity and
sameness of their music with a power ballad of some kind.  Nevertheless,
applause was almost totally absent at the end of the second song, Pig and
Prodigy.  The boos, catcalls and slow handclaps began early in the third
song, So-So Sower.  This audience could see no value whatever in Crystal's
gentle pastoral tune with its subtle evocation of a traditional English
folk song arranged by Vaughan Williams.

   From then on, the audience response got steadily worse.  Even
Crystal-who was used by now to performing to mostly indifferent
audiences-could see that the situation was hopeless.  Her songs could
hardly be heard at all over the slow handclapping and shouted abuse: some
of which was very offensive to women, even one like Crystal who probably
didn't really much mind being accused of promiscuity or of being
indiscriminate in her choice of partners.  And when the audience began
lobbing empty bottles and beer cans at the stage, it was obvious that after
only four and a bit songs, Crystal Passion's first American concert was now
over.

   "What the fuck do we do now?" Andrea wondered.  She was standing just by
me beside Tomiko and the mixing console.

   Judy rushed back into the DJ booth and put on Ace of Spades by Motörhead
which is famously one of the few Rock tunes that almost everyone likes, but
this could only be a brief stopgap on the proceedings.  I could see Judy
and Bertha in the shadows of the booth frantically flicking through its
small collection of vinyl Rock albums for something that could calm down
the discontented crowd.

   I wandered over to the bar, accompanied by Philippa for moral support,
to chat to the owner of the Candy Cream.  He was sitting on a stool on the
customer side of the bar with a huge lit cigar on which he hardly puffed at
all.

   "Your band's not gone down very well," Luigi said with an apparently
unconcerned smile.

   "It's been a fucking disaster," I said.  "It's all because our musical
equipment's still at the airport.  If we'd had our guitars, keyboards and
everything, I'm sure we'd have put on a better gig."

   "Don't worry about it, dear," Luigi replied as he waved his cigar
uncomfortably close to my nose.  "Kai warned me not to expect much.  It was
either opening the club for you lot or shutting it down for the night and
not making any money either at the door or at the bar.  As it happens,
thanks to the New York Post, we got a fuck of a lot more people than I
expected and this crowd like their booze a lot more than clubbers on
ecstasy and poppers.  The bar takings are up, if nothing else."

   "But what about the gig?" Philippa asked.

   "Fuck it!" Luigi said.  "If they don't like your band, well fuck them.
If they wanna leave, let them.  If they wanna stay, we've got plenty of
booze for them."

   "So, you don't expect to reimburse any of them?" I asked.

   Luigi's face expressed incredulity and disbelief.  "Fuck no!  They got
what they came for.  If they don't like it they can fuck off somewhere
else. Anyhow, it's about time those old Kiss albums got an airing.  I've
been thinking about chucking out that Rock shit years ago.  Who'd believe
kids'd still be listening to the same old shit now as they did twenty years
ago!"

   So, what was expected to be an acoustic set for a handful of bemused
Americans expecting the much larger Crystal Passion ensemble became instead
a badtempered Rock Disco of precisely the kind that I'd avoid at any cost
back in London.

   I wandered backstage to where Crystal was sitting in the dressing room
with Thelma who was puffing agitatedly on a joint.  I don't think I'd ever
seen her more desolate.

   "I'm so sorry, Pebbles," she said, almost sobbing.  "I've failed you
all. I've failed everyone."

   This gig, however, like so many other less than satisfactory events in
Crystal Passion's life gets no mention at all in Polly's biography.  It's
as if it never happened.  I suppose it just doesn't fit her narrative.

   And it also didn't fit the narrative of a conservative DJ in upstate New
York on a local radio talk show syndicated across American AM radio
stations.  Samuel Hedrick had seen the article about Crystal Passion in the
New York Post and had somehow found out that we'd be performing at Candy
Cream which, according to him, was a club frequented by homosexuals, drug
addicts and drop-outs.  None of us in the Crystal Passion band ever
actually got to hear his syndicated broadcast of course.  We didn't even
know about American talk radio and even if we had we weren't likely to
spend any time listening to the ranting of religious, political and social
reactionaries.  There were too many other things to do in America and some
of these, we were beginning to discover, like bagels, Latin dance music and
cable television, were not only novel but really quite addictive.  The last
thing we'd be interested in listening to were the narrow-minded opinions of
a middle-aged balding radio announcer who thought that Bill Clinton was too
much of a liberal, that homosexuality was the mark of the devil, and who
was utterly ignorant of the world beyond the 50 United States.

   But had we listened to Samuel Hedrick's Voice of Reason, we'd have heard
a sustained ten minute rant about English dykes, long-haired punk rockers
and a supposed drug trail from London to New York of Ecstasy tablets and
crystal meth, which last he was convinced was the drug after which Crystal
and the Passions had been named.  His listeners would have discovered that
Crystal had vilified the name of Jesus Christ Himself by calling her second
album Passing Passion, which he explained in a peculiarly convoluted
narrative was intended to cast doubt on the truth of the Resurrection and
thereby the entire foundation of Christianity.

   We would also have heard Hedrick's advice to his listeners to actively
boycott any concert in their locality by these lesbian agitators and dyke
blasphemers.  If our music was anything as crude and vile as that of the
Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones or Kiss, which Hedrick assured his
listeners it most certainly was, then these apologists for Satan, these
drug-addled dyke punks and scantily dressed whores should be sent back to
London, England, from whence they'd come and where they should have chosen
to stay.

   Chapter Four ===========

   It's often assumed that because I've been cast as Crystal's best friend,
I'm also the one who knows most about her childhood or at least about her
life before she became a musician.  That's just not true.  Her husband Mark
knew Crystal's family far better than I ever did.

   Mark was never really a close friend.  In fact, I regarded him rather
more as a rival.  Neither Crystal nor Mark were jealous lovers but that
wasn't what it was like for me, although I accepted Crystal's sexual
promiscuity much more easily than I could her almost uncritical emotional
promiscuity.

   I know that Crystal Passion was christened Christine Giordano, that her
mother, Marianne, was Irish and her father, Giuseppe, Italian.  And I know
that her family home was an unremarkable semi-detached house in Harrow,
North London.  I'd also heard the rumour that Polly Tarantella makes such a
big deal about which is that Crystal was the bastard daughter of a
millionaire who was paying her some kind of an allowance.  That would
certainly explain why Crystal managed to live relatively comfortably when
Giuseppe's income was never any more than what you'd expect for a
middle-ranking civil engineer.

   As to why she'd adopted the name Crystal Passion, I guess it was just as
accidental as my stage name of Pebbles.  And mine was entirely because of a
supposed resemblance to a character in the Flintstones cartoon series.

   All I know about the circumstances of Crystal's birth are what Polly
discovered in her research for the biography.  How she tells it was that
there'd been an outbreak of Legionnaire's Disease that closed the local
maternity ward in Carlisle where her parents were living at the time and
the result was that Crystal was born instead in a Lake District cottage,
but I don't attach nearly as much significance to this accident of birth as
Polly does.  I think the theory hinted in the chapter of her biography
about Crystal's birth that her father was a man who wasn't her mother's
husband is entirely speculative.  Marianne was an old hippy and she gave
birth to her daughter during that time in the 1960s when the practice of
free love was flaunted as a statement of identity.  It'd almost be more
incredible if Crystal's parentage could be verified without DNA analysis
and that wasn't available in those days.  It's even more unlikely that this
alleged real father would agree to take responsibility for an unplanned
pregnancy.

   I've met some of Marianne's friends from the time of Crystal's birth. 
They're all very nice people who're rather bemused and even dismayed that
the fashions of their age, which appeared to herald a long-lasting-even
permanent-change, turned out to be as ephemeral as every other fashion. 
And I can see where Crystal might have picked up her attitude regarding
habitual nudity and polyamory.

   I once spent a few days with Crystal in a New Forest farm house where
her parents previously used to live.  It had been a kind of hippy commune
from the late 1960s to nearly the 1980s.  It was now wholly owned by Zack
and Liz who'd lived there for all of that time.  They were real old hippies
in every sense.  Long greying hair, ethnic clothes and always smoking hash
and weed.  I really enjoyed their company, so it was pretty much inevitable
that Crystal and I should join the two elderly hippies in bed.  I'd never
had sex before with people old enough to be my parents, so this was a first
experience for me but not one I made a habit of until I was pretty much
that age myself.  I can't imagine Zack and Liz would be up to such a
vigorous foursome nowadays, especially as, being the only man, Zack had to
invest a disproportionate amount of his energy.

   I also met their son, John Aaronson, but not at the farm house nor
indeed with either of his parents.  He's rather better known as John River,
of course: lead singer with the River Bank.  In the early days of Crystal's
musical career, when she was a History undergraduate, she and John were an
acoustic duo prosaically known as John & Crystal.  It could have been
called Aaronson & Giordano, but that was too much of a mouthful.  Polly
Tarantella dedicates a whole chapter to this early partnership.  She
believes Crystal is the natural successor to the River Bank's legacy, but I
don't think there's much in common between John's music and Crystal's. 
Nothing was recorded from the time they performed together, but Crystal
told me they mostly sang other people's tunes.  And a weird selection it
was too.  Songs by Bob Dylan and Nick Drake, of course, but also songs made
famous by Billy Holliday, Everything But the Girl, Abbey Lincoln and an
acoustic version of Big Fun by Inner City.

   John and Crystal guested on each other's gigs later on, but this was
before the River Bank did the music for that weird ballet with the Hereford
Salon Ensemble that was infamous for its depiction of violence, nudity and
explicit sex on stage.  It was that rather than the River Bank's version of
Al Green's Take Me to the River or their own Thunder in the Sky that is
most in tune with Crystal's music.

   From what I've been told, there was nothing very special about Crystal's
school life.  She was a bright pupil and excelled at school, but not so
much that she was ever the star pupil.  She was a sort of geek that no one
could imagine was destined for a career as a sexually promiscuous musician.
Although she excelled at Music Studies, she didn't pursue it as an academic
subject.  She played guitar with a school folk group that mostly played
covers of Top Thirty songs.  The photos of her at the time show a pretty
girl dressed unremarkably for a 1980s teenager.  There are no pictures of
her in the nude.  Indeed, there are no nude photos of her at all until
Christine Giordano became Crystal Passion.  Even so, I'm sure she was just
as habitually naked in the family home with her hippy parents and their
hippy friends as she was in later life.  And, despite Polly's lurid
conjectures, I have no reason to believe she'd ever been exposed to
inappropriate sexual behaviour from within the family circle.

   Crystal's parents were separated by the time we set off on our American
tour but they hadn't yet divorced.  I think they were waiting for Crystal's
brother, Justin, to finish university before making it official.  I don't
know why they split.  Marianne always seemed to get on just fine with her
husband, although Crystal hinted that another man was involved.  And I got
the impression that the extramarital relationship this other man had was
with Crystal's father rather than with her mother.

   Although Crystal had never been on holiday to America as a child, it was
to San Francisco that Marianne chose to move when she separated from her
husband and where she lived with some English friends who'd settled there
in the 1970s.  It was a natural destination I suppose, since San Francisco
had once been the beating heart of the hippy movement.  And so she should
see her daughter perform on the Crystal Passion American tour, Marianne was
staying at the time with some other friends who lived in the Pennsylvania
countryside.  She was scheduled to meet us at our hotel when we arrived in
the City of Philadelphia for our second official gig on the tour.

   Although I'd made love with Zack and Liz, I've never had sex with anyone
other than Crystal in her immediate family.  I don't think Justin would
want to have sex with one of his sister's friends and Marianne quite simply
wasn't a potential partner.  I'm sure Crystal's mother had dabbled in
Sapphic pleasure in her younger days, but it was obvious to my now expert
eye that she wasn't truly attracted to other women.  And so I again
disagree with Polly who says that Crystal inherited her sexual proclivities
from her mother and that Marianne split up from Giuseppe so she could shack
up with her friend Marcia in San Francisco.  Marcia wasn't gay either.  In
fact, I don't think she's ever been in a permanent relation.  She was far
more devoted to her three young children than she was to any lover.

   Before we set off from New York to Philadelphia, we had the opportunity
to perform in the Big Apple as the full band-albeit at the last minute-in
front of a very small audience in a basement club somewhere in Brooklyn. 
Homeland Security had finally released our equipment and Kai Pharrel, or
his boyfriend Pedro, arranged a last-minute gig to support a Math Rock
group with the suitably dull name of Attenuated Dissonance.  The MF Club
could hold at most a hundred people, but the number of people who bothered
to come and watch us play was barely a quarter of that.

   It was a real treat to have my Rolands back and even better to perform
as part of a full band with Crystal at the front of the stage with Thelma,
the Harlot, Andrea, Philippa and Judy gathered around her.  At the back,
and constantly being bumped into on the small crowded stage, was the rhythm
section of Jane and Jacquie and me.  The set was mostly based around
material from our third album, Seventy Doctors, and from the unreleased
album, The Last Word, although nobody in America would know what was new
material and what wasn't.

   As always, the audience was totally bemused by what they heard.  There
was really nothing in common between a nerdy three-piece rock band and a
ten-piece ensemble of diversely attired women.  And, in Crystal's case and
very nearly Judy's, not really attired at all.  I was wearing a pretty
flowery dress I'd spotted in the window of a Brooklyn charity shop, so with
my shaved head and blood-red lipstick I definitely looked the part of a
Riot Grrrl, as did Thelma and Philippa.  In their tight tank tops and
shorts, Jane and Jacquie looked ready for a real work-out.  And for some
reason Andrea wore a check shirt with jeans so with her violin and bushy
hair she more resembled a Country & Western fiddler than whatever else the
audience might have expected.

   I'd like to say the gig was a success.  In fact, it was almost the
highlight of our tour but at the time we thought it was just a warm-up for
the gig we were due to do at the folk rock venue Mary Jane's in
Philadelphia.  So we were buoyed up with fresh enthusiasm as we squeezed
into the twenty year old Volkswagen camper van loaned to us by a friend of
Kai's which was festooned with a fading psychedelic mural and the words
Grateful Dead emblazoned amongst other lesser tributes to Janis Joplin,
Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane.  The drive from Manhattan to
Philadelphia took nearly four hours, which was rather longer than we'd
expected, but more time was spent getting lost on the roads out of
Manhattan and those into Philadelphia than on the nearly one hundred miles
of interstate highway between.

   The hotel in Philadelphia was better than the one in Manhattan, but
that's not saying much.  We still had to share three to a room and our only
view through the hotel windows was of a disused car factory.  As band
leader, Crystal was assigned a room to herself but she almost immediately
offered to share it with me.

   And so it was that when Crystal's mother came to visit her daughter, she
found me sprawled across the hotel room bed reading a copy of The
Philadelphia Inquirer in more hope than expectation of finding something
that alluded to our upcoming gig at Mary Jane's.

   "Is Chrissie not here, Simone dear?" Marianne asked after she knocked on
the door and we'd greeted each other.  Her blue jeans were a tight fit on
her matronly hips.  She was wearing a red tee-shirt that celebrated the
Philadelphia Phillies.  Her bushy grey hair was as wild and unruly as ever,

   "She's out with Tomiko and Jenny," I said.  "They're doing a recce of
the venue we're playing tonight."

   "She knew I was coming, didn't she?" said Marianne.  "I left her a phone
message at reception."

   In those days, when very few people had cell phones, even in the United
States, you couldn't normally phone someone unless they were in.

   "Yeah, sure," I said.  "She'll be back soon.  Take a seat.  D'you wanna
share a spliff?"

   "I don't mind if I do, dear," said Marianne.  "I have to tell you, I'm
real freaked out by the roads in this city.  I don't like to drive, but you
just can't rely on public transport in America.  How's the tour been so
far?"

   "Not so good," I confessed as I skinned up a concoction of half tobacco
and half weed.  I told Crystal's mother about our trials so far.

   "It's as if the yanks have got it in for us," I said.

   "Don't be silly, dear," Marianne said.  "I don't think anyone pays
attention to what's written in the New York Post." At this stage we didn't
know about Samuel Hedrick's rant on talk radio.  "Anyway, you have to
expect a bit of the rough with the smooth.  If nothing else that's what
Chrissie learnt when she used to go backpacking."

   "Backpacking?"

   "Yes," Marianne said.  "It was after she'd graduated and before she
surprised us all by marrying her university boyfriend, Mark.  Almost
unannounced she boarded a ferry from Folkestone and went hitch-hiking round
Europe and Asia.  And if that wasn't bad enough, despite having so many
friends who'd have joined her if she'd asked, she decided to go all the way
by herself.  And she was away for very nearly a whole year."

   "Crystal's mentioned her travels but I thought they were spread out over
several years."

   "Chrissie's always liked traveling.  We visited places like Morocco,
Kenya and Jamaica when she was a little girl.  And she stayed with us at
our friends' homes in France and Holland.  But it's one thing to go on
holiday for a couple of weeks.  It's another to be away for a year in one
stretch."

   "No, I didn't know she'd done that," I said as Marianne passed the
halffinished joint back to me.  "But there's a lot about Crystal's life I
don't know about."

   "That's the same for me also, dear," Marianne admitted.  "And for
Giuseppe as well.  Whatever I might have got up to when I was younger is
absolutely nothing compared with my renegade daughter.  We had no idea she
was gonna become a folk singer or rock singer or whatever she is.  I didn't
really take her folk duo with John very seriously.  I couldn't see the two
of them doing that for very long, and he's done rather better for himself
with his group, the River Bank, than he ever could have done with Chrissie.
I think her musical ambition is more a result of her year of independent
travel than her time with John."

   "You don't think Crystal was simply inspired by John's example?"

   "In the sense that she'd learnt a lot by playing with him, I guess she
was.  But I don't think they ever wrote any songs together, did they?  And
you can't hear much of the River Bank in Chrissie's music either.  John's
much more mainstream than Chrissie.  I think she got more out of listening
to Moroccan gnawa and those Steve Reich and Iannis Xenakis albums that
Giuseppe bought during the time he was into contemporary classical music.
But it's good that Chrissie got John's blessing.  I don't think she'd have
got signed to a record label or found a manager if it hadn't been for him.
And it doesn't do her any harm to be associated with a famous rock band."

   "So where did Crystal go travelling?"

   "Well, India was the most important part of her journey, though she also
sent us postcards from Thailand, Burma, Nepal and Indonesia.  She'd
probably have gone to a lot more countries if she could, but there are so
many places that aren't easy to enter even now the Berlin Wall's come down.
We were out of communication for well over a month when Chrissie got stuck
in a really out of the way place in the Himalayas, but I get the idea that
this was the episode in her travels that had the biggest effect on her: you
know, being totally out of touch with anyone who could speak much English.
I imagine you discover a lot about yourself in that situation."

   "So, what was Crystal like when she eventually got home?"

   "Terribly thin, dear.  Very thin.  I don't think the climate and the
diet did her any favours.  She had terrible diarrhoea and sickness while
she was away, but thankfully she didn't get hepatitis.  We've got her
habits of good hygiene and of not sharing soggy roaches to be thankful for
there.  And of course she was very enthusiastic about the cities, the
deserts and the mountains she'd got to see: all of them much more
impressive than anything in Europe."

   "And then Crystal got onto a record label, found a manager and recorded
her first album," I speculated.

   "The way you put it makes it sound so easy, dear," said Marianne.  "I
really don't know how Chrissie managed to persuade that record label to put
out her first record.  It doesn't sound much like anything else that was on
the market and I have no idea who buys her records.  But Chrissie can be
very persuasive.  And I'm sure her association with John helped her no end.
But yes dear.  That's almost exactly what happened.  My darling daughter
returned from travelling round the world, got married to a boyfriend she'd
not seen for over a year and started a career as a singersongwriter in the
early 1990s when that kind of music was probably about the least
fashionable it's ever been.  That takes extraordinary courage.  I have
nothing but admiration for everything Chrissie's done.  And even if it all
ends in tears, I think the experience will have made it all worthwhile."

   It was after another joint-this time using Marianne's stash-when Crystal
returned to her room to find her mother in a decidedly mellow mood.  She
pulled her clothes off with no ceremony and hugged Marianne close to her
bosom.  As always I was fascinated by Crystal's openness in front of her
mother.  My parents would never be at ease if they saw me in the nude.  In
fact, they weren't remotely comfortable with even a single aspect of my
career or love-life, however much they were sure it was just a phase I was
going through.

   "Mum!" Crystal exclaimed with her chin over Marianne's shoulder and her
arms around her.  "I tried to get here as soon as I could, but the hotel's
nowhere near the subway and it wasn't an easy job to work out the best way
back.  But I'm glad to see that Pebbles has been keeping you company."

   "She has.  She's been very good to me," said Marianne languidly as she
proffered the last hit to her daughter.  "D'you wanna toke?"

   "No thanks Mum," said Crystal firmly.  "I'm fine just as I am."

   "You know, Chrissie dear," continued Marianne as she stubbed out the
roach in the ash tray, "Simone and I were chatting about how you gave up
everything and took up a career as a singer songwriter.  Didn't you once
tell me that when you were in India you met a guru who told you that you
were destined for great things?  Is that why you became Crystal Passion?"

   "There are lots of reasons, Mum," said Crystal sitting down on the edge
of the bed beside her mother.  "But yes, you're right.  I did meet an
Indian guy who predicted that one day I'd become world famous and that my
dream of musical success would live beyond me.  But how much of a guru this
guy was, I can't say.  India's a weird place when it comes to religion and
there are loads of these sadhus and holy men everywhere.  It's no big deal,
Mum.  They're all naked with long hair and bushy beards.  I guess that's
why he liked me.  But he knew nothing about the international music scene.
And you can never be sure with these mystics whether they're talking
metaphorically or literally."

   "So, Crystal.  What did this sadhu have to say?" I asked intrigued, as
this wasn't a story I'd heard before, though inevitably it's got a
prominent place in Polly Tarantella's biography.

   "Oh, the usual nonsense," she said dismissively.  "There was something
to do with former lives and predestination.  And how my music would bring
light into the darkness and life after death."

   "Those are bold claims, Chrissie dear," said Marianne.  "You don't
believe any of it, do you?"

   "Of course not," said Crystal.  "It doesn't make sense.  There's always
something you have to sacrifice or repent for a prophecy to be fulfilled,
isn't there?  And I haven't given up or repented anything."

   "You did get married to Mark," said Marianne probingly.

   "That doesn't mean I gave up anything," said Crystal in reply.  "And
well you know that, Mum."

   "I must say yours is a marriage like no other," said Marianne with a
sigh.  "Giuseppe and me, we thought we were open-minded and free-thinking,
but you and Mark...Well!"

   "What more did this sadhu say, Crystal?" I probed further.

   "Lots of weird stuff.  Like my music would be enjoyed more in foreign
lands rather than in the land of my birth.  That my music wouldn't be
accepted in my own country..."

   "I don't think that's so true, dear," said Marianne.  "But I do think
you're very brave not to compromise.  But that's not an attitude likely to
go down well in America.  I'd be surprised if you ever got to be more
popular here than in England."

   "What else did he say?" I persisted.

   "That I should focus on making music that came from within and which was
meaningful to me.  That one day such music from the soul would be
appreciated by the many rather than just the few.  But most of what this
guy had to say was wellmeaning gibberish.  I think he was just grateful
that we'd had sex together.  I don't think these sadhus get much
opportunity for that."

   "I'm sure you're right, dear," said Marianne.

   "You are coming to the gig tonight, aren't you?" Crystal asked her
mother.

   "I wouldn't miss it for the world.  But let's hope the Philadelphians
appreciate it more than that crowd in Manchester.  If it hadn't been for
what you and your band look like and dress, I don't think you'd have had
any audience left at the end of the gig."

   "We were playing support," Crystal said.  "And I don't think anyone
there had ever heard our music before."

   "I haven't heard your music anywhere on the radio over here, Chrissie
dear," said Marianne.  "It's not played on the Top 40 stations or the
Country stations, and not all on the African-American radio stations.  No
one knows what to expect.  Are you going to be the headline act tonight?"

   "Yes, Mum."

   "Do you have a support act?"

   "I'm not sure.  I think so."

   "Well, Chrissie, let's hope that if there is one, they'll put the
audience in the right mood for you, Simone and the rest of your all-woman
ensemble."

   Marianne's concerns about the support act were well-intentioned but in
the event it was more their evening than ours.  We'd never heard of Josh
Jackson and his group the Shackamaxons.  Who had outside of Philadelphia?
And despite Mary Jane's supposedly being a folk club, there was virtually
no folk in their songs which was rock music firmly in the Bruce Springsteen
tradition.  Josh Jackson's songs celebrated an American blue-collar culture
whose concerns were meaningless to an all-woman band from Central London.
But in Philadelphia his music was very popular indeed.

   When we arrived at the club, we were delighted to see a queue gathered
outside the venue even though it was very different from the kind of
audience you'd normally expect at a Crystal Passion gig.  Our music didn't
often appeal to an audience of mostly young men dressed in a uniform of
leather jackets, blue jeans and check shirts.  Of course hardly anyone in
the queue had heard of Crystal Passion.  They were all there to see Josh
Jackson who, in spite of not having yet finalised a record deal, was going
to have no difficulty in selling records to his already devoted fans.

   Although the music and its cultural references were alien to us
(especially to those like me who weren't rock fans), Crystal seemed to
really enjoy it.  And Judy, despite her loyalty to the main event, echoed
Crystal's favourable assessment.

   "These dudes can play!" she exclaimed pointing at the lead guitarist
who, like Josh Jackson on rhythm guitar, dressed pretty much the same as
his audience.

   "It's the lyrics I like best," said Crystal.

   I focused my ear on what Josh Jackson was singing, but it was scarcely
poetry and not at all as allusive or evocative as Crystal's lyrics.

   "It's all about car washes, drug stores and Walmart," I said.  "And the
rhymes couldn't be more obvious.  'Blue jean' and 'you know what I mean'.
'Cadillac' and 'bivouac'.  It's not gonna give Bob Dylan sleepless nights."

   "No," admitted Crystal.  "But look at the crowd.  They know the words
off by heart and it means everything to them.  The songs aren't like the
Beach Boys: all sunshine and sand.  That last one was about a car factory
closure."

   "Was it?" I said, genuinely surprised as I thought it was just a
conventional love song.

   "And this one's about the Gulf War.  George Bush isn't exactly flavour
of the month here..."

   "Good thing they got rid of him after just one term then," said Judy.

   Nevertheless, despite Crystal's good opinion of Josh Jackson, the
audience who'd been so enthusiastic and lively during his set were clearly
rather less bothered about seeing us perform.  Indeed, after Josh Jackson's
second encore when the lights came up to his fans' obvious disappointment,
the general flow of the crowd was towards the exit.  And by the time we
came on stage, there was probably only about a third as many people in the
audience as there'd been before the interval and almost all of them were
clutching bottles of beer.

   It was a mix of subdued cheers and wolf-whistles that greeted the
Crystal Passion band as we came on stage.  And the latter was mostly
because Crystal was dressed, as always, in absolutely nothing and Judy with
a strap-on dildo and black stickers over the nipples of her otherwise bare
breasts.  The rest of us, including me, took no such risk, although my
shaved head, tee-shirt and tight denim shorts might well have raised
eyebrows in an audience more used to watching mainstream rock bands.

   Crystal made an effort to give a performance that Josh Jackson fans
might enjoy.  She selected a repertoire of those songs most likely to
appeal to Rock music devotees and she subtly changed the lyrics to refer to
automobiles, side-walks and freeways rather than cars, pavements and
motorways.  The audience applauded her politely, but as the concert went on
more than half of our already depleted audience either made its way towards
the bar at the back of the club or left altogether.  None of us were
surprised when after the first song, a long-haired bearded guy, dressed
much the same as Josh Jackson but somewhat older, sneaked onto the stage
and whispered to Crystal in an obviously embarrassed way.  This wasn't the
first time in Crystal Passion's history we'd had an intervention like that
so we knew exactly what instrumental riff to play while Crystal and Judy
slipped off-stage to return more modestly attired.  Judy came back dressed
in a short leather skirt with a bikini top, whilst Crystal just slipped on
an oversized tee-shirt that oddly enough celebrated the Franklin Institute,
Benjamin Franklin Parkway: not that any of us had actually visited it.

   This concert was scarcely a huge success although we were politely
applauded by the fifty-odd young men and women who hung around to the end,
drinking from bottles of beer and smoking innocuous cigarettes.  We didn't
earn an encore and didn't really expect one.  Indeed, it was something of a
relief to get off stage.  I took on the duty to sell copies of our CDs to
the audience after the gig, but I wasn't too surprised to have sold only
three CDs and they were all copies of Passing Passion with its artistic
portrayal of a clearly naked Crystal crouching by the Serpentine in
Kensington Gardens.  That CD was almost always guaranteed to sell more
copies than the other albums whose covers showed no nudity whatsoever.

   I wasn't the only one selling Crystal's records.  Marianne turned up to
the concert just as she'd promised and helped me sell records at the
make-shift stall we set up by the small bar just outside the concert hall.
It was probably more because of Marianne's selling skills than mine that we
managed to sell any records at all.  When the last guest had left and
before she drove back to her friends in rural Pennsylvania, Marianne
chatted about her new life in California and made me even more eager to
travel there some time.

   It was only as Marianne and Crystal were saying goodbye to one another
that I remembered that I hadn't taken my equipment off the stage.  I tried
to get back into the concert hall, but the door was locked.  Through its
small smoked window I could see my Roland D-50 on stage along with the rest
of my gear, but I couldn't see a way to get to it.

   "Was that your synthesiser, honey?" asked the long-haired bearded guy
who'd asked Crystal and Judy to cover themselves up.

   I nodded.  "Can you let me in to pick it up?" I asked.

   "'Fraid not," he said regretfully.  "I don't have the keys.  I think
Ben's the only guy with keys and he usually quits as soon as he can. 
Anyhow, he ain't round here no more, I can see that.  Come back tomorrow
and I'm sure old Red will let you in."

   "Red?"

   "Yeah, he looks after Mary Jane's during the day when it's more a bar
than a club.  You'll recognise Red.  He's got red hair.  That's why he's
called Red.  I reckon you can't miss him."

   So there wasn't much I could do about it.  As we'd be leaving the
following day to drive the 300 miles North-East to Boston, I'd have to go
to the bar about midday, which was when it opened.  And that also meant I
couldn't accompany the rest of the band on their planned tourist trip of
the historic city of Philadelphia.

   Unlike Judy or Crystal who were never concerned at all about what people
might think of them, I always tried to look as inconspicuous as possible
during the day in an unfamiliar city.  Especially over here in America,
where I was expecting gun-toting red-necks to be standing on every street
corner, although Philadelphia seemed to be more a city of check shirts and
trainers rather than Stetsons and Cuban heels.  So, I covered my freshly
shaved head with a woollen cap and dressed in jeans and tee-shirt just like
almost every other woman in the city.  I wasn't sure whether a tee-shirt
celebrating Orbital would make sense in Pennsylvania, but at least it
wouldn't antagonise anyone.

   "Yeah, Red, that's me," said the ginger-haired and ginger-bearded barman
at Mary Jane's when I approached the bar.  His hair was shoulder-length and
tied back, but more prominent than the colour of his hair was the huge
paunch that flopped over the lip of the bar.  "What d'you want?"

   "I need to pick up some equipment I left behind on stage last night," I
said.

   "You've got a weird accent, honey," Red remarked.  "You weren't one of
them English dykes we had last night.  Fucking awful they were, I'm told."

   Shit!  I didn't want trouble.  "No, not me," I said.  "I'm a friend of
Josh and his band.  I just gave them a loan of my keyboards."

   "Josh Jackson!" said Red warmly.  "He's one hell of a guy." He glanced
around the bar and spotted another middle-aged man who was too bald to have
long hair, but compensated as best he could with a luxuriant beard.  "Hey,
Bob.  This chick's looking to pick up her gear.  You wanna help her?"

   "Yeah sure, Red," Bob replied as he accepted the keys thrown at him by
Red.  "Come on, hon," he said.  "Let's pick up your electric piano.  I saw
it there this morning and I thought: there'll be someone missing it who'll
be coming round for it tomorrow.  These electric pianos ain't cheap, are
they?"

   "No," I said as I followed Bob through the doors to the club and into
the eerily empty and echoing space inside.

   "So, hon," said Bob while I gathered up the leads and packed away my
Rolands in the cases I'd also left behind.  "You weren't with them Limey
rock chicks, were you?"

   "No, not me," I said.  "I'm a friend of Josh's.  They borrowed
my...er...electric piano last night."

   "I didn't know Josh played piano," said Bob.  "Still, I'm glad you ain't
one of those rock chicks.  I'm told a couple of them were goddamn butt
naked.  Can you believe it!  Mary Jane's is a music venue, not some kinda
strip joint.  There's plenty of them down by the Delaware if that's what
you want."

   I followed Bob out of the venue and back to the bar where Bob returned
the keys to Red.

   "Hey, honey," said Red with a quizzical expression.  "You sure you're
with Josh and the Shackamaxons?  They've played here plenty times and I
ain't seen no chick with them.  You sure you ain't with this English rock
group, what's it called, Crystal Fashion?  You look like you could be."

   "Not me," I said.  Even though I'd collected my Rolands and didn't need
to curry any more favours, I'd dug a hole for myself and I had to stay
there.

   All of a sudden there was an awful shriek.  I looked around startled,
halfexpecting to see some kind of wild monster.

   "Fucking juke box!" Bob exclaimed.  "Always starts up too loud.  And
it's some fucking heavy metal crap some kid's put on."

   "I don't know what kids get out of that horse shit," agreed Red. 
"Though from what I've heard, this Crystal Fashion chick band's even
worse!"

   Chapter Five ===========

   "Where is everyone?" I asked when after an exasperating journey on
Philadelphia's public transport system I'd finally got back to the hotel
and found Crystal sitting in the hotel lobby with only Jenny Alpha and our
luggage for company.

   Crystal pretended to look around the hotel lobby at the scuffed velour
chairs and the sticky linoleum floor.  "They're not here, that's for sure,"
she said with a smile.  "In fact, they've all left in the camper van for
Boston."

   "They left without me?" I wailed.

   "It was much too cosy together on the way down and everyone complained
about it," said Crystal.  "Especially Thelma.  So, we've hired a car to
share the load.  The rest have gone ahead so they get a chance to settle
into Boston and maybe see the sights."

   "What type of car did you get?"

   "It's some kind of Chevrolet," said Jenny.  "They call it a compact over
here, but it's plenty big enough for us and our gear.  I'll do the driving.
It should be a cinch what with all American cars being automatic."

   "It's not as if you have to change gear very often anyway when you get
onto the freeway," Crystal commented.  "So, come on, Pebbles.  Let's get
your equipment into the boot of the car.  Or automobile trunk as they call
it over here."

   "Trunk of a Chevy!" Jenny exclaimed in delight.  "Now I know I'm in
America!"

   The drive from Philadelphia to Boston took some six or seven hours
including a couple of stops at roadside diners just beside the freeway. 
Crystal sat with me in the back of the car while Jenny did the driving and
constantly twiddled the radio dial to find a station that wasn't either
Country & Western or Top 40.  And when she found a station that was at all
tolerable, it was never long until the reception got so poor that she had
to retune the radio to something else.

   "We've had a stroke of luck," said Crystal.  "There's a guy in Boston
who knows our agent, Madeleine, and he's a real fan of the band.  He works
at Harvard University, which I'm told is in a suburb aptly known as
Cambridge."

   "I'm surprised anyone in America's ever heard of us let alone could
claim to be a fan," I remarked.

   "Well apparently he is.  And what's more this guy-Professor Simon
Kurrein he's called-has some influence in the university's music department
and he's organised an extra gig for us at the John Knowles Paine Concert
Hall which is normally reserved for classical music..."

   "Do you think we'd be a good fit there?  It's not as if we're a string
quartet or whatever."

   "I don't see why not," Crystal said.  "We'll be at least as good a fit
as we were at Mary Jane's.  We've got the gig because another concert's
been cancelled.  A group of Persian musicians who couldn't get their visas,
I was told.  So there's an empty slot for us to fill."

   "So how did this Simon get to know about our music?  And why does he
think it'd appeal to classical music fans?"

   "Well, it's more likely to appeal to those who listen to Steve Reich and
Terry Riley than those who enjoy Schubert and Mendelssohn, but I think it
was the track Dave's First Words that won Simon over.  You might remember I
used an interleaved chant in a kind of counterpoint.  Simon recognised the
Reich influence and wanted to hear more.  So, how good is that?"

   I remembered the tune very well, of course.  Passing Passion, the album
it came from, was the first record I recorded with Crystal Passion.  In
fact, it had been a big deal for all of us.  Crystal had performed solo on
her previous album and now, rather than Crystal Passion being the assumed
name of a singer-songwriter, it had become the name of a band.  And this
was the band that when we went into the studio for the first of our two
sessions featured me on keyboards, my sister on violin, and Jane and
Jacquie on drums and bass.

   We recorded just over half an hour's worth of music, but this wasn't
nearly enough for a whole album, especially not in the early 1990s when
most CDs were over 70 minutes long.  By the time we went into the studio
for the second session, the band's membership had grown to include Judy
Dildo and Tomiko Morishita.  Crystal Passion had made the journey from solo
artist to quintet and then to sextet and sound engineer in the space of
just one album.  And it was at about this time that Bertha joined the band
as our first roadie, so including Crystal there was now already eight of
us.

   This was a huge change to the band's complexion and even more so the
music we were playing.

   It was inevitable that an expanded band should need both a roadie and a
sound engineer.  Crystal had got to know Bertha through a lover who
frequented a lesbian bar that she'd somehow found the time to visit while
still being sexually active elsewhere.  It was no surprise that Bertha
agreed to work for the band when asked.  She'd already been roadying for
lesbian Rock groups like the Nathanael Sisters (whose sisterhood was
political rather than fraternal) and Peerless Ploughwoman.

   It was through Mark that Crystal recruited our new sound engineer and in
a fashion that was so typical of her.  She'd come home after a gig to find
her husband horizontal on the living room carpet and fucking an
Irish-Japanese woman who was, of course, our future band-member.  His prick
was deep inside Tomiko's arse when Crystal opened the door and he continued
to fuck her while Tomiko and Crystal discussed how much the services of a
qualified sound engineer would improve the sound of the Crystal Passion
band.  And, inevitably, she and Crystal were soon also making love together
and sharing Mark's cock as a kind of handshake to cement the deal they'd
just made.

   Tomiko and Bertha were only part-time band members in the sense that
they were also working on other projects, but Crystal ensured they were
treated as equals with the rest of us.  But most significant change to the
band was when Judy Dildo became a member.  Although she only played on four
tracks on the Passing Passion album, the presence of a rock guitar made an
immediate and noticeable impact on the Crystal Passion sound.  When the
band consisted of Jane and Jacquie, Andrea and me, we were an
electro-acoustic outfit backed by the steady metronomic beat that was the
inevitable product of the passion for club music I shared with my
Zimbabwean lovers.  When Judy joined, we now began to sound more like a
rock band.  This wasn't surprising seeing that Judy Dildo had already
played lead guitar for several years in a series of women-only and
mixed-sex rock groups.

   It was Judy who'd sought out Crystal rather than the other way round. 
Although she enjoyed the company of women, both sexually and socially, she
was actually more comfortable when performing with men, even when she was
the only woman in the group.  She strutted and postured on stage just like
a male rock star.  She was almost more macho than the men she performed
with.  The bands she'd played with had typical Rock Group names like Gog,
Six Demons and Silver Payola.  You'd never have thought that a rock chick
covered in tattoos and with an aggressive attitude to match would be drawn
to Crystal Passion's eccentric and unclassifiable music, but like me she'd
had an epiphany when she'd heard Crystal Passion playing support to Six
Demons at a gig in Leeds.  That was bizarre enough in itself.  Who on earth
would have booked Crystal Passion to play on the same bill as a death metal
group whose songs weren't remotely ambiguous or subtle and which they
performed at an excruciatingly loud volume?  At least when she saw Crystal
Passion sing at the Leeds Pilot Cellar Club, it was in a group with the
four of us backing Crystal rather than just a single naked woman on stage.

   Judy sought out Crystal immediately after the gig and there and then
offered her services to the band.  Right from the start she was offering
practical suggestions as to how to make the band's sound more up-front and
punchy and Crystal was listening intently.

   We weren't so sure about Judy.  She was a very different kind of
character to the rest of us.  She didn't go to night clubs like Jane,
Jacquie and me.  She wasn't interested in folk music like Andrea.  The
music she most enjoyed had to have energy, power and an instant impact. 
And this proclivity had to be overlaid somehow on the groove-based rhythm
and melody that we were contributing to the Crystal Passion mix.

   Within a week of Judy approaching Crystal, she was a full member of the
band and joined us at the disused retail unit we'd hired to rehearse the
remaining few songs for the Passing Passion album.  It was Judy who's the
chief author of the sound that rock critics like Polly Tarantella rate as
the very best of Crystal Passion.  This is ironic, of course, given that
Judy Dildo is portrayed as the arch-villain in Polly's account of the
Crystal Passion tragedy.  In fact, I'd say that if it hadn't been for Judy
Dildo's impact on the band, it's highly unlikely that Polly would ever have
been attracted to Crystal Passion and her music at all.

   The track that Professor Simon Kurrein most enjoyed, Dave's First Words,
isn't one of the tracks Judy played guitar on.  In fact, it consists mostly
of Jane and Jacquie providing a steady beat with me adding an electronic
pulse and voice samples, while Crystal intones over the top.  It's
peculiarly mesmeric and nearly became a signature tune for the band.  It's
almost always the first Crystal Passion tune that people ever get to hear,
usually on the radio, and although it doesn't fit well into Polly's thesis
of what the band is all about, she quotes the lyrics (in their entirety)
more than once in her best-selling biography.  She seems to view it as
Crystal's manifesto.  And, for all I know, she may even be right.

   The recording of Passing Passion was enlightening and instructive for
all of us.  Crystal was extremely disciplined in her approach to
composition.  She'd taught herself to read and write music and whenever she
presented us with a new song she'd already written it down in her neat
handwriting on song sheets with annotations to mark where we could throw in
our own individual flourishes or samples.  Although she got us to rehearse
each song in its entirety for hours on end, this was never a Trout Mask
Replica ordeal in pursuit of perfection.  Rather, it was a collaborative
process in which Crystal sympathetically discussed how each song might be
improved.

   Nevertheless, there wasn't that much space for improvisation in the
early quintet.  Although Judy Dildo boosted the sound when she joined the
band and sometimes jammed almost like a jazz guitarist, the rest of us
weren't really competent to do more than play what we'd rehearsed.  Even
Andrea, who was a much better musician than me, didn't have much skill at
improvisation.  All that came later.  But there was still a sense that the
music was the collaborative creation of the whole band, although Crystal
could never be deemed as anything other than the songs' composer.  I had
ideas about rhythm and sound collage that I'd plundered from my collection
of Detroit techno compilations and Balearic mixtapes.  Andrea knew stuff
about East European and Arabic music as well as English and Celtic folk. 
Crystal threw all this into the mix and this helped give the music its
distinctive sound.

   Cheese was a kind of rap that Crystal half-improvised to the extent that
although the rhythm and measure of each line was always the same the actual
lyrics changed from one performance to the next.  Unlike the lyrics of NWA
and other East Coast Gangsta Rappers, Crystal's rap didn't contain a single
profanity or swear word.  Roast Peanuts was almost an instrumental which
Crystal overlaid with the kind of swooping vocalese you might associate
with the Cocteau Twins.  Then there was the upbeat Electric City which was
the most danceable track on the album and has been extensively remixed
since Crystal Passion was rediscovered by DJs as diverse as Daniel Avery,
Pearson Sound, Flying Lotus and Erol Alkan.  The catchy chorus "There's
electricity in the Electric City" has been stretched and sampled and
distorted beyond all recognition.  Hidden Glory is a song which builds up
like a bolero from an almost inaudible first bar to a distorted climax
which I sampled from the soundtrack to the movie The Day the Earth Stood
Still.

   There are two stand-out tracks on which Judy Dildo performs.  There's
Dusty Eyes where Judy plays a frenzied guitar solo which somehow works in
counterpoint to Andrea's violin and Crystal's interweaving lyrics that go
"I see you see me see you see them see us..." and so on.  And then there's
Three Little Pigs which is broken into three sections which mirror one
another but where the final section breaks into a heavy metal style rock
guitar riff that in isolation could have come from a Metallica album.

   There's a lot more to the album, of course, and Polly Tarantella is
effusive about every single track.  But I do know that the choral singing
on Lustful Lady that she attributes to Crystal was actually a sample I'd
taken from an obscure 1970s Italian horror movie.

   When we at last entered Boston's outer suburbs, Jenny steered the car
towards the Hotel Syracuse where the band was staying.  By the time we
arrived, everyone else was already getting to know the bars and tourist
attractions in Boston's town centre.  Needless to say, the Syracuse was no
more salubrious than any other hotel we stayed at and Crystal heard my
groan of dismay at having to spend another night in a grotty American dive.

   "Look, Pebbles," she said.  "We don't have to stay here.  We can drop
off the gear and drive out to this Simon Kurrein's house.  I half-promised
I'd visit him when we arrived and maybe he'll let us stay the night."

   "I don't think I'm in the mood for sex with a middle-aged man," I said
wearily.

   "What?" said Crystal, who seemed genuinely startled at my interpretation
of her remarks.  "No, of course not.  We don't have to have sex with every
man we meet and in any case I don't think he'd even want to.  He's a
university academic who's married with adult children.  I just think it'd
be courteous to take the trouble to meet him in person since he's been so
helpful and that it would also be nice if you came along."

   Professor Simon Kurrein of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
lived in an almost stately home in Concord, not far from Walden Pond and
the family home of Louisa May Alcott.  This was a side of America I hadn't
seen before.  This America was liberal, affluent and open-minded.  And,
reassuringly, it seemed almost European to me.

   The professor couldn't have been more delighted to see us.

   "So you must be Pebbles," he said proffering a hand, although I could
see that he was wondering whether he should also kiss me on the cheek.  In
those days, not so many English or Americans were as touchy-feely as they
are today.

   He led us into a living room that was large enough to host one of our
gigs and introduced us to his wife, Alexandra, who was sitting at the
console of what at the time was a very high-spec beige PC.  Simon Kurrein
and his wife were both academic sophisticates whose clothes seemed almost
casual at first glance, but with closer scrutiny could only be very
expensive.  I wondered how it was that university teachers could be so
affluent.  Although they were both at least as old as my parents, they
dressed and acted like a much younger couple.  Crystal was perfectly
relaxed in her inexpensive Liberty print dress (of which she did not divest
herself on this occasion), but I felt very much the slattern in my jeans
and tee-shirt.  I even kept on my woolly hat in the probably misplaced fear
that the professor would disapprove of my shaved head.

   "How's America treating you so far, my dears?" Simon asked after we'd
settled down in the plush leather armchairs and were both offered a glass
of what he claimed was a very modest red wine.

   Crystal gave the couple a reassuring account of our stay so far in which
she made no reference whatsoever of our difficulties or the disappointing
audience reaction to our shows, but laced it with amusing anecdotes and
fulsome praise for the other band members.  All the while, Simon and
Alexandra nodded sagely and made the occasional encouraging remark.  I
glanced around their living room at the many books and neatly arranged
records (both CDs and vinyl) of which the majority were classical and
modern jazz.  I glimpsed a Fela Kuti album sleeve besides those for Miles
Davis and Sonny Rollins, but most records featured the names of pianists,
violinists, string quartets and orchestras I'd never heard of playing the
music either of composers I'd also never heard of or those, like Brahms,
Purcell, Schumann and Paderewski, whose names were familiar but their music
wasn't.  I felt very much the ignoramus in this company, but I wouldn't
have been at all surprised if Crystal were to start discussing the relative
virtues of symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich and Arnold Bax.

   "And did you know that you're now famous in America?" said Alexandra
with an amused smile, holding a wine glass poised in her left hand.  "There
was something about Crystal Passion on national television."

   "Famous?" Crystal said.  "I knew there was an article written about us
in the New York Post, but I didn't know anything was broadcast about us on
television."

   "Well, I imagine it's mostly thanks to that newspaper article and a
scurrilous radio campaign from one of those forthright and opinionated
Christian Radio disc jockeys," Simon said.  "You were mentioned in a
discussion on a cable television talk show."

   Crystal sighed.  "I didn't know about any of that.  I didn't know the
band was the subject of any radio coverage whatsoever.  And I didn't know
that anything was said about us on American television.  Please, Simon,
tell us what you know."

   Neither Simon nor Alexandra knew much about what was actually said on
Samuel Hedrick's radio show Voice of Reason.  They were no more likely to
listen to the rants of a right-wing radio pundit than a listener to such a
radio show would the music of Crystal Passion.  Or indeed anything that
wasn't reassuringly safe and familiar.  Which would exclude them from
getting to hear pretty much everything in Simon's extensive record
collection.  But the couple knew that Hedrick's tirade had been negative,
vituperative, ill-informed and inflammatory.  What else could it be?

   Similarly, they'd have only known for sure what was broadcast on The
Daytime Show with its regular presenter Peter Pilton, if they'd chosen to
tune into CBS at three o'clock in the afternoon Eastern Standard Time,
which, of course, as a professional working couple who more often watched
their television programmes on PBS, they were never likely to do.  But the
fact that it was daytime television and that the only two likely reference
points were the stated opinions of the New York Post and Samuel Hedrick,
Simon and Alexandra more or less knew that it wouldn't have given Crystal
Passion a fair and balanced hearing.  So, although neither they nor anyone
they knew had actually listened to the broadcast they were confident that
it had presented Crystal Passion in the worst possible light.  And Simon
Kurrein, who'd been exposed to a lot of radical and determinedly
uncommercial music and theatre, was under no illusion as to what the
Crystal Passion band might be like as a performing entity and how that
might be construed by the media.  In truth nothing we did was remotely as
radical as what came out of Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960s.  Nor was it
as revolutionary as anything propounded by Ken Kesey, William Burroughs or
Timothy Leary.  But considering the outrage that a group of English yobs
like the Sex Pistols could generate; or the voyeuristic fascination with a
pop singer like Madonna; or the ability of the media in both Britain and
America to demonise almost anyone: it was unlikely that Crystal Passion
would ever be reported as anything other than dangerous, mad and
subversive. And despite Polly Tarantella's efforts to make it seem
otherwise, incitement to revolution had never been Crystal's intention.

   I didn't get to hear Samuel Hedrick's pillorying of Crystal Passion,
though it was repeated in different contexts over the next few weeks and
became steadily more inflammatory.  I've seen the transcripts that Polly
managed to uncover in her research.  As they were written from memory, no
one can be certain that they are Samuel Hedrick's words, but having since
heard the rants of other reactionary American radio presenters like Rush
Limbaugh I have no reason to doubt their veracity.  And vicious and bizarre
in equal measure they are too.

   I guess I half agree with Polly's view that Samuel Hedrick had put
Crystal Passion on trial and that the outcome was decided in advance, as
this seems to be precisely what the purpose of such rants are, whether
directed at politicians or musicians or even doctors and social workers. 
When we were touring America, the right wing media was only beginning to
get its teeth into Bill Clinton, but it's actually much worse these days
than it was then.  You'd think President Obama and Nancy Pelosi were
devil-worshippers if you believed half of what they say.  But I don't
suppose Crystal Passion got it worse than any other musician who's outraged
conservative opinion.

   I also didn't see the broadcast of The Daytime Show that discussed
Crystal Passion until after Polly had published her biography.  I'd always
assumed it was the kind of thing you see these days on Fox News, where
obnoxious presenters bully and shout down anyone whose opinions they
disagree with and compete with one another to be the loudest and least
reasonable.  But back in the early 1990s, Fox News didn't exist and the
general tendency was for discussion shows to be conservative with a
decidedly small 'c'.  So, although Polly quotes a lot from the radio
discussion, I don't think it was as insanely vituperative as a similar
discussion would be these days on a show presented by Sean Hannity, Bill
O'Reilly or Glenn Beck.

   Nowadays, when there's a discussion on television it's posted on YouTube
within minutes.  In the 90s, the only way such a discussion could survive
was if someone bothered to video-tape it.  But Polly Tarantella's research
almost inevitably came up with an instance of someone in the United States
who'd thought it worthwhile to record that particular edition of The
Daytime Show.  The elderly woman who did so was much less interested in
Crystal Passion and her legacy than she was in a cloying interview with a
romantic novelist.  And so, thanks to Polly Tarantella, two decades after
the event I've actually got to see the interview she claims was more or
less Crystal Passion's death warrant.

   I don't think I'd go along with that, although the discussion wasn't
especially sympathetic towards Crystal.  Peter Pilton was one of those
silver-haired, chiseljawed, ever-smiling television presenters that are
more often seen in America than in Britain.  Inevitably he had that
half-indulgent 'what are kids going to get up to next' attitude towards the
story, although he'd at least got Crystal Passion's name right, even if his
two guests gave the band names such as Bristol Fashion, Crystal and the
Passions, Chrissie Passion, and Chrysler Passage.  It was obvious that
neither of these apparent experts knew anything about the band at all.

   The two guests were predictable in terms of both who they were and what
they had to say.  There was the conservative Christian, Bob Farrow, who
reminded me of televangelists like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Jimmy
Swaggart.  To an American viewer, I guess, he might seem reasonable and
sane, but to me he was swivel-eyed and entirely obnoxious.  He was the sort
of man I was very glad my father hadn't been.  The other guest, Jeff
Barrett, was a Rock Critic of some kind, though it was never mentioned what
he actually did other than appear on programmes like this.  He was another
kind of stereotype; the sort of Rock personality even then virtually
extinct in Europe.  His hair was long, blond and bouffant and he resembled
an extra from a glam metal band like Mötley Crüe or Bon Jovi.  He dressed
in a mixture of leather and denim and had an annoying habit of saying words
like 'cool' and 'hip' as if the quotation marks were still very much in
place.

   Neither of them knew anything about Crystal Passion and there was
nothing in the discussion that would enlighten a viewer who might genuinely
want to find out.  The pictures they showed were of all-girl rock groups
that I'd never heard of before such as Red Abyss, Fabulous Disaster and
Jack Off Jill.  Bob Farrow had a lot to say about the sinfulness of
homosexuality, the decadent lyrics of rock songs and the bad example rock
musicians were setting kids by taking drugs and foreswearing Jesus.  Jeff
Barrett had a lot to say about American rock music and how chicks had found
a welcome niche for themselves within its embrace.  He heaped praise on a
bunch of American Rock groups that I don't much like, such as Kiss, Poison
and W.A.S.P.  He mentioned very briefly such British pop groups as Talk
Talk, Stone Roses and U2, and quite clearly thought we were nothing more
than a Chick Rock group that took our clothes off on stage to give the guys
a thrill.

   Even though Crystal Passion came out of the programme apparently either
an emissary of Satan on the one hand or trivial to the point of utter
irrelevance on the other, I don't really go along with the rage expressed
by Polly who describes it as "crowning Crystal Passion with thorns",
"stripping Crystal Passion of all dignity" or "acting as both judge and
jury to damn for eternity the most significant musical revolution since
Bruce Springsteen or the Beatles".  The discussion show might have been an
unfair representation and it certainly wasn't going to win us many friends
amongst American conservatives, but the true damage had already been done.
And that was to bring to the attention of an intolerant vindictive American
community a band who in its opinion could only be infuriating, irritating
and maybe even immoral.  I don't believe it was really Crystal Passion per
se that was the object of criticism, but what a British all-girl band
represented and the sexualised fantasy of cultural subversion that it
invoked.  And the more they found about Crystal's habitual nudity, her open
marriage, the sexual preference of most of the band and the defiantly
noncommercial music, the more Crystal Passion would be feared and despised.

   Nevertheless, I most definitely did not feel like the member of a
reprobate satanic lesbian cult while Crystal and I were being entertained
by Simon and Alexandra.  Indeed, I don't think I'd ever felt more like a
lady.  This was an evening soiree of sophisticated discussion, a very
filling Mexican dinner prepared by the Kurreins' cook, and an entertaining
impromptu solo performance by Crystal on, of all things, a lute.  It was
most peculiar to hear her song Mustard Birds played on a mediaeval string
instrument with its very contemporary references to the Big Bang and Cosmic
Inflation.  Crystal played several of her own songs, including Dave's First
Words, Travelling Light and Muscle Mary Magdalene, but she accompanied
Alexandra, who had a classically trained singing voice, on a selection of
more familiar songs such as Norwegian Wood, Tears of a Clown and I'm a
Believer.  It's unlikely that either John Lennon or Stevie Wonder, let
alone Neil Diamond, ever expected their songs to be performed in such a
way.

   I was quite relieved that Crystal kept her clothes on all evening and
that towards the end neither Alexandra nor Simon suggested that we should
join them in bed.  There are occasions when sex is best reserved for the
person most close to you and in my case that was Crystal: as it had been
from the moment I first cast eyes on her.  Although I knew her love was
spread equally between so many, the love she expressed to me never felt any
less passionate, intense or genuine.

   The bed in which we slept that night was probably the most comfortable
and luxurious I'd ever slept in until that time.  The sheets felt just
right against my skin and smelt so fresh and unsullied.  The mattress was
firm but not too hard.  And it was spacious enough for both Crystal and I
to make love without the risk of falling off the edge and onto the floor.
We were both naked and writhing and cuddling and fisting and snuggling as
the mood took us.

   "You know, Pebbles," said Crystal, as she ran her tongue over the blue
stubble of my pate.  "Much as I love your shaved head, I do miss your
beautiful bright yellow hair."

   "It was very short," I reminded her.  "Shaving it off wasn't such a big
deal."

   "It was longer when we first met," Crystal remarked.  "Not as long as
mine, but well over your ears..."

   "And it was streaked red and blue," I said, with a whimsical laugh. 
"Don't fret, Crystal, I won't keep my head shaved forever.  But it's good
on a tour.  I don't ever have to get it styled.  Maintaining it is just a
question of scraping off the stubble with a razor.  You'll soon see it long
again."

   But that, alas, was a promise that I could never fulfil.

   I could have stayed in the Kurreins' bed all day, but, as Crystal made
sure I remembered, we had a gig to perform at the John Knowles Paine
Concert Hall.  And this was the gig Crystal enjoyed the most on our tour
even though the venue was less than half full and that by a somewhat mixed
and rather bemused crowd of students and people two or three times our age.


   This concert was one that not even a viewer of The Daytime Show with
Peter Pilton could describe as a rock concert.  Jeff Barrett would have
been very disappointed and probably at least as bewildered as our audience.
Although Crystal appeared naked as always (which raised no objection or
comment), Judy Dildo was relatively subdued.  She dressed in a baggy
tee-shirt and corduroy trousers that made her look nothing like a rock
chick.  This is evidence (that Polly Tarantella disregards) for the case
that Judy was more than willing to make compromises in her appearance and
musical style when she believed it served the greater interest of the
Crystal Passion band.  Although I was always more comfortable on electric
rather than acoustic keyboards, there was a glorious Steinway Concert Grand
piano at the venue which I self-consciously tinkled on for a couple of
songs.  But it was Crystal, Andrea and Philippa who put the piano to best
use and gave Crystal Passion's music an almost classical timbre.  In fact,
like Judy, I also played a rather lesser role in this concert.  This was a
venue better suited to acoustic than electric or electronic music, but
Crystal with her experience of being a singer-songwriter restructured her
compositions for the venue's ambience.

   Although it was the best presented and most sympathetically received
concert on our tour, it probably wasn't the kind of gig most suited to the
Crystal Passion band.  The audience were polite and responsive, but
scarcely enthusiastic.  And the compositions they most enjoyed were
precisely those with the least potential for commercial success and, it has
to be said, the least likely to appeal to Polly Tarantella and the rock
critics that have so successfully revitalised her legacy.  The audience
politely requested an encore, but I got the impression that it was for
form's sake rather than from a genuine desire to hear more.  Crystal closed
with a solo rendition of The Sage and Stupid Sluts that despite its title
(which Crystal didn't announce) is a tricky composition with an alternating
10/4 and 5/4 rhythm and abstruse lyrics that don't make at all clear that
it's a celebration of the right a woman has to be sexually promiscuous if
she should so wish (or, at least, that's how both Polly and I interpret
it). I wonder whether the applause wouldn't have been rather more subdued
if the more senior members of the audience had known the song's title.

   Crystal was very satisfied with how the concert went and grateful to
Simon for having made it possible.  Judy was less happy, but she made no
comment other than a dismissive remark about having to wear such crappy
clothes to keep Crystal happy.  She tugged off the corduroy trousers as
soon as we left the stage and pulled on a short leather skirt.  And of
course she wore nothing under her baggy tee-shirt.

   Polly's account of the actual concert is rather perfunctory: possibly
because she views classical and acoustic music as peripheral to the main
thrust of her epic tale of Crystal Passion's revolution in popular culture.
But she praises Professor Simon Kurrein's achievement in booking a concert
at Harvard as being a life-saver for Crystal after all the negative
publicity the tour had so far attracted.  Although I was also grateful for
everything that Simon had done, I don't think any of us at the time put it
into such a context.  After all, if Simon hadn't told us about the
discussion on The Daytime Show with Peter Pilton, none of us would have
known about it and, in any case, at the time we thought it was more amusing
than worrying.  There'd always been a long tradition of newspaper,
television and radio totally misunderstanding popular culture and of
finding the worst possible light in which to present it.  We probably felt
we'd got away relatively lightly compared to the furore that accompanied
the rise of Acid House and the ongoing persecution of rave culture in the
UK.

   I'm fairly certain that no one in the audience knew much about Crystal
Passion other than what was hurriedly put together in the publicity
material which confusingly described our music as 'avant-folk' and our live
concerts as 'lively and deceptively chaotic'.  The poster advertising the
gig featured a print of Jacopo Tintoretto's Women Playing Music which might
have been strictly correct (especially since the women are all naked) but a
16th Century painting was more likely to remind an English audience of the
Renaissance club in Derby than whatever it was that Crystal Passion
represented.

   "I don't know what we'd have done without you, Simon," said Crystal
after the concert just before we drove back to the Hotel Syracuse for what
couldn't possibly be such a good night's sleep for either Crystal or me.

   "It was my pleasure," he said.  "I just hope I can be of help if you
should ever need it again."

   Chapter Six ==========



   "We've been invited to her home!" an excited Andrea announced after she
and Crystal emerged from the hotel lobby's public phone booth.

   "Whose home?" I wondered, not really having paid much attention.

   I was sitting splayed across one of the Crown Hotel's most threadbare
red velour sofas.  We were now on the latest stop of our trans-American
tour and in the city of Providence, the capital of the tiny Ocean State of
Rhode Island.  I'd been browsing statistics about the state in a tourist
brochure the hotel handed out to its guests and, compared with most states
of America, they were on a reassuringly modest, even homely, scale.  Rhode
Island had a smaller total population than most English counties and was
almost as small in area.  I'd also been taking advantage of the fact that I
was just out of the receptionist's line of sight and had surreptitiously
rolled a joint.  I was in desperate need of narcotic recreation after the
drive from Boston.  At least we were scheduled to stop for three or four
days this time.  An opportunity at last to relax.

   "Veronica Wilson," said Andrea.

   "Sorry, who?"

   "Veronica Wilson," Andrea repeated.  "You must have heard of her. 
SingerSongwriter from the seventies.  She used to perform with the likes of
James Taylor and Carole King.  She made a name for herself at the Newport
Folk Festival in its heyday and she's a regular now it's been revived."

   "So, she's a folkie," I said dismissively.

   "She's very good," said Crystal who ambled towards us.  "Your sister's
got good taste, Pebbles.  I've always been a fan.  We've been invited to
visit her at her home in Newport.  On Bellevue Avenue Would you like to
come along?"

   "Shouldn't we be preparing for the gig?" I said, even though I'd have
much rather lit up my joint than rehearse.

   "That's not till tomorrow night," said Andrea.

   "Judy and Olivia are already practising at Thorn's with Tomiko, Bertha
and Jenny," said Crystal referring to the venue where we were due to
appear. "I have absolute faith in their ability to rehearse without us. 
There wasn't anything else you were planning to do, were you, Pebbles?"

   "No, not really." Although Jane, Jacquie and I had discussed getting out
to investigate Providence's night clubs, nothing had been decided.  "Will
we be going in the Chevrolet?"

   Crystal nodded.  "There's no other way to get there."

   "And you want me to do the driving?"

   "It'd be good if you could, Pebbles.  As you know, neither your sister
nor I know how to drive."

   And so it was that rather than smoke a spliff, I volunteered to drive
Andrea and Crystal in the back of the car, who brought along their
instruments with them: namely, a violin and an acoustic guitar.  The two
chatted enthusiastically about the life and discography of Veronica Wilson
while the more I overheard the less engaged I felt in the conversation. 
I'd never had much interest in Andrea's collection of LPs by the likes of
Joan Baez, Pentangle, Bert Jansch, Al Stewart or even Bob Dylan.  And the
more my sister enthused about Veronica Wilson and her falsetto voice and
her idiosyncratic blues-influenced plucking style on the six-string guitar
the more I regretted not having brought along a Techno cassette to listen
to in the car.

   Crystal and Andrea had always been fans of folk music and
singersongwriters.  In fact, Crystal's first album, Triad, featured nothing
more than Crystal's voice, Crystal's guitar-playing and occasionally
Crystal on piano.  There were no overdubs and hardly any post-production.
It was Crystal Passion as naked as she could be (and in her case literally
as well as metaphorically).  It wasn't my favourite Crystal Passion album,
but then it was also the only album I hadn't played on.  On the other hand,
it was the music from that album that had enticed me in the first place
and, even unplugged, her songs were more than good enough for me to enjoy
without having to imagine how much better they'd be with a kick-drum, a
bass line or extra colour.  Although the music on Triad was simpler in
terms of arrangement or instrumentation than it was on later albums, the
songs were no less daring in lyrics, rhythm and structure.

   There was a certain relatively naïve romanticism in some of her songs.
The one Polly Tarantella likes most, Rambling Woman, has the sort of verse
you'd imagine a Romantic poet like William Wordsworth might have penned
given all its references to valleys, mountains and glades grazed on by
sheep, rabbit and deer.  It reminds me of the American folk song The
Wayfaring Stranger, which Polly also mentions although I guess the version
she's most familiar with is the one by Jack White rather than, say, Johnny
Cash or Emmylou Harris.  Then there's Mercy Mistress which is now best
known from the Disclosure mix, though I personally prefer the one by
Floating Points.  It lends itself to a House or even Trance mix with its
slow buildup to a swooping chorus, even though its lyrics are a
down-to-earth confession of personal failure and frustrated ambition.  The
song that's most controversial is All On My Own which Polly's interpreted
as a plea for help and understanding and which others have interpreted as a
bold statement of Crystal's spiritual beliefs.  I'm not sure it's either of
those things, but it's the song on which Crystal is at her most anguished.
This is especially so in the lines where she sings: "Strip off my clothes
and throw them away.  / Put a conical cap on my head and turn me to the
wall.  / Tie me up and pull me down.  / Take away my soul.  Leave nothing
at all." There's been a lot of speculation as to who she was supposed to be
addressing, but all she ever told me was that it was an allegory on
self-reliance.

   I don't know whether Veronica Wilson had ever heard of Crystal Passion
before.  It's possible I suppose.  Andrea had heard of Crystal through her
folk music friends, so she must have had some small degree of fame in that
scene.  Maybe it was the association with John River that piqued the
interest of this moderately famous American singer-songwriter.  But however
little or well Veronica Wilson knew about Crystal Passion, we were greeted
like long-lost relatives when we turned up at her door.

   In so many ways, Veronica was exactly what you'd expect an American
singer-songwriter from the 1970s to be like.  She was a woman in her
mid-forties with long straight hair that she almost certainly continued to
dye blonde.  She had a good figure for a woman of her age, though she was
no longer as slim as she once must have been.  Her bosom was full and
almost matronly, her thighs were squeezed into tight denim from the crotch
to the knees, and her well-scrubbed face was no longer left to only
nature's whims.  She wore a baggy orange sweater and designer jeans, but no
shoes or socks.

   I'd expected a grander home for such a relatively successful musician.
Although Bellevue Avenue was one of Newport's more expensive streets, with
many relatively old New England houses, her home was relatively modest
compared with, say, Professor Simon's.  Nonetheless, it was detached, had a
large garden and boasted more space than one woman would need just for
herself, even though, according to Andrea, there was no husband, partner or
child currently sharing her life.

   I parked the Chevrolet on the driveway while Veronica ushered Andrea and
Crystal into her house, both clutching their instruments.  I deliberately
took my time till I followed them in as I had my joint to smoke which I did
in her front garden behind a tree that hid me from the gaze of the street.
I'd been promising myself a toke ever since we arrived at the Crown Hotel
and I could now take the opportunity to gather my thoughts together.  I
discreetly stubbed the roach out on a tree trunk and tore it apart before
scattering it to the wind.  And then I walked into Veronica's house.

   I had no difficulty in finding where Veronica, my lover and my sister
were gathered.  The sound of guitar, violin and piano led me down a long
narrow hallway past closed doors to Veronica's living room.  This was an
impressive space with a sturdy wooden floor, like the rest of the house,
dominated by what in those days was a very large television, many times
deeper than wide, and a Sohmer mini-grand piano.  And sitting on the piano
stool was Veronica who was singing as I entered.

   I'd stumbled on an impromptu concert recital and one where I was not at
all at ease.  I plumped down on the leather sofa with an apologetic smile,
while Veronica, Andrea and Crystal performed songs which as far as I knew
might have been traditional American folk songs, contemporary folk-rock
classics or the Veronica Wilson songbook.  I could tell that it was being
performed exceptionally well, that the songs had catchy melodies and that
the lyrics were possibly profound, but I didn't share my sister's ear for
acoustic music in those days.  I'd probably appreciate it much more
nowadays.  I've since bought records by Veronica Wilson and other
singersongwriters I never thought I could enjoy, but I'll never be as much
an enthusiast as Andrea.

   My pleasure in watching the performance was less from listening to the
music than from just admiring the trio.  Veronica was a handsome woman,
however much at that time of my life I couldn't ignore the gnarly veins on
the back of her hands, the creases around her eyes or the glimpse of grey
at the roots of her hair.  These days, in my own early middle age, I'd
consider myself lucky to be half as well preserved as she was.  Andrea was
pretty as always.  Her bushy hair made her look like a romantic heroine
while her checked shirt and jeans made her seem almost more American than
British.  She handled the violin as if it was an extension of herself.  It
seemed to grow out of her chin while, as she sang, her mouth moved with the
same sweep and flourish as her bow.  But as always it was Crystal who was
the centre of my attention.  My eyes rested on Veronica and Andrea for only
brief moments before once again settling on my closest friend and most
favourite lover.

   It's probably because I knew Crystal so intimately and seen her naked so
often that it only belatedly became apparent to me that although Andrea and
Veronica were dressed just as they were when we arrived, Crystal had once
again removed all her clothes.  She was wearing nothing, not even shoes, as
she plucked her guitar and joined in the chorus when Veronica prompted her.
How had this woman whom we'd never met before not only accepted Crystal and
my sister as accompanists at such short notice, but showed no sign of
embarrassment when Crystal took off her clothes?  This is the kind of
incident that I find most miraculous about Crystal, rather than the many
apocryphal stories that so excite Polly Tarantella.

   Between each song Veronica would glance at Crystal and Andrea in turn, a
broad grin on her face, and suggest another song.  She might say for
instance: "I Carry
the Victory" or "The Face of My Love" or "Strange Fruit" and either

Crystal or Andrea would nod and with only a couple of notes on the piano as
a cue, they'd launch into a new song.  Or she might say: "Banks are Made of
Marble" or "This Land is Your Land" or "Dark Night Blues" and there was a
general incomprehension followed by a few bars of rehearsal and Crystal and
Andrea would then be playing along to a song that neither had ever heard
before.

   After I'd sat through nearly an hour of what was almost entirely
unfamiliar music to me, instead of suggesting another song, Veronica said:
"Hey guys.  How long you planning on staying in the Ocean State?"

   "Another three or four days," said Andrea.

   "We've got a residency at Thorn's Folk and Blues Club," Crystal
elaborated.  "We're there for three evenings in a row."

   "So where you guys staying?"

   "The Crown Hotel," Crystal said.

   "Never heard of it."

   "It's a dump," said Andrea.

   "That doesn't sound good," said Veronica.  "You're not gonna perform
your best at Thorn's without a good night's sleep.  You wanna stop over
here at my place?  I've got plenty of room for you guys."

   "As long as it's no trouble..." said Crystal.

   "Not only is it no trouble, but I absolutely insist."

   "What about our luggage?" said Andrea, who was never content unless
everything was properly organised.

   "I can go back and fetch all that," I volunteered.

   "If you could?" Crystal pleaded in a way that left me no space to change
my mind.

   It took me less than an hour to drive back from Newport to Providence
and as always I was grateful for America's wide roads and relatively good
drivers.  As a Brit, I was often bemused by signs that directed me to
ostensibly homely destinations like Warwick, Coventry and Greenwich.  If it
weren't for the fire hydrants on the roadside and the fact that I was
driving on the right, I could almost believe I was driving through the West
Midlands.  I parked the car just outside the Crown Hotel and rushed through
the lobby and up to the bedrooms where Crystal, Andrea and I'd been booked
to collect the bags.  Although I was pleased at the prospect of staying at
a grand historic house in Newport rather than yet another crappy
non-descript American hotel, I still felt that I'd be very much the odd one
out in a company of folkies.  I'd almost prefer to stay with Jane and
Jacquie, even if the beds were rather too small and lumpy to be truly
comfortable.

   I was just about to stumble downstairs to the lobby loaded down with
luggage when I heard the high-pitched sound of a clarinet coming from one
of the other bedrooms that we'd been allocated to.  It could only be
Thelma. I knocked on the door and was let in by Olivia who wore only a pair
of denim shorts and plastic bangles on her wrists.  Thelma was wearing a
large baggy tee-shirt under which there might have been a pair of knickers.


   She laid down the clarinet and asked straight away: "Have you seen the
paper?"

   "Newspaper?  Which one?" I asked as I sat next to Olivia on the edge of
the bed.

   "This one," said Olivia who passed me a copy of the New York Post that
was open somewhere in the middle.

   I could see a picture of Crystal Passion and Judy Dildo that had been
taken at the concert in Philadelphia just before they'd been told to put
more clothes on and in which crudely painted black bars both highlighted
and obscured the otherwise bare nipples and crotch.

   "What's all this?" I asked.

   "It's another fucking roasting," said Thelma.  "The bastards have really
got it in for us here."

   It didn't take me long to read the whole newspaper story.  As in the
earlier story in the New York Post more than three-quarters of the
allocated space was taken up with the photograph and the headline: English
All-Girl Punk Outrage Hits East Coast.  A headline like that could just as
easily have been praise as censure, but prompted by Thelma it was with a
sinking heart that I read the text of the article:

   Philly, Boston and now Rhode Island are trembling in the wake of the
latest English pop sensation to invade America.

   Punk Rocker Crystal and her band the Passions continue to cause shock
and outrage at their concerts.  It's not only their music that's wild and
filthy.  The girls are too!

   Jeff Buckminster (47), owner of Philly Rock Club Merry Jane, was so
shocked by the girls' naked antics that he asked them to cover up right
away.

   "We don't run a Strip Joint," he told our reporter.  "We mostly showcase
good local boys like Joe Jackson."

   Loyal fan of Joe and his group the Shackabacks, Phil Stewart (18)
agrees. "I don't think Crystal and her group is right for Philly," he said.
"I don't think they're right for America."

   Crystal and the Passions have also outraged NY DJ Samuel Hedrick who's
urged his listeners to boycott their concerts.  "It's the worst possible
kind of lesbian filth," he says.

   Reverend Bob Farrow was so scandalized by the Punk Rockers that he
appeared on The Peter Pilton Daytime Show to warn off impressionable kids.
"These English girls are not the example for American schoolgirls that
parents want to see!"

   Crystal and the Passions have future tour dates in states from Illinois
to Virginia.  Look out America!



   Although it was obvious that this article was by no means four-square
behind Crystal Passion, I could see that it was as likely to attract people
to our gigs as it was to deter them, and that would mostly be for the
prospect of seeing Judy's dildo or Crystal's nipples.  Since the tour was
intended to get the band better known in America and to profit from the
proceeds of concert sales, such publicity might actually not be such a bad
thing.  However, I knew Crystal would get upset and that mostly by how the
article had described her.  And, as far as I knew, she didn't even listen
to, let alone identify with, punk rock.

   "Can I take this to show Crystal?" I asked.

   "Sure," said Thelma.  "She's got to know the worst, hasn't she?  Where
is she?"

   "She's with a local singer-songwriter, Veronica Wilson.  She and I have
been invited to stay at her place in Newport."

   "Veronica Wilson," said Olivia.  "Never heard of her.  What's she like?"

   "Er...  OK, I guess.  It's not my thing really.  But it's the kind of
stuff both Andrea and Crystal are into."

   "You and Crystal aren't spending much time with the rest of us, are
you?" said Thelma, slightly accusingly.  "There was that professor in
Boston and now this folk singer..."

   "Crystal's got to make new friends and contacts in America," I said.

   "Or go to bed with every last one of them," sniffed Thelma.

   I decided not to defend Crystal's honour and integrity, about which I
felt somewhat guilty as I drove back to Newport with Thelma's copy of the
New York Post.  However, as it happened there was nothing that I should
have felt guilty about.

   After I'd arrived at Veronica's house and parked the car in the drive, I
endured more than ten minutes of angry frustration as I intermittently rang
the doorbell and then impatiently waited for an answer.  I was absolutely
sure that everyone was in the house.  Veronica's station wagon was parked
exactly where it had been earlier and I'd been told that no one in America
ever walked anywhere unless they had to.  I assumed that nobody could hear
the doorbell over the din of their music making.

   "Hiya!" said an American woman's voice from behind the gauze screen to
the porch.  "It's Pebbles, isn't it?  Have you got all the bags and stuff?"

   "Of course," I said, slightly peeved not to be let straight in.  "It's
all here."

   But when I walked onto the porch beside her I could see why Veronica was
so reluctant to open the door.  And that was because she was totally naked.
She had a large pendulous bosom over a slightly more round stomach than
she'd had as a younger woman and a thatched mess of pubic hair that was
much more common in those days than it is today.  I made no remark about
her nudity-there could be nothing less cool-but I'd already guessed what
was happening.

   As usual, Crystal had wasted no time at all in seducing Veronica,
although she'd probably done it so subtly that the famous singer-songwriter
would think it was she who'd taken the initiative.  And when I made my way
to the living room, I was no longer witness to a concert recital but to a
small-scale single-sex orgy.  Crystal and Andrea had their arms around one
another and limbs spread out over the couch.

   "Make yourself comfortable, honey," said Veronica who left me in little
doubt as to what she really meant.

   I hesitated while I considered my options.  There was no doubt in my
mind that it could be fun and certainly a memory to cherish to make love to
Veronica and her impressive and enticing bosom.  There was also the
opportunity to snuggle up towards, fist, frig, and otherwise make love to
Crystal who I adored more than anyone else in the world.

   But there was also the troubling presence of my sister.

   Amongst the complex weave of possible sexual combinations practised by
the members of the Crystal Passion band, what I'd always avoided at all
costs was any that involved me being intimate with my sister.  Carnal
knowledge within the family was something I simply could never contemplate.
I'd never discussed it with Andrea, but I'm sure she felt the same way.  It
puzzled me sometimes that Jane and Jacquie weren't likewise shy of sibling
sex, but I guess the relationship between twins, even if not identical, is
of a different order from that between sisters separated by a few years. 
And although in the orgies and group sex sessions, it is possible that my
lips or fingers might have engaged with her crotch-or vice-versa-this had
never been intentional.

   But despite my reservations, I could see no way out.  It was still
necessary for me to make every conceivable effort to avoid physical
engagement with Andrea however difficult it was to avoid when four women
were engaged in passionate embrace on the sofa and thick woollen rugs of
Veronica's massive living room.

   Although the pivotal centre of our activity was Veronica whose body had
probably not been so lavishly stroked, kissed or violated for many years
(judging by her awkwardness and the frightening intensity of her orgasms),
for me it was always a case of how to navigate past Veronica and Andrea
towards Crystal who, for reasons of fairness with regards to Andrea and of
artistic respect towards Veronica was equally as assiduously manoeuvring
her attention in the opposite direction.  So it was inevitable that of the
four of us it was me who was the least satisfied and most eager to continue
late into the night.

   But this was not to be.  It was Crystal and Veronica who nestled
together in Veronica's huge double bed while Andrea and I slept in separate
beds in different rooms.  This was my first solitary night for quite some
time.  Normally, I relied on one or both of Jane and Jacquie to keep me
company throughout the night.  Now it was just me by myself and no other
woman's body against mine.

   And, to be honest, I rather enjoyed the novelty of it.

   Even if nowadays I'd be rather more grateful for and certainly more
appreciative of the attention of as many passionate, frequent and regular
sexual partners as I had then.

   I almost certainly had a more restful night's sleep than Crystal.  And
when the opportunity at last came for me to show her the article embedded
somewhere towards the middle of the New York Post, her reaction was much
worse than I'd expected.  She gripped the newspaper article in her hands as
if it might otherwise escape and compulsively read it over and over again.

   "Don't fret, sweetie," said Veronica as she pulled Crystal's head down
onto her bosom.  "You shoulda seen what they said about me when I was
dating Tim Buckley.  It's just good that no one ever found out about me and
Laura Nyro."

   "I just feel that instead of being treated like a song-writer or a
musician, I'm being pilloried as a freak," Crystal wailed.  "It's as if the
American media were stripping me bare, beating me with a whip and holding
me up for ridicule."

   "It's not as bad as all that," I said.

   "No?" said Crystal with a look of mock disbelief as a tear trailed down
her cheek and onto Veronica's bosom and across the wide expanse of her
areola.  "What does it say?  'Naked antics'.  'Lesbian filth'.  And what
about this call to boycott our concerts?  What have we ever done to deserve
this?"

   "Are you sure it's not because you play this 'punk rock' music the kids
dig these days?" Veronica remarked.

   "There's no 'punk' in our music at all," said Crystal.  "Judy plays a
mean rock guitar, but that's about it.  Crystal Passion is more Everything
But the Girl than Dead Kennedys.  It's more Portishead than the Damned. 
There's absolutely nothing about Crystal Passion for anyone to get upset
about."

   "There's the nudity and the lesbianism," I pointed out.

   "As I said," Crystal repeated firmly.  "There's absolutely nothing that
should upset anyone about Crystal Passion."

   As always, Polly Tarantella has plenty to say about the New York Post
article, though I suspect that if she were familiar with UK newspapers like
The Sun or The Daily Mail, she might have a different attitude.  In her
biography, it really does seem as if Crystal were spat at, stripped of all
modesty, beaten with a whip, paraded naked down the street and forced to
wear a dunce's cap.  The chapter regarding this incident is even entitled
America Scourges Crystal Passion and she portrays Samuel Hedrick and
Reverend Bob Farrow as party to a grand conspiracy whose objective is to
humiliate Crystal and drive her out of America.  Much as I'm sure both
pundits would have been delighted to see Crystal Passion fly back to London
before we'd completed our tour, I doubt that this was the only campaign
against the encroaching tide of permissiveness and immorality they were
engaged in.

   Polly makes a great deal about Veronica's role in comforting a
distressed Crystal, although she discreetly overlooks the fact that they
had sex together.  However, in Polly's defence, Veronica wasn't quite as
eager as Crystal was to share her body with more than one other woman.  And
nowadays this is something I can readily relate to.

   Polly also expresses regret that there isn't a recording of Veronica
Wilson and Crystal Passion playing together, but in the days when mobile
phones couldn't even take still pictures let alone films and when cameras
were too heavy and clumsy to carry in a pocket, this isn't surprising.  But
it's thanks to Veronica that our gigs at Thorn's Folk and Blues Club were
sold out and attracted a more than usually appreciative audience.

   And that's mostly because she agreed to perform on stage with the band:
a decision which led to a frantic last-minute publicity campaign by Barry
and Anita Thorn who pasted a sticker on all the concert posters they could
find so that it now read: Featuring A Guest Appearance From Veronica
Wilson!!  And this publicity most definitely attracted a bigger and more
enthusiastic audience for Crystal Passion.

   There is no sense that Crystal changed our set simply to suit Veronica
Wilson.  She always adapted the choice of songs and arrangements to fit
wherever we were performing.  So, in this gig, there were some songs she
performed with only Andrea rather than with the whole band.  And she was
more than content to perform as Veronica Wilson's accompanist on her Rhode
Island lover's songs.  This was probably much like her early days when she
played in a duet with John River.  But along with songs that appealed to
Veronica's many grateful fans, there were the more upbeat songs in which
Judy Dildo took full possession of the stage and where the larger ensemble,
including saxophone, clarinet, percussion and, of course, my electronic
keyboards, made a clamour which disorientated those in the audience with
abundant grey beards, long white hair (if there was any hair at all),
chunky jumpers and leather sandals.  They must have thought they'd been
accidentally transported to a night club, though I doubt whether any of
them would appreciate the difference between Michael Jackson and the Jungle
Brothers or between the Temptations and Orbital.  And, most crucially of
all, Crystal performed as she mostly always did: in the nude, unannounced
and unabashed.  Nobody else, including Judy, exposed more than the usual
amount of flesh that a female musician in a hot and sweaty cellar venue
might normally display.

   Polly's wrong to say there wasn't a record of Crystal Passion performing
with Veronica Wilson.  There were no photographs, film or recording. 
That's true enough.  But there was a brief review of the concert in The
Brown Daily Herald under a picture of Veronica taken some ten years earlier
which was captioned as Veronica Wilson Plays with the Crystal Passion Band.
This review focused almost entirely on Veronica's music though it does
admit that "the Crystal Passion Band were spirited accompanists" and that
"the English all-girl electric folk and blues group acquitted themselves
well and much to the appreciation of Providence's folk fraternity."

   And this was probably the warmest praise Crystal Passion received during
the entire duration of our American tour.

   Chapter Seven ============

   "Detroit!" Jacquie exclaimed as she looked up from the tour itinerary
she'd been reading.  "That's where our next gig's gonna be.  I've always
wanted to go there."

   "Home of the MC5 and Iggy Pop," remarked Judy Dildo.

   "And much more importantly," I said.  "The home of Techno."

   "It'll be good to see Juan Atkins or Derrick May on the decks," said
Jane.  "I absolutely love that Nude Photo album."

   "You're irrepressible!" giggled Philippa who excitedly gripped Jane's
shoulder.  She was still glistening with the afterglow of their having
slept together the night before and responded rather more to the album's
name than the music which the rest of us knew had nothing to do with
nudity. Philippa had never been much of a clubber.

   "It's a long drive to Detroit," said Bertha who'd be the one taking the
wheel of the camper van all the way from Providence.  "It's over 700 miles!
We'll need an early start."

   And a long drive it most definitely was, with most of us squeezed into
the camper van, while Crystal rode in the Chevrolet with Jenny, Judy and
the Harlot.  The route even traversed a stretch of Canada, which for me was
only the second country I'd ever visited in the New World, even though it
didn't appear appreciably different from the United States.

   It was while the camper van drove along the King's Highway in Ontario
that Jane, Jacquie and I decided between us that as soon as we arrived in
Detroit we'd head to Belleville on the city's outskirts and hunt out the
clubs where Detroit's finest might be on the decks.  The ground plan
determined, our discussion from then on was about which DJ should take
precedence: Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins or Derrick
May.  Jane had read somewhere that Detroit's top club was called the

Music Institute while Jacquie was sure that it had closed down.  I
misunderstood them and thought the sisters were discussing an actual
American college of music.  Our entire knowledge of Detroit and its Techno
scene was based more or less entirely on the small collection of
twelve-inch singles we'd amassed back in the late 1980s.  None of us had
followed the scene with the close attention required to know how much the
musical landscape might have changed since then.  We'd heard of Carl Craig,
Plastikman and, of course, Jeff Mills, but we had no idea where to go or
even who were most likely to still be active in the Detroit night clubs. 
We were adrift in a strange place without a map or compass.

   And this we learnt for sure when Jane, Jacquie and I ventured out just
after midnight into Detroit's dark unfamiliar streets with me believing
that because the sisters were black and because the founding fathers of
Techno were also black I was in possession of a mystic charm that would
somehow protect me from the horrors lurking in the city's shadows and which
would also miraculously guide us towards the world's greatest Techno.  We
excitedly discussed what treats were in store for us, which in our
imagination would be the American equivalent of Hardfloor, Autechre and
Carl Cox.  Perhaps we'd hear the most cutting edge sound from the likes of
Robert Hood, Richard Hawtin or Terence Parker.  Surely we wouldn't be
disappointed.

   It was almost inevitable that rather than us chancing upon the best
night club Detroit had to offer, the taxi we'd hailed instead dumped us on
a dark forbidding street where we had no clue as to which direction to go.
Three girls in a foreign city looking for a good time and we were already
wondering whether we oughtn't just hail another taxi and hasten back to our
bargain-basement hotel.  And we weren't at all prepared for the chill wind
that had descended on the State of Michigan from the nearby Great Lakes. 
It was freezing!

   "Fuck this!" said Jane, who wasn't known for her love of wet and cold
weather.  "If we don't find a club soon, I swear I'm gonna fly off!"

   "You and me too!" said Jacquie whose temper was no more reserved.  "This
is your fucking fault, Pebbles!  Where's the bloody Techno?  There's fuck
all here!"

   "Perhaps the decent clubs are hidden away somewhere," I said, while
wondering to myself how my instructions to the taxi driver could have led
us to a street of boarded-up shops and that unfriendly kind of American bar
we were getting to get know all too well: the type that only welcomed a
kind of woman who, whatever our clothes might suggest, was very different
from the kind of woman we were.

   "Where then, Pebbles?" said Jane.  "Where?  I can't fucking see
anything!"

   "I'll ask," I said, spotting a pair of dark-skinned young girls in tight
skirts tottering by on exaggeratedly high heels.  The way they were dressed
wouldn't be considered remotely stylish in London, but this was America
where good taste in fashion, we'd discovered, was mostly confined to New
York.

   "Yeah!" I said when I'd returned to the sisters carrying the memory of a
garbled message inflected with a thick Hispanic accent.  "There's a club
round here just two blocks away.  The Cross it's called..."

   "And fucking cross is what I'll be if it's as fucking shit as everything
else in this shitty country!" said Jane.

   "Honestly, Pebbles," Jacquie chimed in.  "This is all your fucking
fault. I told you we should have looked for some kind of listings magazine.
If they've got Time Out in London and New York, surely they've got a Time
Out in Detroit..."

   "...Or something like it!" said Jane.

   I knew Jane and Jacquie were being unfair, but I was never up to
standing up to them when they got irate.  Although this didn't happen very
often, when it did the twins made up for the respite with sheer unremitting
ferocity.  I just wished Crystal was there.  Even though she hadn't known
Jane and Jacquie for as long as me or even quite as intimately, she was far
better than me at defusing bad situations and then to somehow steer
everyone towards smiling cooperation with grievances both forgotten and
forgiven.

   "Is this it?" asked Jane in mock incredulity when we took our place at
the end of a none-too-long line (as they call it in the States) leading
into The Cross: a club whose undistinguished entrance was guarded by
well-muscled black bouncers in unadorned sleeveless tee-shirts.  From
inside came a muffled thud of what could have been any kind of music:
maybe, we were hoping, something good.  The other people in the line were
mostly like the two girls I'd got directions from and I was now more
pleased than ever that Jane and Jacquie were black.  Although I wasn't the
only white woman there, those who weren't black or brown were chatting in
heavily accented Hispanic English.  And although we'd all dressed in
anticipation of a hot night out of four-to-the-floor sweaty action in our
flimsy dresses, handbags and pumps (and, just in case of trouble, a beret
to cover my shaved pate), the majority of women in the line (and there were
nearly three times as many as men) were dressed in decidedly downmarket
chic with perilously unsteady high heels.

   "This is gonna be a disaster, I fucking know it!" said Jacquie between
clenched teeth.  She was so angry she couldn't say another word while we
continued to stand in the icy wind waiting to be let in and out of the
cold. Jane more than made up for her sister's intemperate silence with a
tirade about what a shit-hole America was and how she planned to quit the
Crystal Passion band and get back to her studies at Uni as soon as the tour
was over or, maybe at this rate, a fuck of a lot sooner than that.

   I didn't have much hope that things would be much better when we got
inside The Cross and I wasn't wrong.  The club was the kind we normally
avoided at all costs back in England.  What wasn't in the shadows was
garish, brash and camp.  There was even a 70s style disco ball.  The poster
outside advertised House and Techno and something called Neo Soul hosted by
someone with the promising name of DJ Stumble, but I was already far from
expecting to enjoy an evening of full-on high intensity Robert Hood and
Plastikman.

   We spent hardly any more time in The Cross than we had waiting to get
inside.  When the music was unfamiliar to our ears it sounded like high
energy Soul or R&B, and the tunes we did know were the kind of commercial
House that occasionally creeps into the English Top 40 and gets played on
day-time radio.  KClass, Robin S and Rozalla are good in their place but it
wasn't what we'd been hoping for.  Nothing we heard could really be called
Techno.  This was not a Night of Dancing to remember for very long at all.

   "So much for fucking Detroit!" said Jacquie when we at last got back to
the hotel.  "A cheap fucking club with plastic music for plastic people! 
And here we are in a cheap fucking hotel with piss on the stairwell, stains
on the carpet and a TV that's tuned to only the worst fucking shit that's
ever been broadcast.  If this is the fucking capital of Techno, you can
fucking keep it!"

   "And if you think you can share the same bed as us after this fucking
fiasco," said Jane with unnecessary spite, "you've got another thought
coming!  After all that glitzy mirrored disco ball shit we need as much
sleep as we can to get over it."

   I hadn't been expecting much intimacy with the sisters after our
disappointing night out so I sheepishly curled up in a ball in the single
bed while Jane and Jacquie shared the double bed.

   Things weren't going very well for us in Detroit at all.

   Perhaps we'd all had unrealistic expectations when Marianne told us
she'd arranged a tour for the band in America with Sanity Records.  There
was so much of America we knew about and even idolised.  And here we were
in the birth place of Techno and, as Jane and Jacquie said, it was all
shit. But when Marianne made her announcement, we'd only just finished
recording the third album, Seventy Doctors, and all of us were enthusiastic
and ready for anything.

   By then, the Crystal Passion band had expanded from a performing sextet
with roadie and sound engineer to an altogether more ambitious and larger
ensemble.  We were already preparing to record the fourth album.  Crystal
was brimming over with new songs and compositions.  The plan was to get the
new album out, record the next one and then head off to the States where we
almost truly believed that we'd crack open the world.  No longer just the
occasional late-night play on Radio One and Capital (not to mention
innumerable pirate radios that never paid a penny to the Performing Rights
Society).  No longer small venues and crappy cellar bars.  No longer the
small time.  We were off to America: the Land of Opportunity and the
flashing dollar sign.  Surely just over the Atlantic was a future where we
could politely decline Grammy awards and enjoy more money than we had sense
of how to spend.

   Crystal Passion now had four new musicians: Philippa, Olivia, Thelma and
the Harlot.  And we even had a second roadie, Jenny Alpha, to set up the
extra equipment that came with the inflated numbers.  The band had
continued to grow even though we all wondered how Crystal could stretch
from not having enough to remunerate six musicians and two crew, to not
having enough for ten musicians and three crew.  But I had to agree that
the extra accompaniment of Saxophone, Clarinet and Trumpet, various types
of percussion instrument and backing vocals had given the Crystal Passion
band a richer, more intricate and even rather sophisticated sound.  It had
come a very long way from one girl and her guitar (and very little else!).

   Philippa played other instruments besides the Tenor and Alto Saxophone.
In fact, she'd studied at the Royal College of Music and was already a
professional musician; but not one who'd made much money despite having
played regularly in a classical saxophone quartet and several jazz bands.
Like Judy and me, she'd had a kind of epiphany when she saw Crystal Passion
on stage, though of all the band she was the one least enamoured of Judy
Dildo's guitar-playing and on-stage theatrics.  She said it detracted from
the music's essential integrity.  Ironically, she was also rather more like
Judy than she was to anyone else in Crystal Passion in the sense that we
could all imagine her having a successful career outside the band.  We
thought her stint with us was just a way to pass the time before she
graduated to a more challenging musical career, but whereas you'd predict
that Judy Dildo would be the axe-woman for a metal band, you'd expect
Thelma to sign to ECM or Harmonia Mundi; even though from her appearances
alone you'd take Philippa for the archetypal Riot Grrrl.

   Olivia had been a Civil Servant-working for the Inland Revenue, I
thinkwho used to perform in a Pub Rock band, some fifteen years after Pub
Rock's finest days.  Her taste was for the kind of Rhythm 'n' Blues that
was a light year away from the African-American pop music that's called R&B
these days.  This Rhythm 'n' Blues emphasised earthiness, earnestness and,
of course, rhythm: which last, of course, was where Olivia excelled with
her imaginative array of miscellaneous percussive instruments.  When
Crystal saw her improvise on kitchen utensils, washboard and hollowed-out
stereo speakers she was determined that Olivia should join the band which,
with her remarkable powers of persuasion, she made sure would happen.

   I'd never got to know Thelma or the Harlot as well as I should have done
I guess, although I must have had sex with either or both of them at one
time or another maybe even at the same time.  They didn't know one another
before they joined the band, but on stage they were inseparable.  They not
only provided backing vocals, they also both played brass: the Harlot on
trumpet and Thelma on clarinet.

   In her account of the Crystal Passion band, Polly Tarantella hardly
mentions the Harlot at all and never by her real name which, like mine, is
Simone.  What were the chances of there being two Simones in one band?  I
don't know how she got to be called the Harlot, but this dated from long
before she joined the Crystal Passion band and the name suited her well. 
I'm sure it was more her sexual appetite than having a shared musical
vision that had compelled her to join the band, however good her
trumpet-playing was.  The Harlot loved sex-really loved it.  She was always
either in the midst of having sex or in between times of having sex.  She
was the one who most enjoyed making love with multiple partners and she
didn't care at all about which gender.  I don't know where she drew the
line and I never cared to ask.  Was it with transsexuals?  With animals? 
With children?  All I know is that we never came across a sexual adventure
to which she was loath.  Indeed, she was invariably the most enthusiastic.
A cock up the anus, two fists up the snatch, two cocks in her mouth and
semen dripping down her cheeks and chin: these are my abiding images of
her. Those along with the bruises, welts and love-bites that provided
evidence of her vigorous and inventive sexual activity.

   Thelma was otherwise known as Judy, but you couldn't mistake her for
Judy Dildo.  Thelma resembled more a little pixie, with very short hair
(but not shaved off like mine) and she wore feminine clothes with a kind of
Riot Grrrl feel to them.  She was a good friend of Jenny Alpha and I think
it was probably through our second roadie that Thelma got to know Crystal
and then joined the band.  Not surprisingly, given the vitriol she visits
on Judy Dildo, nowhere does Polly Tarantella ever refer to Thelma by her
other name.

   Thelma's relationship with Jenny Alpha was probably the most like a
conventional two-person relationship of any of us (however much I strived
to make this so between Crystal and me).  Jenny enjoyed her dope: that was
for sure.  But she also enjoyed sleeping in the same bed as Thelma and
making passionate love with her.  It was very romantic.  Jenny Alpha was
pretty much the physical opposite of our other roadie.  Bertha was big,
muscly and very much the butch dyke.  Jenny Alpha was lithe, toned and had
a sweaty kind of femininity that sat well with her penchant for sports gear
and trainers.  And whereas Bertha always made her presence felt either in
bed or in a social setting, you were often not aware that Jenny was even
there until, say, she had to pack up the gear or get everything ready for a
gig, or, in different circumstances, because you found her fist between the
lips of your vulva, her tongue in your mouth and her crotch rubbing against
yours.

   But it was Jenny Alpha's hand on my shoulder that woke me up after my
abortive night of Detroit clubbing.  I gazed up through sleep-encrusted
eyes at a Jenny wearing only a slip and knickers accompanied by Thelma in
just a tee-shirt.

   "Plans have changed again," said Jenny without troubling to welcome me
to the new day.  "We're not gonna be playing at the Detroit Fall after
all."

   "You what...?" exclaimed Jane who'd also woken up.

   "We're gonna be playing at a strip club instead."

   "...The fuck!" exclaimed Jacquie.

   "It wasn't as if the fucking Detroit fucking Fall was such a great venue
to start off with," declared Jane who strode over to my bed, her pendulous
bosom swaying and her long fingernails poking into Jenny's lightly raised
chest.  "I don't fucking know what Marianne was fucking thinking in the
first place, but...a strip club!  You must be having a laugh.  And not in a
good way."

   I could see that neither Jane nor Jacquie had slept off their anger. 
This wasn't going to be pleasant.

   "So, what's this about?" asked Jacquie when she threw open the door to
the bedroom Crystal was sharing with Philippa and the Harlot.  "We're
booked into a fucking strip joint?  What the fuck are we gonna do?  Wear
fucking tassels on our nipples and swirl them at the fucking punters?"

   "I'm not gonna fucking dance on any fucking cunt's lap!" said Jane. 
"I'd rather shove my fist up his arsehole.  And I ain't gonna cut my nails
first!"

   Crystal was obviously already upset.  Her reddened eyes gave the
unmistakeable impression that she'd been weeping and if she ever wore
makeup it would now be streaked down her cheeks.  She bit her lower lip and
looked around at her audience of Jane and Jacquie and me, along with
Philippa, the Harlot, Jenny Alpha and Thelma.

   "I can't pretend it's anything but bad news," she said meekly.

   "So, what happened?  What's this Jenny and Thelma are saying?  Is it
true?" I asked, sort of still half-expecting Crystal to laugh and declare
that it was all a joke: not that this was ever the sort of prank you'd
associate with her.

   "While you were out last night I got a telegram from Kai in New York
telling me to get in touch with him urgently," said Crystal in a small
voice.  "So I called him, but it was a while till he picked up the phone. I
had to speak to Barnie while waiting: you know, the guy Tomiko got to
know...  He didn't know much but he knew the gist of it.  And that was that
the proprietor of the Detroit Fall had got wind of the negative publicity
we've been getting and decided he didn't want us in his club, thank you
very much!  He didn't want a bunch of naked sex-craved punk dykes giving
the Detroit Fall a bad name, when what he'd originally been expecting was a
folk-rock group.  But he didn't want to break the agreement he'd had to
give us a gig and, of course, neither did Kai, and, I guess, in America
where they call out the lawyers on the smallest excuse neither do we.  So,
he arranged for a friend of his to stage our show instead and this friend
runs a strip club in the city..."

   "You're fucking kidding, aren't you?" said Jane angrily.

   "Kai backed up what Barnie said," Crystal continued.  "I'm going to have
to contact the manager of this strip club today.  But what Kai also told me
is that, given what's been said about us on TV and in the New York Post,
they want each and every one of us to perform in the nude."

   "The nude!" exclaimed Jacquie loudly enough to be heard on not only
every adjacent room but probably on the floors above and below.  "Fucking
naked!"

   "You might not fucking mind being nude on stage," stormed Jane at
Crystal who was currently as naked as ever, as incidentally were almost all
of us.  "But that's a step further than Jacquie and I have ever taken
before.  It's fucking insane.  And we're not fucking doing it!"

   Jane and Jacquie were right, of course.  We might appear naked in front
of each other and, indeed, on occasion in front of very many more people,
but none of us, except Crystal and Judy Dildo, ever took off all our
clothes on stage.  That wasn't the sort of band we were.  In any case, it
was always unspoken that neither Crystal nor Judy did so for any reason
other than the exercise of their personal preferences.  And, furthermore,
there was another reason for our reluctance besides our understandable
aversion to pandering to the pornographic fantasies of a male audience. 
And that was that Judy and Crystal were also the two members of the band
for whom nudity was somehow both most natural and most flattering.  Jane
and Jacquie might have been my lovers, but neither had the figure of a
magazine model: their bosoms were pendulous with large areola, their arses
protuberant, and their thighs and waist fleshy and overflowing.  I loved
their bodies dearly, but they weren't the object of most people's erotic
fantasy.  And, of Andrea and me, it was my sister who was the most slender
and evidently attractive.  Although I had no excess fat as such, I was (and
still am) quite thick-boned even if I'm not at all above average height. 
And with a below averagesized bosom, a waist not much slimmer than my hips
and, of course, my shaved head: I was plainly not the obvious candidate to
be a stripper or sex performer.

   But there was a kind of inevitability to the subsequent stream of events
along which I flowed while never feeling in control.  Kai Pharrel
emphasised the legal consequences of reneging on a deal in America. 
Marianne in London expressed sympathy for our plight, but totted up the
punitive costs of a tour that was already losing money.  And then there was
the fact that we would have two successive nights at The Purple Robe and it
was over a week till our next scheduled gig in Kansas City: the home of
Charlie Parker and not much else.

   What else could we do till then?

   The gigs were promoted on unsubtle garish posters pasted throughout the
city that featured photos of naked women that resembled not a single one of
us strumming Rock guitars and bashing it out on drums.  And emblazoned
across the poster under the thick purple italic letters proclaiming the
club's name was the name of a band called Chrystal and the Passions who we
half-hoped no one would associate with us.  In small print were a few
choice quotations that were attributed to articles about us: 'Notorious and
Naked' 'Anarchy from the UK' and 'Lesbian Punk Sensation'.  None of us
cared or were at all bothered to confirm whether the Detroit Sunday
Journal, USA Today or the Philadelphia Daily News were correctly cited.

   Crystal was probably the most distraught of any of us, however much she
struggled to appear outwardly calm.  Her mood was worsened by Jane and
Jacquie who maintained a tireless tirade of how shit Detroit was, what a
cesspit America was and how much they were looking forward to quitting the
band.  Every day they threatened, with attendant tantrums, to fucking walk
away and leave the Crystal Passion Band mired in shit up to the fucking
chin.  Their mood was not improved by the fact that on this occasion it was
the band's rhythm section that couldn't be spared.  A set that had been
adapted to emphasise the more rhythmic and guitar-led side of the Crystal
Passion Band had to include Jane and Jacquie.  Most of the band was spared
the shame of having to appear at the Purple Robe, but, unfortunately, I was
also not one of those.

   Crystal and Judy Dildo led the band from the front.  In fact, Judy was
the only one who didn't seem especially upset by the turn of events.  As a
Rock Guitarist she'd appeared at some pretty crappy places with
correspondingly rowdy audiences.  She often regaled us with stories about
the audience at these Rock gigs: the urination and vomit on stage, the
blood and bruises in the mosh pit, and the fist-fights in the venue's
shadows.

   When Crystal and Judy appeared on stage at the Purple Robe on either
side of the dance pole they were both totally naked with the exception of
their shoes (flatheeled in Crystal's case and rubber-soled in Judy's).  It
was unusual to see Judy perform without her strapped-on dildo and the black
plasters over her nipples, but I think she felt a need to compensate for
the rest of us who were disgusted, ashamed and humiliated at having to do
the gig.  Those watching the gig must have thought Judy was the band leader
and that she was the Chrystal advertised on the posters rather than just
one of the Passions.  She completely took the initiative and compensated
for Crystal's unnatural reticence and our shamefaced reserve by giving the
audience something of what they wanted (although they may have been puzzled
that it wasn't she who was singing; in fact, Judy's voice would only ever
be good for the raucous amateurish punk rock that not even she enjoyed
much).

   The rest of the band was composed of the rhythm section of Jane, Jacquie
and me, who stayed as much in the shadows as we could; enough so that we
could avoid baring our private parts which were hidden under our not
especially sexy or erotic underwear.  Even so, we all still had our tits
out for the boys: the sisters' large and fleshy breasts flopping about
awkwardly as they played and my own much more modest bosom affording little
pleasure to the voyeur (of which pretty much everyone in the audience was).
I borrowed a purple wig from one of the pole dancers who performed between
our three twenty-minute sets.  I was scared that my shaved head would
attract the wrong kind of fetishistic attention otherwise.

   The only other members of the Crystal Passion band to venture into the
Purple Robe were Jenny Alpha to roadie and Tomiko to manage the sound desk.
She was dressed even more than usual like a weird Japanese schoolgirl wet
dream; if one that swore with frightening ferocity, drunk her beer straight
from the bottle and snorted a shocking number of lines.

   The time we spent on stage was relatively easy to endure.  I barely
glanced out through the flashing red and yellow lights at the exclusively
male audience that was mostly somewhat older than we were used to playing.
They were just shadows I could glimpse in the dark of men who'd presumably
been lured into a strip club with the promise that they'd witness a
currently notorious rock band.  It was actually the time when we walked
onto and came off the stage that was most humiliating.  I'd never before
been treated to so many wolf-whistles and so much yelled innuendo in my
performing life.  Only Judy acknowledged the attention and she played the
role of the Angry Rock Star to perfection (although that may have been
because she was an Angry Rock Star).  Jane, Jacquie and I kept our heads
down or looked away until we could withdraw behind the thick purple velvet
curtains and retire to the small changing room where the strippers were
waiting their turn.

   I don't know what I'd expected of the Purple Robe strippers.  In all the
American movies I'd seen which featured a stripper, she was almost always
portrayed as the waif-like girlfriend of a dishevelled and misunderstood
male hero who was struggling to get by until she could do something more
worthwhile with her life.  I could see no evidence of that in the Purple
Robe strippers who smoked constantly, whose skin was a mix of several tones
of black and brown, and for which English was not always their first
language.

   Moxie Fox was the stage name of the girl who lent me her wig but she
preferred to be called Charlene.  She had very light black skin and was so
thin that I half-expected her to start shooting up, but she could just as
easily have been a recovering anorexic.  She was more interested in hearing
about my glamorous life as a Rock Star than she was to talk about her life
or trials however much I tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, but I
preferred Charlene's company to that of Jane and Jacquie whose
broken-record conversation returned again and again and yet again to how
shit it was to perform in a fucking strip club and that they'd be fucked if
they'd go on stage for the next set (even though they always did).  I had
no opportunity to talk to Crystal who was in a tightly huddled conversation
with Judy Dildo whose arms were wrapped around Crystal's shoulders in
sisterly affection.

   Jenny Alpha and Tomiko were the only ones who didn't come backstage but
they had to supervise our equipment to ensure it didn't get stolen.  In any
case, neither of them had been obliged to take off their clothes.  My guess
is that the two of them were sharing their dope and coke and should any of
the male audience venture too close they were both more than capable of
handling the situation.  Tomiko's blatant sexual aggressiveness and Jenny's
well-toned muscular figure were more than enough to intimidate even the
most crass wolf-whistler and unfunny heckler.

   Polly Tarantella is characteristically coy about our gigs at the Purple
Robe, as she is with any aspect of Crystal's life that doesn't fit into a
remarkably prim vision of her as a misunderstood and wholly spotless
genius. What she does say corresponds more to her account of a Crystal
Passion who was persecuted and humiliated on her American Tour where the
villains are not so much flexibility in the face of necessity but the
persons of Kai Pharrel and Judy Dildo (Marianne being wholly innocent of
any wrongdoing).  I think Polly is unfair to both of them.  Kai was just
the bearer of bad news and Judy Dildo, if anything, was the person who did
more than anyone to rescue the band from even more humiliation.  But Polly
is unlikely to forgive Judy for making a success of a couple of gigs at a
strip club.  I think she'd rather we'd had our clothes ripped off our backs
by rapacious male chauvinists and then stoned to death.

   Judy was the one who interceded between Crystal and the manager of the
Purple Robe, a greasy man with skinny arms and a supersized paunch.  She
got us in and out of the venue with as little harassment as possible.  She
held off the attention of the ravening crowd by both teasing the audience
and treating them like miserable shits.  And more than that, she was
spending more and more time together with Crystal as she tried to console
our clearly despondent band-leader who was taking sole blame for what Jane
and Jacquie so often reminded everyone had so far been a disastrous and
humiliating American tour.  It was Judy who most tried to convince Crystal
that she ignore the bad press, the shame of performing at a pornographic
venue and the deepening black hole of debt and unpaid wages that was
opening up the longer the tour continued.  But this might be what most
antagonises Polly about Judy.  How can Crystal have let herself be led
astray by a woman like Judy Dildo when there were others in the band (most
significantly me) who Polly claims were much more suitable companions:
women who fit better into the myth that Polly and other Rock Music Critics
are creating about Crystal Passion and the newest nouveau vague of
contemporary Rock Music.

   We all wanted our memories of Detroit and the Purple Robe to recede into
the back of our mind.  We'd done our gigs and we'd got paid for them. 
Jane, Jacquie and I skulking in the shadows; Crystal strumming her guitar
and singing sweetly over the catcalls; and Judy Dildo strutting, preening
and thundering out the power chords.  And all this to an audience perhaps
too mesmerised by Judy's Rock Star presence and Tomiko's deafening
reconstruction of the Crystal Passion sound to pay much attention to the
music they were listening to.

   So, it wasn't with anything like joy or anticipation that we read the
review of the gigs in a Detroit tabloid newspaper.  It wasn't at all
reassuring even though it was a relatively positive review but for all the
wrong reasons.  It was headlined English Chicks Rock the Purple Robe and
the body of the article didn't get any more faithful to our memories of the
event:

   English Grunge Rock Chicks Chrystal & the Passions rocked out the Purple
Robe as part of manager Bob Crux's new policy to diversify the range of
shows he stages at the venue.

   Bob explained to our reporter that the Purple Robe has long been a
success at catering for the demand for adult entertainment in lively
downtown Detroit and when he heard that English Rock Stars Chrystal & the
Passions were in town he decided then and there to put them on stage.

   The sell-out show featured an English all-girl Rock Group who dressed
(or didn't dress) just as the crowd demanded.  This was a night out for men
who appreciate an adult show with Rock songs.  Just the tonic if you like
the very best English Rock Bands like U2 and Duran Duran.

   The lead guitarist was Julie Bilbo (29) who rocked the joint like a
female Richie Blackmore if the Deep Purple ax man ever got dressed (or
undressed) like her.  Chrystal (26) was the Passions' singer and talented
songwriter.  She reminded this writer of Grace Slick in the days of
Jefferson Airplane.

   Rock fans at the Purple Robe were treated to the very best of English
Chick Rock and we look forward to seeing more English talent like this.

   Come on, England.  Don't be shy.  Show us more of what you have to
offer. And we want to hear more of your Rock Music too!



   "What kind of shit is this!" exclaimed Jane.  "Did this cunt even
actually go to the fucking concert?"

   "Who is Richie Blackmore?" wondered a totally bemused Tomiko.  "And what
is this Deep Purple?"

   "The reporter must be a mate of the manager," Thelma remarked.  "Bob
Crux is the only whose age isn't reported."

   "Where did they get those ages from?" Thelma wondered.  "Did they pluck
them out of thin air?  Are you really 29 years old, Judy?"

   "Erm..." said Judy Dildo, uncharacteristically sheepishly.  "Maybe."

   "Let's just hope no one outside of Detroit ever reads this review," said
Crystal with firm resolve.  "And let's hope we can put the Purple Robe
behind us and look forward to the next gig."

   "Yay!" said Philippa in almost gung-ho enthusiasm (but then she no more
than most of the Crystal Passion band had actually ventured into the Purple
Robe and she didn't have much shame and humiliation to put behind her). 
"Kansas City here we come!"

   Chapter Eight ============

   "Wherever it is we'll be tomorrow, it won't be Kansas," Crystal
announced when she'd returned from the hotel foyer after what was
originally intended to be a routine phone call to Kai about the tour
itinerary.  "And it most certainly won't be Kansas City."

   "No need for ruby slippers then," said Thelma.

   "So, if we're not going to Kansas, where are we going?" Andrea asked. 
"Weren't we supposed to be travelling from there to Chicago, Washington and
New Orleans?"

   "It isn't only Kansas we won't be going to," said an emotionally drained
Crystal.  "It's worse than that.  We're not going to any of those other
destinations either.  According to Kai, almost every venue in the country
has cancelled our gigs."

   "What the fuck!" Olivia wailed.  "Why?"

   "It's the result of all the negative publicity we've been getting," said
Crystal.  "The concert organisers don't like what they've read and they
don't want to take the risk of allowing us to get on stage."

   "I thought there was no such thing as bad publicity," remarked Judy.

   "That might have been true if we were a punk rock group or some kind of
edgy theatre troupe," said Crystal.  "But we're not.  We flirted with fame
and instead we found scandal."

   "It's all the fault of the fucking American media!" Judy sniffed. 
"They've fucking had it in for us ever since we arrived in this shit-arse
country."

   Of all of us, Judy Dildo was the one most likely to agree with Polly
Tarantella's thesis that Crystal Passion was the victim of a grand
conspiracy.  Most of us blamed our misfortune more on the outcome of a
series of unfortunate events.  And this is ironic given that Polly portrays
Judy as the pantomime villain of the tour.  She seems to assume that every
slight, every setback, every cancelled gig, police harassment and negative
press article was all part of a grand scheme whose sole purpose was to
bring about Crystal Passion's demise.  And the fact that Judy was no more
unscathed than Crystal does nothing to deflect Polly's condemnation.

   "Is there anything we can do?" Jenny Alpha wondered.

   "Yeah there is," said Jacquie who, along with her sister, was still
incensed at our humiliation at the Purple Robe.  "We can get on board a
fucking plane and fly home.  This tour's been a fucking disaster from the
very beginning.  Let's just cut our losses."

   "We've still got a few gigs to honour," said Crystal.  "We don't want to
cause any disappointment."

   "From what we've seen so far, nobody'll be disappointed at all," chimed
in Jane.  "They won't even know we were ever supposed to be there.  Let's
just head to the nearest international airport and fly home."

   "When and where are these gigs?" I asked.

   "The first one's a couple of weeks from now," said Crystal.  "It's in a
city in South Carolina.  Rock Hill, I think it's called."

   "South Carolina," sniffed Jacquie.  "Hicks and hillbillies.  It doesn't
sound like the fucking Promised Land."

   "I vote we cancel the gig there before they cancel us," said Jane. 
"Those good ol' boys can lynch someone else.  We can fly home to London and
civilisation."

   Nobody took Jane up on her suggestion.  Crystal was too upset for any of
us to want to make things worse for her and I guess we still hoped that
there might be some value in carrying on.  And it wasn't much later that
day that our fortune unexpectedly seemed to change for the better.  This
time a much more cheerful Crystal summoned the whole band to congregate in
the hotel bar where the only people there other than us was a bored woman
bartender and an elderly hotel guest nursing a glass of bourbon.

   "Good news," announced Crystal with a broad grin and a glass of mineral
water in her hand.  "We've got a gig arranged next week in New York State."

   "New York again!" Bertha exclaimed.

   "Not New York City," Crystal elaborated.  "New York State.  Somewhere
near a city called Syracuse.  It's a festival they hold in a field not many
miles from there.  It'll be just like Woodstock or Glastonbury.  It's
called the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival."

   This announcement prompted a varied response.  Although we were all
women and many of us enjoyed the company of women more than we did men,
some of us, like Andrea and Judy Dildo, didn't much subscribe to the more
radical tendencies of the feminist movement.  For others like Olivia,
Bertha and Jenny Alpha, there was no feminist proposition short of
compulsory male castration they wouldn't subscribe to.  Although neither
Crystal nor I were female separatists, we were generally comfortable in the
company of our radical sisters as long as the business of raging at the
unfairness of life didn't get in the way of enjoying it.

   "Where did you find out about this festival?" wondered Judy who was the
least enthusiastic of any of us.  Perhaps she was apprehensive of the
generally negative opinion most feminists had towards Heavy Metal and
mainstream Rock music.  "I wasn't aware that Kai had much to do with the
American feminist scene..."

   "He is gay," said Tomiko as if that provided an explanation.

   "Since when has being gay made a Man better informed about Women?" Jenny
Alpha sneered.  "What the fuck can he do in a dickless zone?"

   "It was Simon who's organised it for us," said Crystal.  "Kai called him
up on a hunch and Simon just happens to be a friend of Ariel Golgotha, the
woman organising the festival.  Simon told her that we'd played at the John
Knowles Paine Concert Hall and what a great band he thinks we are."

   "How is the professor?" I asked, as the only other person who'd met him.

   "Professor Simon Kurrein?" said Crystal, surprised to hear him addressed
in that way.  "OK, I suppose, though we mostly only chatted about the
festival: you
know, the time and place and how to get there.  We'll be the first and

only foreign women's band to have ever played there, which, in a sense,
gives us a lot more license than they allow the American bands."

   So, the professor had come to our rescue for a second time: something
Polly makes much of in her Crystal Passion biography.  However, I can
categorically deny that Simon flew from Logan Airport to meet us at Detroit
Metropolitan Wayne County.  His contribution, though significant, was to
endorse Crystal Passion to Ariel Golgotha and thereby throw us a lifeline
at a difficult time on the tour.  He knew very little about the Sisterhood
Women's Music Festival.  He probably thought that in a world where women
musicians are mostly in the shadow of their male counterparts the mere fact
we were women was all the shared identity that was needed.  What he
probably didn't know so well was how militant much of the women's music
scene had become in the 1990s.  There were still women with guitars singing
pretty tunes in the tradition of Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman and Joan
Armatrading; but there was now a new scene that was sweeping away the
cutesy, effete, folky scene of women doing it for themselves.  Inspired by
the likes of Courtney Love and her band, Hole (whose song Teenage Whore was
a favourite of mine), and propelled by the likes of Sleater-Kinney and
Bikini Kill, this was a scene that owed far more to the Slits and ESG
(another of my favourites) than it ever did to the example of girls
strumming on acoustic guitars: however much their sex lives might challenge
the preconceptions of their male fans.  And it was this, rather than some
kind of folksy, hippy-dippy guitar and girl scene we were expecting to find
at the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival.

   What worried me was that Crystal Passion might not appear either old or
new enough to satisfy the festival-goers' tastes.  A feminist audience
might be just as bemused and puzzled by Crystal's dense, ambiguous and
elusive lyrics as any other audience.  Crystal might have been as
passionate in theory as she was in practice with regards to female
empowerment, gender warfare and lesbian love (although she never used terms
like 'queer' and 'dyke' to describe herself or her sexuality), but this
wasn't obvious from listening to her lyrics.  Even when they're written
down (as Polly Tarantella has done) there's nothing specific or concrete in
her words at all.  Certainly not anything as tangible as a proclamation of
the triumph of women against the selfevident evils of patriarchy and male
oppression.

   Although we didn't get to meet Simon, I exchanged a few words with him
over the phone before we drove off to New York State.  He was plainly
sympathetic to our plight, but careful not to actually invite us to play in
Boston again.  I guess the adverse publicity we'd attracted no longer made
that possible.  And so it was that a couple of days sooner than we needed
to, we travelled back across the narrow strip of Canadian territory to our
next gig.  Surely things could only get better from now on.

   "Wow!" and "Gee!" and "Golly!" were the words Ariel Golgotha most often
used when she addressed us, although she also employed used such words as
"Fuck" and "Shit" to demonstrate that she wasn't just the preacher's
daughter she actually was.  We learnt that her passion for women's issues,
as much as her lesbianism, was the destination of a difficult personal
journey that led from anti-abortion rallies in the company of her father's
congregation towards a lesbian woman-centric life style that her parents
actively disapproved of.  And given my experience with my own less than
sympathetic parents, this was enough reason for me to take a shine to her.

   But my attitude was the exact opposite of Judy's.

   "Fucking vicar's daughter!" she exclaimed, when we were out of earshot.

   "Seeing that we've arrived early, Ariel has offered us two gigs at the
festival," said Crystal, who chose to ignore Judy's comments.  "We're gonna
be playing on the first night and on the last night as well.  That's one
gig on Thursday and a second on Monday."

   "For double the fee?" Andrea wondered.

   "Not quite," admitted Crystal, "But it's a better deal than we were
expecting."

   The Sisterhood Women's Music Festival was no Glastonbury, no Woodstock,
no Reading, no Womad, nor even the kind of free festival that used to be
put on by local authorities in Central London to show how hip the borough
councillors still were.  It was held in a big field where it hadn't rained
for several weeks in which small tents were being erected in steadily
closer proximity to one another over the first day.  Not surprisingly for a
festival organised by and for women, the toilet and washroom facilities
weren't bad at all, though the makeshift bar was something of a
disappointment to those of us who preferred alcohol to soya milk and fresh
juice.  But what was really weird, and surprisingly elating, was that there
were no men at the festival whatsoever.

   "Isn't that a bit weird?" said Andrea when I mentioned this to her.  "I
mean, men are at least half the population."

   "About fucking time, I'd say," Jenny Alpha remarked.  "No one says fuck
all when it's only men who're in a pub, at a football match or on a golf
course.  The fewer dicks, pricks and bollocks the better."

   Judy wasn't convinced.  "You put a lot of women together and there'll be
bitching from sunrise to sundown," she said sourly.

   "And you think it's any different when there are only men around,"
countered Jacquie.  "There are always gonna be people who bitch.  It's only
human nature."

   "What have you got against women all of a sudden, Judy?" said Thelma. 
"Do you really think men are any better?  I'd rather be bitched at than
raped or sexually assaulted.  Men might not always be the enemy but, fuck
it, they deserve to be."

   "Yeah.  Yeah," said Judy, evidently uncomfortable with this line of
argument.

   Not that any of us were especially comfortable when we tried to settle
down to sleep in the cramped space of the rather small tents Ariel had
available and which she generously let us use.  We hadn't expected to have
to camp out during our American tour and I wasn't the only one who'd never
slept in the open air before.  Jane and Jacquie were vocal in their disgust
at having to sleep in borrowed sleeping bags on groundsheets laid over
dew-damp grass.  And Tomiko was moaning that she'd much rather sleep on a
futon.

   Nevertheless, our discomfort was partly compensated by the attention
lavished on us the following day by the other women at the festival.  Never
before-and probably never since-had I ever felt so privileged to be
British. Not that I'd ever had a choice in the matter.  This stemmed from
the mysterious and persistent legacy of the Beatles' Invasion of the
American music scene almost thirty years earlier.  Whatever magic sparkle
the lovable mop-tops possessed, Americans were convinced that it had
brushed off on all and every one of their compatriots even if, by the
1990s, only Oasis played music that remotely resembled Mersey Beat.  While
my musical reference points were West Coast America and Detroit, Americans
assumed that all we knew and cared about were the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones, Elton John and, at this festival, Dusty Springfield.

   Not only was I celebrated simply by virtue of having been born in
Britain and of being a member of a British popular music ensemble, it was
also because I was a woman.  Here were women amongst whom my shaved head
and relaxed clubbing clothes made me feel that I was at last where I truly
belonged.  We were in the company of women whose dress and appearance was
as miscellaneous and unconventional as the Crystal Passion band.

   It is fair to say that Crystal was adored with a degree of unquestioning
love I'd never seen before, even when we'd played at lesbian and feminist
events in the UK.  The very Englishness of her appearance-whether clothed
or totally nude-only charmed the women who gathered around her.  In truth,
I can't remember whether there was an occasion when Crystal actually did
wear anything: I was so used to seeing her nude.  She was naked for at
least some of the time and, just as in the UK, there was nobody who'd be so
uncool as to remark on this.  It might even have been her natural nudity
that stimulated such adoration.  Wherever Crystal wandered-from book stall
to food stall to poster stall; from the stage to the caravans that provided
both toilet facilities and hot water (and not a urinal in sight); from the
Volkswagen camper van to the tent-she was followed by female fans who
adored her despite not yet having heard her music.

   There was one note of discord, however, when one of the women, older
than most and wearing the peasant rags of the unreconstructed hippie,
mentioned that she'd heard that there was negative criticism about Crystal
Passion in some of the American media.

   "Don't concern yourself about me," said Crystal.  "I'm only a visitor to
your country.  You should be concerned about American women such as Ariel
Golgotha who are more often the victim of media assassination.  If someone
like me who does comparatively little to further women's rights attracts so
much undeserved censure, imagine how much worse it would be for Ariel if
she was the centre of attention for reactionary sensation-seekers in the
media.  I feel enormous pride in all of you who work together in the
struggle to make the world a better place for all women whether they live
in the mountains, the hills or the forests..."

   "...Or the towns and cities," echoed one of the American women who'd
been trailing Crystal wherever she went.

   "Of course," agreed Crystal.  "For all women everywhere."

   I left Crystal in the midst of her adoring fans and strolled off with
Andrea to see what else was happening at the Sisterhood Women's Music
Festival.  Unfortunately, there was little there that I hadn't seen at
other festivals.  There were stalls selling organic vegan wholefood. 
Stalls selling CDs and amateurish prerecorded cassettes.  Stalls piled high
with feminist and lesbian literature, where even the badly-drawn comic
books were deadly earnest.  Stalls selling ethnic clothes, which was
different from what I was used to seeing in Europe only in that there were
more ponchos and sombreros rather than batik and cheap Indian fabrics and
tie-dyed teeshirts.  Although I soon got bored with rummaging through the
ethnic chic, Andrea was soon laden down with wooden beads, rattan mats and
braided hair-bands.

   I didn't surprise me at all when we returned to where we'd pitched up
for the night to discover that the tent Crystal was sharing with Judy and
Philippa was full of naked women.  And neither Judy nor Philippa were
anywhere to be seen.  I could just about identify Crystal in the midst of
the entangled female flesh where she was wholeheartedly enjoying the
intimate affection of American sisterhood.  I'm not sure what my feelings
were to see Crystal with all these unfamiliar women, although I decided
against stripping off to join the fray.  I might even have been reassured
that Crystal wasn't making love with Judy.  For the last few days I was
beginning to resent the greater attention Crystal was paying Judy who I
couldn't help wondering, with a pang of jealousy, might have somehow
superseded me as Crystal's favourite lover (if any woman was ever more
favoured than another).

   It was apparent that this representation of the American Sisterhood
appreciated Crystal for more than just her music.  For a start, it was
unlikely that many had actually heard much of it, even though our CDs were
on sale in record racks otherwise mostly crammed full of k.  d.  lang, Joan
Baez, Tori Amos and 7 Year Bitch.  I loitered around Crystal's tent as the
lovemaking continued long after Andrea had discreetly wandered off.  It
wasn't only because I loved Crystal so much that I thought she was far more
attractive than the other women.  One of them was plump, another painfully
thin (almost anorexic) and another dreadfully old.  Of course, that was
what I thought at the time.  These days, I'd be delighted to enjoy intimacy
with any of those women.  Crystal's affection towards other people was so
universal that I often wondered whether she discriminated on physical
attractiveness at all.  And then she'd astonish me with a frank and honest
appraisal of someone's appearance: both good and bad.  But when it came to
sex, Crystal never seemed troubled by such matters.

   The sounds of passionate sex, let alone the smell and sight, soon became
too much for me, however many times before I'd heard, seen and smelt
Crystal's naked body.  I left the temptation of flesh behind and wandered
over to the tent I was sharing with Andrea and in which she was stretched
out and admiring the wares she'd bought.

   "I don't know why you're so disgruntled," said Andrea.  "It's not
because of Crystal, is it?  Or do you just not like Women's festivals?"

   "I like them well enough," I said.  "And it's refreshing not having men
around.  I just think that celebrating our womanhood should be more fun
somehow.  And not in this happy-clappy everything-is-groovy kind of a way."

   "From what I've heard about some of the younger bands here," said
Andrea, who actually preferred exactly the kind of music that I didn't much
like, "there's gonna be a lot more sound and fury than sweet melodies when
they take the stage."

   Andrea was right, of course, but not so much on the first day.  In fact,
the order in which the bands and musicians were scheduled to take the stage
was in inverse order to the time of day when they'd be at their best.  The
first bands to appear on a stage brilliantly lit by the afternoon sun had
names like the Jerusalem Whores and the Furry Fishcakes.  The bemused women
who'd turned up to hear them wore threadbare hippy clothes and their long
hair was visibly greying.  A handful of younger womenalmost certainly the
bands' friends and family-were dancing self-consciously at the front of the
stage.  And just when the younger music fans who'd have most enjoyed the
spat-out lyrics of songs such as My Flappy Vulva Lover or Peter Won't, But
Paula Does emerged from their tents the music had become more folky and
better suited for an afternoon in a sunny park than a night of drinking and
dancing in the open air.  Now was the time for singers with names like
Margot Klein, Leanna Morris and Amy Jones to perch on stools with their
acoustic guitars accompanied by an all-too-earnest all-female backing band.
They performed well-meaning and allusive songs that celebrated womanhood in
a thoroughly wholesome way.  It was all women doing it for themselves and
women surviving the horrors of heterosexual entanglement.  It wasn't that I
didn't appreciate or even agree with such lyrics.  After all, I'd not been
tempted into a relationship with a man for years.  I just didn't much like
the hectoring and sermonising.

   It was when Margot Klein had sung her last song-an encore, in fact-with
its catchy chorus of "Make Your Man Share the Burden!  Watch him Stumble
and Fall!" that the Crystal Passion band was due to take the stage.  The
honour of being the final act on the first night was simply a tribute to
our status of being international.  We may well have been the only band
that didn't come from New York State.  And this time, all of us were on
stage.  Not a slimmed-down ensemble as dictated by circumstances.

   In the interval between the Crystal Passion band taking the stage and
Margot Klein reluctantly walking off, acoustic guitar in hand while she
waved appreciatively at her adoring middle-aged fans, there was a DJ set
laid on by a woman in hippy gear who wouldn't have survived a single second
in a British Night Club.  She even allowed gaps between records which she
thankfully didn't compensate for with inane radio DJ banter.  Her idea of
getting the audience ready for our set was to play songs by any and all of
the British girl singers she could think of: so we were treated to an
uneven mix of Joan Armatrading, Lulu and Sandie Shaw.  She even played the
Eurythmics' Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves: a tune I'd hoped never to
have to hear again.  I didn't appreciate being lectured about the virtues
of "the conscious liberation of the female state" and being reminded that
"the inferior sex has got a new exterior".  While a few very bored hippies
were swinging their motherly hips to this preachy housewife-friendly song,
Bertha and Jenny Alpha were humping equipment onto the stage and Tomiko was
setting up her mixing decks under a canvas shelter a hundred yards away.

   I was nervous as I always am before a gig, but the signs were all good.
I was sure we could only shine after what I considered to be an extremely
tedious DJ set.  And the audience which had thinned out as
singer-songwriter followed singersongwriter was at last beginning to be
filled out with younger women who'd be up for something more upbeat and
perhaps somewhat less self-satisfied.  And many of these women were in
thrall of Crystal Passion as a result of her daytime charm offensive.

   Ariel Golgotha dashed onto stage with disarming enthusiasm dressed in an
odd mix of ethnic chic and biker leather.  She tried to address the crowd
through the microphone, but all we could hear was a muffled voice swamped
by the inspirational lyrics of Joan Armatrading's Me Myself I.  And then
with a half-audible sentence punctuated by the words "Fuck", "Shit" and
"Golly", Ariel could at last be heard.  She kept her announcement
brief-possibly because she didn't really know any better than anyone else
what our music sounded like-but I don't think Judy Dildo enjoyed being
heralded along with the rest of us as an icon of Women's Liberation who was
furthering the cause of feminism through the vehicle of Progressive Hard
Rock.

   And this may be why as soon as we took to the stage, Judy unleashed the
unmoderated fury of full-throttle guitar licks which instantly energised
the audience's younger element and dismayed the older hippy chicks.

   This was the only set on our tour where we played the music we'd
recorded in London just before we departed for our American tour.  At the
time, we'd thought that the six songs we'd recorded were unfinished work
which would soon be accompanied by half a dozen more when we returned to
England.  But we valued the opportunity to try out our new material on an
absurdly enthusiastic audience before we returned to our more usual
tried-and-tested repertoire.  What we didn't know of course was that these
six songs-on average no more than five minutes long-was to be our final
recording as the Crystal Passion band and that they would later feature on
an album with the portentous title of The Last Word.

   In many ways this album is the most unsatisfactory and patchy release
credited to Crystal Passion, however much Polly Tarantella champions it as
our masterwork.  In those days, it was expected that an album should last
at least seventy minutes.  And this was to justify what was then the more
expensive price of a Compact Disc compared to a vinyl record.  The six
tracks we'd recorded for the as yet untitled fourth album amounted to
barely thirty minutes.  So, what would have been a very good short
album-perhaps bolstered by the songs So-So Sower and Muscle Mary that we'd
recorded on an earlier session as a potential single release-was bloated to
a full seventy minutes by an additional half an hour of out-takes,
halffinished songs found on Crystal's personal cassette player and a few
songs that hadn't been good enough for Seventy Doctors, the previous
record.

   Nevertheless, the six tracks we'd recorded fit together very well and
when it came for us to assemble the album, it was because Philippa and
Andrea insisted on it that the songs were released on the album in their
original sequence: even if they appeared after a somewhat miscellaneous
selection of those tracks, like Muscle Mary, that Gospel Records considered
might yet have commercial potential.  And these six tracks featured the
whole of the Crystal Passion ensemble in all its miscellaneous glory in
arrangements that Crystal had agonised over and had somehow got absolutely
right.  There was electric guitar and fiddle, saxophone and percussion,
clarinet and trumpet, backing vocals, lead vocals, acoustic guitar, and,
keeping up the rhythm, my keyboards, Jane's drums and Jacquie's bass.  And
it wasn't the mess that some of us had dreaded.  With the help of Tomiko's
expert engineering skills, it all held together as a coherent whole.

   It is this set of six songs that Polly so often proclaims as the
definitive sound of Crystal Passion and which she already has plans to have
re-recorded by a set of Band Aid musicians.  Perhaps there'll be someone
like Squarepusher or Jon Hopkins playing my synth chords (though I wouldn't
be at all surprised if they featured Elton John instead).  Perhaps they'll
have a decrepit Heavy Metal guitarist play Judy Dildo's licks (but knowing
Polly's hatred of Judy, it probably won't be anyone who's any good).  And I
have no idea who'd play the role of Crystal Passion.  Would it be Taylor
Swift or Miley Cyrus?  Whoever it might be, I can't imagine she'd appear
naked on stage as Crystal did at the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival. 
And if Taylor Swift did appear undressed in the cause of authenticity, I
doubt whether she could carry it off with as little sense of embarrassment
as did Crystal.

   The six songs have perplexing titles like Curry Carousel Chorus, Gloria
in an Escalator and Tell Me You Love What I Want You To Love and although I
now know every word by heart I still have no idea what Crystal was getting
at when she wrote the lyrics.  I sometimes wonder if she means me when she
sings "Thank you, Kirsty" over and over again in Lamb Ram Community. 
Inevitably, there's no explicit reference to either 'Pebbles' or 'Simone'
in her lyrics, any more than there is to a 'Judy' or a 'Mark' or anyone
else she regularly made love with.  Crystal's lyrics remain enigmatic well
beyond the grave, however well they rhyme, scan and give the impression of
having meaning.  What I do know is that I always burst into tears whenever
I listen to the songs in sequence.  They touch me deep inside even though I
don't know what Crystal was singing about and, as I've told Polly many
times, she never gave much away.

   "Fuck, Crystal," said the Harlot who had to solemnly intone "Sanitary.
Sanctuary.  Salutary.  Sanity." in You Carry an Affirmation.  "What the
fuck is all this about?"

   "It just sounds good," said Crystal.

   "Not that good," said Thelma who shared the backing vocal duties with
the Harlot.  "And what's it got to do with 'Offer me an Amphora'?  Where do
you get all this pseudo-mystical shit?"

   "Do you think I should change the lyrics?" Crystal asked gently.

   "I didn't say that," said Thelma.  "It's not that it doesn't sound good.
It's just that the lyrics don't make much sense."

   And I don't think even Polly Tarantella would disagree with Thelma's
assessment.

   The first and only time I ever felt like a pop star, as opposed to the
keyboard player in an obscure uncategorisable music group was that night
when we appeared on stage.  So, this is what it's like, I thought as the
women in the audience danced, swung and moshed to music with complex time
signatures, enigmatic lyrics and an eccentric set of instruments.  I didn't
know at the time that many years later, when nobody could mistake me for a
'babe' and when I could no longer shave my hair in case people thought I
was on chemotherapy, that I would then be far more famous for my role in
the Crystal Passion band than I was at the time.

   And what were we like as a band when we were in full flow?

   I'd like to think we weren't at all bad really.

   There were some truly talented musicians in the group.  Not just Crystal
but also Andrea, Philippa, Olivia and Judy Dildo.  And it was Judy who on
this night, as she increasingly did as the American tour proceeded, who
made the greatest impression other than Crystal herself.  I'd be fooling
myself if I were to claim that Jane, Jacquie and I were much better than
just about adequate.  I've heard far better rhythm sections on old Tamla
Motown records and on almost any modern Jazz record.  And although Polly
might be loath to agree, none of us, including Crystal, offered what Judy
Dildo could in terms of stage presence.  And on this stage, the two women
were almost as one.  Both were either totally or almost totally nude.  Both
had guitars strung over their shoulders.  And both dominated the stage:
Crystal with her inexplicable unassuming charisma.  Judy with her Rock
Guitar theatrics and her teasing of the audience's expectations.  And
whatever Polly says, Judy knew how to play guitar.  You can hear it on the
CDs, but nothing compares with the imagination and daring of the live show.
If she was still active, she'd probably have become famous in her own
right. Rather than as the object of Polly's unquenchable rage.

   And, just like for a rock band, our audience clamoured for not one, not
two, but three encores.  And we'd have gladly given more if Ariel Golgotha
hadn't brought the proceedings to a close.  Fortunately, we had enough
material for as many encores as might be required, but Crystal decided to
give our American audience exactly what they'd really wanted all along. 
And this meant that the third encore featured the Beatles' We Can Work It
Out which somehow melded into Walk On By and climaxed with Nirvana's Come
As You Are.  No one could pretend that Crystal's vocals sounded much like
either John Lennon's or Kurt Cobain's, but on this occasion Judy Dildo
showed an unexpected skill at singing with a rasped voice which just
happened to harmonise well with Crystal's more folky voice.

   "Fuck!" said Jane as we left the stage.  "That gig almost makes the
American tour not seem so bad..."

   "That was fucking awesome!" said Olivia.

   "You did real good there!" I said to Judy Dildo, swallowing for the
moment my resentment that she was sharing her bed with Crystal rather more
often than I was.

   Judy was dripping with sweat, but she knew that she'd done a good job.
But she wasn't going to let that detain her.

   "Yeah.  Yeah," she said distractedly before pushing her way through the
crowd.  "If you could just excuse me please..." she said as she
disappeared.

   "Where do you think she's going in such a hurry?" Andrea asked as we
watched her go.

   I didn't know, but I knew well enough where Judy was later that night
from the passionate cries of lovemaking that came from the tent she shared
with Crystal.  And no amount of intimacy with the now reconciled Jane and
Jacquie could make up for my hurt feelings.



   Chapter Nine ===========

   If you were touring America these days and you wanted to contact your
manager or, indeed, anyone back in the UK, all you need to do is switch on
a laptop or tablet or smart phone and use Skype.  And if not Skype exactly,
you'd use Viber or exchange emails or instant messages.  But in the early
1990s, the internet was very slow and ridiculously expensive and most
people weren't online anyway.  So, when Crystal wanted to contact
Madeleine, our agent, to find out how things were doing she had to seek out
a payphone and drop a lot of coins into the slot for a not very long and
usually unsatisfactory conversation.

   I don't know how or when Crystal originally got Madeleine to represent
her.  She was Crystal's agent long before I first heard her live and she'd
also represented John River before the River Bank became famous and
ascended well out of her league.  I sometimes got the impression that
Madeleine was working for Crystal as a favour, although she did also manage
some other rather more successful bands that regularly toured Europe and
the UK.  None were fabulously rich or famous, but they made enough for it
to be worth Madeleine's while.  This roster included folk groups, a jazz
band and several minor league Rock and Pop groups.  The most commercially
successful band was called the Seven Imps.  They were a Death Metal group
who'd originally come from Norway but had now settled in East London and
bore a remarkable resemblance to Snow White's Seven Dwarfs as illustrated
by Arthur Rackham.  To be honest, she and I were never really the best of
friends.  I think there might have been some sexual tension between us.  I
considered myself to be Crystal's primary lover after Mark and I think
Madeleine might once have believed that she occupied that role.  Whatever
the reason, she was never especially friendly towards me.  Madeleine was a
rather offhand manager when we returned to England and, in the absence of
anyone else, it was me who became the de facto acting band leader.

   John River and Mark both told me that Madeleine was critical in the
early days of Crystal's career and it was she who persuaded Christine
Giordano to adopt a stage name that was less of a mouthful and thereby
become the eponymous Crystal Passion.  The acoustic sound of her first
album, Triad, was a much better fit with the singer-songwriters Madeleine
managed-such as Mary Jane Clover, Lenny Shroud and Joanna-than it was with
the direction the music took after she teamed up with me, my sister, Jane
and Jacquie.  And it was through Madeleine that Crystal Passion got signed
to Gospel Records.

   All the same, she still doesn't get much of a mention in Polly
Tarantella's biography.

   "So what's Madeleine got to say?" asked Olivia.

   "We've had more news coverage in the UK over the last few days than
we've ever had," said Crystal.

   "Good or bad?" wondered the Harlot.

   "Mixed," admitted Crystal.  "And none of it's about the music.  There
was a short article about us in the NME that was on our side.  It was about
our American tour and how we've been maligned by the right-wing press and
misrepresented on television and radio.  It was more about the failures of
the American media than an account of the gigs we've played."

   "That's something at least," said Tomiko.

   "Well, it's better than the articles about us in the Sun, the Daily Mail
and the London Evening News where we've again been called Crystal and the
Passions.  In fact, the Daily Mail even managed to spell my name with a
'K', so that I'm now Kristal as in Kristallnacht.  At least they don't also
accuse me of being anti-Semitic."

   "What do they say?" Philippa wondered.

   "That we've been scandalising all of America with our shocking stage
act. That we've been appearing on stage in the nude and having live lesbian
sex in front of our fans.  That we're in the same tradition of scandalous
and outrageous rock groups as the Sex Pistols, the Slits and Throbbing
Gristle.  And, what's worse, the only gig any of them report is the one at
the Purple Robe in Detroit.  There's a small photo of us in the Sun but
it's difficult to tell what's going on because it's obscured by so many
black rectangles.  There's nothing about our gig at Boston.  Nothing about
our gig with Veronica in Newport.  And there's something in the Daily News
about me once being John River's girlfriend..."

   "And is that so?" Bertha asked.

   "Hardly.  John is my cousin.  Even I draw the line at that."

   "Don't worry about all that shit," said Judy Dildo.  "No one pays
attention to what's printed in those rags."

   Unfortunately, Judy wasn't quite right.  Even in the 1990s and without
the prevalence of the internet, news could still carry a long distance. 
Maybe it wasn't as instant as it is these days, but it was fast enough.

   Later that day I was hanging around our camp site with Andrea, Tomiko
and Crystal while we discussed how to capitalise on the success of our
first gig and what numbers we should play at our gig on the closing night.
We weren't going to be the final act.  That honour was given to a local
Syracuse all-woman Hard Rock band called Third Rock.  We weren't even the
second-to-last.  That slot was taken by the Women of Babylon, a Riot Grrrl
band from Brooklyn defiantly proud to be both mixed race and lesbian.  That
was the perfect combination at this festival which the Crystal Passion band
surpassed only by virtue of us having almost three times as many women as
they had.  But we were looking forward to being third from last and
wondering whether we should perform some other cover songs.  Andrea was
keen on playing Carole King's It's Too Late while I was arguing the merits
of Alison Limerick's Where Love Lies.

   But our discussion was interrupted by Ariel Golgotha who appeared by our
tent dressed in denim shorts, hand-weave sandals and the official festival
tee-shirt.

   "Gee!  What the fuck!  Have you heard this horse-shit rumour, you guys?"
she said.

   "Sorry, Ariel," asked Crystal innocently.  "What horse-shit?"

   Ariel looked Crystal up and down from her face to her toes, clearly
uncomfortable at standing at such close proximity to a naked woman.  Her
freckled face visibly reddened, but she continued regardless.

   "The horse-shit about you guys performing at a strip club in Detroit.  I
mean it's fucking groovy that you're like naturists and into Mother Earth
and all those good things, but Gee!  Strip Clubs!  I mean, guys...  What
the fuck!  Is it true?"

   Crystal lowered herself onto a deck chair, partly to obscure her nudity
but also to take the more submissive role appropriate for further
negotiation.

   "We've not been lucky with some of our bookings, Ariel," she said.

   "But a fucking strip club.  In front of fucking...  fucking...  in front
of men.  Gee!  I mean, like what the fuck!  This is a woman's festival. 
We're here to celebrate our sisterhood.  We're not here to pander to male
chauvinist fantasies and fucking...  fucking...  stuff like pornography and
the oppression of women.  Just tell me it's all horse-shit, guys.  Come
on."

   "It's not what we wanted to do," said Crystal.  "We had a gig arranged
at the Detroit Fall, which is normally a folk-rock club.  But when we got
to Detroit, we discovered that we'd been booked to play at a club called
the Purple Robe instead.  We didn't know what kind of place it was and we
felt duty-bound to fulfil our obligations."

   "But fuck!  Gee!  You didn't have to play at a fucking strip club.  What
will the sisters think?  It's like the opposite of everything we stand
for."

   "Do you want us to cancel our gig, Ariel?"

   "What?  No.  I don't think so.  It's too late for that.  But Gee!  I
don't know.  If word got round...  You're not going to start having sex on
stage are you?  I'm openminded, fuck knows.  But there are limits, you
know. There's only so far you can go with free expression before it becomes
pornography.  I mean, naturism is one thing.  That's communion with nature
and being Green and aware and as one with the spirits.  But sex on stage,
even in front of the sisters, that's fucking...  fucking...  It's not
right. Is it, Crystal?"

   "Not at all, Ariel," said Crystal.  "And you can be assured that we
shan't be doing anything like that at all.  We'll just go on stage and
perform our songs.  That's all we want to do and that's all we shall do."

   "Well, that's cool then," said Ariel who seemed relieved but evidently
not completely reassured.

   This conversation visibly upset Crystal.  Once Ariel was out of sight
and earshot, she sank her head into her hands: her face obscured by her
long hair.

   "What have I done?" she wailed.  "How has it all come to this?"

   "None of it's your fault, Crystal," said Andrea, kneeling down beside
her and wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

   "It's all shit anyway," said Tomiko.  "Who cares about that gig in
Detroit?  At least it helped pay the bills."

   "We're still going to make a phenomenal loss on this tour," Crystal
continued.  "We should have just said no about appearing at a strip club.
We should have stuck to our principles."

   I wasn't sure what to say.  After all, unlike my sister, I was one of
those who'd actually performed on stage at the Purple Robe and, what's
more, had done so almost totally nude.  I'd hated doing it but I was also
complicit.

   "Shall we just continue working on the set list?" I suggested.

   "That's mostly been done," said Andrea.  "And judging from what Ariel's
just been saying I don't think we'll have the opportunity to play bonus
cover tunes, whether by Carole King or by some House diva."

   "If we get the chance we should try Eight Days a Week or Norwegian
Wood," Crystal proposed with a shy smile.  "Anything by Lennon-McCartney
goes down well."

   "How about we play something decent like Lithium or Smoke on the Water?"
suggested Judy Dildo who strode towards us from the direction of the food
tents.  She was wearing a skimpy bikini top and barely decent denim shorts
and her arm was around the waist of a teenage girl with short black-dyed
hair wearing a festival teeshirt and tight black briefs.  Judging from her
piercings and tattoos, this was a girl who'd enjoy the music of Hole and
Bikini Kill as much as Judy did.  And the evidence from her simpering
affection towards Judy was that there was a whole lot more about Judy that
she'd been enjoying.

   "Ariel's just come over here and told us that she'd heard about our gig
in Detroit," I announced in the malicious hope of deflating Judy's ego.  I
wasn't feeling charitable towards her.  I mean, how dare she?  Not only was
she making love with Crystal more often than I was, she'd also found the
time and opportunity to pick up and fuck the local talent.

   "Shit!  You mean the Purple Robe."

   "Exactly," I said.

   "That Ariel's one prudish bitch," said Judy uncharitably.  "She thinks
that all it takes is to have sex with a woman for her to be the fucking
spokeswoman for a whole half of humanity.  She should go back to fucking
church and sing hymns and shit."

   The girl accompanying Judy giggled appreciatively.  Disrespect towards
the Christian faith patently went down well with her.  Nonetheless, Judy
slipped out of the girl's grip and slid towards Crystal so that now both
she and Andrea had their arms around her.  And I was just stood at one side
and looked on ineffectually in the company of Tomiko and a still giggling
teenage girl who was rolling up one of those single-skin joints that
Americans prefer.

   "We'll show those bastards we mean business," said Judy boldly.

   "That's not why I make music," Crystal pleaded.  "I'm not about
confrontation, Judy.  I'm about building bridges."

   "Like fucking Simon and Garfunkel," Judy sniffed scornfully.

   Judy's teenage girlfriend passed me her spliff which I received
gratefully, despite the dampness of the roach.  "It's the bomb," she said.
I nodded, but I'd already enjoyed somewhat stronger dope earlier that day
and was now up for a whole lot more.

   "Fucking traitors!" shouted a woman from behind me.  "Scumbag Assholes!"

   "What?" I said twisting round my neck, while Andrea, Crystal and Judy
jerked up their chins.  Neither Tomiko, who was now in possession of the
joint, nor Judy's girlfriend, who was waiting for it to return, paid much
heed to the commotion.

   "You ain't feminists!" jeered one of three women who were emboldened by
a concoction of the kind of stimulant officially banned at the festival
(and whose prohibition Ariel whole-heartedly supported).

   "You're more fluffers than feminists!" agreed her companion who like
here friends wore jeans, tee-shirt and a severe haircut (although not quite
as radical as mine).

   "Strip Clubs and Pornos!" echoed the third.  "If that's what you think
feminism's about, fuck off back to England!"

   "You certainly ain't wanted here, you Asshole Limeys!" said the first.

   With that and a cackle of unsisterly laughter, the three women trailed
off.

   "What the fuck was that about?" Judy's girlfriend wondered.

   "That was totally uncalled for," said Tomiko, whose cut-glass English
accent startled the teenager.  "It wasn't true and it wasn't fair.  We've
none of us done porn, have we?"

   I decided not to remind her of the Harlot's history.  "I hope that's not
the opinion of all the women here," I said.

   "Of course it is," said Judy bitterly.  "These pent-up stuck-up
feminazis!  If you don't follow the message word for word, you're fucking
toast."

   "They have a point," said Crystal who, as always, could see the virtue
of even the most contrary opinion.  "This is a festival celebrating
womanhood.  And what we did in Detroit didn't further the feminist cause at
all."

   "Fuck it!" said Judy angrily.  "Come on, Crystal.  Come with me.  Let's
get away from all this prissy feminist shit."

   She arose from her crouched position and Crystal stood up beside her,
allowing Andrea to slump into the now vacant deck chair.  Judy then walked
off with her arm round Crystal's waist.

   "Hey, girl!" called out Judy's new girlfriend.  "Can I come along?"

   "Sure thing," said Judy who walked off with one arm around Crystal's
waist and the other around her teenage friend.

   "Where do you think they're going?" Tomiko wondered.

   I almost expressed the petulant opinion that I didn't know and I didn't
care, but my more sympathetic sister spoke before I could.

   "Crystal's distraught," she said.  "A change of scene will do her the
world of good."

   "And just where is that change of scene?" I remarked.  "What is it that
Judy and Crystal do together?"

   "You feel the need to ask," countered Andrea accusingly.  She'd never
fully approved of her sister's infatuation and this wasn't the first time
she made it apparent.

   I wouldn't be the only one to wonder where Crystal and Judy had gone
when late that night neither of them had yet returned to their tent,
although I might have been the only one to see a pattern in this
unexplained absence and the greater amount of time they were now spending
together.  It wasn't until the following day that we saw them again though
it was totally uncool for anyone (especially me) to actually ask where
they'd been.  It was enough to know that Crystal was distressed by the
hostile attention and the inward conflict with her conscience.  I was the
only one who'd take offence that it was with Judy rather than me that
Crystal had chosen to unburden herself.  Sure, I still had the intimate
attention of Jane and Jacquie-not to mention the opportunity to make love
with all or any of the other eight women in our entourage (with the notable
exception of my sister)-but these could never be enough.  I hadn't dropped
out of university and abandoned the promise of a career with the Ministry
of Agriculture and Fisheries just to be the keyboard player in a
commercially unsuccessful ten-piece band.

   Even so, whatever resentment I harboured against Judy is nothing
compared to that expressed by Polly Tarantella.  I sometimes wonder why
Polly's so vehemently hostile.  She's never met Judy and never likely to do
so.  And of all those in the Crystal Passion band, no one was more like the
kind of Rock Star axe hero that Polly is more often enamoured with.  Rock
music's pantheon is full of men and, increasingly, women who play electric
guitars, wear tight clothes and strut their stuff across the stage.  And
this is exactly what Judy Dildo was all about.  Even her stage name was in
the honourable tradition of Rock Stars like Billy Fury, Sid Vicious and
Siouxsie Sioux.  And yet Polly has taken against Judy and is
whole-heartedly in favour of Pebbles-even though my stage name owes more to
Hanna-Barbera than it does to Malcolm McLaren.  I'd much rather listen to
Orbital or D'Angelo than anything by Black Sabbath or Queens of the Stone
Age.  My guess is that ever since she became such a fervent convert to
Crystal Passion, anything and everything that reminds her of what she most
often used to champion is now the very thing she least wants to associate
herself with.

   But even with Crystal back-and no sign or mention of the teenage girl
who'd accompanied her and Judy-we weren't fully able to concentrate on
preparing for our final gig as the festival's antepenultimate act.

   Word of our Detroit gig increasingly became public knowledge as the day
progressed.  Whereas on the first day of the festival Crystal could do no
wrong, now there was no crime against feminism she wasn't guilty of.  A
scrappy signboard was erected near our tents on which was painted a crude
arrow pointing in our direction and the phrase This Way to the Porn Sluts!
However, as many of the Riot Grrrl bands had names at least as provocative
as 'Porn Sluts', this probably didn't have quite the negative impact that
the women who'd put the effort into painting the signboard had intended.

   There were no longer any groupies following Crystal around wherever she
went and only Judy, Thelma and Olivia were now sharing her tent.  In fact,
Crystal hardly showed her face in public at all.  This was a wise policy as
every time she did, she attracted the attention of an affronted woman or
other who'd shout something like "Jezebel!", "Traitor!" or "Judas!" in her
direction.  Or a tirade of abuse along the lines that no true feminist
would be seen dead near a strip club let alone perform inside.

   "Crystal Fucking 'Linda Lovelace' Passion!" shouted one woman
scornfully.

   "Suck my dildo, bitch!" shouted another.

   "This abuse is as bad as any of Crystal's supposed sins," Andrea
remarked.

   "I hate to say it," said Bertha.  "I love and admire Crystal, but she
kinda deserves this shit.  She did agree to sing in front of a load of
fucking strip club punters.  And it wasn't just the one time she agreed to
flash her tits for the fuckers."

   "It's easy for you to say that," I said.  "You weren't even there."

   "And I fucking never would, whatever you paid me," Bertha continued. 
"Fuck knows what Jenny Alpha was thinking when she agreed to roadie for you
that night.  It'd take a fucking fortune to persuade me to do what she did.
And then I'd have to hide my face for shame for the rest of my fucking
life!"

   "Bertha's right," chimed in Philippa.  "Crystal should never have agreed
to appear at the Purple Robe.  Whatever possessed her to be so fucking
stupid?"

   I thought of countering this criticism by repeating the arguments that
had seemed so persuasive to me at the time.  That it was a way to earn
money on a tour that was haemorrhaging cash to the extent that the band's
survival had become doubtful.  That after all the shit we'd already got on
the tour, what difference did a little more make.  That the audience might
well include men who were genuinely interested in listening to our music
(and we managed to sell more CDs at the Purple Robe than almost anywhere
else we performed).  That if Crystal had asked me I'd walk through the
Valley of Death to demonstrate my love for her.

   But the truth is that none of us were feeling positive about appearing
on stage that evening, sandwiched as we were between the Djuna Barnes Folk
Trio and the Women of Babylon.  Crystal cancelled the customary dress
rehearsal without comment, although we knew it was from fear of organised
disruption.  We could no longer wander round the festival with the
self-confidence we had on the first day (and I made a point of hiding my
shaved head under a woollen hat in the hope of not being recognised).  The
only members of the band still openly supportive of the decision to play at
the Purple Robe were Judy Dildo, Jenny Alpha and the Harlot.  In fact, the
Harlot went so far as to say that if there had been onstage sex as so many
of the festival women at the festival believed then she'd have made a point
of being up there with the rest of us.

   "What could be more cool than to have Judy's fucking dildo in my twat
and your fist up my arse?" the Harlot said provocatively.

   "Um!" I said, feeling decidedly uncool as the image of doing this while
being watched by the creepy Purple Robe clientele flashed through my mind.

   The only person oblivious to the prevailing mood was Tomiko.  She seemed
genuinely surprised that the rehearsal was cancelled.  She was put out to
be told that the set would be almost exactly the same as the Mary Jane's
gig in Philadelphia and that it was unlikely that we'd play songs by the
Beatles, the Kinks or the Dave Clark Five.  "Fuck!" she exclaimed as if it
was the most polite expletive imaginable.  "What's happening with you
guys?" And then before anyone could reply, she rolled another joint and
returned to the state of narcotic bliss that so became her.

   As the time for our gig approached, we gathered together back-stage as a
procession of all-women acts performed ahead of us.  Just before the Djuna
Barnes Folk Trio was the nearest to an electronic duo the Sisterhood
Women's Music Festival had to offer.  Like Soft Cell and Wazoo, Black
Triangle consisted of a flashy singer and an uncharismatic keyboard player.
To my ears, the singing was oddly stylised and the twiddling was decidedly
too high register.  And worse, the beats were totally pre-programmed and
flat-footed.  It was a real relief for me when they at last came off-stage.
Was the very land from which Techno and House owed its origins still
suffering from such undanceable electronic music?

   The Djuna Barnes Folk Trio was a trio of women who played bluegrass and
American folk songs and were a blessed relief to me.  Andrea and Crystal
weren't the only ones in the band enjoying their set, though Judy said they
were total shit and Jane and Jacquie were more interested in a private joke
about the fiddler in the trio whose jeans kept slipping down and revealing
her not notably appealing bottom crack.  At least the songs weren't
hectoring anthems on the virtues of womanhood and lesbianism.  They had a
yearning thoughtful quality that made me wonder how well the lyrics and
tunes could be mixed by a Drum & Bass or Deep House producer.

   But all too soon, it was our turn to appear on stage.

   And as we all expected (with the exception of Tomiko who was a hundred
yards away in the mixing tent), we were immediately greeted by boos and
jeering.  There were even a few banners waved up and down in the audience
emblazoned with phrases like 'Crystal Passion: No Thanks!', 'Go Home to
England!' and 'Strippers Not Welcome!'.

   "Uh-oh!" said Olivia as we came onto the stage.

   "This doesn't look good," said Andrea who joined Philippa and Thelma in
the scuffle to take position as far as possible from the front of the
stage.

   "Fucking fascists!" Judy Dildo spat out, but not otherwise appearing
confrontational and, for her, dressed quite modestly.

   "If they want a fight," said the Harlot unconvincingly, "I say: Bring It
On!"

   "Oh shit!" I said in fear at what lay ahead.

   Crystal, however, behaved no differently to how she would normally.  She
made no marked concession to the change in attitude expressed about her
onstage nudity.

   She walked toward the front of the stage with as broad a smile as she'd
have had if the audience were greeting her with cheers.  She picked up the
microphone and ignored the barrage of jeers.

   "Put your clothes back on!"

   "Stick to Blue Movies!"

   "Fuck off Judas!"

   The jeering died down as Crystal stood her ground and made no comment.
Her smile was as unforced and generous as ever.

   "Can I have a word please?" she asked the audience.  "You've heard some
bad things about me and my band and I'd like to set the record straight."

   This plea simply led to even more jeering and heckling, but Crystal let
it all wash over her.  She maintained her beatific smile regardless while
the volume of vocal dissent steadily dipped.

   "Daughters of America," she announced as if addressing not just the
audience at the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival, but all women.  "Weep
not for me, but weep for yourselves and for the unborn children of America.
For the days are coming, in which people shall say that the women of today
are fortunate indeed.  Blessed are the barren and those who will never
carry children and the nipples which will never give suck.  Then shall the
people of America say to the mountains, 'Fall on us' and to the hills
'Cover us'.  For if those as innocent as us are the victim of such scorn,
what shall be done to those who have true cause for concern?"

   This was typical of Crystal Passion's oblique mysticism and I didn't
understand a word she was saying then and I don't understand it any better
now.  Perhaps she'd learnt this way of speaking when she was travelling
across India.  Or maybe its origin was the music and mystical musing of
George Gurdjieff that she loved so much.  Wherever it came from, it
mystified and bemused the audience just long enough for us to launch into
the first song of our set, Bread for the Fisherman, with its equally
enigmatic lyrics and its punchy guitar riff.

   I can't say the gig was a success as such, but we played for over half
an hour and we deliberately didn't pause for long between songs so there
was little opportunity for the catcalls or boos to be heard.  Except for
Crystal's nakedness, which in any case was mostly obscured by hair and the
way she held her guitar, there was nothing in our performance that could
have persuaded an uninformed observer that there was ever a whiff of
scandal associated with the Crystal Passion band.  Both Judy Dildo and the
Harlot were remarkably restrained.  We kept the songs short and let them
tumble out one after the other.  The only ones in the band to take solos
were Andrea, Thelma and Philippa.  Nobody seeing my sister could imagine
her as anything other than an earnest advocate of the sisterhood.  With her
curly hair, checked shirt and jeans she looked more like a member of the
Djuna Barnes Folk Trio than the Porn Star or stripper that many in the
audience might have thought she was.

   We didn't expect an encore and we didn't give the audience the
opportunity to ask for one.  As soon as Crystal had sung the last few words
of a rather folky Rambling Woman she waved at the audience with a free arm
while her other grabbed her guitar as if in response to an explosion of
applause.

   "Thank you!  Thank you very much for letting us appear at the Sisterhood
Women's Music Festival.  Hope to see you again!" Crystal shouted out.

   And then as quickly as was possible we fled the stage, Jenny Alpha and
Bertha rushed on to dismantle our equipment, and the Festival's DJ once
more took to her decks with an uninspiring mix of records by 1970s' women
Soul singers like Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Gloria Gaynor.  And we
knew better than to walk back to our tents where we were expecting to be
waylaid by those in the audience still angry at our well-documented
betrayal of the feminist cause.

   "Let's see what the Women of Babylon are like," said Judy Dildo, as if
this was the one thing she'd been looking forward to all evening.  I agreed
to listen to the gig reluctantly, but I actually rather enjoyed it,
probably more so from having survived our own set without having been spat
on or hit by a thrown beer-can.

   The Women of Babylon was a band much more in tune with Judy's musical
taste but were admirably fervent in their support for the lesbian and
feminist cause.  They were angry, very angry, at the injustices of male
patriarchy and its thoughtless chauvinism and casual sexism.  They were a
great deal more like the kind of rock band the American media thought we
ought to be (and a lot more so than any woman's rock group I'd ever seen in
London or anywhere in the UK).  They even permitted themselves some
gratuitous nudity, but much more in the confrontational manner of Courtney
Love and Babes in Toyland.

   The festival audience seemed divided amongst itself as to the virtues of
the Women of Babylon.  Some in the audience were insanely enthusiastic
about the band (especially when the band were riffing on the theme of
tampons and period pains) whereas there were other women were just sitting
out the set so they'd have a good seat for the headline band.  To my ears
(but not Judy's), the final act, Third Rock, was a rock group that could
have performed their set at any time in the previous thirty years.  The
single distinguishing fact about the band was that they were all women. 
Dressed in a sexually ambivalent uniform of jeans and leather and long
full-bodied hair, the band's gender was quite simply the only thing that
distinguished them from dreary 1970s' Rock bands like Iron Maiden, Blue
Oyster Cult and Grand Funk Railroad.

   At one point in Third Rock's set, I turned my head round to check
whether Judy Dildo was enjoying the music as much as I was hating it, but
instead of her being beside me, miming to the Rock theatrics and guitar
licks, there was no sign of her at all.

   Or for that matter of Crystal.

   "You're looking for Judy and Crystal?" guessed Jane who along with her
sister understood more than most my obsession with our band leader.

   I nodded.

   "They left about half an hour ago," Jane said.

   "Any idea where?"

   Jane shrugged her shoulders.

   "Don't worry about it," she said.  "Crystal's her own woman.  And
whatever it is that Judy's got to offer, it's what Crystal wants most at
the moment."



   Chapter Ten ==========



   I guess it should be obvious to just about everyone simply by having a
look at an atlas, but it came as something of a surprise to me, to realise
how big America actually is, and we were only travelling from North to
South down the Eastern United States.  Almost every single one of America's
states is bigger than England, and some are bigger than France or Germany,
but when you travel across Europe you know for sure when you've left one
country and entered another.  In America the differences are more like
those between English counties.  To an American one state doesn't much
resemble another at all, but it seemed like a whole lot of pretty much the
same thing to me.  Diners.  Motels.  Malls.  Gas stations.  And countless
Stars and Stripes.

   The drive from New York State to South Carolina was too much for us to
do it all in just one day and yet on the map it seemed like we'd hardly
travelled any distance at all.  The real American South of New Orleans, the
Mississippi, the Florida Everglades and Texan cowboys was still way out of
reach.  And there was a whole lot of America to the West-the Rocky
Mountains, the Nevada Desert and the West Coast-that was even more distant.
I've travelled many times to California since Crystal Passion's fateful
American Tour and visited places like Monterey, the Big Sur, Tijuana and
the East Ocean Boulevard that I'd always dreamed of visiting when I was
listening to Brian Wilson, Dick Dale and Eden Ahbez as a teenager in my
London Suburban family home.  But nothing we'd seen on our tour of the
United States could seem more remote from the beaches, the sunshine and the
surf of the America that I'd imagined.

   "So, another shitty motel," moaned Jacquie at a band conference in a
diner somewhere vaguely in the vicinity of the States of Maryland, Virginia
and West Virginia.

   "Any better ideas?" asked the Harlot, who was one of today's designated
drivers, fingering the point on the fold-up freeway map where the motel was
positioned.  "This one's just about the right distance for today.  If we
drive into one of these other towns marked on the map, like Roanoke and
Barren Springs, it'll be a long detour and there mightn't be anywhere
better to stay."

   The Crystal Passion band was split between the two vehicles we were
hiringthe Chevrolet and the VW Camper van-and for reasons of fairness we
equally divided the time each of us spent in one or other vehicle.  So,
five of us would travel a leg of the journey in the relevant comfort of the
Chevrolet and the remaining eight in the Camper Van.  I'd earlier been
enjoying the Chevy's front seat on the journey from a diner just outside
Winchester, Virginia, (which couldn't have been more different from the
original Winchester in Hampshire, England) during which Jenny Alpha was
driving and Philippa was squeezed between Jane and Jacquie on the back
seats.  And now we all bundled into the Camper Van while another five could
at last enjoy the car's relative luxury: this time driven by Judy Dildo
who, along with her other talents, was one of the few of us who could drive
and willing to do so on the right hand side of the road.  And according to
the complex formula that we'd agreed on earlier, Judy would this time be
accompanied by Andrea, Jenny, Olivia and Tomiko.

   So, for this leg at least, I'd be reunited with Crystal and not need to
worry about Judy monopolising her attention.

   However, once we set off along Interstate 81 away from the Burgers and
Fries of the Myrrh Cross Diner towards the Burgers, Fries and double
bedrooms of the King's Cavalry Motel, Crystal was uncharacteristically
reticent and any conversation with her was terse and to the point.  She was
obviously distressed by how much attitudes towards her had changed over the
few days of the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival.  Although Ariel Golgotha
paid us in full for the two gigs, she was noticeably less talkative while
she counted out the dollar bills than she'd been on the first day of the
festival.  And we were taunted in a most unsisterly manner by a small group
of women as our Camper Van trundled over the grass, out of the field and
onto the main road.  Indeed, as we weaved along Interstate 81 from New York
State through Pennsylvania towards Maryland and beyond, Crystal didn't
cheer up at all.  I guess this was the first time she'd had to confront the
kind of hostility we were now experiencing in America.

   It was several hours later that we arrived at the King's Cavalry Motel
which was pretty much identical to all the others we'd already passed.  But
then what were we expecting?  A motel is what it is: a budget roadside
hotel with a whole load of rooms and lots of parking spaces.  And the
King's Cavalry Motel was designed the same as every other motel, with each
room facing towards its own parking space and each room faithfully
providing what was advertised at exactly the stated price.

   Normally there was plenty of space whenever we pulled into a motel but
when Bertha steered the VW Camper Van into the car park, it was obvious
that there weren't many spare rooms available.  In fact, almost every motel
room had a car parked in front of it.  And when we bundled out of the van,
eager to stretch our legs and have a smoke, we were met by Judy Dildo and
Andrea who'd been sitting on a bench and waiting for us just by a soda
vending machine.

   "Hey guys!" said Judy.  "It's not good news.  There's a business
convention or something near here, so almost all the rooms are taken
already.  In fact, there are only four rooms left and they're all double
beds."

   "So that's enough for just eight of us," said Crystal.

   "Yeah, you're right," said Judy.  "You eight.  We've already booked the
rooms for you: we didn't want to risk losing them.  Then me and the rest of
us will drive on.  There's another motel about fifty miles ahead.  The
Silver Noose Motel it's called..."

   "So we'll have to stay the night in two different motels," said Crystal
betraying more than just polite regret in her voice.  "The Crystal Passion
band will be split up for the first time on the tour."

   "Well, since we arrived at JFK," remarked Tomiko.

   "Don't worry about it, Crystal," said Judy.  "It's only fair.  You need
the rest more than we do.  I'm sure the Silver Noose will be more than good
enough for us."

   Crystal could see the sense in this arrangement, so she and I walked
with Judy to the motel's check-in desk where Olivia was waiting for us
while she sipped from a can of fizzy soda.  The middle-aged and overweight
motel receptionist was squeezed behind the desk and busy handling the
concerns of an equally obese guest.

   "Phew!  You guys are really hot and sweaty!" Olivia said pointing at the
vending machine in the motel foyer.  "You better have a can of something."

   We agreed and slotted in our quarters for ice-cold cans of carbonated
drinks with exotic names that none of us had ever come across before.  I
selected a can of Myrtle's Malt and Crystal chose Top Gaul.

   "God!  It tastes foul!" I exclaimed.

   "Yeah, it's really vinegary," said Olivia.  "It's cold though."

   "It might be cold," said Crystal after a sip of Top Gaul, "but it's not
exactly refreshing.  Can we swap drinks, Pebbles?  I don't think I can
drink any more of this."

   We swapped drinks and I could identify no discernible difference between
Myrtle's Malt and Top Gaul.  They were both sugary and both disgusting.

   "Does anyone else want to drink this stuff?" Crystal asked.  "I don't
think I've ever drunk anything so horrible in my life!"

   "Yes ma'am!" said the receptionist as the hotel guest she'd been dealing
with waddled off.  "I'd be thrilled to drink a can of Myrtle's.  It's
locally brewed and I for one am proud of our local beverages."

   "You're welcome to it," said Crystal with a winning smile as she handed
it over to the receptionist who greedily guzzled down three long draughts.

   The receptionist regarded all four of us-and especially me-with a
hostile expression she didn't bother to disguise.  She didn't like the fact
that my head was shaven any more than she liked Judy Dildo's rock chick
uniform of denim, leather, jangling jewellery and tattoos.

   "Ain't you that lezbo punk rock group from England I've heard tell about
on the radio?" she asked.  "Bristol Fashion or summat?"

   "Crystal Passion," I automatically corrected her.  "And we're not a punk
rock group."

   "You ain't?" she said sceptically.  "Well, all that din all sounds the
same to me.  I'm a Country Music gal and you freaky druggies are all punks
as far as I'm concerned.  And I'll tell you this now so's there's no
misunderstanding, here at King's Cavalry we have a 100% anti-drugs policy
and we don't listen to no excuses."

   I was so stunned to hear someone pronounce 'anti' as 'ant eye' that I
wasn't sure how to respond, but as always Crystal was diplomatic and
non-confrontational.

   "I can assure you that not one of us will consume illegal drugs while
we're here," she said.  "But I'm sure we might be tempted by the beer you
sell in the bar."

   "I don't think Jake'd take kindly to young gals entering his bar
unaccompanied," the receptionist said.  "He runs a civilised business as we
all do here.  And no decent Christian gal would be drinking liquor by
herself, would she now?"

   "Of course not," said Crystal.  "I imagine you'd like to see our
passports before you give us our room keys."

   She handed over a set of eight British passports in which Her Britannic
Majesty's Secretary of State requested and required all those whom it may
concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance.

   "So you're this Christine Fashion?" the receptionist said when she
looked at Crystal's photographs.  "Least it ain't the mouthful of your real
name.  Eye-talian ain't it?  And I'll remind you again.  This is a
Christian establishment.  No drug-taking.  No loud parties.  And no bugging
our paying guests with your Rock & Roll tomfoolery."

   After this chastisement, we carried our bags to the rooms we were
allocated, after first seeing Judy set off with Jenny Alpha, Olivia, Tomiko
and my sister.

   "Fuck knows what that cow in reception would've made of Tomiko's
passport," Judy snarled as she gripped the steering wheel in anticipation
of the drive ahead.  "A Japanese girl with an Irish passport and the
poshest accent this side of Windsor Castle.  She'd really be freaked out."

   Crystal restrained herself from her usual conciliatory remarks as she
knew this would only encourage Judy to be further outspoken.  "Drive
safely," she said after kissing Judy tenderly on her lips.

   This show of affection inevitably attracted the unwelcome attention of
some of the denim-clad men hanging around outside the bar, clutching
bottles of beer and puffing on cigarettes.

   "Dykes!" yelled one of them as we strolled back to the motel room where
I'd be sharing a double bed with Thelma that night.  "Lezzie Carpet
Munchers!"

   "Suck my dick, girls!" chimed in his friend.  "You don't know...  You
might actually like it!"

   "Whyn'tcha screw a real man, ladies?" yelled another.  "Or ain'tcha got
the balls?"

   "They ain't got no balls," taunted the first man.  "And they ain't got
no tits neither!"

   "I don't think I'll be going to the bar after all," Crystal commented as
she pushed open the door to the motel room she was sharing with Philippa.

   Despite what these men expected, I don't think any of us were in the
mood at that time for lesbian sex.  Or for any drug-related activity.  I'd
exhausted my personal stash supply at the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival
and I hadn't yet found a reliable source on our time on tour.  In fact, the
only thing I was in the mood to do was slump on the bed, dog-tired in the
unaccustomed heat, holding the television remote while skipping through the
dozens of television channels in the hope of finding one that wasn't
showing a commercial.  It seemed that as soon as I found a channel that was
showing anything halfway decent-perhaps an episode of Friends or Star Trek:
The Next Generation-then without warning the drama would be interrupted by
the naffest TV ad imaginable.  I even had to sit through a 30 second ad
extolling the virtues of Top Gaul, the memory of which was still rumbling
uncomfortably inside my guts.

   However, when Thelma and I nestled against each other and tried to fall
asleep we were kept awake by the constant commotion from the bar where the
jukebox was playing unnecessarily loud Country & Western and from the
incessant shouting and loud conversation of other guests obscured by the
evening shadows.  A handful of men congregated outside our bedroom door for
some ten or fifteen minutes during which time they constantly hollered and
swore at each other.  There was also the echo of yelling in the near
distance from an American woman in which I couldn't tell apart a single
individual word but I'm sure several were neither decent nor Christian.

   "Fuck knows what convention those guys are going to," Thelma commented.
"But it sure isn't to sell Bibles."

   "Or maybe it is," I said ruefully, recalling the ecstatic bawling I'd
briefly witnessed on one of the Christian TV channels I'd skimmed through
earlier that evening.  Americans didn't worship God in the same restrained
manner as the Church of England does.  Rather, it was conducted at a loud
volume with high theatre and buckets of perspiration dripping from the
preacher's brow and nose.

   After more than an hour of this commotion and some disconcerting
screams, thumps and bangs, a general atmosphere of night-time silence
finally descended on the motel.  And now we could hear more clearly the
roar of traffic on Interstate 81.  Thelma and I wrapped ourselves in each
other's arms under the poly cotton sheet and rested our heads on the hard
pillows.

   I was hopeful that the blessed relief of a welcome night's sleep would
soon be upon me.

   But as it happened, this wasn't to be.

   All of a sudden my near slumbers were rudely interrupted by a violent
and insistent banging on the bedroom door.

   "What the fuck?" Thelma exclaimed.

   The bangs on the door were repeated and this time I could hear words:
"Police!  Open up, ladies!"

   "Fuck!" I exclaimed, as I hastily jumped out of bed and pulled on a
baggy shirt and some jeans.

   Thelma was up on her feet well before me, dressed in a simple dress
she'd squeezed into far more rapidly than I ever could.  She opened the
door and addressed the two police officers who were standing on the other
side with an accent almost as posh as Tomiko's and totally devoid of her
habitual glottal stops.

   "How can we help you, officer?" she asked.

   "We've heard reports of illegal activity, ma'am," said one of the
policemen.  "Drug-taking and other misdemeanours.  We'll have to ask you
and the rest of your pop group to accompany us to the Sheriff's Department
for questioning."

   "Of course, officer," said Thelma.  "But I hope you won't mind if you
were to let my friend and I get dressed in more decent attire."

   "Of course not, ma'am," said the police officer.

   For me, the following few hours passed by in a disconnected haze.  I
remember it more as a series of incidents during which I was constantly
fighting against an overpowering need for sleep.  Five of us were bundled
together into the back of a police van, including Bertha who was by far the
least cooperative of us and who Jane and Jacquie made the most effort to
calm down.  Crystal, Thelma and I sat in the back of the police car which
was the most outrageously large car I'd ever sat in.  And there was still
only space for five people including the police officer who sat beside the
driver, who I guessed was the titular Sheriff.

   And he wasn't the kind of Sheriff I expected to see after having watched
movies like High Noon and Blazing Saddles.  He looked much more like John
Candy than he did Gary Cooper or John Wayne.

   "So, you're this Crystal they been talkin' about?" the Sheriff asked,
turning his head round to look at me.  "The lead singer of Crystal and the
Passions?"

   "No she's not, sir," said Crystal.  "That would be me."

   "You sure don't look like no punk rock chick," the Sheriff said with a
hint of disappointment in his voice.  "Ain't you the one that's gonna burn
down all the temples and build them again in three days?"

   "That doesn't sound like me at all, sir," said Crystal.

   "Are you sure you ain't?" said the policeman driving the car.  "That
ain't what I heard about you Godless punk rockers on the radio.  I heard
you'd come here to America to really shake things up.  That you lot think
you're the new Kings of Rock!"

   "That's just not true, sir," said Crystal.

   "So, you ain't the new Elvis Presley or Dave Matthews?" the driver
taunted.

   "We aren't even the new Michael Jackson or Madonna, sir," said Crystal.

   "I darned well hope not!" said the Sheriff.  "Just one of them scum is
one too many for me!"

   The taunting didn't stop even when we arrived after an indeterminable
distance from the motel at the Sheriff's Office.

   "We've got the new King of Rock here, Maud," announced the Sheriff to a
stout middle-aged female police officer who was sitting at a desk dominated
by a vast electric typewriter.  "Or maybe the Queen of Punk Rock.  It's
that Crystal from the pop group the Passions that ol' Rush has been yakking
about."

   "Well she can't be as bad as these two punks," said Maud, indicating the
two young men sitting opposite her.  They seemed implausibly sheepish for
tough-looking men adorned in ill-fitting faded denim and countless crude
tattoos.  Whatever drugs they regularly took, they were no advertisement
for its long-term health benefits.

   "We ain't bad," protested one of them.  "We're just wasted, is all."

   "Talk for yourself, Diz," said the other.  "I ain't wasted.  I ain't
smoked nothin'.  I ain't had nothin' but Bourbon.  I'm clean."

   "Yeah sure, Tyler," said Diz.  He stared at Crystal who appeared very
much out of place at the Sheriff's Office in the floral skirt and blouse
she put on when she agreed to accompany the police for questioning.  "You
seem like a sweet chick.  You'll put in a word for us, won'tcha?  You can
see we're the sort who ain't gonna mess up a guy just for the sake of a
wrap."

   "Don't fuckin' bother the lady, Diz," said Tyler.  "She ain't no
crackhead."

   "That's where you couldn't be more wrong, boys," said the policeman
who'd driven us there.  "This here young lady is Crystal from the English
Punk Rock group the Passions.  We've apprehended her on a drug bust just
like we have you boys."

   "Motherfuck!" Tyler exclaimed.

   "She don't look like no crackhead to me," Diz sniffed.  "And I wouldn't
want her to be one, neither.  Look at the fuckin' mess my old lady is.  And
she ain't even twenty-five yet."

   "Just shows how looks can deceive, boys," said the Sheriff.

   We were escorted to a room at the rear of the Sheriff's Office which I
imagined was most often used for interrogating suspects, though I don't
think many of the criminals arrested here were likely to be guilty of
especially serious criminal offences.

   "Could you tell me please, Sheriff," said Crystal in a measured voice
while Jane, Jacquie and the others were escorted into the premises, "just
why we've been apprehended and of what crime we're supposed to be guilty?"

   "Drugs," said the Sheriff.  "Pure and simple.  The good people at the
King's Cavalry Motel have it on good authority that you ladies are in
possession of illegal drugs and we don't tolerate no drug abuse in this
here county.  And so it is my duty to inform you that we're gonna search
you ladies for drug possession."

   "And an excellent policy that is too, Sheriff," said Crystal
diplomatically.  "But I can categorically affirm that not one of us is
guilty of possessing illegal drugs and I am also certain that the only
reason you wish to search us for drugs in the Sheriff's Office is that when
you searched our bedrooms at the hotel for incriminating evidence of
narcotic use you didn't find any there either."

   The Sheriff was visibly put out by this evidence of Crystal's
understanding of the situation.  "That as may be, ma'am," he said.  "But
I'm sure you understand that we, as law enforcement officers, are
duty-bound to investigate all and every report of illegal drug-taking.  You
must have been aware that there was a real ruckus at the King's Cavalry
Motel earlier this evening."

   "And none of that was any of my doing, Sheriff," said Crystal.  "Nor was
it of any of the members of my ensemble."

   "On some?" sniggered one of the police officers who'd driven the police
van.  "On some what, ladies?  Where'd you hide your 'stash', as you call
it? Or your 'gear'?  Or d'you call it something else back in England?"

   Crystal ignored the mocking.  "Please just complete your investigation,
Sheriff," she said.  "I'd be grateful if you could just get it over with so
that we can return to the motel, get some sleep and drive on to the concert
we're due to perform in Rock Hill, South Carolina."

   "Is that where you're playing next, ladies?" said the Sheriff.  "Raising
hell in the Carolinas.  There's gonna be a few Tar Heels who won't be well
pleased to see a van-load of hippy punk dykes tear up their town..."

   "Even if they do call themselves the new Kings and Queens of Rock &
Roll," sniggered one of the other police officers.

   "Or just Queens of the 'Ensemble'", chortled another police officer.

   Needless to say, the interrogation and search that followed discovered
no drugs on any of us: however much Maud patted us down and our pockets
were turned inside out.  Because Crystal was the band leader and therefore
the one most likely to secrete drugs on her person, Maud escorted her to
the women's toilet for special treatment.  I guess that as a woman police
officer working in an all-male office, Maud had to work especially hard to
be accepted (especially as her physical appearance would attract
unflattering remarks when she was out of earshot).  Consequently, her body
searches were extremely thorough.  Although, unlike Crystal, I didn't have
to remove my clothes, Maud was expert at identifying exactly those
places-in between the arse cheeks, in the seams of the jeans or under the
collar-where a girl might hide her stash.  But it was Crystal who suffered
the most thorough search of all.

   Polly describes Maud's interrogation in great detail and with total
dismay.  How dare Crystal be humiliated in this way?  She was stripped of
her clothes (though I doubt whether Crystal was much bothered about this)
and Maud's hands sheathed in clear plastic gloves were thrust into both
Crystal's vagina and anus: something which, in very different
circumstances, Crystal might even have enjoyed.  But there was nothing
pleasurable about this kind of intrusive interrogation.  As Polly makes
clear, the whole episode was deeply humiliating and absurdly so because, of
all of us, Crystal was the one least likely to possess drugs or hide them
anywhere on her body.

   Crystal never criticised the rest of us for our various drug habits, but
when she told the Sheriff that there should be no place for drugs in a
person's life, I don't think she was being a hypocrite.  As a general rule,
she didn't take drugs.  She didn't smoke.  She very rarely drank alcohol.
And she didn't even drink much coffee.

   "Thank the fuck it was you lot that got the third degree rather than
us!" exclaimed Judy Dildo the following day when we at last arrived at the
Silver Noose: many hours later than we'd intended.  "If we'd been the ones
hauled in last night rather than you then we'd have been busted for sure.
And by now we'd either all be in chains or on the first plane home."

   "Why's that?" Crystal asked as we stood around in the car park of a
truly insalubrious and rundown motel.  "Is there something we should know
about?"

   "I didn't tell you guys 'cos I wasn't sure how to break it," Judy
confessed with no hint of remorse in her voice, "but while we were at that
Fucking Feminazi Sisterhood Festival, I scored a quarter weight of some
real classy Tijuana shit.  I wanted to keep it hidden till we got to Rock
Hill.  It was gonna be a kind of surprise for everyone after the long
drive. So, if those pigs had bust us last night, we'd have definitely gone
down.  We'd be down and we'd be out!"

   "Are you saying that you're carrying enough dope for us to be done not
for possession but for dealing?" Andrea asked aghast.

   "How much did you say you've got, lover girl?" asked a delighted Olivia.
"And I thought I was gonna have to survive on nothing but fucking booze."

   "Way to go!" echoed the Harlot.  "A fucking quarter weight.  We're
loaded!"

   "And soon we'll be wasted," said Jenny Alpha supportively.

   "Can we try some of it out now?" Tomiko wondered.  "I could really do
with a toke right away."

   I could see that Andrea's appalled reaction, which I almost shared, was
pretty much in the minority amongst the Crystal Passion band.  Judy Dildo
was now the hero of the moment even though it was only by a very slim
chance that she'd not been one of those hauled off to the Sheriff's Office
and given a thoroughly invasive shakedown.

   And if that had happened, the tour would have ended rather sooner and
amongst other things the Crystal Passion band would now have a criminal
record and a Rock & Roll reputation like that of the Happy Mondays, Keith
Richards and Iggy Pop.

   This would have appalled Polly Tarantella, although there was a time in
her life when she'd have had a much more sympathetic attitude towards the
drug-taking that Judy and most of the band indulged in.  From what I've
heard from those who knew Polly in her early years as a Rock Music
Journalist, she was a woman who'd swallow, snort, sniff and even inject
whatever there was available when it was available and as much as she could
while remaining conscious.  But that wasn't the Polly Tarantella who
interviewed me and the one who still keeps in touch.  Instead, she's now
very much the reformed ex-Junkie.  Mineral water, red wine and fruit juice
is all I've ever seen her imbibe.  And whatever scars she may once have had
along her arms or between her toes have all healed now.  But she still has
sucked-in cheeks, the occasional hundred yard stare and an impossibly
straight nose that's been ravaged and rebuilt.

   It is Polly's born-again sobriety more than a sympathy for the excesses
of youth that now governs her attitude towards what she describes as Judy
Dildo's criminal irresponsibility and unrepentant recklessness.  The very
fact that Judy was weighed down with enough dope to keep the Crystal
Passion band high until the very end of our tour was a sin close to
treachery given that Crystal herself was the one member of the band who
wouldn't normally toke on a joint when it was passed around.  And it
antagonised Polly even more to learn that Judy was intending to sell the
hash in quarter ounce quantities to the other band members, as if this
small-scale dealing was the sin for which she should be most damned.

   Is there no crime for which Judy Dildo wasn't guilty?

   I've even argued with Polly on Judy's behalf, even though at the time I
was by far the least sympathetic person in the band towards her.  In fact,
I'd have probably been secretly pleased if matters had gone the other way
round and Judy had been busted in our stead.  At least I wouldn't have had
to suffer the indignity and shame of having Maud pat down my trousers and
Crystal wouldn't have had Maud's latexcovered hand thrust into her most
private orifices.  And, of course, with Judy Dildo out of the way, at long
last I'd have had Crystal all to myself.

   Polly's account of the interrogation at the Sheriff's Office is one of
the most lurid chapters in her biography.  The details she's obtained may
well be true but they don't figure very highly in my memory of the event. I
was almost always just within a heartbeat of falling asleep during the
whole ordeal.  I was so exhausted that I didn't take in a whole lot of what
was happening.  Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that Crystal was the only one
who was strip-searched.  I think Jane and Jacquie would have told me if
they'd also been searched in such an intrusive manner.  Although I'm sure
the police officers did have unreconstructed opinions about black women
(or, for that matter, bald women, homosexual women or just plain ordinary
women), they didn't express more than the most general and, to be honest,
completely predictable disrespect.  I have no memory of the policemen
playing cards and placing bets on who'd take custody of Crystal's elegant
summer hat, dress and sandals if she were found to be in possession of
illegal drugs.  Nor did I see any evidence of the statement that was
reputed to have already been typed up and ready for her to sign.  And
allegedly this was a complete confession of her habitual drug abuse.

   But I do remember the joke that was repeated far more often than it was
ever funny that Crystal had claimed to be the King of Pop.  Indeed, the
main dispute was whether she should be referred to as the 'New King of Pop'
or simply 'The English Girl Who Claims to be the New King of Pop'.  Not
surprisingly, the shorter phrase was the one settled on, though of course
this designation became totally irrelevant when the Sheriff admitted there
was no substantial or even circumstantial evidence of drug possession of
any kind whatsoever.  And that we would be allowed to go free.

   "And we'll see what them boys down in South Carolina make of you gals,"
he said ruefully.  "You better take good care of yourselves is my advice,
is all."



   Chapter Eleven =============



   Nobody should approach me if they want a fair, balanced and informed
opinion of Rock Hill, South Carolina.  Most of what I discovered about the
city was well after the Crystal Passion tour and what we saw was probably
unrepresentative and, to be honest, not especially attractive.  It was a
town very much in the shadow of the somewhat larger city of Charlotte, 25
miles away and mostly only glimpsed at as we drove by on the relatively new
Interstate 485 which also took us past Charlotte Douglas Airport from which
we'd later fly home.

   Mostly what we saw of Rock Hill were derelict mills and warehouses.  We
didn't visit the York County Museum, the White Home or the Botanical
Gardens.  The best that could be said about the hotel we were staying at
was that it had once been much grander in the past, but nobody could
mistake the Paradise Hotel for what it had been named.  The plumbing was
dreadful.  Every single tap dripped, especially the ones servicing the
chipped enamel baths.  And, other than malfunctioning airconditioners,
out-of-order escalators and sticky red carpets, the hotel's prime
attraction was a huge lounge bar with a juke box so loud that it could be
heard from every bedroom and which only played records by the Marshall
Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash and the Eagles.  But even those in
our band who enjoyed this kind of Rock and Country music (which definitely
didn't include me) wouldn't feel welcome in a bar where the women clientele
were mostly there for business.

   "Let's hope our gig doesn't get pulled after that drive," Andrea
remarked when we collected the keys to our bedrooms.

   "There are two gigs," said Crystal.  "There's one tomorrow night and
another on Friday.  A cancellation would be very expensive.  I'll check out
the situation as soon as we've eaten." It was early evening and we'd not
rested once on our long drive from the Virginia side of the North Carolina
State Border where we'd stayed the night at a shabby motel on the Old
Pipers Gap Road.

   "Do we have any gigs after Rock Hill?" Olivia wondered.

   "Not for over a week," Crystal answered.  "There's one in Baltimore,
Maryland, and then another in New York again.  Brooklyn this time.  And
that'll be our last concert!"

   "About fucking time!" snorted Jane.  "This tour's been a nightmare from
beginning to end."

   "It's certainly not been the success I'd hoped for," Crystal conceded.

   Judy, Tomiko and I all volunteered to bundle into the Chevy with Crystal
and make a preliminary visit to the Penitence Club where we'd been booked
to play.  With a name like that the club could have been anything.  Judy
speculated that it was a BDSM fetish club with dungeons and chains, while I
couldn't help wondering whether it wasn't somehow associated with a
denomination of Evangelical Christians.

   "It used to be called the Repentance," Crystal said, which didn't
resolve our speculation at all.

   But as it was, Judy's conjecture was the most accurate, although
thankfully if it was being used as a fetish club it wasn't on the nights we
were due to play.

   "Am I thrilled to see you guys!" said the club's proprietor who was
waiting for us in the Penitence Club's bar.  He introduced himself as
Skull, which was an appropriate name for such a painfully gaunt man whose
cheeks were sunk to the bone and whose crooked teeth were too big for his
mouth.  He was clad in leather and denim with long lank hair and spikey
stubble on his chin and cheeks.  I couldn't tell how old Skull was, but
despite his many tattoos and piercings he was probably in his forties or
even older.  "I was dreading you wouldn't make it."

   "Why would you think that?" said Crystal in her sweetest voice.  "We
wouldn't dream of letting you down."

   "Well, you can't have missed all the shit going round about you and your
band, girls," Skull said.  "It's fucking everywhere.  It was even in The
Herald, not to mention the fucking Rush Limbaugh Show and all the other
asshole fascist radio talk shows.  From all what they say, I can't wait to
see you guys perform.  Is it true you chicks have sex on stage together?"

   "Not on stage so much," said Tomiko in the spirit of clarification.

   "But you take your kit off, don't you?  That's what The Herald says.  We
should be pulling in punters from Charlotte now your record got played on
WRDX FM.  And there was some shit about you chicks in The News & Observer.
You guys have triggered a fucking storm.  It's gonna be fucking amazing
tomorrow.  There'll be a line round the block to see you: sex or no sex."

   "Definitely no sex," said Crystal.

   "Don't let me stop you if you change your mind, girls," Skull continued.
"You wanna see the posters I got made for you?  They're fucking awesome!"

   "Yes, why not?" said Judy, speaking up for a visibly apprehensive
Crystal.

   Skull unfolded a poster on a beer-stained table.  I could see that even
Crystal struggled to maintain her conciliatory smile while I was just too
horrified to comment.  The best that could be said for the poster is that
it might have once been fashionable in the early days of punk rock.

   "It's definitely something," said Judy Dildo, who was the only one who
might have a partiality for the mock Gothic font in which most words were
printed.  The only other font used was ugly and angular as if someone had
scratched the words on a concrete wall with a chisel and this was used to
display the band's name as Cristal & the Passion.  Under all this was a
smudgy sepia image of a few nearly naked women wielding electric guitars
and posturing with their mouths open and their tongues hanging out.

   "Good, ain't it!" said Skull.  "I got my mate Piles from the tattoo
studio to put it together.  We've plastered these posters all round Rock
Hill.  That and all the free publicity you chicks have got will really draw
'em in tomorrow."

   "I dare say it will," said Crystal half-heartedly.

   Not that Skull would have noticed a lack of enthusiasm.  He was far too
intent on admiring the poster laid out in front of us.  "Fuck knows who
these chicks are," he said, indicating the grainy images with the
discreetly obscured nipples and crotch.  "Fucking lookers, ain't they?  I
can't fucking wait to see you chicks strut your stuff."

   "Not all of us take our clothes off," I remarked.

   "Well, there's always one spoilsport, ain't there," Skull smirked.  "But
as long as there's something for the guys to look at, we'll be OK.  You
dig?"

   "Yes, we understand," said Crystal.  "We know exactly what you want."

   "Damned right you do, girls," said Skull, proudly reviewing his poster
which heralded in hard-to-read Gothic font that 'Teusday Nite was Girls
Nite!!!' and that we would be responsible for 'the Very Best Butt Naked
Rock & Roll in Both the Carolinas'.

   "Shall we just call off the gig?" I asked Crystal as soon as we'd left
Skull behind and in the street outside the Penitence Club

   "Call it off?" Crystal wondered, clearly taken aback.  "Do you really
think we should?"

   "You saw the poster," I said.  "We've met Skull.  What the fuck does he
think we are?  The Sex Pistols?"

   "Maybe..." Crystal said warily.

   "For fuck sake, Crystal," I said, pressing home the argument.  "The
poster makes us look like a third-rate Punk Revival band.  They couldn't
even get the band's name right.  And if you think I'm gonna get 'butt
naked' for a crowd of grungy pervs...  It's fucking insane!  Let's just cut
our losses and call it a day here and now."

   "I dunno, Pebbles," cautioned Judy.  "Come on, Crystal.  What's the gig
worth?  How fucked are we if we don't do it?"

   "Our funds aren't in the best state," Crystal admitted.

   "Fuck, Crystal," I exclaimed.  "Are you serious?  We made a mess of
things in Detroit and look at the shit that got thrown at us at the
Sisterhood Festival.  Are we going to erase the very last trace of our
credibility in Hicksville, South Carolina?"

   "What's the bottom line, Crystal?" chipped in Judy.  "Do we have a
choice?"

   "We always have a choice," Crystal said cryptically.

   "Fuck it!" Judy exclaimed.  "I need a drink.  Let's go to that bar over
there and chat about it over a Budweiser or whatever other piss-poor beer
they sell."

   "I could do with a drink, too," chimed in Tomiko who was still stoned
after having sampled Judy's Tijuana Hash.

   Fortunately, there was an empty bench on the Mockingbird Bar terrace by
the roadside so we didn't have to venture inside what was the kind of
low-down disreputable bar that often gets featured in American films where
the hero gets drunk and beaten up in a brawl.  Judy Dildo wasn't fazed at
all and happily strode inside, ignored the unsubtle stares and bought three
beers and a mineral water.  Maybe the men leaning on the counter thought
Judy was a biker chick and that they'd better keep their distance in case
there were also some male bikers around.

   "I don't think doing the two gigs at the Penitence will harm our
reputation any worse than it already is," said Judy as she handed out the
drinks.  "We need the cash just to afford to fly home.  Let's face it, this
tour's been a fucking disaster and we need every last dime we can get."

   "Is that true?" I asked Crystal.

   She nodded.  "We're not in a good place, Pebbles."

   "We'll give the fuckers what they want," said Judy.  "Rock & Roll and
naked women.  No pussyfooting this time!  The real deal."

   "I'm not taking my clothes off again like we did in Detroit," I said.

   "I'm not saying you had to," said Judy.

   "I never joined Crystal's band to play fucking Rock Music," I continued.
"I hate Rock.  I hate Heavy Metal.  I hate all that shit."

   "I know you do, Pebbles," said Judy.  "But it's just the one gig and you
can program your synths to make whatever kind of sound you want.  Think of
it as us being like the Prodigy or the Chemical Brothers..."

   "Anyone who doesn't want to perform at the Penitence doesn't have to,
Pebbles," said Crystal diplomatically.  "We can arrange the songs so we
don't need keyboards.  You don't have to come on stage with us."

   "Fuck!" I exclaimed, knowing that I'd already lost the argument.  I
turned my head towards Tomiko.  "Have you got any of that Tijuana shit on
you?"

   "Not out in the open, Pebbles," said Judy prudently.  "Look me and
Tomiko, we'll go to the loo-what they call the bathroom over here-and skin
up a big one.  But then we'll have to be fucking discreet when we smoke
it."

   "Yeah," I agreed, looking forward to the opportunity to be left alone
with just Crystal.  "Sounds like a plan."

   However, I barely passed even two words with Crystal before we were
interrupted, this time by two long-haired young men puffing on Marlboros
and dressed in jeans and tee-shirts.

   "Hey, gals, mind if we join you for a beer?" asked the one with blond
hair.

   "Well, as a matter of fact..." I began, fully intending to tell them to
fuck off.

   "Of course we don't mind," said Crystal sweetly.  "We haven't had the
chance to chat with the locals."

   "Heck no, girls," said the other man.  "You ain't from these parts, are
you?  I reckon I know your accents.  You English or summat?"

   "Yes, of course.  My name's Crystal and this is my friend Pebbles."

   "Like the fucking Flintstones," the blond-haired man exclaimed.  "I'm
Des and this here's Gus.  We sound like some fucking TV Show too.  Des and
Gus!"

   Crystal laughed good-humouredly and in the chat that followed, she
mostly asked questions of the two men while I sullenly and silently puffed
away on the Marlboro cigarette that Des offered me.

   "We've just come out the pen," admitted Des in answer to Crystal's
question.  "Thievery and Burglary that's what we've done time for.  Not for
the first time neither."

   "Those bastards have got it in for us," said Gus.  "I'm out just ten
days and I get sent back to York County before I can earn a single day's
honest pay."

   "Shit, Gus," said Des.  "You ain't done an honest day's work in your
entire life.  If it ain't thieving, it's dealing meth, cracking joints or
aggravated assault..."

   "You ain't no saint, Des.  You got caught fair and square.  You lifted a
whole bunch of shit from that house on West White Street..."

   "I was desperate.  I was gonna be evicted and all.  I had to do
somethin' to pay the rent.  My missis was relying on me..."

   "And now she's done gone left you, Des.  Fine load of fucking good it
did you.  You're in as much shit as me now."

   "What are you going to do now, Gus?" Crystal asked.

   "Fuck knows.  Rob a bank, I s'pose," said Gus.  "You girls don't know
what it's like being on the wrong side of society..."

   "I don't know about that," said Crystal ruefully.

   "Even if you did get in the shit," Gus continued, "you'd climb out of it
OK.  You got an education, I can tell from the highfalutin' way you speak;
those long educated words I don't rightly know."

   "That ain't the point, Gus," said Des.  "This here girl's no criminal.
She's like a fucking angel, 'scuse my French, ma'am.  But you are a crook,
Gus.  You're one mean motherfucker.  Me, I've done my time.  I'm gonna go
straight.  I'm gonna get a job and get my missis and my boy back.  I done
wrong.  I know that.  And I'm truly sorry for what I did and the distress I
caused those good folks on West White Street."

   "I'm sure things will work out for you if you're sincere," said Crystal,
who was spared the need to elaborate by the return of Judy and Tomiko who'd
already smoked rather more than their fair share while in the lavatory. 
But Tomiko once again demonstrated her fantastical ability to roll the
perfect joint, however stoned she was.

   "Hey guys," said Tomiko in a voice whose poshness was well above and
beyond any scale that Des and Gus had encountered before as she proffered
them a lit spliff.  "We`ve got plenty to go round."

   "Not now," said Judy guardedly, knowing only too well how
undiscriminating Tomiko could be with regards to sexual liaisons.  "There
are other things we've got to do this evening."

   "Like what, sweetheart?" challenged Gus.

   "Wouldn't you like to know, lover boy?" said Judy in an assertive voice
that effectively killed the likelihood of anything between them resembling
romance.  "Just enjoy a World Class Tijuana toke while it's going free and
don't fucking Bogart the joint, boys."

   It was as apparent to me then as it has been subsequently to Polly
Tarantella that the preparation for the Penitence Club gig was much more in
Judy's control than it was Crystal's.  On this occasion, Judy Dildo was
effectively band leader while Crystal was relegated to chief song-writer
and lead vocalist.  She didn't have the spirit to resist Judy's coup
d'état. In any case, Crystal had no alternative to offer.  And this seizure
of authority, more than any other, is what most riles Polly about Judy. 
She even speculates that had matters turned out differently, Crystal
Passion would have been side-lined from her own band and that it would in
effect become the Judy Dildo band.  But bizarrely enough, Polly is about
the only person who might have liked the Rock & Roll direction Judy might
have taken the band.  Nobody else in the band would have agreed to such a
change, especially not me who, along with Jane and Jacquie, still dreamed
of a future cutting white label twelves and DJing at Pacha and the Café del
Mar.  My sister, Andrea, had already said she was unhappy with the
nonacoustic element of the Crystal Passion band and that she preferred it
when Crystal had been a solo performer.

   Crystal's biggest achievement was that she'd managed to hold together a
band of so many disparate elements, a band that could include Andrea and
me, Judy Dildo and the Harlot, and Olivia and Thelma.  Such bands are very
rare and don't normally last for long.

   It was Judy who took the wheel of the Chevrolet on the drive back to the
hotel (again displaying her legendary ability to never get wrecked however
much dope she'd smoked), while in the back seat, next to Tomiko, Crystal
sat silently with her face pressed against the window.

   "Hey guys, look at that shit!" said Tomiko leaning a pointed finger over
my shoulder and towards the wall of a dilapidated factory where one of
Skull's posters was pasted.  What made even Tomiko agitated wasn't so much
the defaced poster, which looked no better in situ than it did in the
Penitence Club's bar, but the nature of its defacement.

   In England, when a poster is pasted up which shows something a little
bit risqué any later defacement makes it rather more obscene than it was
before.  A picture of naked or semi-clad woman are embellished with crude
sketches of erect penises and scrawled over with juvenile obscenities.  But
this defacement was of quite a different order.  Across the poster and
obscuring all trace of nudity was a strip of white paper of the type that
normally announces a change to the planned event on which was printed in
sans serif (rather than Gothic): 'Ban Indecency in Rock Hill'.

   Another poster a few yards further along was pasted over with a similar
strip of white paper with the same message but also with a spray-painted
message probably not written by the original defacers.  And this read quite
simply: 'Kill All Dike Punks'.
And another poster was similarly obscured by a white strip with the

printed message: 'God Hates Lesbians'.

   "Fuck!" exclaimed Judy Dildo, clearly impressed.  "There's obviously
someone here who doesn't like us."

   "Or even women in general," Crystal commented.

   Our growing fears about how we'd be received were further heightened
when we later drove from the hotel to the Penitence Club.  As was our usual
routine, we arrived a few hours early to set up the equipment, do a sound
check and familiarise ourselves with the venue.  With so many of us and so
much equipment, we had to travel in both the Chevrolet and the Volkswagen
Camper, expecting just to park outside the Penitence, unload the equipment
and park the car nearby.  However, as the club had no car park, we had to
park our vehicles a block or so away in the nearest available lot.  There
was no way the Camper Van could be described as discreet or unobtrusive
adorned as it was in psychedelic colours and celebrating long-gone rock
bands such as the Grateful Dead and the Doors.  Although it would be
eye-catching wherever it was parked, on this occasion the fading grandeur
of Volkswagen's hippy icon was an unwelcome beacon to our presence in Rock
Hill's streets that, however well lit by the bright sun, were manifestly
squalid and grimy.

   "Is it safe to leave the van here?" Andrea wondered, as she lifted out
her violin case.

   "It's no less safe than parking it at the Paradise Hotel," said Judy
with a dismissive sniff.

   "It's best the van is parked nearby if we need to make a swift getaway,"
remarked the more practically minded Bertha.  "Not that it wouldn't be
better if we were parked a lot nearer."

   So, we all had to share the burden of Jane's drums, Tomiko's sound desk,
my keyboards and Olivia's assortment of bongos, cymbals, tambourines and
tympani along with whatever we would normally carry.  As we walked across
the near empty lot from the psychedelic Camper Van along Rock Hill's least
celebrated streets, these instruments (especially my own) had never before
seemed more heavy.  And although we arrived earlier than we normally would,
there were early signs of what would later be a somewhat larger crowd. 
There was already a straggle of young Americans hanging around the front
entrance to the Penitence Club attired in the Grunge scruffiness now
fashionable in the States nearly twenty years after it had been so in the
UK.  There was no surprise here, as our audiences were mostly much the same
wherever we'd played, though in this case there was a marked lack of women.
Clearly 'Girl's Nite' at the Penitence didn't mean that there'd be a
greater presence of female fans.

   What we weren't used to seeing-had never seen before-was a small group
of exactly the sort of person you'd never associate with a Crystal Passion
gig gathered together on the other side of the road from the venue behind
placards that read 'God Hates Lesbians' and 'Rock Hill Says: Cristal & the
Passions Go Home!' At this stage there were twice as many people camped
opposite the venue as there were young men waiting to go inside.  I wasn't
in much of a position to get a close look at the protestors, but they
looked no different to the great majority of people we'd seen so far in
South Caroline or, indeed, anywhere else in America.  Blue jeans, check
shirts and mostly overweight.  If they differed at all, it was that the men
were more whiskered and that some of the women sported plaits and
head-scarves.  You certainly wouldn't guess they were radical Christian
fundamentalists unless you happened to see them with a group of like-minded
people.

   As soon as the demonstrators spotted us they began yelling and shouting
in our direction.  There could be no doubt that we were the infamous coven
of Godless English Lesbian Punk Rockers that they imagined us to be.  In
any setting, there was no way a group of more than a dozen young women
could blend into the background especially given our relatively eccentric
dress.  And in South Carolina, there was the added cause for prejudice in
that two of us were black and one Japanese.  And that we were all either
exclusively lesbian or openly bisexual.  But nowhere before had I heard the
kind of bizarre and oddly archaic taunts thrown at us.  Words like "Dykes",
"Atheists" and "Jezebels" would have been considered terms of praise at the
Sisterhood Festival.  Expressions like "Whores", "Blasphemers" and
"Satanists" were equally irrelevant insults.  And there was little potency
in less monosyllabic taunts such as "May God Forgive Your Sins!", "God
Hates Lesbians!" and "Thou Hast Committed an Abomination and Art Cursed in
the Eyes of the Lord!"

   The actual words yelled at us was irrelevant.  It was obvious that by
accident rather than design we were now the object of intense hatred for
this small gathering of protestors.  And nobody was more upset about this
than Crystal.  Throughout her whole life she'd endeavoured only to
understand and love other people.

   Actually getting into the Penitence wasn't as simple as we'd hoped. 
First of all we had to locate the artists' entrance at the side of the
venue.  It was out of sight of those waiting to see us perform but well
within sight and earshot of the demonstrators.  After many repeated
attempts to attract attention by ringing the doorbell and increasingly
panicked by the emboldened yells from across the road, we hammered on the
stage door and yelled as loud as we could to try and get attention.

   "Yeah.  Yeah," said Skull as he opened the side door with bleary red
eyes and the hair on one side of his head visibly flattened.  "I heard you
guys the first time."

   "Just fucking let us in," said Judy Dildo, who was in no mood for
chitchat.  "Just get us away from the fucking Bible Bashers before they
lynch us."

   "OK!  OK" said Skull who stood on one side of the door while we filed
past him into the club's relative safety.  He glanced across the road at
the small gathering who on noticing him launched into cries of "Shame on
You!" and "Shut Down the Penitence!" As he closed the doors behind him and
padlocked the security bar into place, he was chuckling to himself.  "Well
done, guys!" he said.  "You chicks have got yourself the best fucking
welcome committee you could hope for."

   "Some fucking welcome!" exclaimed Jacquie.

   "Even better," said Skull with a huge grin as he regarded Jane and
Jacquie for the first time.  "Hey.  Wow!  Not just fucking nudist dykes,
you've got nig...African American chicks in the group too.  The more ruckus
caused by them Fundies, the more tickets we sell for the gig.  I reckon
we'll do good business tonight.  I even asked Golly to do an extra shift at
the bar."

   At this stage, it was usually Crystal who'd pay attention to practical
matters such as locating the dressing room and stage, but she just wasn't
in a fit state to do that.  Her face was etched in tears and her mouth was
gasping like a freshly hooked fish.  She was more upset by the hostile
reception outside than anyone else.  Clearly, things had got too much for
her.

   While Andrea and Philippa tried comforting Crystal, it was up to Judy to
get things organised.

   "Whatever, Skull," she said.  "Just show us where we do the sound
check."

   "Sound check?" said Skull.  "Oh yeah, of course.  You're real pros,
ain'tcha?  And I don't mean that in the vulgar sense either, girls.  What I
mean is that you've got a professional attitude..."

   "And we need to see the dressing room, too," said Olivia.

   "Dressing room?" said Skull.  "You serious?  I s'pose you must be if
you're gonna change out of your dresses.  I got a room at the back you
could use but it ain't got no make-up mirrors or any of that shit.  In
fact, I dunno if there's even space to get all of you in there at one
time..."

   "Shall we just see what's on offer, Skull?" said Judy who like me was
already seeing her already low expectations of the facilities offered by
the Penitence drop yet further.  "We'll just make do with whatever you've
got."

   I can't claim that our gig at the Penitence was one of the Crystal
Passion band's finest.  From my point of view, at least, it was one that in
different circumstances I'd much prefer to be able to forget.  Crystal was
still very unhappy during the rehearsals and into the concert itself.  She
was hardly able to restrain her tears and it was a great effort for her to
stand on stage and sing and play the guitar.  It was almost as if she'd
decided to simply go through the motions: something I could never accuse
her of before.  If anything characterised Crystal Passion as a musician it
was that she put her heart and soul into every performance.  When you saw
her on stage, you were witnessing someone who'd somehow bypassed the
limitations of communication and was literally speaking from deep inside
her very being.

   Not tonight, however.  This was Judy Dildo's gig and, given the
circumstances, nobody was going to object to this at all.

   Was this the way it would be from now on?  I wasn't at ease even during
the sound check where only Crystal took off her clothes (to Skull's obvious
delight).  Until that night, we'd never played our music so fast, so
furious and so ferociously.  The songs, the lyrics and the melodies were
all Crystal's.  She'd composed them and she retained authorial copyright.
But on this gig the electric guitar was pushed right to the front and
played louder and faster and more forcefully than it had ever been before.
Tomiko mixed the percussion, the drums, the bass and even my keyboards to
emphasise the hardness of the beats and to pump up the lower register as a
counterweight to the energy and propulsion of Judy's electric guitar.  The
mid-range represented by Andrea, Philippa, Thelma and the Harlot could
barely be heard at all except as an accompaniment to the lower and higher
registers.  And Crystal was almost inaudible.  Her acoustic guitar was
overshadowed by Judy's electric guitar and her vocals were mostly heard
only in harmony with Judy Dildo, Thelma and the Harlot.  On this occasion,
it was Judy's abrasive singing voice which was most prominent.

   So, on this gig at least, I was now the keyboard player in a Rock & Roll
Band.  This was something that my sister and I, not to mention Jane and
Jacquie, had sworn never to do when we first met Crystal.  This wasn't the
music I wanted to play.  But Judy Dildo was well in her element.  She was
effectively the band's leader, overshadowing everyone including Crystal.

   And bad though it had been for me in the rehearsal where, with Crystal's
tacit approval, Judy encouraged us to rock like an all-girl Metallica or
Napalm Death, it was much worse at the actual gig.  I'd never been more
grateful for the lines of coke and sulphate that Judy laid on for us all
before we hit the stage.  That, with the Tijuana shit and the Carolina
Bourbon shots that Skull so thoughtfully supplied, got us into something
that approximated to the right mood for the evening ahead.  But this was a
gig where Andrea and Philippa fought to get as far into the already crowded
rear of the stage where Olivia, Jane, Jacquie and I were playing.

   It was at the front of the stage where the action was taking place. 
Thelma and the Harlot had joined in the spirit urged on by Skull's
expectations (and those of Conservative America and its Syndicated Media)
to follow the example usually set only by Crystal and, less regularly, Judy
Dildo.  And that, of course, was to bare their flesh.  Only the Harlot
bared as much as Crystal.  For the first time she appeared on stage totally
nude and somehow seemed much more naked, in a raw and physical sense, than
Crystal had ever done.  Her shaved crotch, nipple rings and tattoos
promised with great frankness exactly what the Harlot had to offer any of
her lovers, which was many times more than what anyone in the audience was
ever likely to have experienced before.  The Harlot wasn't the only one
onstage nudist.  Thelma flaunted all but her neatly trimmed crotch, which
was obscured by a flimsy bikini bottom.  Judy Dildo had forsaken even the
black nipple plasters that was normally her only pretence of modesty given
that her vagina was obscured by the much more obscene and fully erect
representation of male genitalia after which she was named and which was
strapped on to her crotch.

   I can only imagine what the almost exclusively male audience made of the
huge black plastic dildo Judy flaunted and which she thrust towards the
rowdy young men to the percussive rhythm supplied by Jane and Jacquie and
massively pumped up by a shadowy Tomiko in the sound booth (who didn't need
to take any of her clothes off to arouse the libidos of at least a
subsection of the male audience).

   In the sense that we earned an encore and that the audience were
obviously excited and enthralled by the Crystal Passion band, this gig
might be pronounced a success.  But it was obvious to most of us that this
hadn't been Crystal's show at all.  And this was proven by how she burst
into tears as soon as we'd finished and were out of sight of our fans. 
Only Judy Dildo, Thelma and the Harlot seemed to have enjoyed the gig,
perhaps because this was the concert where they were most in charge.

   "That was fucking great, girls!" said Skull who came to see us backstage
and was clearly disappointed that the lead singers had managed to get
dressed before he made his presence known.  "I can't fucking wait till
Friday's gig.  We should have double the crowd.  We'll either have to cram
them in like sardines or turn 'em away."

   Only Judy Dildo chatted to Skull while the rest of us gathered our gear
together, with Bertha and Jenny Alpha as fast and efficient as ever. 
Olivia and Philippa shared the duty of selling copies of our CDs to the
audience as they filed out.  Not surprisingly, the record that sold the
most copies was Passing Passion: the only record sleeve to feature Crystal
in the nude.  I couldn't help wondering how disappointed our audience would
be when they came to play the album (or even the wholly acoustic Triad) to
find that it was about as unlike a Punk Rock album as you could imagine. 
They weren't to know that a couple of decades later, their purchases would
now dramatically soar in value thanks to Polly Tarantella's efforts (and
even more so, if they bought the then significantly less expensive vinyl
edition).

   "I just want to go to the airport now and fly home!" Andrea declared as
we walked back to the Camper Van.  "I've just about had enough of this
tour."

   "It's been one fucking humiliation after another," said Jacquie.  "At
least that perv Skull didn't try to get us all to strip off."

   "It wasn't that bad," said Thelma.  "You heard how they called for an
encore.  That was better than anything we got in Boston."

   Crystal said nothing.  She was weeping softly and walked along with her
head facing the ground and her shoulders hunched.  Judy also said nothing,
but although she had a comforting arm around Crystal's shoulders it was
clear that she wasn't upset.  And this, as far as Polly Tarantella is
concerned, is just one more piece of evidence of Judy's treachery and
scheming.  How dare Judy Dildo allow Crystal Passion to be so humiliated!

   Crystal's misery for the evening didn't end just with the shame of being
overshadowed by her lead guitarist (though only Polly is as upset by that
as much as I was).  When we were in sight of the Camper Van, we could now
see our folly in having parked such a conspicuously psychedelic vehicle in
Rock Hill's streets.

   "Fuck!" exclaimed Penny Alpha.  "It's a fucking write-off."

   "I hope the insurance will cover this," said the more practical Olivia.

   "More's the point," said Bertha who was weighed down by the heaviest
equipment (mostly mine and Tomiko's).  "How the fuck do we get back to the
hotel?"

   Thankfully, the Chevy had been totally untouched by whoever it had been
who'd vandalised the Camper Van, but it had never been intended for use as
a shuttle service to the hotel for the band and our equipment while Judy
and Crystal hunted for a nearby phone booth to make the necessary calls to
local garages to take care of the Volkswagen Camper Van, to Kai Pharrel to
determine our liability and to car hire firms to get a replacement vehicle
for our subsequent gigs.  And at the time, of course, we had no idea how
pointless this last concern would be.

   Although I have my own ideas as to who smashed up the Volkswagen Camper
Van and Polly Tarantella has no shortage of hypotheses, the culprits were
never found and, to be honest, nobody expected they ever would be.  But it
was clear that those who'd attacked the van weren't just opportunist car
wreckers.  The tyres had been slashed, the windows smashed and the doors
prised open.  That was sort of what you'd expect.  What self-respecting
vandal would leave such obvious targets untouched?  There was little inside
the van of any value, but what there was had been knifed open, pulled apart
and strewn across the parking lot.

   But the way the vandals distinguished themselves (although it could
never be used as evidence in a court of law) was by the nature of the
graffiti sprayed over the psychedelic celebrations of the Grateful Dead,
Jimi Hendrix and Spirit.

   'Rock Hill Hates Dykes'.

   'Cristal Sucks Dick'.

   'Jesus Dont Forgive Your Sins'.

   'Cristal, Whore of Punk'.

   'Go Home Punk Dikes'.

   Crystal sniffed as she brushed aside a tear from the corner of her eye.
"They really don't like me, do they?" she said.

   "It's not you they don't like," I said.  "It's what you represent."

   "It comes to exactly the same thing, believe you me."



   Chapter Twelve =============



   Polly Tarantella hadn't always been the great custodian of Crystal
Passion's legacy nor always the music's greatest champion.  In fact, I
first heard of her when Oliviaone of the few original band-members I still
keep in touch with-e-mailed me a link to a Rock Music website I'd never
have discovered otherwise in which Polly Tarantella lambasted Crystal
Passion with a vehemence that was bizarre given the many years since the
band had broken up.  In those days she was known as Sally Tyrant and was a
famous or, perhaps, notorious Rock Music critic, celebrated for her acerbic
and scathing prose and for her withering assaults on everything and
anything that triggered her dissatisfaction.

   What amazed me most of all was that a Rock Music Critic had even heard
of Crystal Passion.  By then the band was almost entirely forgotten.  If
our music was likely to be heard anywhere it would be on obscure late-night
music shows on BBC Radio 6 or X-FM.  It wasn't old enough to profit from
the Prog revival and not contemporary enough to be considered alt-folk or
electro-acoustic art music.  But here was Sally Tyrant laying into those
musicians and bands she deemed traitors to the cause of Rock Culture as she
judged it.  In her eyes, Crystal Passion represented the very worst
deviation from Rock Music's sacred mission.  The eponymous lead singer and
her band were being too clever by half.  The music was trying to be both
pop and art and had failed as both.  Crystal Passion belonged to the same
tradition as Sufjan Stevens, the Unthanks and Badly Drawn Boy.  The band
was striving towards something ambitious, something epic and something
deep, but succeeded only in being trite, hackneyed and unconvincing.  Rock
Music was best represented by bands like the Foo Fighters, Muse and Stiff
Little Fingers who fashioned a no-nonsense style that said all that was
needed to be said without complicating the message with mystical nonsense
and fanciful analogies.  The best song was less than three minutes long and
expressed in a few glorious chords, plenty of energy and unfussy lyrics
everything it had to say.  The cause of Rock Music was best achieved by
dumping the pretentious crap, cranking up the amp and just getting on with
it.  And in Sally's opinion nobody had ever done this better than the
Clash, the Strokes and Metallica.

   This article really hurt and upset me.  What had Crystal Passion ever
done to deserve such scorn?  What was so offensive about her music?  And
any criticism of the Crystal Passion band-on all but the first album-was
also criticism of me of course.

   And it wasn't as if I'd made such a great success of my career since
Crystal Passion disbanded that I could easily rise above it all.

   Bizarrely enough, Sally Tyrant's tirade led to a short-lived spike in
iTunes downloads and Amazon record sales as her readers tried to find out
what was so very bad about Crystal Passion's music.

   On the other hand, much as I felt crushed by this attack on the woman
who even today remains the only true love of my life, I partly sympathised
with Sally Tyrant's sentiments.  And in a sense, I almost prefer Sally
Tyrant's earlier ascetic attitude to Polly Tarantella's current attitude
whereby anyone who criticises Crystal Passion, however mildly, is
immediately beneath contempt.  Nothing can now be said about Crystal
Passion that isn't uncritically positive.  And as someone who likes her
House, Techno or Bass unadorned and on point, I understand the thesis that
Crystal Passion had diluted the impact of her music by trying to be so many
different things at the same time.

   But Sally Tyrant's earlier appraisal also doesn't make much sense.  Even
those musicians she disparaged have released music that's basic and raw
while many of those she celebrates so highly (in particular the Clash) have
recorded songs that were experimental and even gratuitously complex.  And,
speaking for what I most believe, the quality of Crystal Passion's music is
such that someone like me, who wouldn't normally listen to Folk Music or
Prog Rock or even the Rock Music that both Sally and Polly claim to be the
Zenith of the Evolution of Music, can be so won over that I could give up
everything (literally) just to be with her.

   And it wasn't just the music, of course.

   The next I heard of Polly Tarantella (as Sally Tyrant not much later
rechristened herself) was when she started writing articles about Crystal
Passion (and, incidentally, Sufjan Stevens and the Unthanks) in which she
was as admiring and eulogising as she'd once been cruel and contemptuous.

   So, why the sudden change of attitude?

   It's not something that Polly's ever explained to me nor, as far as I
know, to anyone else.  Polly is so convinced in the absolute correctness of
her opinions at the time of expressing them that she'll deny she's ever
changed them.  She'd probably say her earlier remarks were meant ironically
or were misunderstood.  (Not that there seems much scope for ambiguity or
misunderstanding in a Sally Tyrant tirade).

   Polly's change of heart coincides with the period of hospitalisation she
doesn't talk about much but which apparently took her within a heartbeat of
death.  I think it might have been a massive drug overdose that triggered
Polly's health crisis and the accompanying change of outlook, given that
her drug habit also came to a very sudden and abrupt halt.  Polly's someone
who likes to punish herself.  She's sometimes talked about her S&M sex
sessions as some kind of a badge of honour and I've witnessed the perverse
pleasure she gets from putting herself in harm's way.  Perhaps she's
decided that instead of being metaphorically beaten up by those who don't
like her championship of Rock Music orthodoxy, she'd rather be attacked for
taking the radically opposed view that, after all's said and done, the
truest and purest manifestation of the Great Rock & Roll Dream is to be
found in the much maligned and heroically unsuccessful Crystal Passion
band. After all, what could be more perverse in the History of Rock than a
band made up of a dozen British women whose music straddles so many genres
of which Rock was but one (and only just), who sold hardly any records at
all, and who spectacularly failed to crack the elusive American Rock Music
market?

   And then, of course, for a woman like Polly who's drawn to pain and
suffering, she must also have been attracted to the circumstances related
to the Crystal Passion band's demise.

   And also of Crystal Passion herself.

   But a worse situation than the one we'd already found ourselves in
seemed highly unlikely while we were being chauffeured back in small groups
by Chevrolet to the Paradise Hotel with as much equipment as possible
resting on our knees or squeezed into the trunk.  It was Judy and Crystal
who took the responsibility of contacting Kai Pharrel and the various
insurance companies regarding the vandalised Camper Van and of arranging
alternative forms of travel for the rest of our tour.  In fact, it was much
more Judy than Crystal who was active.  Crystal was more depressed and
withdrawn than I'd ever seen her before.  She clung to Judy with a
limpet-like closeness that I'd never imagined possible before.

   I was so sick of the disaster that was the American Tour that I just
couldn't be bothered any more.  I no longer cared whether we played another
gig in America and I openly speculated with Andrea, Jane and Jacquie
whether I could be bothered to stick with the Crystal Passion band when we
returned to England.

   "Why not just call it the Crystal and Judy Band and be done with it," I
said bitterly.

   "Don't be so hard on Crystal," said Andrea.  "It's not been an easy ride
for her and Judy just happens to offer her the comfort she needs at the
moment."

   "And just what is that?" I countered.  "Unless Crystal's become a late
convert to Tijuana's finest or a fan of Heavy Metal, all Judy can offer is
love and sex..."

   "And what's so wrong with that?" countered Jacquie.

   It was plain that the Crystal Passion band's close proximity with one
another during the series of disasters that was our American tour wasn't
healthy for our intertangled complex and libertine lesbian love life.  I
was spending more time with only Jane and Jacquie.  Andrea had more or less
renounced lesbian sex altogether.  And amongst the others, now the once
reliably indiscriminate Crystal was spending most of her time with Judy,
only Tomiko and the Harlot could be trusted to maintain the sexual licence
that had so recently acted as the band's cohesive glue.

   So, it was pretty well inevitable that the appearance of a couple of
young men in our number during our stay at the Paradise Hotel would
exacerbate the growing fractures in the band.

   "There's a fucking man in my room!" exclaimed Bertha as she burst in on
Andrea and I while we were resting in our shared bedroom, slightly stoned
from our cut of Judy's Tijuana stash.

   "Not just one man," said Philippa who followed behind and was just as
disgusted.  "There's two of them!  Where do they come from?"

   "Hey!" said Olivia who was chasing after them with Jenny Alpha.  "Don't
be so uptight."

   Just behind Olivia and Jenny were two sheepish young men with unkempt
long hair and well-worn baggy check shirts and jeans.  One had the
light-brown skin that in America was enough to qualify him as Black, while
the other had a trace of Catawba Indian which, as with Elvis Presley, was
somehow not enough for him to lose his White ethnic status.

   "Hey guys," said the young man with the paler skin.

   "This is Matt," said Olivia.  "He and Joe belong to a local Rock Group.
Both come from here in Rock Hill.  Matt plays guitar and Joe plays drums."

   "Yeah," said Joe.  "We saw you guys at the Penitence.  You were cool. 
You really rocked it..."

   "And then we bought your records after the gig," said Matt.  "We could
only afford the vinyl.  But it was fucking amazing!  Even better than the
gig.  That Crystal Passion is one fuck of a singer.  And she wrote the
songs and all."

   "We were fucking blown away so we asked Skull where you guys were
staying and he told us it was at the Paradise," continued Joe.

   "So we came here to pay our respects..." said Matt.

   "...And Jenny and I have been looking after them ever since," continued
Olivia.

   "Fuck!  They're cute," said Tomiko who poked her head in through the
door.

   "Gimme that ass!" echoed the Harlot whose head poked in from the other
side.

   "They're both fucking men!" said Bertha in disgust and despair.

   It was inevitable of course that those in the Crystal Passion band whose
sexual identity wasn't solely lesbian should be tempted by male flesh. 
There was no denying that Matt and Joe were the kind of young men who'd be
attractive to those in the band with no absolute preference.  They were
slim.  They were young.  They were refreshingly open-minded in a nation we
now understood wasn't naturally either liberal or tolerant.  And they were
a relatively rare phenomenon in a world where the greater proportion of the
Crystal Passion fan base, at least in the UK, was feminist and female. 
Neither Matt nor Joes were female but neither did they seem bothered about
the gender of the musicians in the band.  They didn't only listen to Grunge
groups like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and the Pixies, but also to female musicians
as varied as Joni Mitchell, Bikini Kill and P J Harvey.  In fact, if it
wasn't for the complicating presence of Jane and Jacquie and (at a
distance) Crystal, I might have been tempted myself.

   Neither Crystal nor Judy were likely to agree with Bertha and Philippa
that the presence of men in our company was to be avoided at all costs. 
Judy because her sexual preferences leaned more towards men than women and
Crystal because she would never deign to take account of such trivial
distinctions.  So, while at the Paradise Hotel, our already substantial
numbers were further swollen.  And, by virtue of their gender alone, Matt
and Joe could only be divisive in a band increasingly held together more by
circumstance than choice.

   And this, among other things, clearly upset Crystal.

   "It's the end, isn't it Pebbles?" Crystal confided to me as we sat
together in the Paradise Hotel's scruffy garden near a scrawny chicken who
was pecking at the bare sun-baked soil.  "The band won't survive the tour.
The album we've already recorded will be our last."

   "Don't be silly," I said reassuringly, but in truth somewhat startled
that Crystal should so echo my thoughts.

   "Oh America!" Crystal pleaded.  "What have I done to deserve this?"

   "Don't despair," I said.  "We'll be OK.  The Camper Van being vandalised
is something we'll survive.  We'll get over it.  It'll all work out.  After
the gig on Friday, everything will be absolutely fine.  Three days after
that we'll forget all about it."

   "I hope so, Pebbles," said Crystal.  "I hope so."

   "It's bloody hot here," I said, glancing up at the sun beating down on
us.  "Do you want me to get you something to drink from the bar?"

   "Don't worry about that, Pebbles," said Crystal picking up a can of soda
from between her feet that she must have already purchased from the hotel
vending machine.  "This might taste vinegary and it's probably got every
chemical additive you can imagine, not to mention carbon monoxide and
sugar, but it's enough for me now." She rubbed the can over her forehead
and let the moisture drip down her nose.  "What I've got to do and have to
do right away is call my mother..."

   "Marianne.  You think she'll be contactable?"

   Crystal regarded the clock looming above the hotel reception desk.  "My
mother and I agreed to be near the phone about this time every day if we
ever needed to get in touch.  And I definitely want to talk with my mother
now."

   "Let's get into the foyer then and out of the sun."

   "You're right, Pebbles," said Crystal.  "That's exactly what I must do.
I really need to talk to Mum."

   The way Polly Tarantella describes the conversation that followed
between Crystal and Marianne it's as if we were all in the same room.  But
of course we weren't.  Crystal was standing in the hotel phone booth with a
cardboard phone credit card while I was hovering around within earshot but
not part of the conversation.  And at the other end of the telephone in San
Francisco-almost as far away across the American continent as we were
across the Atlantic Ocean from England-was Marianne and, somewhere in the
background, was her new boyfriend, John Dimple, whose relationship with her
mother Crystal was evidently eager to encourage.

   "John's good for you, Mum," said Crystal.  "From what you've told me
about him, he's exactly the kind of man you need in your life right now."

   Obviously I couldn't hear Marianne's reply but I could see Crystal nod
her head and interject with the occasional "Yes" and "No".

   "Of course you must live together if that's what you want, Mum," said
Crystal.  "He's a lot better than your last boyfriend.  Not that he was bad
exactly, but John is a better proposition altogether.  That's what you need
at the moment."

   There was a muffled response from the other end of the line, presumably
still about John.

   I never met John Dimple, whatever impression you get from Polly
Tarantella's account, not then and not since.  Perhaps he arrived too soon
in Marianne's life to feature in the following weeks and months.  But
Polly's interviewed him and in her biography of Crystal Passion he poses as
a real authority on Crystal Passion even though they'd never actually met.
Nevertheless, given that he and Marianne maintained a relationship for more
than a decade and a friendship that's lasted to the present day I have to
credit John with a lot more knowledge and understanding of Crystal's mother
than I ever had.

   But it's still not the same as knowing Crystal.

   Perhaps it's because of John, who sounds like a nice kind of guy, that
Polly has given Marianne a prominent role in Crystal's life that seems much
greater now than it did when I knew Crystal and played in her band.  It's
true that Crystal had a close healthy relationship with her mother.  It was
rather better than my relationship with my mother who still resents me for
not being heterosexual and for not settling down as a suburban wife with
two children and a husband with a job in the City.  And better also than
Polly's relationship with her mother which must have been strained beyond
breaking point every time Polly was admitted into rehab or when she
appeared on her parents' door smashed, wasted or wrecked.

   But there are many women who have good relationships with their mothers.
My sister Andrea has a much better relationship with our mother than I do,
that's for sure.  And I don't think Jane and Jacquie ever had a falling out
with their parents despite the strain of their relationship with me.  So, I
don't think significant conclusions can be drawn about Crystal's genius and
musical direction from the mere fact that Marianne's hippy mother and she
were close.  It wasn't that which determined her future life, however much
Polly Tarantella emphasises the parallels between events in Marianne's life
before Crystal was born and events in Crystal's life when she became a
professional musician.

   These few precious moments with Crystal that Polly makes such a big deal
of are even more precious now than they seemed at the time.  For most of
the time between our two gigs at the Penitence Club, Crystal was nowhere to
be found.

   And neither was Judy.

   I admit that I greatly resented Judy's pernicious influence on Crystal
and her subsequent absence from my side.  However, even at my most jealous
at the time I wouldn't have drawn the kind of conclusions that Polly
suggests, such as, for instance, that Judy orchestrated the bust at the
King's Cavalry Motel.  The fact that matters would have been much worse had
Judy been taken to the Sheriff's Office along with the rest of us and
they'd found a quarter weight of dope in her possession doesn't imply that
Judy's good fortune in not being busted is part of some grand scheme.  My
guess is that the bust came more from the motel staff's malevolent
suspicious nature.  Crystal Passion was the object of hostile media
attention and they didn't much sympathise with our lifestyles.  Although I
don't agree with Polly, I can see that a villain gives her story a sense of
intrigue.  And what better villain could there be than someone as close to
Crystal's bosom as Judy Dildo?

   It wasn't only me who noticed that Crystal and Judy were absent from the
Paradise Hotel and their shared bedroom.  And everyone assumed that
wherever they were, they were together.  But doing what, I don't know.

   I don't believe Crystal was taking drugs, unless she was a lot better at
hiding the evidence than anyone else I've ever known.  In any case,
drug-taking wasn't in her character.  It wasn't that she disapproved of
drugs.  It was more that she couldn't see the point.  The real world was
already weird enough.  So what were Crystal and Judy doing together that
they didn't share with the rest of the band?

   Sex is one thing, of course.  Crystal's sexual passion is something
difficult to describe to someone who's never experienced it.  And Judy
Dildo-who was probably more heterosexual than almost anyone else in the
band except my sister Andrea-was overcome by Crystal's sexual charisma. 
That must have made emotional matters between them even more significant.
And I don't think it's just idle speculation that Judy and Crystal shared
their moments of intimacy apart from the band in the company of men.  Judy
enjoyed being fucked by men.  And Crystal did too.  And I suspect they
enjoyed sharing their bodies with men equally as much as each other.

   I also think that Judy was eager to expose Crystal to the kind of music
she enjoyed so much.  The fact that Rock Music, more than almost any other
kind of genre, chiefly appeals to men (and most especially adolescent men
in awe of the most common and basest male fantasies) meant that Judy Dildo
would have to drag Crystal away from other women: especially those of a
feminist disposition that Judy so often professed to despise.

   So in those hours Judy and Crystal spent together I visualise the two
women writhing together in the midst of a tangle of naked men whose huge
erect penises were either inserted into all or some of their orifices and
spurting semen all over them.  And into this stew of masculine fucking,
sucking and spunking, I envisage a soundtrack of heavy metal guitar,
energetic but unimaginative drum beats, and singing that sounds like either
a cat being strangled or a man barking through a mouthful of gravel.

   The sooner Crystal got bored with all that shit the better!

   But even though by Friday we'd all got used to the idea of hardly not
seeing much of either of them, it was a surprise for us all to be packing
up our equipment for our gig at the Penitence and there still to be no sign
of Crystal or Judy.

   "Where the fuck is she?" wondered Jenny Alpha as she loaded Crystal's
acoustic guitar into the back of the non-descript removal van we'd hired
for the day.  "Still fucking Judy at a fucking opium den?"

   "She will be here when the gig begins, won't she?" pleaded Thelma. 
"It's not gonna be much of a Crystal Passion band without Crystal."

   "And what about Judy?" remarked the Harlot.  "Who'll do all that rock
strutting stuff if she's not here?"

   "Matt can help out," said Olivia, whose arm was around his waist.  "He
plays a mean guitar."

   "I fucking hope we won't have to resort to that!" Philippa sniffed.

   "Crystal's never let us down before," I said with the confidence and
authority that came from being one of the band's original members.  In
fact, after Crystal herself, probably the original member.

   But my optimism was misplaced.  Even after the equipment was set up on
stage, Crystal still hadn't arrived.  We had to rehearse with Tomiko on the
sound desk with Skull lurking in the shadows clutching a can of Bud and
snorting a line of Coke.  Philippa, Thelma and the Harlot stood in for
Crystal's role either by playing acoustic guitar, as only Philippa was
able, or by singing her lyrics, as Thelma and the Harlot could both do
(though their voices had none of Crystal's porcelain beauty).  And as
Olivia proposed, Matt stood in for Judy: easily able to mimic her Rock Star
strut and Axe-Man flourish, and surprisingly good (given the rushed
circumstances) at learning and playing her riffs.

   But when the real Judy Dildo turned up with barely half an hour left
before we were due on stage and to witness Matt subbing for her, she was
instantly dismissive.

   "What the fuck is this shit?" she said.  "Gimme my guitar and I'll show
you how it should be done."

   "And Crystal can take responsibility for the acoustic guitar and vocals
too?" Philippa pleaded.

   Judy seemed genuinely alarmed.  "Isn't Crystal here?"

   "Fuck no," said Thelma.  "We thought she was with you."

   "She was but..." began Judy.  "Well, fuck it, she's not with me now."

   "So where is she, Judy?" I challenged.

   "She ain't here is all, is she?" said Judy defiantly.  And then rather
more conciliatorily and with evident distress in her voice, she asked:
"You're absolutely sure Crystal's not here?  You're not shitting me?"

   "We wouldn't fuck about when it comes to something like that," said
Jane. "Where the fuck is Crystal?"

   "Erm..." said Judy hesitantly.  "Fuck!  She's not here?  Fuck!  Shit!"

   And with these oaths Judy Dildo strode off towards the Penitence Club's
exit.  And then with a theatrical gesture that was probably unintentional
she slammed the door behind her and was gone.

   "Fuck me!" said Jacquie, who'd never much liked Judy.  "What's got into
her?"

   "I think there's a good chance we won't see Judy playing her guitar
tonight after all," Olivia remarked.  "It looks like you've got the gig,"
she said to Matt who was at least as startled and bemused as the rest of us
at Judy's outburst.  "You've just passed the audition.  You've got all the
votes."

   "Well, at least we don't also need a fucking drummer," declared Jane.

   "But there's still no sign of Crystal," moaned Philippa.

   "Fuck!" Thelma exclaimed.  "Am I gonna have to be Crystal for the
night?"

   "You and me both, sweetheart!" said the Harlot with a slightly deranged
laugh.

   "I'm sure Crystal and Judy will turn up in time for the gig," I said.

   "Well, we've just got to assume they won't," said Olivia.  "We'll have
to expect the worst and prepare for it."

   "So tonight it's gonna be Matt Dildo and Thelma & Philippa Crystal,"
remarked the Harlot.

   And so it was to be.

   I'd never before performed on stage in front of an audience without
Crystal Passion and it goes without saying that the Crystal Passion band
without its titular leader wasn't the same at all.  Of course, as far as
the audience of check- and teeshirted young men with a cigarette in one
hand and a bottle of beer in the other, the only differences to what they
expected was that the guitarist was a man and that there was absolutely no
nudity.  None of us had the heart or inclination to strip off, not even the
Harlot.  And certainly neither Thelma nor Philippa who were more anxious
about having to sing the lead vocals on songs they knew well but whose
lyrics they didn't understand any more than did the rest of us.  It just
wasn't the same to hear Thelma intone: "The son comes home with nothing to
show.  The father gives him a fortune of snow.  The worst is loved the
most. And the best is left to last." What seemed so profound voiced by
Crystal sounded banal and faintly bizarre coming from Thelma and Philippa.

   At least we were spared a refrain from the audience of "Take 'em off!"
or "Show us your tits!" And this was mostly because of Matt being on stage
and his obvious love for the rock riff.  It just didn't make sense for an
audience of men who valued their heterosexuality to demand that Matt should
rip off his clothes and display what was actually quite a handsome asset
(not that I ever did more than glance at it while he was fucking Olivia on
her bed).  And given that this was primarily a Rock audience who'd come to
see a Rock Band, Matt's frequent quotations from the great rock riffs of
history (such as 'Purple Haze', 'Come As You Are' and 'Sunshine of Your
Love') managed to satisfy those who might otherwise have been clamouring
for the sight of a lot more female flesh.

   During every moment and every second of the gig I was expecting, hoping,
almost praying for Crystal Passion or even Judy Dildo to appear at the side
of the stage with a smile and the reassurance that everything was alright
and that their earlier non-appearance had been nothing more than a
hiccough. But no such luck.  We powered through our gig, playing a set that
was pretty much identical to our previous one at the club except that we
were more content to let Matt indulge himself in his Rock Guitar dreams of
glory than we'd ever have allowed Judy.  And that was because it was a
relief for us all, including Philippa and Thelma, to just fade into the
background gloom and stay out of sight.

   We gave no encore although there were many in the audience calling for
more and Matt was ready and eager to jump back onto the stage.

   "I'm just not in the fucking mood!" said Jacquie.

   "Keep your sonic dildo strapped away, sweetie," Jane dismissively
advised Matt.  "None of us are going back there however much the fuckers
shout out for us."

   "Forget about it, lover boy," said Olivia, forcefully grabbing Matt's
crotch.  "We can make sweet music elsewhere."

   "Still no sign of Crystal or Judy," remarked Andrea.

   "They're probably in a fucking twelve man orgy somewhere," remarked
Jacquie snidely.  "Judy's always liked cock and rock and now she's tempted
Crystal over to the fucking dark side."

   "It's not like Crystal," I pleaded in her defence.

   "But it's fucking just like Judy," snarled Jane.  "I fucking hate that
bitch."

   "Yeah," said Jacquie, expressing for the first time what has since
become the orthodox account of events according to Polly Tarantella.  "Ever
since Judy joined the band, it's been headed towards disaster.  And ever
since we arrived in America-the land of fucking racist metal heads-Judy's
led us all down the slope towards destruction.  Fuck it!  She's the bitch
who got us to play naked in Detroit.  And she's the bitch who's turned
Crystal Passion into some kind of all-girl Rock Band."

   These weren't the last words said about Judy as it became increasingly
apparent that Crystal hadn't been hiding in the toilets or sitting
despondently in the dressing room or waiting outside the Penitence with
some perfectly understandable excuse as to why she hadn't made it to the
gig.  There was still no sign of her anywhere.

   We were in a very sombre mood as we hoisted our equipment along to our
van, which hadn't been vandalised this time even though the same group of
Christian protestors had been protesting at exactly the same spot on the
street as before.  My guess is that nobody thought it worth the effort of
vandalising a battered old van with the smudged-out name of Wayne Sentry &
Sons barely legible under all the grime and rust.

   "Was that the worst gig we've ever done?" Jane wondered.

   Matt was visibly hurt by Jane's dismissal so Olivia stood up for him. 
"We just weren't able to play as well as we would've back in the UK. 
Events haven't been kind to us.  But we did a fuck of a lot better tonight
than anyone would've predicted given that we've lost our lead singer, our
song-writer and both our guitarists."

   "I thought you guys were awesome," said Joe loyal as ever to his best
friend and probably envious that it hadn't been Jane who'd failed to turn
up for the gig.

   "Well, whatever," said Tomiko who was visibly bored with the discussion
and held a spliff between her thumb and forefinger.  "Anyone wanna share
some blow?"

   When we got back to the hotel, I helped Bertha and Jenny unload the
band's equipment from the van not so much because I needed the exercise but
because I wanted to put some distance between me and Jane and Jacquie. 
Much as I loved them, I wasn't able then (and I've been no better since) to
handle the sisters when they got angry.  And, besides, I was angry too. 
And like Jane and Jacquie I also blamed Judy Dildo for the fact that
Crystal hadn't turned up for her own concert.

   What the fuck could be more important than that?

   When I entered the foyer of the Paradise Hotel, with Jenny Alpha loaded
down with Tomiko's sound deck and Bertha sharing the burden of my keyboards
and tangled cables, there was a palpably weird subdued atmosphere. 
Although everyone was gathered around the reception desk and sitting on the
polyvinyl chairs, nobody was talking.  Not even Matt and Joe.

   Shit!  Had our rooms been burgled?  Had there been another bust?  Had
some bad news come back from the UK?

   "What's going on?" I asked not sure who I was actually addressing.

   And then I noticed for the first time that there was a strange man in
the centre of the foyer and that he was dressed in the almost casual
official uniform of the South Carolina police with the archetypal
broad-brimmed hat.

   "I'm afraid I've got bad news for you, ma'am," he said.

   "It's about Crystal, isn't it?" I said, suddenly letting forth the flood
of tears that I'd been holding back all evening.  "Something's happened to
Crystal.  There's been an accident.  She's in the hospital."

   "I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, ma'am," said the
police officer.  "But it's worse than that."

   And indeed it was.

   Crystal Passion was dead.

   And not just dead.  Violated.  Savagely abused.  And then discarded.

   And discovered-not many hours after her last breath-alongside the banks
of the Catawba River: a broken doll bruised and bloody and pierced by
knife-wounds, her nose crushed and her clothes nowhere to be found.

   But most of all: dead.

   It was hard for me to take in a single detail, but what was becoming
increasingly apparent to me as I wailed and wept was that I would never
speak to, laugh with or play with Crystal Passion again.

   In fact, I would never see Crystal Passion alive ever again.



   Chapter Thirteen ===============

   There's a lot I simply can't remember that happened in the following few
days we were stranded in Rock Hill.  My attention was almost entirely
focused on my overwhelming sense of grief.  I was completely disconnected
from the many events swirling around me.  I guess I was hoping that Crystal
might still be alive and would magically appear from somewhere.  And when
it was established that Crystal had been murdered at almost exactly the
time that Judy Dildo made her brief appearance at the Penitence Club, the
only relief I had from my overwhelming anguish was the intense hatred I
could direct towards her.  As it was with other members of the band.

   "We don't know for sure, do we?" said Andrea, one of the few brave
enough to defend Judy in her absence.  "Just because we haven't seen her
since...  since...  Just because of that doesn't prove anything, does it?"

   "So, why isn't she here then?" said Jane.  "What's that bitch hiding
from us?  I'm not saying she actually killed Crystal..."

   "She couldn't have done," said Jenny Alpha.  "We saw her at the club
when it happened.  Even Judy couldn't have been in two places at the same
time."

   "It can't be a fucking coincidence that we've seen fuck all of the bitch
since she burst in like that," said Jacquie.  "What did she know?  Where
did she fucking run off to?  She knew something, didn't she?"

   "I don't know what Judy did or didn't know," said Philippa, also
striving to be diplomatic.  "But you're right, Jacquie.  Judy took Crystal
to a dark place she wouldn't have gone to otherwise..."

   "Fucking Thrash Metal male orgies," I moaned.  "Fucking men, smack,
dicks, sadomasochism and knives."

   "We don't know about any of that stuff," said Philippa.  "Except the
knives, of course.  And the fact that Crystal was raped and pissed on just
before she was killed ..." I burst into a fresh torrent of tears that
prompted my sister to wrap her arms around my shoulders.  "Well that's what
happened, isn't it?  It could be that Judy had nothing to do with it at
all. Maybe Crystal just happened to be walking along the Catawba River and
was the victim of a random act of violence.  We just don't know."

   But what we did know and got to know for sure when we filed into the
crematorium to identify Crystal's abused and battered body was that she was
undeniably dead.  The woman on the cold marble slab whose eyes were
discreetly closed and whose skin had already taken on the pale complexion
of the recently deceased could be none other than Crystal Passion: the love
of my life and the woman to whom I had literally sacrificed everything. 
Except my life, of course.  And I don't know how many times I thought to
myself (and maybe even wailed aloud to my sister and my two black lovers)
that I would gladly sacrifice that as well if Crystal Passion were still
alive.

   That Crystal was unclothed in the crematorium, despite the cold, seemed
appropriate.  That was how she'd been most of her life and how she was when
discovered at the scene of the crime by three young black men who were
originally detained as suspects despite their exemplary academic record and
good behaviour.  This time, she was naked simply because that was what all
corpses are before an autopsy and for a case like this where murder was
pretty much obviously the cause an autopsy was a necessary part of the
police investigation.  The fact that Crystal's beautiful body, already
scarred and disfigured by the violence that had killed her, would soon be
scalpeled apart only made me sob the louder while the police officers
looked on and Andrea, Jane and Jacquie tried to comfort me.

   But my grief overcame me.  My feet suddenly gave way beneath me and,
still wailing, I collapsed to the floor.  I gripped Jane's tee-shirt so
tightly when I fell that I tore it across the seams, but fortunately not so
that her bosom fell loose.  I crouched on the floor in despair and shouted
out to the world, just like you see people do in the kind of movies that I
never usually watch: "Why?  Why?  Why did this have to happen?"

   "Gee!  She's taking it bad, ain't she?" remarked one of the brawnier
police officers.

   "She was Crystal's closest friend," said Philippa.

   "She was Crystal's lover," the Harlot clarified.

   "Well, whatever they felt for one another," said the police officer
sympathetically.  "This gal certainly feels it strong.  I don't often see
grief that bad.  And I've seen some pretty crazed shit I can tell you. 
That Crystal Passion chick must have been one heck of a gal!"

   The responsibility of positively identifying Crystal Passion's body was
only the first of a series of duties we all had to do, including Matt and
Joe, and even Skull.  And on this occasion the police were on our side. 
Whatever they might have privately thought about a dozen oddly dressed
British women and their unorthodox lifestyles was expressed only
inadvertently.  This was a murder case and, for the moment, the chief
suspect was Judy Dildo.

   Her alibi was in no way helped by the fact that she hadn't returned to
the Paradise Hotel at all on the night following the gig nor on the
following days.  As a result, much of the police interrogation was focused
on Judy and what we knew of her whereabouts in the few days we'd been in
Rock Hill (and from before the time we'd crossed the South Carolina State
Line).  It didn't occur to me that we should hide the fact of Judy's
acquisition of a quarter weight of dope and to the credit of the police,
although they confiscated what was left for forensic testing, there was no
mention that we were complicit in a criminal offense.  Jane observed with a
bitter laugh that when Judy Dildo did return she'd be busted whether she
had anything to do with Crystal's murder or not.

   "That'll fucking teach the bitch!" she said.

   "That doesn't seem fair," said Tomiko.  "If Judy had nothing to do with
it, why should she be punished?"

   I was so wrapped up in my own sorrow that I didn't pay much attention to
how the others were reacting to Crystal's death.  I suppose I assumed that
I had the most cause for sorrow having always been Crystal's primary lover
in the band, but in fact everyone was grieving.  Jane and Jacquie could
sublimate their grief with their anger.  My sister was distracted by my
near nervous breakdown.  But we were all in a state of shock and distress:
Philippa, Thelma, Bertha, Olivia, the Harlot, Jenny Alpha and, most of all,
Tomiko.

   I suppose it was because I'd always thought of Tomiko as being somehow
different from the rest of us that I never imagined she'd get so
distraught. Tomiko was an ethnic Japanese woman with a Public School
education and an Irish passport who managed the sound deck and was more
often stoned than straight.  But while we were in the crematorium she wept
silently as she hovered over Crystal Passion's body.  She ran her fingers
over the body, even over the knife wounds that had slit open the stomach,
and then she unexpectedly exploded into a torrent of tears.

   "It's real!" she sobbed, as Olivia and the Harlot comforted her.  "It's
really happened!  I didn't imagine it possible.  Crystal's dead.  She's
dead.  Dead!  Dead!"

   Polly Tarantella has somehow managed to obtain a transcript of the
police investigation into Crystal's murder and almost all of it is
transcribed in her biography.  There are exact details in the coroner's
report (which I couldn't bear to read at the time) which describe the
nature of the knife wounds, present an analysis of the semen found in her
vagina and anus, itemises where she was hit and the likely cause of each
bruise, and confirms that the urine traces over her body were fresh at the
time of her murder.  The fact there'd been no attempt to hide her body was
evidence that the murderers weren't professional criminals.  And the
evidence from the semen and the nature of the violence was that there'd
been at least two and possibly as many as half a dozen men involved in the
crime.  But in the early 1990s when there was no such thing as DNA
profiling and when America was drowning in a national crime wave, there was
little likelihood the criminals would ever be found.  Unless the forensic
evidence exactly matched the other evidence the police had in their files
(which were mostly written on paper rather than stored in a computer) or
one of the perpetrators had left behind some tell-tale evidence (as so
often happens in American cop shows) there was almost no chance that
Crystal's killers could be identified unless Judy was able to help the
police with their inquiries.

   Given that so much of the police investigation related to Judy Dildo,
Polly has a lot of ammunition for her claim that Judy was Crystal's evil
nemesis.  There's a lot of redaction in the police files which as far as I
could see was more to protect the witnesses (such as me) than to hide the
truth.  I can tell from the transcripts that it was Jane and Jacquie who
had the most vicious things to say about Judy, though I was surprised to
discover the extent to which some in the band continued to defend her. 
Though I don't know for sure, I think Judy's chief champions were Tomiko,
Jenny and the Harlot.  She was described in a much more positive way than
I'd have predicted.  I didn't know before reading these accounts just how
great Judy's love for Crystal had been.  Nor how much she'd admired me. 
And this makes me feel especially ashamed given how much I hated and
despised Judy at the time.

   Polly's thesis of Judy's great treachery needs more than a few unkind
comments from Jane and Jacquie (and probably also from Philippa and
Bertha), but the necessary proof, at least as far as Polly's concerned,
came to light on the third day of the police investigation

   At this stage we'd got used to reading reports in the Rock Hill Herald
and the other local newspapers from the Charlotte metropolitan area about
the 'English Rock Star Murder' which on the local television news channels
was also known as the 'Crystal Passion Riverside Knifing'.  There was
nothing much more said about Crystal or the band in the reports beyond the
facts that we came from London, England, and that we were all women (except
for 'local boy, Matt McGinnis').  There was no mention now of the
controversy that had agitated the Christian faithful nor of the chequered
history of our American tour.  But the cliché of finding out about a story
from a news bulletin rather than directly from the police (again so
familiar from American cop shows) was true in our case.

   "Breaking," said the news reader on whatever local affiliate was
associated with NBC.  "We have new information about prime suspect Judith
O'Hara in the Catawba River Killing.  After the break."

   And so Andrea and I, holed together in our hotel room, had to endure an
endless series of advertisements for local realtors, automobile sales and
legal services until the news reader appeared on the screen again.

   "The body of Judith O'Hara, the English rock guitarist the police have
been looking for, has been found in Rock Hill less than a quarter mile from
the scene of the horrific murder of English Rock Star, Crystal Passion.  At
this stage, we don't yet know whether the cause is suicide or foul play,
but we do know that Miss O'Hara's dead body was found hanging from a tree
by local walkers in River Park.  We're expecting a statement from the Rock
Hill PD in the next half hour.  Stay tuned."

   And following this there was a totally unrelated story about the
preparation for the following year's Come-See-Me Festival at the historic,
award-winning Glencairn Garden, more on which I was in absolutely no mood
to find out about.

   "I don't fancy waiting for this talking head to get round to what's
happened to Judy," said Andrea.  "We'll get someone to drive us to the
police station and get the story from source, shall we?"

   My sister had clearly decided that whatever small benefit we might get
from getting the news from the detectives investigating Crystal's murder
before the formal announcement would be worth our while because we'd be
busy doing something instead of having to wait anxiously in a hotel room by
the television screen for a spokesperson to loom into camera view.

   "As long as we can keep the radio tuned to a news station while we drive
there," I said as I jumped up with a fresh sense of purpose.  We then
bundled into the Chevy with Jenny at the wheel and both Tomiko and Thelma
for company.

   "Hey, ladies," said Nate, the receptionist at the Police Station who
we'd got to know quite well during the last couple of days.  "I was
expecting to see some of you here after what what's been found.  I guess
you wanna talk to the DI?"

   "Is Luke here?" I asked.

   "No," Nate admitted.  "He's gotta make an official announcement for the
TV cameras.  It's big news round here as I guess you ladies already know.
But some of the other guys will fill you in.  Wait here.  I'll see who I
can find."

   It was Inspector Matthew Papadopoulos who escorted us into a quiet
office that was reserved for just this kind of discussion to describe what
had been found and what had been determined from the evidence.  It was
evident that he'd had to do something like this many times before.  Even
though it was Inspector Mark Evans who'd actually attended the scene of the
crime and examined the evidence, Inspector Papadopoulos gave such a vivid
depiction that it was difficult to believe that his was a second-hand
account.

   Judy had indeed been found hanging from a tree in River Park.  The
walkers who came across her body weren't the first to walk past it, but
they were the ones who'd noticed it first.  The body was hanging just above
head height and was obscured by dense foliage.  In those days, there were
very few cell phones, even in America, and none of these walkers owned one,
so a couple of them remained by the scene of the crime (which must have
been gruesome), while the other two raced off to a nearby drug store which
was the nearest place where they could find a telephone.  What they'd
witnessed was exactly like those photographs that illustrate the Billy
Holiday song Strange Fruit, only unlike those lynched bodies so indelibly
associated with the Ku Klux Klan and the Gallant South, this corpse was of
a woman of white ethnicity.  At least she hadn't also been found naked.

   It wasn't an easy job for the police to get Judy's body down from the
branch from which she'd been hung.  Evidently, her murderers were quite
expert at hanging people they didn't like.

   "They probably had to loop the rope from an elevated position,"
Inspector Papadopoulos explained, "so we're looking for evidence of snagged
clothing.  Our main task is to establish for sure that this wasn't a
suicide, although I can't see how it could have been.  In any case, we
ain't heard anything from you ladies to suggest that Miss O'Hara was the
suicidal type.  Suicides don't normally involve as much cooperation and
planning as went into Miss O'Hara's killing."

   The evidence was that the hanging was what actually killed Judy but that
this was only the final act of violence in a series of horrific abuses that
she'd suffered.  Inspector Papadopoulos didn't give an account of the
actual lynching, but I have a vivid image in my mind (derived from some of
the more gory horror movies I've seen) of Judy's body pulled taut at the
neck with her tongue and eyes bulging out from asphyxiation while her last
energetic kicks were only helping to hasten her death.  And before that
ordeal, she'd already been beaten, punched and raped.  The inspector didn't
describe in detail how she'd been violated, but those interested in
learning more can find all the repulsive details of the violence against
Judy's body described in Polly's biography of Crystal Passion.  There's
almost as much detail about Judy's final suffering as there is regarding
Crystal herself.  The only compensation for Judy is that she hadn't been
stabbed to death, but I can only hazard a guess at how much terror Judy
must have felt as her murderers slipped the noose around her neck and
tugged the rope upwards.

   The inspector went to great pains to explain to us (rather more than
I've ever seen in a Crime Thriller) how cautious they had to be in arriving
at conclusions about Judy's murder.  What was almost certain was that, as
with Crystal Passion (who was consistently referred to as Miss Giordano),
the death of Miss O'Hara was the result of homicide.  What could not be
determined were the motives for the murders, the identity of the
perpetrators, the exact number of perpetrators, and certainly not their
age, ethnicity or nationality: though the presence of semen in both cases
strongly suggested that the murderers were all men and that there was more
than one in both murders.

   "One thing we cannot be absolutely certain about at this point of time,"
stressed the inspector, "is that the two crimes are directly linked,
although, like you and the crime reporters in the Rock Hill Herald, we're
darned sure they are."

   It would be satisfying to be able to say that the murderers (and rapists
and woman-beaters and perverts) who'd killed Crystal and Judy have since
been arrested and got their due deserts.  And however much in principle I
oppose such brutal means of capital punishment as lethal injection or the
electric chair, I'm not sure my conscience is so resilient that I'd be
upset if the murders were all lined up and electrocuted or, more likely,
spent their last dying moments pumped up with pentobarbital, Pancuronium
bromide and Potassium chloride.  But the truth remains that whatever
theories Polly and others have come up with, nobody knows to this day who
killed Judy and Crystal, why they were murdered or even whether the two
homicides are connected.

   I suppose this is the point in my story I should come up with my own
hypothesis: perhaps adding yet more to the frenzy of speculation about the
murders
and just what Judy knew.  All I can say is that I'm pretty sure Judy had

a good idea who Crystal's killers were.  She mightn't have known them
personally as such but well enough for her to be considered such a threat
that relatively soon after (less than 48 hours according to forensic
evidence) she was also murdered.  There seems to have been a kind of crude
ritual the murderers enacted when they murdered Judy, though I can't say
whether there was anything other than a frenzy of crazed and undoubtedly
libidinous passion involved in Crystal's murder.  Nevertheless, Polly has
no qualms in devoting nearly a quarter of the biography's length to an
account of all the hypotheses and rumours she can find, including those
which are at best ludicrous and, at worst, dangerously unhinged.

   Whatever else Judy had been doing in the couple of days since we last
saw her at the Penitence Club I don't believe she was trying to hide
evidence of her guilt and thereby fell foul of a Rock Hill Mafia Boss. 
More likely is that Crystal's murderers were on the periphery of whatever
social scene she and Judy had got to know in the few days since we'd
arrived in Rock Hill and that when she made enquiries (which must have
taken on a grim urgency after she'd learned out about Crystal's death) she
was deemed to be a sufficient threat to the murderers that they decided to
kill her as well.

   And not simply kill her, of course.

   And although we don't know who Judy's murderers are-just as we don't
know who killed Crystal Passion-I can say with no fear of ever being proven
wrong that the men who killed them were the very worst kind of sick fucks.

   There are those who almost seem to excuse rape, sexual violence and
murder with the theory that the violators or killers were on drugs and
didn't know what they were doing.  I know a bit about drugs: well, a lot
more than those who make such claims.  And even though I'm more an expert
on E, acid and dope than I am on crystal meth, smack or crack cocaine, I
just don't think it makes sense to say that it's only because they're users
that such people commit violent crime.  The one drug I know that's likely
to turn people into crazed lunatics like that is alcohol.  Smack and coke
simply make it easier to do evil things if you're already so inclined.  And
the drugs that do totally space you out also make you incapable of walking
in a straight line or stringing a sentence together, let alone doing
something as difficult as killing someone and getting away with it.  If
drugs were involved in the murder of my two friends, it was more because it
added to the fun the fuckers got out of it rather than being the cause. 
Perhaps if there'd been no drugs (and we don't even know there were) the
killers might have been less brutal, but I guess they'd have compensated
for that with greater clinical precision.

   "I know that it's all a bit much to take in, ladies," said Inspector
Papadopoulos.  "Your friend Judy is dead, just as your friend Christine is.
I'll give you a half hour or so to gather your thoughts and perhaps pray
for the departed if you should feel so disposed, but then we'll have to ask
you, as we will the others in your pop group, to positively identify the
deceased and then to further assist us with our enquires by answering a few
more questions related to Miss O'Hara."

   "And what would be the point of that?" asked Andrea.

   "Of praying, ma'am?"

   "Praying's fine, inspector," said Andrea.  "I respect you for offering
us the opportunity to pay our respects to the dead.  No, I mean what's the
point of trying to resolve the case?  What difference would it make?"

   "So that we can arrest and punish the murderers of your friends," said
the inspector.  "Surely that's obvious."

   "It sure is," said Tomiko, with almost malicious glee in her voice. 
"Whoever the bastards are, I want to see them in court and I want to see
them locked up..."

   "...Otherwise they'll go ahead and rape and murder other women like Judy
and Crystal," said Jenny.  "That's what it's all about, isn't it
Inspector?"

   "Indeed it is," said Inspector Papadopoulos with evident relief that he
didn't have to reply to Andrea's objections.

   Nonetheless, the fresh turn of events that followed the discovery of
Judy's body didn't make it any easier for me or anyone else in the band. 
There was so much we now had to put in order before we could at last leave
Rock Hill and return home.  Not least of which were the funerals.  And
before that we had to assist the police in their investigations.

   First, there was the grisly task of identifying Judy's body which
thankfully wasn't as badly mutilated as Crystal's.  There were bruises and
scratches clearly visible all over her face, torso and upper thighs.  The
neck was swollen and raw.  The head was twisted at an excruciatingly
unnatural angle.  But there were none of the knife wounds that had scarred
Crystal's body.  Although I'd known Judy very well over the past few years
the shock of seeing her dead body didn't distress me as much as it had to
see Crystal's.  I still suspected that even though it wasn't she who'd
actually killed her, Judy was still in some sense responsible for Crystal's
murder.

   There weren't any of the distressing scenes that accompanied the viewing
of Crystal's body.  No one collapsed onto the crematorium floor and no one
burst into hysterical tears.  Some of the band wept for Judy, but I wasn't
one of them and neither were Jane and Jacquie.  But at least nobody said at
the time (although like me some must have thought it) that if it hadn't
been for Judy then we'd have had no dead bodies to identify.  And that
instead of having to suffer all this distress we could have fulfilled the
final commitments of our disastrous American tour and return by British
Airways to London Heathrow and make a fresh start with the Crystal Passion
Band still led by my eponymous lover.

   It didn't surprise me that the police found evidence of drugs in Judy's
blood and that we would be questioned about it.  In addition to the traces
of marijuana, MDMA and alcohol that you'd expect, there was also evidence
of heroin and crystal meth.  Nothing like this, of course, was found in
Crystal's blood.  This didn't endear me any more to the recently deceased,
though like Polly I've speculated about the circumstances in which she took
such narcotics.

   "But it wasn't drugs that killed her, was it?" Philippa asked for
confirmation.

   "Technically no," said DI Luke Doctorow.  "And unless we find further
evidence, her drug taking is at best incidental to our investigations."

   "Could you do me a favour, inspector?" Philippa pressed him.  "Please
don't tell Judy's mother about the drugs.  It'd kill her to know."

   I wondered what Philippa was implying.  Were Judy's parents that naïve
about her drug use?  Though I sometimes wondered what my parents thought
about my own rather less excessive drug habits, I knew that I'd soon have
the opportunity to find out more given that Mr and Mrs O'Hara were soon due
to attend the funeral at the Joseph Armistead & Sons Funeral Home.  Also
flying across the Atlantic Ocean were Crystal's father and brother,
Giuseppe and Justin, and, although they needn't have come, Zack and Liz
Aaronson.  And representing Crystal Passion's British commercial concerns
were our harassed manager, Madeleine Tartt, and Gospel Records owner, Nick
" Domhnaill.  Less welcome for me but inevitably, so too was Crystal's
husband, Mark McDonough.  And from the other compass direction would be
coming Crystal's mother, Marianne.

   Of all these mourners it was with Marianne, Zack and Liz that I most
wanted to spend my time.  At least, we could share our loss over a few
joints.  It was now my turn to comfort Marianne, which somehow served to
make my own loss more tolerable.  I avoided talking to Mark whose
relationship with Crystal I was now more jealous about than ever:
especially since he arrived with a girlfriend, Maria, who'd also had a
relationship with Crystal and who I'd never known about before.  The
complications of Crystal's promiscuous and undiscriminating love-life
wasn't something I really wanted to bother myself with at the time.

   It was on the actual day of the funeral that I met Judy's parents.  Like
the other mourners, they wisely chose not to stay at the Paradise Hotel,
and they made no other effort to get to know the rest of us.  This was
understandable as Mr and Mrs O'Hara shared nothing with the band or any of
its members other than their daughter.  I'd got to know almost everyone in
Crystal's family and had once even had sex with Crystal when Mark was in
the same room.  (I'd like to take this opportunity to deny the suggestion
that I had sex with him, but of this I can't be absolutely sure.)

   The only members of the band who spoke to Judy's parents were Philippa,
Olivia and Andrea.  Mr and Mrs O'Hara were a world apart from Crystal's
bohemian hippy mother and father.  Judy's father was a middle-aged man with
a prominent paunch, a head shaved to obscure his baldness and not at all
comfortable in his Marks & Spencer suit and tie.  Judy's mother was tall
and lean and smoked as often as she could when not in the funeral parlour.
Like her husband, she wasn't used to wearing what they deemed suitable
clothes for a funeral (which was probably much the same outfit that they'd
wear to a wedding, a christening or a degree ceremony).

   "I thought after Judy had agreed to go to rehab, she'd be alright," I
overheard Mrs O'Hara say to Andrea.  "We all did.  She was so much better
after.  We didn't mind the boyfriends and the late nights and all: it was
all those hard drugs that were killing her we didn't like."

   "We thought it'd be good for Judy to go on tour with you girls," said
Judy's father.  "That Crystal seemed like a nice girl.  Really posh and
polite, she was.  Not like Judy's scummy boyfriends.  Bloody scumbags the
lot of 'em, if you don't mind my French."

   Mark, Marianne and Giuseppe paid for the funerals of both Judy and
Crystal and also paid for Judy's parents' air-fare and hotel bills.  I was
dreading that they'd impose some sort of self-indulgent hippy nonsense on
the funeral.  Would there be a naturist theme to celebrate Crystal's
preferred style of dress?  Would there be the scent of incense and
patchouli oil everywhere?  Would we be treated to a soundtrack of dreary
1960s singer-songwriters?  Instead it was a remarkably restrained event or,
indeed, pair of events, as both Crystal's and Judy's funerals took place on
the same day and the combined funeral was a tribute to both women.

   Judy's parents requested hymns that were chosen more for their tunes
than their lyrical content, but I wasn't going to criticise them for
choosing He Who Would Valiant Be or Jerusalem.  There were even prayers and
a moment of silence.  This must have been a source of gratification for
Judy's parents just as much as it would have annoyed the living Judy. 
Reverend Emery Cleopas of the Rock Hill Episcopal Church must also have
been pleased to discover that the band of English lesbian punk rock
degenerates he'd been expecting were rather better behaved than the
plethora of tattoos, unconventional hair-styles and unorthodox clothes (let
alone our media reputation) might suggest.

   Music was played at the funeral.  That could scarcely be avoided in an
event to mark the passing of two musicians.  There were two tracks by
Crystal PassionRambling Woman and Travelling Light-but there was also a
rock song that Judy had recorded with one of her earlier groups, the Stone
Rollers, called Reach Hither Your Hand.  Tomiko seemed to enjoy the song
but I hated it.  Otherwise, the music was a peculiar mix of polyphonic
liturgical songs played on CD by the likes of the Hilliard Ensemble and the
Tallis Scholars in conjunction with some peculiar downbeat jazz.

   Was this the kind of send-off that Crystal deserved?  Or for that
matter, Judy?  Polly Tarantella is convinced that it wasn't.  That in some
way, given her unquestionable eminence, this funeral was yet another
humiliation piled onto Crystal Passion's ultimately tragic American tour.
She also deemed that it was worse than demeaning for Crystal's funeral to
be bundled together with Judy's.  That wasn't how it seemed at the time. 
However much I'd have preferred it otherwise, the respective set of kin
believed that a joint funeral for two women who'd worked, lived and died
together (more or less) was entirely appropriate.  And whatever Polly has
to say, it wasn't a cut-price, pauper's funeral.  I admit that it wasn't a
State Funeral attended by the great and good from the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame or by a line of mournful Grammy winners.  Perhaps only this could
satisfy Polly.

   Given the circumstances, the funerals were well organised and well
attended.  The attendance was boosted by the presence of Matt, Joe, Skull,
Professor Simon Kurrein and Veronica Wilson.  And it certainly was no
insult to have the service led by Reverend Emery Cleopas.  Although nobody
in the Giordano family was a regular churchgoer, Marianne had a soft spot
for the Anglican community and its Episcopalian cousins.  She believed it
was better to have the service conducted by someone professionally
qualified and, through the grace of the Most Reverend George Carey, he was
automatically sympathetic to a group of mostly English people who were
having to bury their dead in a foreign land.

   Would it have been better to repatriate the bodies?

   Well, whatever Polly thinks, this isn't a cheap option.  And anyway
there's now a corner of South Carolina where Judy and Crystal will forever
be neighbours.  Furthermore, Crystal's grave is now almost equally as far
apart from where her parents now live.

   Rock Hill, SC, now benefits from having an extra source of tourist
revenue in the form of visitors to the Forest Hills Cemetery which those
inspired by the life and music of Crystal Passion can come and pay their
respects.  The good people of the fourth-largest city of the Charlotte
metropolitan area have a claim to fame that would have been denied them if
Crystal had been buried instead in a suburban London churchyard.

   Would anyone outside of the Carolinas have ever heard of this otherwise
unremarkable American city otherwise?

   Chapter Fourteen ===============

   Both Crystal's and Judy's parents preferred that their daughters be
buried rather than cremated so the final moments of the funeral weren't of
two coffins sliding inside a furnace and being incinerated.  Instead a
procession of hearses snaked out of the funeral home and wound through the
roads and avenues of Rock Hill to Crystal's final resting place at the
Forest Hills Cemetery.  I was a mess of sorrow and tears during the whole
drive.  The brief respite I'd had from my grief by the need to comfort
Marianne abandoned me now that there were others, including Crystal's
father, who'd taken on the role.  It was Andrea who once again shouldered
the burden of comforting her sister as we processed towards the cemetery
and the already excavated rectangles of soil into which Crystal and Judy
would be separately buried.

   I knew very little at the time about the conventions and customs
associated with funerals and wasn't at all sure what was the right thing to
do.  I'd seen in movies that someone or other was supposed to throw
something into the open grave, so I tossed in a linen handkerchief that
Crystal had once given me.  However, nobody else followed my gesture and I
still regret having lost this small memorandum of Crystal's life.

   The funeral wasn't as private as any of us would have liked.  How could
it have been?  All of North and South Carolina, or at least those in the
Charlotte metropolitan area, were interested in witnessing the final
chapter of the Catawba River Murder (or the River Park Lynching or the
English Rock Star Double Homicide).  And there were those, I'm sure, who
believed that Crystal deserved to die for the sin of being a godless
lesbian atheist who shamed the moral rectitude of York County, SC.

   There was a modest coterie of photographers who followed the funeral
procession all the way from the exit door of the Joseph Armistead & Sons
Funeral Home to the Forest Hills Cemetery.  Although they kept a respectful
distance, I could still hear the distant click of camera shutters as I bent
my head down in memoriam.  However, not even Polly has suggested that it
was the relentless hounding of the press that had brought about Crystal's
death.  It might have worsened the generally sour atmosphere in the weeks
and days that culminated in her tragic murder, but Crystal had escaped
press attention sufficiently enough for her murderers and Judy's lynchers
to remain unknown, undiscovered and free from the penalty of justice right
up to the present day.

   My enduring hope is that someone somewhere in Rock Hill or the Charlotte
metropolitan area, almost certainly middle-aged and possibly balding, is
now feeling sufficient remorse for his role in the rape and murder of the
woman Polly Tarantella deems the greatest performer of popular music since
at least the 1970s that he will come forward to the Rock Hill PD and hand
himself in.

   And with the funeral over, there was no longer a reason to remain a
moment longer in South Carolina or the United States.  So at long last (and
after far longer than any of us would have chosen) we could set off for
Charlotte Douglas International Airport and fly back to the United Kingdom.

   I don't believe a single one of us was sorry to leave America behind.

   Not that our arrival at Heathrow was especially auspicious.  Or
particularly anything much.  There were no paparazzi or reporters stalking
us on our return.  In fact, it was pretty much as we'd hoped.  The tensest
moment was the wait by the carousel for our luggage after which we strolled
unhindered through the green channel and then by Piccadilly Line on the
long tube ride home.

   It wasn't that our tragic American tour hadn't been news.  It just
wasn't the sort that would justify a press stake-out or more than a few
column inches in the middle pages of a family newspaper.  Sure there'd been
obituaries for Crystal Passion in the Guardian, the NME, the Wire and Smash
Hits, but I got the impression that the tribute writers got their
information directly from our label, Gospel Records.  There was a brief
mention of Crystal Passion's murder on Have I Got News for You in which
more effort was expended in explaining to Ian Hislop what a Riot Grrrl was
than on any insight into Crystal Passion or her music.  It was obvious that
what interested the British media wasn't that a couple of almost unknown
musicians had been murdered but that it took place in South Carolina which,
by virtue of being one of the original Confederate States, was therefore
the home of racism, religious bigotry and mind-blowing ignorance and
stupidity.  There is nothing that the British-in particular, the
English-like more than to feel superior to a nation of straw-chewing,
cross-burning, negro-lynching hicks.

   A few radio plays of our songs, most particularly by the likes of John
Peel and Mark Radcliffe, piqued interest in our music and this led to an
early peak in our CD sales, which the hurriedly mixed and marketed
posthumous fourth album went some way to satisfy.  Although I still think
The Last Word is the least satisfactory of Crystal Passion's albums,
including her first solo acoustic album, it is the biggest selling.

   "So, who's still active in the Crystal Passion Band?" our manager,
Madeleine Tartt, asked when we met her in a small coffee shop near
Paddington Station.  I was accompanied by Tomiko and Jacquie while
Madeleine had her chunky well-thumbed Filofax ever close at hand.

   "Andrea says she won't have anything more to do with the band," I said.
"Without Crystal, my sister says there's no point in the band continuing."

   "OK," said Madeleine.  "Who else is there?"

   "Philippa and Bertha have become an item and they're travelling the
world together," I said.  "I think they might be in India or Armenia or
somewhere."

   "I don't think Olivia's interested in sticking with the band either,"
said Jacquie.  "Not if Jane's still playing..."

   "And are you and Jane still in?" asked Madeleine.

   "Only if Pebbles keeps it together," said Jacquie, giving my hand a
reassuring squeeze.

   "Jenny Alpha's living with Olivia now," I said.  "So, if Olivia's left,
then I guess Jenny has too.  I don't know where Thelma is, but I don't
think she'd be keen to be involved in a Crystal Passion band without
Crystal.  And I'm pretty sure the same goes for the Harlot."

   "So, let's do the sums," said Madeleine, mostly addressing me.  "If we
assume that you stay in the band, and Jane and Jacquie too, then all we're
left with is a trio.  What about you, Tomiko?  Do you want to work with
Pebbles and the two sisters?"

   "I'd do anything to keep the memory of Crystal Passion alive," said
Tomiko with startling conviction.  "It's what she deserves."

   "So what we're left with is a rhythm section and a sound engineer," said
Madeleine.  "Can any of you sing or play guitar?"

   I shook my head.

   If the three of us were to keep alight the flame of Crystal Passion we'd
be more likely to emulate Underworld or Portishead and pursue a career on
the dance floor, while I'm sure Madeleine would prefer we followed the
examples of Joy Division after Ian Curtis committed suicide or Genesis when
Peter Gabriel left (though I don't think Jane would relish being the band's
Phil Collins).

   "So, what do we do now?" Madeleine wondered.  "There's an album to be
released and I know that Ben from Gospel records would like some remnant of
the Crystal Passion band to be out there to promote the record and even go
on tour.  But I don't think even Ben would be so enthusiastic if all that
appeared on stage was a rhythm section with no lead singer and no lead
guitar or indeed any lead instrument whatsoever."

   "I don't see why not," sniffed Jacquie.  "What about Booker T & the
MG's? What about the Shadows without Cliff Richard?  What about almost
every fucking House and Techno crew you can think of?"

   "That's not gonna work, Jacquie," said Madeleine.  "The album's got a
singer and a guitarist on it.  In fact, it's got three singers and two
guitars.  There's gonna be some pretty pissed-off punters if they go to
what they think is a Crystal Passion gig and what they get is the Chemical
Brothers."

   "There's my friend, Steph," I said.

   "Steph?" wondered Madeleine.  "Who's she?"

   "She can sing and play guitar."

   "And where is Steph at the moment, Pebbles?"

   "She plays with the Palms, a sort of alt-folk group, but I don't think
she's doing anything much at the moment.  In fact, I don't think the Palms
are active at all these days.  It's hard for them to find gigs, especially
in London."

   "She's untried and untested, Pebbles," said Madeleine.  "It'd be a heavy
burden for her to take on the role of Crystal Passion.  Are you sure she's
up to it?"

   "I could ask her..."

   "Well, we don't have many options left," said Madeleine.  "I'm getting
the very real impression that if your friend Steph can't rescue Crystal
Passion then the band has already played its farewell concert."

   I pretty much agree with Madeleine.  The last real gig as Crystal
Passion-that is with the eponymous band leader-was that first engagement at
the Penitence Club where Judy Dildo was the real driving force.  What I'd
prefer to remember as the final Crystal Passion gig was the first one at
the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival where she was accorded so much
respect and adulation.

   And no way was Steph a replacement for Crystal.  The best that Stephanie
Dickens could be was a surrogate Crystal Passion: able to do the job but
never able to match the real thing.

   But Steph was available and, what's more, she was thrilled to accept the
offer.  It was a huge step forward for her.  The Palms weren't really
getting anywhere.  They hadn't been signed to a record label and I don't
think any of their original songs were either especially original or even
particularly good.  But Steph could definitely sing, even if her voice was
more a bluesy mezzo-soprano.  She was also an accomplished guitar player,
at least as good as Crystal in a technical sense.  She could also play
piano, but as I was already the band's keyboard player this wasn't the role
we wanted for her.  And she knew all Crystal's music, especially the songs
on her singersongwriter debut album.  However, although I'd known Steph
since before going to university she was more my sister's friend than mine.
She and Andrea often practiced playing music together in their respective
bedrooms: Steph on guitar and vocals and

   Andrea on the fiddle.

   At the time I thought the music they played was flimsy and dreary with
absolutely no beat or rhythm, but I'd probably rather enjoy it if I heard
it now.

   Steph did as well as she could to fill the lead role in the much
diminished Crystal Passion band.  In fact, she was probably the most
professional and dedicated of any of us.  I don't think Jane, Jacquie and
me really had our heart in the enterprise.  Crystal Passion was dead and
every time we played one of her songs (and all the songs were hers), what
we all heard in our heads was Crystal Passion's voice and Crystal Passion's
guitar whereas what we were actually hearing was Steph's voice and guitar.

   And there were several occasions I collapsed into tears during
rehearsals when I recalled how Crystal used to enthral me with her voice
and her enigmatic lyrics and her idiosyncratic tunes.

   The final tour of an outfit called the Crystal Passion Band wasn't what
I'd call a huge success even though it attracted larger audiences than we'd
ever had when Crystal was alive.  The quartet we now were was not the
ten-piece band that performed on The Last Word.  There was no equivalent to
Judy's electric guitar or the backing vocals from Thelma and the Harlot. 
There was none of Olivia's crazy percussion or Andrea's ethereal fiddle or
Philippa's soaring saxophone.

   Tomiko did her best to help fill the vacuum.  There is a cliché that the
sound engineer is a proper member of a band, in our case the fifth member,
but Tomiko was truly worth two or three of the rest of the band.  She had
the imagination and technical skill of a top club DJ and the ability to
squeeze out more sound than could be expected from a quartet.  I was now
able to properly appreciate Tomiko's role when we were a ten-piece band
where she managed to balance the weird mix of instruments into a pleasing
whole and admired her ability to somehow fill the space of ten instruments
with just four.

   I loved Steph for her commitment and energy and, as the tour continued,
I came to love her in a much more physical way.  She and I were soon lovers
in a kind of distant echo of the love I'd previously felt for Crystal. 
Steph was very different, of course, and not just because she'd never dream
of taking her clothes off on stage (though she had no such reservation in
the bedroom).  She was tall, she was slim and her hair was short and
enticingly boyish.

   Inevitably my relationship with Steph (which outlasted the Crystal
Passion band by several years) resulted in the band's final demise.  Jane
and Jacquie became increasingly less tolerant of what they came to view as
infidelity even when they shared the same bed as us.  And Tomiko didn't
want to be caught between the fury of the two sisters and me and Steph
however much she enjoyed making love with all or any of us whenever and
wherever it might happen.

   "I understand, Pebbles," Madeleine said, mid-way through the tour when I
announced that the Crystal Passion band would cease to be after the final
gig.  "Steph's good.  Very good.  Much better than I dared expect.  But she
ain't Crystal."

   More's the pity, I thought, but I was too loyal to my lover to say
anything disrespectful.  "Perhaps you could manage Steph in a different
capacity," I said.  "Perhaps as an artist in her own right."

   "I'll see, Pebbles," said Madeleine, but she was obviously reluctant to
do so.  It was Crystal Passion that Madeleine wanted to manage and with
Crystal dead, she no more than anyone else could see the point of the band
carrying on any longer.

   Steph did find a manager, but one who better understood the alt-folk
scene.  She went on to play as singer and guitarist with many other bands:
including the River Bank on whose records she's sung duets with John River.
But Steph wasn't a talented composer and never made much impact as a solo
artist.  Although we lived together for nearly a decade, she never
understood or appreciated House music or Drum & Bass or Techno or any of my
club-oriented musical obsessions.  She supported me as best she could when
I released my own records, but it was always a mystery to her how I could
prefer electronic beats and samples to the beauty of an acoustic instrument
and an unmediated human voice.

   I sympathise with her taste in music more now than I did when we were
lovers.  In any case, when we were living together it was a point of pride
that we keep our spheres of musical taste apart.  But even now when I hear
a piece of music by Bob Dylan or Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell or Leonard
Cohen I always speculate on how I'd boost the sound and add a drum beat,
rather as the Source did with Candi Staton.  But it wasn't musical
differences that drove Steph and I apart.

   It was the love of another woman and in this case it was Steph's love
for a girl called Sandra.  And it still hurts when I reflect on the fact
that Sandra is ten years younger than me, that she's sylph-like slim and
has a tin ear.  For fuck sake, she even listens to Mumford & Sons!  And she
watches fucking X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.  How can Steph have got
it so totally wrong?

   After this short-lived postscript of a Crystal Passion Band, there was
little more of note in the band's story for the next few years.  The boost
in sales of the Crystal Passion record catalogue following Crystal's tragic
death soon trickled away.  In fact, in the coming years, record sales
shrunk to virtually nothing.  The corpse of her music was occasionally
jogged into life by radio plays in America, Britain and Europe.  But while
CD and vinyl sales fell off, it was the arrival of the World Wide Web and
the eventual legalization and subsequent growth in music downloads that
brought Crystal Passion's music to the attention of those who otherwise
would never have heard it and had no prior notion of how it should be
classified.

   Polly Tarantella's discovery of Crystal Passion and her music didn't
happen out of the blue.  There were others who'd re-discovered her legacy
long before Polly (and hadn't necessarily paid a penny to download it) and
some of them loved the music so much they created websites to share their
appreciation.  Soon there were Twitter accounts to link her new fans who
lived in countries as far afield as Russia, Korea, South Africa and
Argentina.

   When the internet was young and the top search engine was AltaVista, all
I'd ever found were bizarrely incoherent references to 'Crystal Passion' on
embarrassingly amateurish home-made websites.  But Olivia tipped me off
that I should have another look and this time when I entered 'Crystal
Passion' into the Google search engine I discovered page after page of
links to blogs, forums and online articles and reviews all celebrating
Crystal Passion.  Although most entries were in English, there were other
languages that I recognised such as French, German, Spanish and Italian,
but also those written in alphabets I couldn't read such as Chinese, Arabic
and Cyrillic.

   Weirder still for me to read were the countless references to 'Pebbles',
a name that had become more a private nickname than a stage-name in the
years since I'd played in the Crystal Passion band.  And somehow this
'Pebbles' had become celebrated as the band's second most significant
member.  This might have been a result of my abortive attempt to keep the
Crystal Passion band alive, but mostly from the entirely accidental fact
that almost all the surviving photographs and film of Crystal Passion
featured me in a rather more prominent position than I probably deserved.
It might also have been because I had a memorable stage name that was still
well-known thanks to the endless re-runs of The Flintstones on television
channels across the world.

   It was probably no surprise that the growing online interest in Crystal
Passion should lead to XL Records deciding to buy the distribution rights
to the otherwise deleted back catalogue still officially owned by the now
defunct Gospel Records.  So, overnight, Crystal Passion became a member of
the same staple as Adele, FKA Twigs, Gil Scott Heron and the Prodigy.  As
someone who'd been a fan of Hardcore and Breakbeat in the 1990s, I was
pleased that I'd now become a member of the same label that had released
Liquid's Sweet Harmony.

   Interest in the music grew to the extent that Pitchfork, Quietus, NME,
MixMag and even Q featured articles on what was forever described as the
'unclassifiable' music of the 'tragically deceased' Crystal Passion.  It
was on this wave of enthusiasm that Polly Tarantella's best-selling
biography was published and further increased interest in the band. 
However, what was most important about Polly's championing was her mission
to define Crystal Passion as the most significant music phenomenon since
the arrival of Punk and New Wave in the late 1970s.  In essence, her thesis
is that popular music needed a saviour and that saviour is Crystal Passion.
And it's only when you start thinking about it that you realise how bonkers
this contention is.

   My own view is that Polly's manifesto is compelling to so many people
because there's a widely held belief that nothing of significance has
happened in the world of Rock and Pop since the 1970s.  All you've got to
do is skim though the popular music magazines, especially those dedicated
to Rock Music, and it seems that everything of importance was happening in
the 60s and 70s.  Record sales are still dominated by the likes of Elton
John, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and the Beatles.  Nobody seems to care about
the intervening decades.  If you browse through magazines like Classic
Rock, Rolling Stone or Q, you'd be convinced that music of any worth simply
stopped being recorded after 1975.  So, the assertion that this grand
tradition has now been resurrected from the grave has great popular appeal
to a lot of people.  And this is especially so when the contemporary pop
you hear on MTV and daytime television is either astonishingly banal or
incredibly derivative.

   But I don't really agree with Polly at all however much my friends and I
have benefitted from her critical re-appraisal.  Crystal definitely didn't
see herself as Rock Music's Messiah.  In fact, she didn't have much
interest in the mythology of Rock and Pop at all.  No more than me did she
believe that popular music is defined only in relation to the hallowed
tradition of the four-piece electric guitar band.  She didn't see herself
as the natural successor of Elvis Presley, John Lennon or even Joni
Mitchell.  It wasn't that she didn't enjoy Rock and Pop music.  It was that
she believed in a broader, wider, more varied music tradition.  She made no
distinction between World, Jazz, Folk or Classical Music.  She was more
likely to listen to Steve Reich, Henry Purcell, John Coltrane, Mahalia
Jackson or Tania Maria than anything by Pete Townshend or Bob Geldof (not
that she actively disliked their music).

   I don't buy into the myth that the history of music is defined by
reference to Pop and Rock.  There was a lot of good music around before the
Teddy Boys ripped up cinema seats with their flick-knives after having
watched a film of Bill Haley and the Comets play sanitised arrangements of
classic Rhythm & Blues songs.  And anyway, I'd rather go to a club and
dance to House, Techno or Bass.  And when I'm at home I'm more likely to
listen to Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin or Flying Lotus than a tedious Rock
album with macho guitar and dreary vocals.  But that's my view.  And I
don't accept the view that there's ever been a major interruption in
service during the time that I've been listening to music.

   But I can't complain too much.  I may not subscribe to Polly's opinions
of Crystal Passion's significance and I certainly don't agree with the more
extravagant claims of her greatness as a composer, a musician or a person,
but I'm very grateful to the interest and attention paid to the music and
the four albums that were released.

   It particularly gratifies me to reflect that although Crystal Passion my
lover was murdered more than two decades ago, Crystal Passion the recording
artist and composer has now risen from the dead and is walking amongst us.
I just hope that those who buy her records are actually listening to her
music and not just acquiring them to keep up with fashion and to appear
knowledgeable about contemporary popular music.

   But if Crystal's music is to be remembered forever then I guess the
significance of her death is that only her corporeal existence has come to
an end and that she has somehow truly attained immortality.