Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Sorry to butt in,’ it’s Jude, who hasn’t gone off with Gaz, ‘but I have a guitar you could borrow. If you like.’

Elf double-checks this. ‘You brought a guitar here?’

Jude looks sheepish. ‘I was hoping you’d sign it.’

There’s still no sign of Ray, so Dean calls Shanks’s flat from a phone booth in the lobby – Ray has no phone – to see if they even left. Nobody replies. They’re late, they hit traffic, they got a flat, they forgot … could be anything. Back in the venue, night has blacked out the long glass wall. This place must bleed heat. A basic lighting rig hangs above the stage, but the lighting officer is on strike, so the bleak strip-lights stay on. ‘I’ve known morgues with better vibes than this,’ says Dean. Griff makes a few final adjustments to his kit. Off to one side, in a storeroom that smells of damp and bleach, Elf has finished tuning Jude’s loaned acoustic guitar, and is retouching her lipstick in a hand-mirror. ‘Any news of your brother?’

Dean shakes his head. ‘We may as well start.’

‘I don’t think anyone else is going to show up,’ says Jude.

‘The sooner we start,’ says Griff, ‘the sooner we’ll get home.’

‘Break a leg,’ says Levon.

‘Give me a list of legs to break and I’ll work through it,’ mutters Dean. They walk up the three steps to the stage. Sixty or seventy people stand in a loose clump nearby. A few of them clap, led by Jude. Dean walks up to the mic. The room is 90 per cent empty space. He’s suddenly nervous. He hasn’t performed live since the 2i’s show, and that was all crowd-pleasing R&B standards. Tonight’s set-list is based on their own songs: Dean’s ‘Abandon Hope’ and his Potemkin-era ‘Dirty River’; Jasper’s untested ‘Darkroom’ and an instrumental, ‘Sky Blue Lamp’; Elf’s ‘A Raft And A River’, written for piano, performed without a piano, plus ‘Polaroid Eyes’ and a few folkier numbers. ‘Okay,’ says Dean, ‘so we’re—’ The speakers howl feedback and the audience winces. That’s why yer do sound checks. Dean fiddles with the mic and shifts it forward a foot. ‘We’re Utopia Avenue. Our first song’s “Abandon Hope”.’

‘We already have done, pal!’ yells a wag at the bar.

Dean flicks an amiable V in the right direction, triggering a few gratifying ‘ Wooo! ’s. Dean makes eye-contact with Jasper, Elf and Griff. Griff takes a swig from his bottle of Gold Label. ‘When yer ready,’ says Dean. Griff flashes him the finger. ‘And a-one,’ says Dean, ‘and a-two, and a-one, two, three—’

Griff buries the end of a lurching ‘Abandon Hope’ under a rockfall of drums. It’s never sounded so shit at Pavel’s , thinks Dean. The half-arsed applause is more than they deserve. Dean goes over to Griff and says, ‘Yer played too fast.’

‘ You played too fookin’ slow.’

Dean looks away in disgust. Elf’s strumming was pointless and her harmonies were off. Jasper’s solo failed to ignite. Instead of a three-minute firework display he offered a minute of squibs that went nowhere. Dean can’t blame anyone but himself for fluffing the lyrics in the third verse, or for the croaked, wobbled, missed notes. Until this evening, he believed ‘Abandon Hope’ was the best song he’d ever written. Was I kidding myself? He pulls Elf and Jasper into an emergency huddle, which Levon joins. ‘That was bollocks.’

Levon starts: ‘Oh, I didn’t think it was all that—’

‘If we try “Darkroom” without a piano,’ says Dean, ‘it’ll die.’

‘“House Of The Rising Sun”?’ suggests Jasper.

Dean’s unimpressed. ‘Without an organ?’

‘It’s an old American folk song,’ Elf points out. ‘It pre-dates the Animals by six decades, at least.’

Dean wonders how long he’ll be able to put up with her.

‘Are we holding you lot up?’ yells the wag at the bar.

‘What do you want to play, then?’ asks Elf.

Dean finds he doesn’t know. ‘“Rising Sun” it is, then.’

‘Once we win them over,’ says Jasper, ‘we’ll do an original.’

Dean goes over to Griff, who’s opening another bottle of Gold Label. ‘Forget the set-list, it’s “House O’ The Rising Sun”.’

‘Aye, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’

‘Just bloody play it.’ Jasper steps up to the mic. ‘This next song’s about a house of ill-repute in New Orleans, where—’

‘“There is … a house … in New Orleans … ”’ begin the bar-football players, who haven’t stopped playing since they arrived.

‘Never heard this one before,’ calls out the bar wag.

Until now, Dean has thought of ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’ as an indestructible song, but Utopia Avenue are proving him wrong. Jasper’s vocals sound constipated, posh and twattish. Elf’s harmony is a distraction in a song about male remorse. Dean walks too far from his amp and his piece-of-shit guitar lead unplugs itself from his piece-of-shit amp. The audience laughs as he scrambles back to plug it in again. Jasper doesn’t cover for him and launches into the second verse without any bass to buoy it along. Griff plays ploddingly – a deliberate ‘fook you’ , Dean suspects, for daring to tell him he was playing too fast during ‘Abandon Hope’ . Nobody in the audience is dancing. Or even swaying. They just stand there, their body language saying, Well this is shit . A group breaks off and leaves. Jasper’s solo misfires again. If he was this useless at 2i’s , thinks Dean, I’d have never joined the band. The swinging doors over by the bar keep swinging. We’re clearing the place out . Dean joins the third verse, hoping Jasper will take the hint and drop away. He doesn’t. He fingerpicks the last four bars minus drums and bass, like Eric Burdon’s intro on the Animals’ version, but it just highlights how inferior the whole performance has been. Not an ounce o’ showmanship , thinks Dean. Hopeless.

On the final line, feedback jags out of the speakers. Not in a cool Jimi Hendrix way: in a bad village-fête-PA-system way. Someone shouts, ‘Heard better!’ Dean can only agree. He looks at Levon, who stands with his arms folded, watching the dwindling audience.

They convene around the drum-kit. ‘Pretty shit,’ says Griff.

‘“Pretty shit”’s too kind if yer ask me,’ says Dean.

‘What’s next?’ asks Elf. ‘“A Raft And A River” without a piano is going to sink without trace.’

‘What about an electric “Any Way The Wind Blows”?’ suggests Levon. ‘You’ve done it at Club Zed a few times.’

‘We were only pissing around,’ says Dean, who thinks Elf’s signature song needs drums like an albatross needs propellers.

‘We’ve nowt to lose at this point,’ says Griff.

‘Any Way the Wind Blows’ is the least worst so far. Griff keeps the tempo slower than on Elf’s recorded version, and Jasper ornaments each line. Dean finally clicks with Griff and they stay in lockstep. The mic barely picks up Elf’s guitar, but only twenty people are left watching. Jude is still there, clasping her hands. She smiles at him, and Dean tries to smile back. The doors at the back swing open. Six or seven guys barge in and Dean thinks, Trouble. They’re dressed more like mods than students. The barman folds his arms. A shout – ‘I said , FIVE fucking BEERS!’ – is heard over the music, and the surviving audience turn around to look. The band plays on. Dean hopes someone is calling for the cavalry, and that Brighton Polytechnic’s cavalry is more than a wheezing porter. Dean hears more shouts: ‘Yeah? If you won’t serve us, I will!’ There’s an exodus from the bar area. Even the bar-football players stop and scuttle off. The mods are helping themselves to beers. This should get the police involved, but Dean doubts they’ll be here any time soon. The band reaches the end of the song, but only Jude and a couple of others applaud. The others melt away as the mods approach the stage, holding beers. Their leader has a bullish neck, rat’s teeth and a shark’s eyes. He gestures at Elf. ‘When’s she flashin’ her udders?’