Of Kid Congo, Panties, Obscene Phone Calls, and a misheard Vicious Cycles lyric

The Vicious Cycles by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

Well, that was a fun night out on Friday! Kid Congo - happy, chatty, and dancin' as he played - did at least two Gun Club songs, "She's Like Heroin to Me," early on, and "Sex Beat;" and, a bit more surprisingly, did a Cramps song, "Under the Wires," the obscene-phone-call classic off Psychedelic Jungle, which would not have been a song I'd've thought he'd do. My girl and I were discussing as she made breakfast the other day whether Kid - openly gay, though I didn't tie that in to the Westender article - might have productively queered that song. Maybe instead of "what colour panties are you wearing/ and how long have you been wearing them" he could have sung, maybe, "what colour boxers are you wearing..." It scans the same, but come to think of it, I don't know if underwear sniffing extends to the queer community. It seems like a pretty hetero fetish, and even there, my girl has NO DESIRE to sniff my underwear. No one in their right mind would. Only men want to sniff only women's underwear, am I right?

I mean, I don't want to sniff girl's underwear... Only SOME men get into that... it's never been my thing.

I did get an obscene phone call from a man, once, mind you. I was sitting at my desk in my old apartment in Maple Ridge, working on an article or something, and the landline rang. I picked it up, and someone said, "I want your hard cock in my mouth right now," or words to that effect. It was clear from his voice that he was deep in a wank. I honestly must admit that I did, briefly, consider it: it would be, after all, nice for the guy if I helped him get off - I do know what it's like to be in that desperate state, and hey, there you go, I could have my first overtly queer experience with zero effort required on my part; hell, it might have been hot! But a minute's calculation resolved it: I wanted to keep writing, didn't want to lose my focus, and, like, I wouldn't want him to get into the habit of calling me or anything. So I said, somewhat apologetically: "Sorry, buddy, I'm just not interested!" And he gave a sad, defeated, "Okay." And hung up.

That was not the most amusing thought that arose because of the gig, mind you. The Vicious Cycles - or the Vicious Cycles MC, I guess they're called now - were one of the opening acts, doing their rockabilly/ biker/ street punk thing, which I liked aplenty; I had seen them once before, at one of their very first gigs, when they rode motorcycles into the Cobalt to open for The Rebel Spell, but I didn't really register at the time how good they were. But the other night, one of their punkier songs had a punchy chorus, repeated many times, which became a topic of conversation between Erika and I, when we discovered we had been hearing the lyrics differently. I thought the chorus was "a trampoline at night," which prompted images of the band breaking into someone's backyard to bounce manically on their trampoline (doesn't SNFU have a trampoline video? Someone does). But I thought it could have been "travelling at night," too, so I turned to ask Erika what she thought they were singing, and she was going back and forth between "a taco in the night," and what at first I thought she said was "attacker with a knife," but turned out, when she texted it to me, to be "attack her with a knife!" (Yikes!). There were so many variants I had to ask the band, afterwards: they joked about changing the lyric to "trampoline," and blanched in horror at "attack her with a knife" - "we're not that misogynistic!" the dude with the hat said (presumably the one named Beardo, despite his beardlessness?). "I mean, we do have one song about cutting you with a razor, but it's not that, um, focused."

Anyhow, apparently the song is actually called "A Tiger in the Night," which, to tell the truth, I like less than anything Erika and I came up with. I think they should go with the trampoline.

Fun night, though!

 (Also by bev davies).