Science Fiction/Double Feature

Last night I played all of the B52s twelve inch singles I have; with the exception of Channel Z and Rock Lobster. Not that I have anything against Channel Z per se, it’s just it isn’t one of their best: and I believe there is only so many times one can hear a certain so enough in a lifetime, and Rock Lobster is certainly one of them. Ever Fallen in Love by the Buzzcocks is certainly another; either way neither of those got played. Love Shack did; Roam did; Song for a Future Generation did and Planet Clair also got a spin.

There is nothing wrong with rock and roll science fiction with a little bit of glam, schmalk and camp thrown in. And I began thinking about my first brush with rock and roll science fiction.

I can narrow it down to October 1979 and can say with some degree of certainty that it took place in Hannover on the Bundes Republik of Deutschland. Me and my schoolfriends were in Germany for supposedly an educational trip with what was hoped would be Lowestoft’s new twin town, Burgwedel. We were the first cultural visitors and we were determined to make an impression.

That’s not true though, we were just being us, and treated the whole thing as a holiday and for me the first time I had been away from home and my parents.
Germany was an odd place; for a start it seemed compulsory that everyone over the age of 14 smoked, and my exchange parents offered me a cigarette soon after I arrived. I refused. They smoked, my exchange partner, Thomas, smoked, his friends smoked.

And then there was the language; I was never the most attentive student, and it fell on poor Thomas’ shoulders to do all the translating as I couldn’t really be bothered. I was too busy soaking up the culture and flavour of life.

I looked at his magazine, Bravo; mainly because there were lots of pictures, words to popular songs, but mainly because in one section there were pictures of barely dressed teens, and a topless girl was still a thing of wonder, and filled my thoughts. A lot. But the magazine had lots about music; a band in make up who spewed blood and ate fire called Kiss were everywhere. They were unheard of in England, or I hadn’t come across them. But in Germany there were huge, nearly as huge as the poster would be if you collected all 52 centre spreads from a years supply of Bravo and stuck them to your wall. On the other side was an equally huge picture of Village People; Thomas was a Kiss fan. To me it sounded like Slade riffs and poor rock, but they were huge. We both like Queen though, and through music we had something in common.

As a non-German speaker, day to day life in Germany for me was not easy; we went to school most days with our exchange partner, and I sat mostly confused through most classes. Some days we went on trips to various places in the area for some understanding of life in Germany. One of these trips was to the border with East Germany, and thanks to a transgression into DDR territory, we did manage to get all tourist coaches banned within a kilometre and a half from the border. But, we did not know that, nor was it our plan; we just followed our exchange partners and walked to the fence, threw things onto the mine field and twanged the wire attached to the automatic machine guns. We also posed for the border guards when they came down to take our picture. I do have pictures to prove all this happened.

And then there was the formal banquet given in our honour at the town hall. Quite who threw the first roll is unclear, but the food fight was quite spectacular and the reporter and photographer from the local paper made it the front story. Oh dear.
So, after about 10 days of being in Germany, Thomas asked would I like to go and see a film? Hmmm. The choice was a film I hadn’t heard of and Alien. In Bravo I had seen pictures of it’s star in her knickers, a scene from the film, and something in me wanted to see more.

Of the film.

Ahem.

But, it was the unheard of film that Thomas and his friends wanted to see; and so late in the afternoon we boarded the tram heading for the centre of the city. As we entered the edge of the city, strangely dressed people with pale make up and dark glasses got on only to jump off and run through dark alley. They seemed excited by something, I wondered what.

We arrived at the cinema only to find hundreds of the strangely dressed people before us, jumping up and down and throwing rice.

How strange.

We paid our entrance fee and went into the cinema and found chaos, people shouting, throwing things and dancing. I noted there was no music. The lights went down, the projector fired up and a pair of bright red lips appeared on the screen and then they began to sing.

“Michael Rennie was ill, The day the earth stood still.”

And so the Rocky Horror Picture Show began. I sat stunned at what was on the screen; I had no idea such a thing existed or had been made. People shouted questions at the screen and the dialogue answered them. Rice was thrown, water pistols fired. What I thought of the film, I can’t remember, the finale of the film did make an impression; Little Nel’s nipples showing over her corset certainly did.
We went back to Thomas’ house in the dark; shadowy figures ran off into the city and night. And in time my memory dimmed of that night.

Years later, back home in Suffolk, I grew up, cinemas closed and my town slowly died. News came of a small theatre in town trying to start a film club, and the first film was to be something called The Rocky Horror Show. Showtime was midnight; I thought I’d go, but why on earth would someone want to show a film at midnight?
When I arrived the place was packed to the rafters; like in Germany people were dancing in the aisles, rice was thrown, and when the house lights went down there were whoops of joy. I had remembered something about the film from Germany, but the realisation that people made a hobby of going to see the film in these midnight shows was an amazing one. I loved it, although, sadly, I was not one of the ones who dressed up, but I did take along rice, water pistols and Bounty Bars. I guess I must have seen the film dozens of time in the cinema in the next ten years. I loved it, I went to the opening night of a revival of the stage play in London, but nothing will beat the experience of that first time, and seeing the film with hundreds of others having a party.