Educating Peter by Tom Cox Page A

It’s all about this heavy metal band who go on tour in America but I won’t go on any more because I’ll just end up talking about it for hours and reciting loads of catchphrases that you’ve never heard of. But the thing is, that thing with Ashcroft, it really reminded me of a scene in the film where the band get lost backstage and can’t find their way to the stage.’
    â€˜Uh. Sounds cool.’
    â€˜So what’s next for Goat Hero?’
    â€˜I dunno. We’re rehearsing next Wednesday.’
    â€˜I’d love to hear some stuff.’
    â€˜I’m not sure you’d like it.’
    â€˜I might. I like some of the stuff you like. We both like AC/DC.’
    â€˜Yeah. But not many of my friends like AC/DC.’
    â€˜What about the girl whose dad’s a TV chef? Whatshername? Does she like them?’
    â€˜Sally? Don’t talk about her. She thought, like, Darius was cool until about two and a half minutes ago, when she suddenly decided to like nu-metal.’
    â€˜Is that because of you?’
    â€˜I dunno. Don’t care.’
    â€˜Why? Is she not attractive?’
    â€˜She’s just kind of immature. There was this girl she used to hang around with, Hannah? And they just used to go round poking people in the ribs at breaktime. I mean, she was in year eight at the time.’
    â€˜Year eight? So what’s that in old-fashioned terms. Second year? Used to—’
    â€˜Not sure.’
    â€˜â€”be different when I was at school.’
    â€˜Oh, right.’
    â€˜So – poking people? What was that all about? Was that a flirting thing?’
    â€˜No. I dunno. It was just, like, really sad. Just poking people! They used to wear their hair in pigtails, too.’
    â€˜Not very goth?’
    â€˜Neh.’
    â€˜And now she likes Staind?’
    â€˜Says she does, yeah. And anyway, they’re just sooo not the best nu-metal band. Raf and me hate them. They’re kind of seriously fake.’
    â€˜So there are different degrees of quality in nu-metal? I never realised that. I thought all those bands sounded phoney and corporate.’
    â€˜No. No way.’
    â€˜Oh, right.’
    â€˜What’s psychedelia?’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜I just wondered. What’s the definition of it? ’Cos you’re always going on about it. And all your mates and everyone seemed to be talking about it tonight.’

VARIOUS ARTISTS – NUGGETS: ORIGINAL ARTYFACTS FROM THE FIRST PSYCHEDELIC ERA (RHINO BOX SET, 1999)
    TOM : ‘ IN MODERN rock music, six years represents an evolutionary microsecond: enough time for Elastica, My Bloody Valentine and The Stereo MCs to record an album (if they all formed one supergroup, put in overtime and cut down on fag breaks). But by 1972, 1966 – the bloom year of America’s garage punk movement – was a period rendered indistinct by at least a couple of aeons’ worth of musical revolutions. If you even remembered it, you were a card-carrying historian.
    â€˜Lenny Kaye, a rock critic who moonlighted as a guitarist for Patti Smith, was such a historian. Disenchanted with rock’s tendency for pomposity in the early Seventies, Kaye masterminded the original
Nuggets
album from his own singles collection – picking twenty-seven low-budget fleeting classics recorded in the suburban garages and cheapo recording studios of America between 1965 and 1968. Was he aware that he was sewing the seeds of punk? Doubtful. But trace a line back from the King’s Road in 1977, via theEast Village in 1974, and you’ll end up here, cradling the genre’s raw, overenthusiastic genesis.
    â€˜By 1972, most of
Nuggets
’ DIY John Townshends and Pete Lennons had long since swallowed their dreams of stardom for jobs at post offices and insurance companies; only the odd few grew into internationally famous pop innovators (Nazz’s Todd Rundgren) and squirrel-shooting metal