The day Ballard died, 19 April 2009, I was twenty-six years old and newly single. I had heard the news late in the evening.
Standing in the antiseptic, anodyne Angel shopping centre. People smoked outside of the Islington Academy. I had quit two months previous. Propagandhi had just finished playing. The night was open to more drinking, talking.
A text message had come through, cutting through digital fog, imparting the news to me. Sweaty elation made somehow more finite. Everything ends. Heroes gone. No heroes.

We sat in a pub nearby, swigged on a pint of cider. I thought of the first Ballard novel I had read, ‘The Drowned World’. As I looked at my companions, sinking into various states of liquid oblivion, it seemed oddly appropriate. Ballard’s work – along with other leading lights of the British New Wave (Moorcock, Harrison, Aldiss) – had been a constant in my adult life, a writer who I would gush over whilst inebriated, a writer who female friends claimed not to ‘get’, a writer who had peered through all that seemed dull and unimportant in modern life and saw the insanity lurking there. A unique force. Gone now, made part of other people’s fictions, their real-life stories influenced by the truth that never was.

We had never believed Ballard was real, not really real. His life story so famous, his books so perspective-altering that he could never have lived in…Shepperton. But he did. We were happier now he was dead, resigned to history, now he could grow and swell into distorted flabby myth. A distended legacy.

The day Ballard died, 19 April 2009, I sat in a pub, sweat drying on cool skin after a ferocious punk gig. Thought about going vegan, of starting smoking again, of ex-lovers and future adventures, of atrocity exhibitions, car crashes, sexual openings, boredom and humdrum psychopathys.

Ballard died, and I was still alive.

Helping out brilliant anarchist folk singer Al Baker and hyperliterate, Marxist rapper The Ruby Kid in their Red Scare tour… we can’t wait, and you can’t either.

AL BAKER

THE RUBY KID

PRESS1

3 CHORD CRAIG

Doors: 7pm

Price: £3

The comedian’s onstage

And he’s pissed at the poncey liberal middle classes

So far up their own arses

He wants to explode their politeness

Test their preconceptions

Which he can seize, rebuild and freeze

And then hold up them high

As an example of comedy’s progression

He’s had several Bill Hicks sessions

He knows the score

Thinks comics who talk about nothing are a bore

So he decides to be “dark”

He decides to be “edgy”

And anyone who doesn’t laugh

They’re just too cagey

So rape joke after rape joke

Shoots out of his mouth

And it’s all cool

He can handle the audience’s “ooohhh”s

Because if you’re offended

He’ll refuse to mend it

He’s being ironic, y’see

And doesn’t really mean it

So for a few minutes that room becomes Joke Rape World

While downstairs in the pub a girl

Goes to the toilet, her staggering ever so slight

She’s had one too many, but that’s alright

It’s Saturday night

And after a hard week’s work

She deserves to relax

But as she turns her back

Her date gets out his wrap

And pours the powdered white fellas

Into her Stella

And the following morning, naked, she wakes alone

Although she swears somebody walked her home

Her heads thumping

Stomach’s churning

Usual Sunday hangover burning

But then

She feels a sting in between her thighs

Reaches down, lightly touching the pain

Examines her fingertips, and her eyes strain

At the dark, drying blood

And she feels the red rising of silent shame

And because she can’t remember

She thinks she’s to blame

The comedian continues

Leading the audience through the world of sarcasm he’s built

And after every laugh

They have a tiny collective spasm of guilt

But there’s no looking inward as to why

Waving that social conscience goodbye

Because the chances are good the comedian doesn’t hate women

Just loves the superiority of the stage

And the glow of winning

The rape jokes are just short cuts

To an easy reaction

And there’s no harm

As long as he’s funny

And his timing’s tight…

… Right?

But just because he’s not a misogynist

Doesn’t mean he can’t preach it

And just because he’s attempting rebellion

Doesn’t mean he can’t teach the shit

We’ve been fed all our lives

Irony without a reason

Is just an empty excuse for teasing

And it takes the piss

Because when that comedian leaves the mic

Joke Rape World still exists

It insists on slicing our ears

To the sound of billions of women

Hammering at every wall of all the years

And rape just becomes something

That happens on our TVs

And as the audience leaves

No one sees

The guy leading the paralytic girl

Towards the humming taxi

Rape jokes just keep rape in its silent cage

And irony puts a stitched smile on the victim’s face

It’s all about emphasis and perspective

About where all your comedic rage is directed

And this is where the problem gets dissected

Because there are some funny aspects of this harsh subject

Tearing into a system that gives longer sentences to weed dealers

Telling us a girls deserve it just because they’re too easy

Being drunk, wearing short skirts

They’re asking to be hurt

All these things can be the aim of satire

A torch to set fire to unthinking views

And this our cue to put a stop to it

Because if irony’s a comedian’s only excuse

It just doesn’t fucking cut it

You’ll find us in the sweat
You’ll find us in the speakers
You’ll find us in the shaking walls
You’ll find us in the cracks of the street
With the uprising moss
Fists raised aloft
Because we know what not doing this costs
It’s in any squat
Pub back room
And on any rooftop we got

This our spot
Our place to stand
Our line in the sand
Etched with grins
And ear drum shattering dins
This is loud
Because it’s gotta match every “Ya Basta!”
And every time someone clutches a mic
In their nervous sweaty palm
It helps us move on that little bit faster
We’re not plastering over cracks
We’re creating space between the gaps
Because too many songs, books, poems and raps
Just scratch and sniff the surface
So this is the shout of the seething surplus
The sound of needing purpose
The finger to the promoters
Who try to make us jump through hoops
Looping us a noose
Confusing and losing us
Hanging price tags off words and sounds

But fuck that

This has been around since the dawn of authority
Since the birth of commodity
It’s survived censorship
Execution
Nuclear bombs
Wars
Genocide
It’s survived and made history
So fucking move aside
You reckon a little bit of money is gonna stop this tide?
This is stronger than you’ll never believe
A bullied kid wiping his nose on his sleeve
Preparing his shield
For when the big kids come calling
It’s the dust clearing after Goliath’s falling
It’s the lure of the siren
The drug stash of Lord Byron
The broken people climbing
The throat of a lion
Flaming semaphore frantically signing

Between the gaps
Is where the geeks take over

Between the gaps
Somewhere in the middle of being pissed and sober

Between the gaps
We try and take it back to the start

And I’m humbled and overjoyed
That I play my part