Bob Loop sat on a stool gazing absently at the sticky sheen that stretched over the long curved bar.  Comfortably oblivious to the other patrons save the odd bump to his back or temporary hand on his shoulder as they ebbed and flowed around him.  Bob’s perch afforded his easy access to Inigo Dick, the acne scarred barman who would occasionally dance the length of the bar to refill Bob’s glass with whatever he had to hand.

Bob, having long since built up an immunity to alcohol, wasn’t fussy.

Bob’s reverence for the process of drinking meant total devotion to the appearance of single minded oblivion his lone stool and familiarity with the barman suggested.  So effective was his appearance that people rarely attempted to engage with him on anything but the shallowest of levels.  Bob liked it that way.  It added to the whole affected mystique of the thing.

Bob’s stool slowly rocked under him.

Turning, Bob came face to face with Pearl Hammond, striking in a blue dress seemingly held aloft by the enormous shoulder pads that made her shoulders uniquely suited, so Bob thought, to the support of various bar snacks.

“Hello Bob.”

Bob Loop made a few mental calculations concerning the level of inebriation it was acceptable to project to dissuade this oddly familiar woman from continuing the nascent conversation.

“Why are you looking at me like that Bob?”

Perhaps a few more seconds of awkward silence.

“I’m really sorry, I thought you were someone else…obviously.”

Hiding the sense of victory behind a slurred, “s’ok,” Bob returned to staring at the sheen on the bar.

“It was just that you looked so familiar.”

Pearl’s eyes, fixed straight ahead, scanned the assorted bottles that Inigo occasionally stirs from their dusty slumber for his more adventurous patrons.

“I’m meeting some new old friends here tonight.  I guess in the excitement of it all…”

Bob’s brow furrowed instinctively.

“This is my first proper night out of the clinic.  I guess I’m a bit lightheaded still.  Everything’s a bit of a blur these days.”

The sense of victory long since passed Bob’s features prepare themselves for the coming onslaught.

“I’m Pearl.”

Turning slowly Bob again sits facing Pearl in her angular blue dress.

“Hi.”

“Sorry about the whole ‘Bob’ thing.  You don’t mind if sit with you a while?”

“Not at all,” lies Bob.

Bob and Pearl sit in silence for a moment, the bar having imperceptibly filled with the night’s traffic.  It was at approximately this point that Bob’s sobriety really started to weigh on him.

“There was all this talk of rebirth.  They went on and on about it at the consultation, at the pre-op, in all that stuff they plaster over the walls.  In the end though, if I’m honest, all it felt like was a very dull grey headache and an strange feeling of…’tightness’.”

It was at the tail end of this moment of awkward ‘sharing’ that the friends Pearl had referred to earlier descended on Bob’s beleaguered bar stool.  All oddly dressed, all youthfully beautiful in that odd way that suggests the entire ageing process in a smile yet anchors those lucky enough to gaze upon them in the enamoured present.

Bob had a horrible sense of foreboding.

“Pearl!”

“You look incredible!”

“How do you feel?”

Pearl sat there absorbing the attention of her new old friends.  Seemingly forgotten, Bob slowly returns to his contemplation of cheap alcohol’s ability to be both adhesive and reflective when applied to well worn wooden surfaces…

“Bob!”

“No, no.  That’s not Bob.  We’ve been through that.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”

Bob doesn’t budge.

“I taught Bob Loop’s father, what, 80 years ago now.”

“How time flies.”

Ale Mania cropped up on (the excellent) Neu Magazine back last summer with the Garage Punk vibes of DC Rails.  They’re just about ready to unleash their debut album on Volar Records (whose Cold Pumas 7″  we featured a couple of weeks back).  The album is not representative of either of those reference points though, ranging from experimental synth tracks not a million miles from Water Borders covering Terry Riley through to this, a total New Order jam straight from Arthur Baker’s cocaine bunker.

Ale Mania – United States of Abamonation

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with volar records