How the Mighty Fall

The bass thumped through the room, rattling the bones of the eckied-out dancers once loyal to your sound, moving their bodies to the rhythms emanating from the stage up front. Look in one direction and you see writhing, sweat-glistening bodies doing their best to stay upright, and look in another, and you see old-school ravers on the come up, nodding their heads to the rhythm.

Through it all, you move with purpose. Disoriented from the throbbing bass pulsing through your brain, each step is like fighting a war you can’t win. But still, you fight.

“Watch yerself, mate,” some wide-eyed madlad says, slamming his shoulder into yours. Ordinarily, he’d be lying on the floor with his already dimmed lights fully punched out for such an infraction, but today… today is no ordinary day. You’re here to confront that bastard playing the tunes.

Up until a week ago, you were the king of this manor. The strobe lights, seeking to blind the congregation there to worship your sound, bend only to you. You’d worked your arse off to get that status. King of the Bass. Lord of the fucking beat. That was you.

You had it down to a science. You’d start low and deep, get the punters chomping at the bit for a big drop to tickle their brainstems. And you’d give it to them, good God would you. They had to work for it though — that made the drop all that much sweeter.

It was last Saturday; you’d just finished a monster set the likes of which the South of England hadn’t seen in decades. Not since the heyday of the rave scene in the early 90s. Back then, when the acid was as pure as the intentions. Since those days, it’s been watered down. The purity slashed, foreign influences having moved in and monopolised.

Coppers, too. Undercover bobbies. They’d stick out like sore thumbs, for the most part. You could always tell. A genuine pillhead, and I mean the genuine article, created only through years of chemical intervention, had a certain je ne sais quoi no undercover bizzie could replicate.

Still, you could never be totally sure if the upstanding gentleman in the corner shilling eckies was the real deal. One wrong purchase and you end up on the wrong side of a wired-up plod with anger issues and a bee in his bonnet.

The night you got axed, you walk down from the stage, the remnants of the adrenaline still dancing in your bloodstream, and head backstage. Lager from the fridge, handful of stale crisps from the bowl on the table, and you collapse down on the tatty couch, letting the last of the adrenaline do its work.

With your set done, the support act is back on stage doing the shutdown procedure. Even through the thick walls of the green room, you can hear his sounds eking through. You lay back, letting the muted music wash over you.

“Hello Martin,” comes a voice from the now open door, interrupting your post-show wind-down, “Can I have a word?”

Hiding your annoyance, for civility is the cornerstone of one’s good nature, you say: “Of course Michael, do come in.”

Michael, the club manager does come in. He sits down on the chair next to your sofa, and you sit up at the same time. His crumpled suit rippling as the buttons hold on for dear life, fighting a losing battle against his ever-growing stomach. The years had not been kind to him. In the cramped space, your knees nearly rub together. Not to worry.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” he begins.

“Just let it out,” you interject, projecting the air of a Buddhist monk, always calm, always stoic.

He uhms and ahs for a while, before getting to the main event. Some small talk about the good old days of the early 2000s.

“Look, mate, we need to let you go.” He says, eventually.

There are no wellness retreats, no finding-yourself-through-meditation, new age bullshit that would imbue you with enough self-control to bottle up the rage that boiled to the surface at that moment.

“You’re fucking kidding me?” You ask. “Seriously, this is some kind of sick joke, surely?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You saw the fucking show I just put on, right?” You’re standing, pacing around the room, “You did see that?”

“I did man, you blew the roof off like always, but-”

“No buts. I melted the fucking faces right off the fuckwits out there. You show me one dipshit half, no, a quarter, as good as me.”

“It’s just that money is a problem. Price of everything is skyrocketing.” Michael says. He can’t maintain eye contact, both from his nervousness and your pacing. “We’re having to cut back across the board.”

“That’s just the problem with people like you,” you tell him, spitting the people out through gritted teeth, “You care too much about the money. This shit’s about the art, man, the fucking art of it.”

“I agree,” Michael says to placate you. “You’re an artist.”

“More than an artist! I’m the lord of this place. People pay pilgrimage to see me up there, coming from hundreds of miles to Afterglow to see Stag Flow do his thing.”

“They do. They really do, man. Money is a huge problem though. I’m sorry, Martin. I am.”

A silence falls over the room. You can’t believe what this fucker is telling you. No more than ten minutes ago, you had that crowd of goblins in the palm of your hand. And now this bastard, no more than an underling, was telling you you’re not worth the fee.

“Would you consider,” Michael asks, cutting the silence, “staying on pro bono?”

“Get to fuck!” You yell out, lobbing your half-empty bottle against a wall, “I wouldn’t stay in your grotty little hovel if you paid me double.”

And with that, you storm out. No time to talk. Rage too strong. Mind too hot. You leave the green room, walk back through the writhing masses of people still dancing, one or two stop and stare, in awe at seeing the great Stag Flow down there with them. No time to talk, the anger was bubbling beyond control.

Between then and now, the sacking a week ago, you’re not all that sure what’s happened. There were pills. There were women. There were parties and there was coke and there was pain and there was blood. But once you came out the other side, you had a clarity you never thought possible.

Stag Flow would reclaim the throne. You would take back what was rightfully yours.

And before you know it, you’re back in Afterglow, that grotty little hovel you were once king of. But now, you’re here as a civilian. In your day, it was strictly techno. The drum and bass shite the new twat was playing would come to a stop, pronto.

The D&B is throbbing through the floor, reverberating up through your shin bones and into your body. You push your way through the dancing patrons, elbowing and kicking and chinning a couple of cunts who thought they could stand in your way.

Up at the decks now, you stand in front of the head-high speakers, the invisible sound waves coursing through your body like a stampede of buzzed-up rhinos looking for war.

“Turn that shit off!” you yell up to the DJ. He doesn’t oblige. He looks down at you, smirks, then turns the shite up louder. You kick and punch and nut the speakers, but that has little effect.

“Come down here!” you yell up, which again, does nothing but give you a sore throat.

“Alright then, mate.” You run behind the decks and start pulling cable after cable. First, the lights shut down, then the smoke machines, and then finally the music cuts out. In the silence, the sound of three hundred pairs of grimy trainers squeaking against the sweat-sodden floor comes to a stop as the last gyrations cease.

That silence turns to anger at the sudden stoppage of the tunes, and the crowd lurches forward.

Right as you climb up onto the stage, ready to give your rousing speech to the masses that will see you whip them up into a frenzy, help you overthrow the tyrannical Michael, and see you once again installed as the rightful King of Afterglow, you’re grabbed by the shoulders and manhandled through the crowd.

Being dragged by the bouncers, you start to give your speech regardless. Time to win hearts and minds. “People of Afterglow, the great Stag Flow has returned!” You shout, but before you can finish your rousing speech for the troops, you’re out on your arse in the cold, the club doors slammed in your face.

The music returns inside, that hideous drum and bass, and even from here, you can feel the tempo pick up and the rhythm rumble through the ground.

Laying there in the dirt and grime and fag butts of the pavement outside the club, the bouncer looks down at you. Like you’re some ordinary punter. Maybe I want to be down here, you send out telepathically to the meat-armed wanker, ever think about that? Cunt.

Behind the bouncer is a poster. Tonight, and every Saturday, it proclaims to the world, DJ Diamond. That used to be you. Name in lights. And now you’re down here. In the mud.

It’s a cruel world. One day you’re the messiah, distributing rhythm like communion wafers to your eager worshippers, and the next you’re in the gutter.

Getting up, you briefly consider going back, but quickly determine it’s beneath you. Michael would soon regret his actions though, for that he could mark your words. Instead, you walk home. A couple tins and a few lines would be just what the doctor ordered. The perfect mix with which to plot revenge.

Crossing through the park on your way home, you pass a junkie on a bench. You’d always had a distaste for junkies. Control yourself, man. Eckies? Sure, no problem, fill your boots. But as far as you were concerned, anyone who touched skag got whatever they deserved.

“Alright, mate?” He says to you. The whole spare-change gimmick was incoming, you think. Fuck off. You ignore him. That’s until you get closer, and you see his face. And he sees yours.

“Shit,” the junkie says, through cataract-bleared eyes, “you’re Stag Flow. I used to get mangled every night at your shows. Shit, that was, what, twenty fuckin’ years ago or somethin’.”

And just like that, it hits you.

Twenty fuckin’ years ago. It wasn’t budget, was it? It wasn’t rent. It wasn’t to save money.

It was because you were too old. You were sacked because you were a product of a time and place that no longer existed. Your sound was a relic, a thing from a bygone era that nobody, save the cabbage brains from the old school, wanted to hear.

Yeah. You’d had your time. You’d been turfed out because you’re a dinosaur on the brink of extinction. To them, you’re no better than the junkie on the bench in front of you. Old fuckin’ news. Cast aside like an empty, grease-stained bucket of KFC.

This would be your life now. Resigned to always being that old DJ who used to tear it up. You were done.

“Yeah,” you say to the junkie, “I’m him.” You eye the needle poking out of his hoodie pocket. You know what it is. You’ve seen once happy punters, content with the Es, turn to the harder stuff only a needle can provide. You’ve seen how it destroys lives. You’ve seen how there’s no coming back. You’ve seen the desperation of the men and women who’d destroyed their lives with H.

You take a seat beside the man on the bench. You turn to him, and really look into his yellowed, sunken eyes. You look beyond the stereotype. Beyond the grime. He’s not just a junkie. He’s you, and you’re him.

“Mate,” you ask, looking down at the needle, “you got any more of that?”