As Good As it Gets: 1983 and The Ice Cream Summer...

Sometimes in life it's amazing what can happen in a short space of time...1982, a grey, post-punk England and the omnipresent clouds of a cling-film encased culture slowly threatening to engulf all us ex-punks, once believers who'd rallied to the cause and sprayed 'Punks Never Die' on the walls for real up and down the country, were now adrift in a disillusioned sea of nothingness that seemed to stretch to the blackest horizon and beyond. About the only good thing to say about 1982 was the fact that was the year I lost my virginity and started to formulate my plan to escape suburban hell.

Then, slowly, stories about a mythical band called Hanoi Rocks began to appear, like small bursts of lightning anticipating a giant thunderstorm. In snatches at first, creating a small trickle that would lead to a small river, that would lead to a flood that would finally burst the dam open forever...these ripples were the dispatches in Sounds, Noise, Zigzag Melody Maker and Kerrang!...

The sole journals offering hope in a landscape of overwhelming mediocrity. The name 'Hanoi rocks' and accompanying pictures appeared in small, almost illicit snatches and seemed somehow to contain the key that would unlock Pandora's Box and let out a riot of colour and fun in a world gone grey and cold.

Slowly, myself, and close friends Paul and Andy (again, disillusioned ex-punks the lot of us) began to see hope and sensed an aroma of something new occurring. Something that seemed to be talking directly to us, making us feel we weren't the only ones on the planet who were experiencing these feelings. As the dispatches from the front line slowly began to increase, in the local paper it was announced that Bank Holiday Monday, 1983, Hanoi Rocks were going to be playing a date in our town. Well, the excitement grew, we all trooped expectantly to the gig, and there was a true flash of 'Road to Damascus' like clarity. Hanoi Rocks played the best gig any of us had ever seen, and completely electrified the small audience of the faithful gathered that magical night. It was sublime. Finally hope was in sight on the horizon, and like the most exquisite narcotic, we were hooked. A few days later, I went to Carnaby Street and bought a Blue Drape with leopard skin trim, to add to my existing wardrobe of old bondage trousers, ripped PVC trousers and frilly shirts, all topped of with obligatory Johnson's skull and crossbones bootlace ties.

Slowly we all began to feel a part of something special, that normally only comes along once in a lifetime and lights up even the most sullen heart. The intensity increased...Hanoi Live at Reading Festival, London again, and everything seemed to fit...The Lords of The New Church adding their apocalyptic Rock 'n' Roll to the mix, Johnny Thunders resurrecting himself in spectacular fashion at the Lyceum Ballroom, the first rumblings of The Dogs D'Amour and The London Cowboys, and always Hanoi, always the sweet, sweet sound of Rock and Roll. That summer of 1983 remains the best of my life...Hanoi Rocks constantly on the stereo, my friends and I dripping in leathers and mascara and junk shop glad rags, all in the gutter but looking at the stars, a new girlfriend that seemed like an extra from a Russ Meyer movie, and making love all summer long with Back to Mystery City as the soundtrack...This truly was as good as life gets!

Love and Light

Apocalypso

XoXoXo