Chinaski

by Frances Vick

  There had been a colleague’s retirement party the night before, and both pathologist and his assistant were mildly hungover. They could have done without dealing with a body that was at least four days old, but it was too late to swap shifts, though they’d both tried.

  They noted some identifying features: a tattoo on the top right bicep of an upper case C inside a circle. Another tattoo around the left bicep, of an intertwining pattern. Three non specific scars were seen on the chest, jaw and right buttock, and the top of the left thumb was minorly deformed. Each earlobe had been pierced twice. The pathologist took out his dictaphone:

  “The body is a white male who appears to be the stated age of 24. The body is of 71 inches in height and thin. The head is normocephalic and covered with light brown hair of moderate length that has been chemically lightened. The eyes are blue. The teeth are in good repair. The neck is unremarkable. The abdomen is flat. The clothing, examined separately, consists of –” he gestured to his assistant, who held up the items with gloved hands, “– a black and red t-shirt with printed words on the front and back. There is a moderate amount of brown emesis on the left shoulder of the t-shirt. A pair of jeans with dried mud staining the back leg cuffs. A pair of blue boxer shorts. One black and white converse tennis shoe. A pair of white socks with grass stains on the soles. Additionally the body wears a necklace made of – what’s that? What would you call that? Woven thread with a small plain silver ring hanging from it.”

  He sighed and turned off the dictaphone, and they both took a break before the cutting began and sat with their back to the body. The pathologist told his assistant that his daughter was a fan of this boy – he was in a band, apparently.

  “She says she wants me to snip some hair, to give to her. Can you believe that? She was serious too.”

  When it was time to begin again, the assistant put a rubber brick under the back of the body, so that the neck and the arms fell backward and the chest pushed upwards. It was easier to cut open that way. The pathologist made a deep, Y-shaped incision from the tops of the shoulders to the bottom of the breastbone and swapped to shears to saw through the ribs and remove the chest plate. The assistant took each organ that was handed to him, weighed it, took some samples, and then placed it, dripping, into a bucket. The pathologist muttered softly into his dictaphone, and a heavy, sleepy lull descended on them both. They started to think about lunch.

  Once the torso was emptied, they started on the head, putting the rubber brick under the neck this time. Pulling away the scalp from the skull, front and back, the assistant grunted and braced himself on a fixed doorstop he had brought from home especially for this purpose. The skull was sawn open, the spinal cord severed, the brain removed for examination, and only a series of cavities remained of the young man on the slab.

  They took another break, turned their backs again and carried on their conversation.

  “It’s the not knowing them anymore. That’s what gets to me,” said the pathologist sadly. “You have them, they love you, and then suddenly, they’ve gone. She’s always out, dressing in rags, like so many of them do now. Says she’s a vegetarian now too.” The assistant shook his head in sympathy. “And when she heard we were doing him,” he pointed at the body behind him with his thumb, “she went mad about it. ‘You can’t do that! You can’t cut him open!’ Shut herself in her room, running up the phone bill to all hours. Real drama.” He sighed heavily. “That’s the main reason I tried to swap, didn’t need the aggravation.”

  The assistant offered him a mint. “So did she calm down in the end?”

  “Oh, yes, eventually. But it took a while. I said to her, don’t you want to know how he died? and that did the trick. Think of his mother, I said.” The assistant sniggered. “I said to her, young people die all the time. We do this all the time, and you don’t care about them, and she says, but he’s special. He shouldn’t have died.”

  The assistant rolled his eyes, “Special!”

  Then it was time to finish up.

  When everything was done, everything weighed and washed, the assistant padded the empty chest cavity with cotton wool, put the sacks of organs back in, and sewed everything up.

  Luckily, they’d finished in time to order the full English breakfast at the canteen.

  * * *

  DCG issued a statement:

  “We are shocked and saddened at the sudden loss of such a gifted musician, artist and performer. Our hearts go out to Carl’s family, friends and fans at this difficult time.”

  So did Deep Focus:

  “Carl Howell was not only a charismatic and talented performer, he was a dear friend and a member of the Deep Focus family. Words can’t express the loss we feel and the pain we share with his family and friends.”

  So did Chinaski:

  “Carl was the soul of the band and we are struggling to come to terms with what has happened. We appreciate the respect of our fans and will make a fuller statement soon.”

  So did Carl’s parents:

  “We are deeply saddened by the death of our only son. Carl brought love and laughter into every heart, and we will miss him every hour of every day.”

  Chris Harris wrote a short piece in NME, and had it placed on the first page surrounded by a black border:

  “Carl Howell, lead singer with Chinaski, died unexpectedly a few days ago. Just before the release of their glorious new album, ‘Smelling Roses, Hearing Flies’, an audacious shot across the bows at every other pretender out there. This young man, poised to take us kicking and screaming into a new musical frontier, leaves us all bereft, all weaker, all diminished. Perhaps, just perhaps, Carl Howell died for our sins.”

  The piece was lauded and vilified in equal measure; hated, lampooned, loved and defended in the letters pages for weeks to come. Graffiti appeared throughout the city, throughout the country, scratched into bus windows, etched onto benches, scrawled on walls and phone boxes:

  ‘Carl Howell died for your sins’.

  Then the album was released, two days before the memorial gig at The Bristolian.

  NME

  Review of Chinaski’s ‘Smelling Roses, Hearing Flies’

  And here we have it. Chinaski, the latest indie snack devoured by the majors, release their long awaited second album, and it’s as close to perfect as we hoped.

  For too long, alternative rock has been fearful to stray far from the rules written by Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, and, yes I said it, Nirvana.

  Unlike most of the post-hardcore crowd, Chinaski have had the balls to climb out of the primordial Underground and take a chance on songs that risk poignancy, grace, charm. We saw this on their debut ‘Alloyed’, but the originality and the subtlety of that record was all but hidden behind the walls of muddy sound that so often marrs Deep Focus releases. Signing to DCG, in this case, has resulted in the band’s blossoming. ‘Shattered’, the latest single, is a fine mix of menace and sweetness that manages to be authentic and radio friendly. The thrashy leanings of ‘No Sense’ and the smudgy dark rock of ‘When We Try’ nod to their metal-infused hardcore roots, but push past them, into the light. On ‘Then The Trouble Started’, Carl Howell’s splintering vocals hint at an unimaginable pain, and there is something terrifying and liberating about witnessing that amount of balls-out drama. Never have I heard a record that oozes this much raw emotion. It’s a fine line between authenticity and indulgence, but Chinaski never tip over to the dark side.

  It will be interesting to see them supporting Nirvana later this year. While Nirvana show every sign of becoming the bloated rock gods they claim to despise, Chinaski are the sharp-witted guttersnipes waiting in the wings to steal their ill-guarded thunder.

  (Since going to press it has been discovered that Chinaski’s lead singer, Carl Howell, has died. Our sincere condolences go out to his family.)

  Melody Maker

  review of Chinaski’s ‘Smelling Roses, Hearing Flies

  Chinaski return with their second album, this, their debu
t for DCG.

  While ‘Alloyed’ did much to cement them a place in the indie foreground, this latest has the look and feel of something conceived in haste and born too soon. The band claims to consider long and hard what songs they record and how they record them, the stories of frontman Carl Howell’s perfectionism are legion. That aside, in the last two years we have had their debut album, two singles, an EP, another single, and now this second album. On balance it might have been best to take a break and think things through a little more.

  From the opening track we are on very familiar ground. ‘Shattered’ takes the same guitar melody as their first single ‘Down’, and couples it with a borrowed bassline from Bowie. ‘No Sense’ references The Melvins (and, by extension, Sabbath) and appropriates an entirely inappropriate Pixies style fade out. Only on ‘Then the Trouble Started’ and ‘Walls to Window’ do we get vintage Chinaski, the sound that was so refreshing two years ago, and even these are diluted by flowery guitar overdubs and studio trickery. The fuzzy, doomy quality of ‘Alloyed’ has been replaced by a clean, crisp, flat sound that positively reeks of good health. This is a shamelessly mainstream album, which I wouldn’t have a problem with at all, if Chinaski hadn’t been so forthright about their aims in signing to a major. In retrospect perhaps their defiant posturing about not changing their sound was a way of masking insecurity, an attempt to stave off the inevitable. Much will be made of this album, in the light of Carl Howell’s untimely death, and I have no doubt it will do very well. But those of us who saw something interesting, even unique, in them before, will be sorely disappointed. Much as I admired Carl Howell as a singer and as a musician, I can’t believe that he would be happy with this album. It’s a frustrating end to what was in many ways a remarkable career.

  The saddest thing is that now they won’t have a chance to put right the wrong.

  18

  13th August 1993

  On the day of the memorial gig at The Bristolian, a hard core of teenagers congregated at May Howell’s front gate, bringing with them candles, flowers, ghetto blasters, guitars. At first the neighbours complained, but soon began giving interviews to the press instead. Some of the more enterprising charged the teenagers to use their toilets.

  A photographer arrived with a journalist; they took pictures, gathered quotes. They said it was for NME – a pull out special about Carl – and so everyone was happy to pose, cry and philosophise for the camera.

  After an hour or two the crowd had swelled, spilling over onto adjoining streets. The police moved them on, ushered them to the bus stops and told them to go back to town, and when they did, they followed a breadcrumb trail of flyers posted on walls, phone boxes, windows. Some of them tore the flyers down and passed them around amongst themselves. A crude black and white picture of Carl was printed on each one, and while the text differed between flyers, the message was the same: Memorial. Till late. Carl Howell. The Bristolian. Free with this flyer.

  Over the last few days these scraps of paper had been kept and coveted in dozens of back bedrooms across the city. Those who had managed to get one, copied them for those who hadn’t, and at first they were given out free to friends, but before long they were changing hands for money. By the morning of the 13th, teenagers had positioned themselves along the side streets leading to the pub, and were selling the fake flyers, now printed with ‘not to be resold’ to make them seem more official.

  The Bristolian was locked and dark, it was still morning. People brandishing flyers waited around the doorway or perched on the sills of the large low windows waiting for it to open. Others congregated in the side streets and alleys. The noise grew. By noon, police were urging groups of teenagers to wait in the nearby park, or go home and come back later. Not many went home, and those that did were quickly replaced by more, eager to get into the pub and start mourning. Some fanned out across the city to the record shops or the City Hall steps to wait, but at least a hundred of them obeyed the police and went to the park.

  It was a beautiful sunny day; there was a happy, expectant atmosphere. Rings of kids hovered around ghetto blasters and money was collected for beer and cigarettes. ‘Smelling Roses’ was played, rewound and played again as girls cried next to boys who were happy to comfort them. A slight boy in a Chinaski t-shirt, with a passing resemblance to Carl, brought out his guitar and began hesitantly picking out the melody of ‘Shattered’. Girls and boys edged closer to him, nodding to themselves and each other, whispering the words, wiping away tears.

  * * *

  At two o’clock Peter was spotted walking through the park on his way to The Bristolian, eyes on the ground, headphones in his ears, blind to the unusual crowd. He remained unaware until he was surrounded by drunk, sunburned teenagers, staring at him in mute sympathy. A pretty girl who could only be 15 touched his arm: “We all loved him,” she said. “We all loved him too.”

  He was given an opened warm beer and the small crowd waited respectfully until Peter had taken a sip and handed it back. “Will you be playing tonight?” someone asked.

  Peter shrugged, “How?”

  “We can play, if you want. Me and my band,” piped the slight boy in the Chinaski t-shirt. We’ve been working on covers, we have the whole first album learned. We can play, I mean, if you want a tribute.”

  Peter shuddered but told him to show up at The Bristolian just so as not to hurt his feelings. He’d think of something to say to him then, some way of putting him off.

  “But I don’t think this will be that big a deal. I think we should all just have a few drinks and kind of say goodbye. But I don’t think this should be an event.”

  “Bit late for that,” said another boy cheerfully, indicating the crowd.

  When Peter went on his way, the pretty girl ran after him and gave him a note. “This is for you, now,” she said, shyly brushing his crotch. Edged around with dirty finger prints, black in the folds, smudged with lipstick, it was addressed to Carl. She must have carried it around for a long time, waiting, hoping to meet him. And now it was too late. Peter opened it up as he walked. An obscene note from a child to a dead man.

  He took the long way to the pub so he wouldn’t have to encounter anyone else and pulled his baseball cap further over his face while he knocked at the door. The bar staff moving about inside didn’t look prepared for what was to come. He wondered if any of them had walked through the park and seen the number of people there. He wondered how many flyers Lawrence had printed, and how all those people were meant to fit in the pub. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a TV camera crew at the end of the street, interviewing teenagers.

  The cool, dark bar smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. Someone was scrubbing at a stain on the carpet, coughing, and Lawrence was emerging from the cellar with a lit cigarette and a bad looking hangover.

  “Are you ready for this?” asked Peter.

  Lawrence, sick, squinted over the smoke, “How’s it looking out there?”

  “How many flyers did you print?”

  “A hundred maybe?”

  Peter shuffled his feet. “Look, I think this is a bad idea.” Lawrence widened his red eyes.

  “I mean,” Peter mumbled, “I mean, this isn’t what we thought. I don’t think we thought this through. Something’s happened that’s weird. I mean it’s insane out there. It all seems a bit...”

  Lawrence poured himself a coke, hesitated, and added a shot of vodka. “Peter. It’s happening.” He softened a little seeing Peter’s face. “It will be OK. Most of the people who show up today will be friends, you know? People want to say goodbye, well then they’ll say goodbye. It’s not going to get weird. Not being funny, but you’re not a big enough band for it to get weird.”

  “There’s TV cameras out there though.”

  “Oh,” Lawrence finished his vodka and lit a cigarette, “I doubt it.” He gagged as he inhaled. “Jesus God if I get through today it’ll be a fucking miracle.”

  Later on, as Peter was setting up upstairs, Lawrence cam
e in a few times, each time slightly drunker and slightly more unsettled.

  “There’s a lot of them.”

  “I told you.”

  “Yeah...” Lawrence was shifty, “I told some of them you were going to play. Kind of. Just to get them off my back.”

  * * *

  As the day went on, Peter got more and more nervous. He stayed in the upstairs room, pretending to himself that he wasn’t hiding. The noise from the bar downstairs edged up over the minutes and hours, and by four o’clock it was a bolus of sound, rolling out of the open windows and into the streets. The chatter, the music, merged with the sun drenched clamour in the park nearby, until the whole area hummed with a weird charge. Those unable to edge themselves into The Bristolian spilled over into pubs close by, bringing the infection of jittery excitement with them. Their voices thrummed with it. Their bodies quivered with it. This was a happening of their own making. Some set up ghetto blasters in the street, hunkering down on their heels, perched on curbs, nodding to the music. Pint glasses towered up on pub windowsills and cigarette stubs clotted the drains.

  By five o’clock the sun had grown hazy and the atmosphere began to change. Fractious girls cried easily, boisterous boys tipped over into aggression and more and more of them funnelled into the gaps in The Bristolian. Nikki was pushed aside when she asked for flyers in return for a handstamp. There was no bouncer on the door – that wasn’t how things worked at pubs like these, but the usual compliance of the kids had disappeared. They wanted to come in. They wanted what they’d been promised. There were already rumours going around that something big was going to happen. Maybe...maybe Carl wasn’t dead after all? Maybe he would be here, tonight.