My name is Tanya Headon. I hate music. All of it. And I’m bloody good at what I do. Which is why, when picketing a gig of The Feeling I managed to get over 90% of the fans to agree with me that they are just soft rock bobbins and their new album is just the Eagles comeback album with a different sleeve on.
But there is always 10% of idiots who cannot and will not see or hear the light. So when one ugly Feeling fan, and his trophy girlfriend (if the trophy looked like a rhombus) attacked me. Usually I would have been able to defend myself, but after a long lunch on the gin and clove, I was not quite on my game. They managed to pin me down a physically attacked me with an mp3 of the Feelings new single until I was left bruised and bloody outside Koko. I suppose I had it coming, I had left a member of Koko’s bar staff in a similar situation when the charged me eight pounds for a gin and tonic. Still to be knocked senseless by a fan of The Feeling. It was embarrassing, as I faded out of consciousness.
I thought it was over. But it wasn’t over at all. Instead I woke up, all of a sudden in a branch of Our Price, clutching a copy of Still by Joy Division. Physically wrecked by this I snapped the vinyl instantly, upsetting a humourless Joy Division fan (not that there is any other kind). In my disorientation I punched him too. And all the Our Price staff. I extracted my price off of them.
What had happened to me?
Drainpipe trousers. Parka’s that people had spelled Jam on. My mobile phone no longer worked (no more ringtones at least). But something was wrong. I was dressed differently, and had on other clothes. I dashed to the newsagent to see what the date was, but all I could see was a copy of the NME with Spandau Ballet on the cover. Could it be true? Surely this can’t be happening. No mobile reception, no decent coffee shops, no way am I living through new romantics again.
It was 1981.
Maybe I should find my 8 year old self. I could congratulate me for burning Helen Myers in 3B’s copy of Prince Charming. And David Medford’s. And… well everyone in the school’s copy. It was the only way, you hear me? Not that it did me any good. What effect did I really have? …
JUST ONE SECOND. Oh my giddy demons of music what have you done? Have I somehow been granted a chance to change the world for the better at last? If only I had been sent back that little bit further. To 1966 I could have stamped on Iron Butterfly, and the world, my world, when I get back, what a Garden of Eden it would have been.
But 1981 it is – that gives me plenty to work with. I must get back. I may be one second away from life, or one second away from death. All I know is that I have to keep fighting. Fight to live. Fight to see Mika beaten to a bloody pulp. Fight to get home.
But until I figure out how, I have much work to do. OH, the work I must do. Why Tash Bedingfield is probably being born in a hospital around the corner, I could snuff that one out in a second. But why stop with one when there is a whole 25 years of music I could prevent.
It’s clear to me now. Why I am here. Imagine if I created a virus. Something contagious and infectious that killed musicians on contact, a virus that would destroy all other forms of music. To hold in my hand a capsule that contained such power. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end all music. That power would set me up above the gods!
And what is this I see in my pocket. “Tanya Headon: Staff Journalist: NME”
“Taxi! … Take me to King’s Reach Tower”