The Goat by Joe Luscombe

The heavy door into the house will open again, soon enough. They are going to need to refill the trough for us. Jean, the lady with a glass eye, says we’ll rush them then. For now I’ll  just go into my head and imagine it all as a journal entry. Back to when I knew JK as Jonny...

1

An all-dayer in Ipswich: Metal Guru ‘22. Despite the name it was all Grindcore and Sludge, not some sort of retro Glam disaster. Better yet, none of that ‘Grrr, wooo! Number of the beast!’ schlock that is taking over out there these days.

The show was fine. A new version of ‘The Swell…’ with the roll, and the off-beat switch-up in ‘Dust Colon’ totally rewires it. I think this lot might go somewhere if they do badly enough in their A-levels and stick around with an old gimmer like me. They want to call themselves Cold Comfort Farm, though, so maybe not. By the time I was back at the flat I was starving, nothing in. Couldn’t be bothered to go out again so was planning to improvise with cans from my flatmates’ private cupboards.

Choosing between fried pinto beans on rice cakes or tofu with a mystery hot sauce. There was an email from Kennedy, who I hadn’t seen since that ‘Piss in Our Time’ thing at the Pram Factory. It was before Covid, so I suppose it was summer 2019. What she sent was a link and the line ‘Look at the credits!!!!#!!’. Still with the peppy exclamation marks.

Clicked it, watched a cartoon on YouTube. It was ‘Humphrey the Heavy Metal Hamster’. You can guess what it was like. This rodent has a power trio with two furry friends, Gimli and Siri. They live together like The Monkees, solve crimes, play a summary song at the end. The music was a kind of KISS for kids. I hate any form of ‘metal’ in pop culture. When the credits came up I turned my attention back on. Had a dread of what I was about to see. Then I got it - ‘Written by JK Ramsey… Executive Producer JK Ramsey.’ JK Ramsey? Jonny K?

2

We played a commune called Partizano tonight. It was a festival celebrating the centenary of ‘The 35’, this pacifist manifesto from 1915. Typical Italian anarcho set-up. Well-meaning hopeless kids trying to do stuff they don’t know how to, with complicated hair and over-thought t-shirts. And a few moody old smokers who have mastered passive aggression towards visiting bands. Was good, over all. Kennedy has this new thing called ‘Touch Crisis’ that is quite confrontational, and the drumming for that is fun. Jonny was on fire. Don’t know what got into him. He’s been grumpy for the last week or so. But he lit up tonight, and that’s a relief. The commune is vegan and committed to ‘liberating’ animals from intensive farms nearby. Turns out that this just means taking ownership of animals the farms have no need for and would otherwise pay to be slaughtered, but still.

There was a goat in tonight, the front row. Maybe she was into it, looking intently at us. I know it was a she because Gio (who helped us set up) told us she was a Garganica from a factory in Modena. She had been pregnant from as soon as possible until she got unproductive five years later. They had her hooked up in a concrete stall. I don’t like to think about it, but enough to say Gargamel had it rough. But she definitely dug Dental Flush, who played before us. After staring us down for the first few with her amazing orange eyes, she curled up by the stack in the corner. Guess she liked the vibrations. After, I saw her wandering around, eating cigarette butts and lapping at pools of beer.

Jonny is a lazy twat at the best of times, and I wasn’t surprised he took the opportunity of us packing away to sit with Gargamel. He was scratching away at his patchy beard and listening to the goat. He appeared to be deep in conversation with her for the rest of the night. He was quiet on the drive to the hostel, but I’ll take silent Jonny ahead of moaning Jonny every time.

3

So Jonny reckons he is leaving the band. I don’t know what’s up with that bloke. Since Italy he has been a different person. He used to just walk on stage and blag it. It was nothing you haven’t heard before, but he’s got some rhythm and it worked enough. Bass and drums is what occupies me, and he wasn’t in the way. Suddenly he’s wanting to be involved in the creative process. And it’s all songs about animals. Specifically, goats. And he’s rewriting old stuff to add more goat-based content. And then it’s a sludge opera about the life of a goat. OK… I welcome his input. And to be fair his voice sounded stronger, like he had been training all his life for this. Maybe Draize or one of those vegan-edge bands would go with it. But can you imagine us pulling up at a venue, KFC wrappers rolling out of the van, giving it the ‘Animal Rescue, but Opera’ moves? Take it up the road, pal.

So he gives us an ultimatum. If I didn’t know Jonny was clean, I’d say he was coked up when he told us. We weren’t on for a couple of hours, supporting Mind Hatchet at New Cross. He comes in and announces that we were going to go for it with the goat stuff at our next show. His eyes were gleaming, honestly.

Kennedy and I were trying not to laugh, and I’ll admit we were a bit piss-takey. So he storms off, all pointing fingers in doorways. As he was leaving he directs his anger at me and says: ‘And you Sticks, you bloody snob. You know what she calls you? ‘The Spark Assassin’. Anything new, you just kill it. Such a sad little man  behind your big drum kit.’

At the time I took it as a compliment. Yes, I have creative standards. We did alright without him that night, anyway. Solid.

4

Kennedy said she’d got nowhere with the agent. Seems Jonny only communicates via this charity these days. Ten emails deep and we’re going round to this place he has set up, just out of town. We get the landline train. It’s called Swizzlehurst or something. We walk from the station, which is an adventure in itself.  It’s outside London, but it’s not like Famous Five territory. We’re the weirdos here, hopping over central reservations.

We get to this compound, buzz through gates and knock on the door. This ridiculously pallid woman opens it and shows us through with hardly a word. In the main room, he’s there, like Francis of Assissi. ‘Hi K! Hi Sticks!’ It was like we saw him yesterday. Long, greasy hair, stringy beard. Sat there in a kimono and beads. He looked almost as translucent as the woman. He was sitting on a wide purple sofa, legs crossed, surrounded by goats. His hands were full of corn, which he was feeding them.

‘You like that don’t you, Tara! Now don’t be greedy, got to keep some for the others. That’s it, now make sure you chew it, Felicia. You know what happens if you gulp it!’

This routine would have gone on forever if we hadn’t interrupted. So Kennedy spoke up. ‘We just saw your name on the ‘Heavy Metal Hamster’ cartoon, and realised you’ve had a real hit, Jonny! We’re so proud of you!’

‘I’m JK now, Kennedy. I’ve moved on a bit, creatively. I’m a different person these days.’

JK brought us up to date. It starts with the Goat Opera. Through agents, commissioners, producers, committees, it changes from an opera about a factory- farmed goat to a kids’ cartoon about hamsters. But there’s a hunger for this bastardised end product. And with the money, JK sets up a sanctuary and a charity.

It was a weird place. He couldn’t drag himself away, so he gets Morticia from the front door to give us the tour. It lasted about  thirty seconds. Kennedy couldn't resist asking ‘What’s in there?’ when we went past a heavy door. ‘Oh, that’s just the merchandise warehouse,’ our guide said, in a zoned-out voice. ‘Oh, cool!’, said K. ‘Can I look at the toys? I’d love to get one signed for my nephew.’ The sidekick looked like a baby goat in the headlights. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible… health and safety … insurance implications … trip hazards…’ she coughed, caught-out pink on bone white.

Waiting for the train back, Kennedy was on to one of her ‘Scooby Doos’. She takes a ‘something just wasn’t right’ and swirls it around until the Caretaker would have got away with it if it wasn’t for… I don’t feel like a kid any more, to be honest, and I was mostly reflecting on how glad I was not to be in a band with her.

Nevertheless, I was along for the ride and the next day I was traipsing along after K, gingerly climbing over barbed wire. She had her backstory ready: forgetting her phone, no response from the intercom. We were soon at the house. We sneaked a look in the downstairs window, underneath the blinds. ‘Jesus, Boots and Mary’, my former bandmate announced. ‘ You’ve got to see this, Sticks.’

I crouched and tried not to crunch the gravel as I leaned forward. It was, indeed, a peculiar sight. We were looking at the room as we were in yesterday. But while then we saw our old bandmate draped in hippy gear and feeding goats, we now saw goats draped in hippy gear. And, yes, he and the pale woman were on all fours, naked, and crawling up towards the animals. The beasts were wearing kaftans and beads. There were tiaras, lopsided on their horned heads. Jonny and the woman were insinuating themselves up to the undercarriages of the female goats and trying to suckle at their udders.

Above them on the sofa, absolutely festooned in fabric and jewellery, was a goat I recognised from that commune in Italy years ago.

Kennedy fell back in horror, shouting ‘Gargamel!!!! SHIT!!#!!’  The Queen goat turned to the direction from which the sound came. She looked directly into my eyes with her cold orange stare. Jonny knelt up and turned. Through a thick bubble of white from his straggly beard bits he shouted ‘Quick!’

A troop of pallid helpers appeared as if from nowhere at the edges of the room and ran towards the door.

5

There isn’t day or night here. It’s cold, and the rivulets of piss-dissolved faeces on the concrete are not easy to come to terms with. There are around twenty of them, we think. There’s a smaller bunch of us. They’ve taken the postman; Jean with the eye, who is a charities auditor; a confused old couple who got lost while rambling. Then there’s a goat scientist of some sort who was involved at the beginning but lost his nerve. Not sure how much we trust him. We are all naked, which was weird at first but something we got over fairly soon. We eat out of a tin bath filled with cigarette butts and beer. At least we aren’t being milked, but that seems a small mercy at the moment. Judging by the others, I don’t imagine I will be able to keep sane for too much longer.

As I look around at my thin, sleep-deprived co-prisoners, the idea of rushing anyone seems ridiculous. I say this to Kennedy but she looks at me sadly and says. ‘Sticks, we have to give it a go. The time for the Spark Assassin has definitely passed.’

There’s a key in the lock. It’s now.