From The Crack Of The Vinyl To The Hiss Of The Tape

My name is Felix Patrick Sogra, and when I was fourteen I killed a boy with a C90 cassette. His name was Freddie Beaumont. He liked Leeds United and Level 42, but that’s not why I killed him. Turned out he also liked Ann-Marie Hayward.

Side A, Track 1: Andrew Gold – Thank You For Being A Friend.

Ann-Marie Hayward had scabs on her knees like a child who’d fallen off the swings. She wore her hair in a cute 60’s bob while so many of her contemporaries favoured a Molly Ringwald perm. Her white knee socks, pulled up to just below those scabby dots, were my constant preoccupation throughout double maths. She played piano and violin and got off the bus at the same stop as me. We talked. A lot. I made her laugh. She touched my arm – right on the lump from my TB jab. It didn’t hurt.

“I’ve stopped shaving my legs for winter,” she told me one afternoon. “Fuzzy down will keep them warm and toasty through ‘til spring.” I could’ve cried, I wanted to touch those legs so much.

Side A, Track 4: Elvis Costello – I Stand Accused.

Freddie Beaumont was my best friend until the fourth year. Together we formed a band, Intastellar. Freddie chose the name. I wrote the songs (though mostly we played covers by Echo & The Bunnymen, Squeeze, and Arthur Lee & Love) and played bass; Freddie sang and posed with lead guitar. Steven Wimpenny played drums; I was working up to asking Ann-Marie to join us on keyboards. For some reason, that was an even scarier prospect than asking her to come down the ice rink with me on a Saturday afternoon. With, just me.

Intastellar played only one gig, at the end of term disco, December ’86. Richard Slater, who thought himself the next Ben Elton but sells wallpaper for a living now, introduced us. “Put your hands together for a band that’s like Dr. & The Medics, without Dr. & The Meh—!“

We went down pretty well despite him. Ann-Marie danced, anyway.

Side A, Track 6: Billy Bragg – The Myth Of Trust.

Read the complete story here.