These vagabond minstrels tear through all their greatest hits, but nowadays it’s no longer lighters held high, only phones upon show. The eerie glow and shadows thrown make us all look like foolish neon green ghouls (and much, much older than we truly are)
One electrifying set later, we’re sneaking shots in a dingy basement bar. Ears ringing, so we’re kind of shouting, damp band t-shirts slowly drying, drunken confessions abound; singing along, she suddenly realised she had always been getting the words wrong.
“I mean it,” she yells across the pool felt, one eye screwed shut as she artfully aims, “I swear that it’s always been ‘IT’S A COLD BUMMER THAT YOU’RE LEAVING ON THAT TRAIN’…”
The eight ball ricochets, the pocket spitting it back out.
“Summer, sweetheart, summer!”
She barks her feral laugh.
“Your fault! I must’ve played that goddamn cassette you made me a million times trying to figure it out”
I recall it all: the satisfying clunk-click of thick plastic pause buttons, the commitment of selecting then listening to each track, the hypnotic rotation of tiny dual miniature spools, rewinding a chewed up C60 with a chipped Bic biro, inking each track on the cardboard sleeve in neat block capitals.
She sidles up and hooks her arms around me, giving my behind a cheeky squeeze.
“I knew you were the one when I found that compilation lying on the doormat”
I look into her eyes as she smiles, thinking: the mixtape she’d learnt it from was a mistake.
It was always meant for her sister.
I resist the urge to tell her.