ROSCOE FLETCHER – ridin’ shotgun with ...

(CD, Knallcore/Lunadisc)

Roscoe is a bigmouthed ex-truckdriver from the South, probably Alabama if he could only remember, but these days everything is so darn complicated. Or he used to work at an oil rig, until he left to wrangle snakes and wildlife critters for a farmer as livestock security. Or he just kicked the shit out of people for a few years. Ask him if he ever killed somebody and he won’t tell you. He never tells anything about himself. He hangs out at the same two roadside bars for over ten years now, drinking, and listening to the stories the people that move in and out of these places tell. When the daytime bar closes he moves over to the one that just opened and will keep open until the early morning, when it is time to get back to the stool at the bar right across the street. Two weeks ago a topless coffee shop has opened not more than five hundred meters away but Roscoe hasn’t yet found the energy to drive up there. Old habits are hard to beat and you never know what might be in store. Coffee and tits is nice any afternoon but you don’t want to change towards the worse, right?

In these two places, people come and leave, talk about their travels and destinations, about their friends, families and experiences, the way live has treated them, mostly bad, though it could have been worse. Like this one waitress that shows the tears tatooed to their arm, one for every time he left she say, but it could be worse, he could still be with her. Now he is dead, so he can’t leave her anymore. Roscoe asks her how she died bus she just gives him a silent stare. He could be trying to get it on with her, but the tatooed tears scare him. And the competition is fierce. Yes, stories like this; or that of the businessman who wanted to roll through this but got stopped by police and then met the guy everybody only calls Spunk in the police station cell. Nobody knows what happened that night, the guy won’t tell and you can’t ever trust Spunk who has never spoken a true word in his live. Rumours has it they were abducted by an alien spaceship. Run by indian ghosts left over after the last massacres in the fifties. Others say it was just a case of mistaken identity that involved some mafia dollars, a hitman and a suitcase filled with lysol. Others say it was the White Aryan Clarions militia that got involved and then Spunk was away for some months, and all of that makes you wonder. Anyways, the business man lost his jobs after falling into a three day drinking binge the next day, totalling his car and falling asleep on the lawn infront of the sheriffs office. He never was the same again, like he swallowed something that made pop in his brain and now he washes the cars at Billy Lee’s gas station, sleeps over in the spare room of Jody Ann’s and only heaven knows what he is waiting for, but as sure as it is cold in hell he is on the lookout. Yeah, stories like that abound around here. People strand on these streets like the whales down at the coast. Like old Ross living in this selfmade shack just a few feet off the highway in a ditch overgrown with shrub. And all the women have black hair and every man owns a gun.

Have you heard the one about the one time Bobby Lee fell down the trench late at night after the 2-two-day barbecue and broke both his legs, one arm and his jaw. Ever since he walks on crutches he is not at all what he used to be. But his girl Jolene never missed any of her beauty classes anymore and she is doing quite well at Mrs. Kahoona’s beauty parlor in the city centre. Jolene’s mother goes down there every other week to get her hair done by Francine, the school friend of Jolene. Her father never comes along because he is bedridden after a 4x4 fell on him in the barn. Francine incidentally has a similar fate, because Bobby Dean’s Camaro topped over on a side road and now he is unable to bend his right leg anymore. Got trouble in the shoulders and the neck, too. That is double hard for Bobby Dean because he used to hang out with the Gator Boys. You never heard of them? They are working kids from around here, probably about 22 or 25 years old, that have this kind of youth club. They take rides together and if you need something you don’t know where to get it from you can always ask them. Though you better be careful not to meet them alone or when they are drunk. Especially careful if they carry their shotguns along. Anyway, Francine, Jolene and Jolene’s mother are like a couple of teenage girlfriends, which is a sight to behold.

Yes, stories like that. Seems as if the wind blows them through this city like the travellers and the dust and the history. And Roscoe Fletcher listens to them. Until he heard them all. And then he’ll get up from his barstool, look around and leave to the sound of a hillbilly-punk band playing a slow country song in the back of the bar. A lonely surf guitar echoing through the early morning room, the band swaying in their own drunkenness and tiredness from the hard-assed rock-music they played the whole night. Their suits wrinkled and stained, their faces tired and beaten. Now it is time for story telling songs in three quarter timing. And that’ll be the last that Roscoe hears, though probably not the last thing you hear of Roscoe Fletcher.