Meeting With Music Makers

I first met the sisters Casady during a quiet spell in the street riots of May, 1968 in Paris, France. I had been drifting in the Latin Quarter from café to café with my buddy Constant Nieuwenhuys, sipping absinthe mixed with fruit twist Fanta and eating a sordid mixture of Reese’s Pieces™ and Kalamata olives from a Tupperware™ tub flaunting the slogan, ‘cela nous concerne tous’.

Constant was going on about how Stanley Kubrick broke a coffee cup in the conservatory of his holiday home in Hogdenville, Kentucky and refused to clean it up. I was only half listening. Kubrick is a close, personal friend and I knew his side of the story, Constant was no innocent party in the drama.  As I waited for Constant to stop his bitter complaining about Kubrick’s manners, I heard a whistling coming from an alleyway. I halted, leaving Constant to carry on while I went in search of the source of the sound.

Behind a bin filled with wigs and tapioca I found two old women sporting fashionable moustaches. I offered them some Kalamata olives and Reese’s Pieces™ from my Tupperware™ tub to try and disarm their prickly defences.

‘Cela nous concerne tous’, read Bianca, taking an olive.

You some kind of Marxist? asked Sierra, taking a handful of chocolate covered peanut butter. 

I’m more of a ‘sous les pavés, la plage’ man, myself, I said, this tub belongs to Constant Nieuwenhuys.

I love his New Babylon work, said Bianca. 

I can take it or leave it, said Sierra.

What was that you were whistling? I asked.

Just a song, said Sierra.

We wrote it ourselves, said Bianca. Do you want to hear it?

I’d love to, I said. 

Bianca pulled a music box from her armpit. Sierra fashioned a guitar out of a wig and some hardened tapioca. They played South 2nd from their album Noah’s Ark (2005). The city stopped, held hands and gathered around the two sisters. Police wept on the shoulders of anarchists. Communists kissed Fascists. Charles de Gaulle shared a cigar with Guy Debord.

Not bad, I said as they finished. 

Fuck off, creep, they said, and we’ve been friends ever since.