Alucidnation: A night out with Bruce B
March 22nd, 2002 by freddie96
The art of simple things: a night out with Bruce Bickerton
Barry is complaining. It’s long past six, it’s freezing cold, and Bruce’s car won’t start. ‘This is so fucking Bruce Bickerton,’ he laughs. ‘Get it together you cunt.’
I’ve joined Bruce and Barry in order to drive down into darkest foot and mouth country for a night of beats and booze, food and photography. It is becoming immediately apparent to me that Bruce is held in high esteem by his friends, something underlined by Dave, Bruce’s father-in-law, who we pick up once the car finally obliges us. ‘I haven’t read that piece you’ve written about Bruce,’ he announces, ‘but if you’d spoken to me I could have told you: Bruce is a complete wanker.’
We zip round the M25 in search of our exit, fuelled by an Alucidnation mix tape and a constant stream of jokes, the majority of them naturally at the driver’s expense. It is Saturday night, after all, and everyone is clearly in the mood for a bit of bashment. Marcus’s rural hideaway isn’t especially easy to find in the dark driving rain, so there is a distinct sense of relief once we get there – not least because we are all starving, and the house is suffused with the smell of baking bread and fisherman’s pie. ELO’s ‘Out of the blue’ is slipped into the CD player, the beers and blow come out, and everyone gets stuck into conversation of one kind or another.
And that’s it, really, for the next six hours (or so). Bruce seats himself on the sofa behind the mixing desk, Marcus wheels out the nosh, and everyone else just enjoys themselves. Especially at Bruce’s expense. Someone has brought a samzdat copy of my Alucidnation profile and it gradually makes it way round the room. The verdict is unanimous: it’s not bad, really, but is lacking in one significant respect. Nowhere does it say what a wanker Bruce is. ‘?Earth needs more people like him?,’ quotes back Mark with a snort. ‘Like fuck. One is quite enough.’
Bruce’s own music gets a similar reception. Weaving effortlessly in and out of deep house, old classics from Judie Tzuke, the Floyd and Lynyrd Skynyrd, even, Bruce roadtests some of his own compositions. ‘What did you make of that one?’ he ventures at one point. ‘About ten minutes too long,’ says Barry. ‘You asked,’ he adds, with a huge grin.
If the evening’s music is given a rough ride, the photography, however, isn’t. Marcus has set up a small screen, and for several hours Bruce, followed by Andy and Tony, projects slide after slide from his personal collection. The majority are taken from group holidays in places like Portugal and Scotland, so there is a palpable sense of what a friend of mine calls ‘social back-stitching’. Life and love and art – and all the things inbetween that bind us to each other – are all affirmed at one stroke.
It’s magical stuff. Faces caught relaxed and offguard, friends joking, sunsets and lazy days. Parties, dancing and meals round large tables. Long walks in the winter sunshine and the stars crazing the night sky. This is it, these images say to me: this is the best life has to offer. There is the moment, and nothing but the moment, apart, perhaps, from its memory and the fresh moments that may help to create. And each one has its own special beauty if we can but see it.
The fact that this dazzling succession of fleeting moments is played out before our eyes for the most part to a soundtrack of repetitive beats seems somehow beautifully fitting. The music provides the heartbeat that strings these moments together, while its driving, continuous loops create a counterpoint to the utter uniqueness of each separate image. It’s as if I am witnessing life being separated into its two chief constituent elements: moments of transitory, unrepeatable experience, and a long thread of unbroken feeling.
I’m still trying to assimilate this sensual rush of beauty when Bruce puts the Zero 7 album on (which gets played in its entirety) before retiring from the decks. ‘Simple things.’ How that says it all.
Freddie B., March 2001