Title: CRUCIFY ME AGAIN

Author: Mark Manning (AKA Zodiac Mindwarp)

Codex Books, PO Box 148, Hove, BN3 3DQ

www.codexbooks.co.uk

codex@codexbooks.co.uk

ISBN: 1 899598 146

£8.95

I've been waiting for this book for over 13 years now, ever since I heard Zod's 1987 hit single 'Prime Mover' and realised for
the first time that in this howlingly mad world I wasn't alone. It came with an accompanying video full of space god rock
Stormtroopers, teenage slutvixens and exploding nun heads that was SO CLOSE to my dreams that it was frightening. The
lyrics, the Sven Hassel imagery, and the knowingly adolescent celebration of the female sex's base appeal was a White
Dwarf-dense compression of every potent visual stimulant from my childhood - Warlord comics, Paul Raymond magazines
and Motorhead album covers. It truly fucking blew my mind and came at a time when heavy metal (my only church) was
daubed in mascara and spandex and needed a serious injection of the grease and hogsweat that TRUE metal would always
be lubricated by. Over the years I followed the band's breakneck decline into obscurity, trudging along to decrepit toilet
venues like Rio's in Bradford to witness the very definition of desperation played out on stage. Zod, Cobalt Stargazer and
the ever-changing line-up of undermutants would pummel through the 'hits' and unleash the occasional blitzkrieg of new
material from albums destined to only be released in Germany. They always looked up for it - perhaps driven less by
enthusiasm than a brainstem compulsion to get the job done - like soldiers in 'Nam they knew they were fucked but had
only the combat to justify their existence. Little did I suspect that behind the facade of showmanship there was a fusion
reactor of neuroses, electric snakes writhing in a pit of Freudian slurry.

This book is a submersible, complete with shit-caked windscreen, dropped into that pit. Nothing like an autobiography, this
is a collection of anecdotes from the man's life - his childhood in Leeds, his adventures in the Rock Wastelands and his
Troubles with Women. I suppose the closest literary comparison would be Bukowski - the same world-weariness, the same
sexual obsessions, the same alcoholic self-indulgence and the ever-enduring image of a damaged man hunched over a
keyboard.

Behind a wildly inappropriate but amusing cover image of scowling Chinese Army DeathBitches are 190 pages of lies,
madness and the often hard and unpalatable truth,

loaded into chapters as short and no-nonsense as a Stanley Knife blade. With titles like 'Sympathy For The Paedophile',
'Fucked By Rock', 'Gobby Cunt', 'Sad Fuck' and 'Menstruating Nazi Fucker' the lazy and uninterested reviewer might think
they could hawk up a quick slating of the book without actually reading it but they would be wrong, wrong, wrong. The
label is not the contents, the map is not the territory and these ironic stabs at tabloid succinctity are designed to draw you
in and then hammer their point home with ball-peen accuracy.

Manning is more than comfortable with his chosen lexicon - an exuberant gutterspeak collision of Milton, Burroughs and
Leeds boot boys - and revels in veering from one extreme to another across the pages. He eases the reader in with
unsentimental tales of his youth - growing up in the shadow of Elland Road football ground and Armley Jail.

Schoolyard scraps, tap room initiations and mindless destruction -all numb responses to the grey monotony of life on a
council estate in 70's England. As grim as these tales may be to some they brought a dewy tear to my eye as I fondly
remembered the 'old' Leeds before the yuppies descended on it like locust and turned it into one huge cafe bar and hair
salon. These experiences gave a solid foundation for the curious young Manning to build upon. At 16 he went to Bradford
Art College where his mind was raked open by extravagant homosexual lecturers who weaned him onto books by Reich
and Burroughs. It was a short step from there to LSD psychosis and then he was ready for a bruising by the Great Beast
itself - ROCK!

The chapters covering his experiences in the music industry are perhaps the least interesting. He mentions a few
interesting characters such as Joe - the giant black Nazi who wore a 'White Power' T-shirt and Clive - lead singer of Dr.&
The Medics who had a magical ability with turds - but seems to have ditched a lot of that baggage in the scummy wake of
endless tedious tours around Europe. There's no mention of any pleasure gained from being a rock star, just a palpable
sense of relief that it's all over and best put down to experience. He does point out that it's pretty rare for the actual culprits
involved to write their own story - these days it's left to the hagiographers at Mojo and the roadies who remember which
testicle Keef liked to shoot heroin into.

The tone become less detached when he discusses the women he's collided with over the years - the three mothers of his
three children and the dozens, hundreds, of others - some of whom were no more than 'Road Gash', some who were
teetering on the edge of sanity and some who, for one reason or another, managed to leave their crampons in his heart. He
attributes his attitude to most of his 'conquests' (that some would knee-jerkingly react to with howls of "misogynist") as
the inevitable result of a life spent on the road in a rock band where the rules of consensus reality are skewed by
unchecked indulgence, testosteronic overload and a gradual slide into an unreedemable state of psychological squalor.
Here's an example of how bad it got:

"I couldn't be arsed wanking myself, but I had this hard-on that just refused to go away. I got up and dragged this little
blonde into my gruesome litter. I couldn't be arsed fucking her but I thought she'd be alright to just toss me off so I could
get some sleep. Blondie started slurping around - she wasn't bad actually - I blobbed off onto her tonsils and went to
sleep". It seems cold but who's to say we would end up the same way in those same fucked circumstances? It's the beast in
all of us, which is ultimately Manning's main point and his favourite subject; the protean shibboleth, utterly divorced from
our pathetic notions of society and decency, always writhing behind it's cage of flesh and bones, ever eager to lunge at
that which it wants to consume or destroy. It's the lifelong wrestle with this Tasmanian Devil that has left Manning
emotionally napalmed and shuttered away from the outside world in his Clerkenwell hovel. With his days of howling at the
moon on stage now consigned to the past he's left to communicate his ideas via the medium that was always his best - as
originally evinced in his lyrics. His casual mastery of language is not designed to impress Guardian reviewers and win
Booker prizes - it's the peacock display of a man who dragged his intellect out of the gutter of diminished expectations and
into the league of articulate deviants like De Sade and Burroughs. It delivers a punch of communication that intellectual (as
opposed to intelligent) piffle merchants like Martin Amis would have to offer up a lifetime full of virgin sacrifices to Yahweh
to match. Amidst the hilarious and breathtaking sexual metaphors ('cock snot', 'nad jam' , 'fuck hammer') are genuinely
profound declarations on the human condition, my favourite being "...language, custom, religion and culture are the thin
paper that covers the cracks in the walls of a haunted universe". That pretty much sums it up for me.

In case you haven't figured it out - this is an important book. Mark Manning has nailed a portion of his soul to the masts
for all to see. He's walked paths that many couldn't imagine, let alone dare to follow, and is reporting back on the ruined
state of the destination he's found. He did it so you don't have to. Now go read his book.

Copyright Rik Rawling 2001