Me and Mickie James by Drew Gummerson

Me and Mickie James

Drew Gummerson

This tongue-in-cheek view of the world of music is the tale of unconventional pop duo 'Down by law' and their search for notoriety. The surreal experiences and characters made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. With Mickie James disabled by a hunchback, this rising pop sensation defies the stereotypical boy band mould. It’s their passion for their music, and for each other, which makes this such a heart-warming read.

Extract
'Listen', I said. 'I've got this line going around in my head, "Potato peelers of the world unite," and I think I've got a bit of a chorus.' I put down the potato I was holding and hummed the few bars I had.
'That's not bad actually,' said Mickie James, 'but I think we'd have to change the words 'potato peelers'. The repetition of the p sound is a bit obvious'.
'I know what you mean,'
'Shut that door', said Mickie James, 'it'll give the room better acoustics.'
That's what's good about Mickie James; musically no one can touch him. With the door closed the room had a kind of haunting echo to it. The echo was further given a dampening effect by all the potatoes over the floor. We couldn't have wished for a better studio.
Pretty soon we had the whole of the first verse worked out and a title. We called it, 'The Uniting of the Potato Two'. The song was kind of a working-class anthem, sort of the thing Elvis Costello usually writes. What was genius about our song though was that Mickie James worked out this whole staccato bass beat backing which pushed it into Kylie territory.
Parallels
  • High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
  • The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
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Explicit sexual Content

Quirky and quizzical