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*** stargore-77.neocities.org ***********************************************
****************************************** e-mail: stargore@disroot.org *****
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*** Joe Dick's Favourite Records (According to Billy Tallent) ***************
**                                                                         **
** Fandom: Hard Core Logo (movie & book)                                   **
** Warnings: References to & discussion of (canon) suicide.                ** 
** Summary: "Billy never totally understood Joe's taste in music.          **
** If taste was the right word."                                           **
** Notes: This fic was originally posted to Archive Of Our Own on the 15th ** 
** of July, 2025, and completed on August the 29th, 2025.                  **
**                                                                         **
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** One - The Dicks - Dicks Hate The Police                                 **
**                                                                         **
** Billy is pretty sure Joe only bought the single because of the band     **
** name.                                                                   **
**                                                                         **
** Or maybe it hadn't just been the name he liked, but the hammers and     ** 
** sickles and red stars and other assorted commie paraphernalia on the    ** 
** record sleeve. Joe's dad had been some big trade union guy, before he   **
** got sick and died, and Joe stuck with his dad's socialist politics out  ** 
** of blind loyalty to John Mulgrew as well as Joe Strummer.               **
**                                                                         **
** No matter why Joe bought the record, he quickly became obsessed with    ** 
** the band, with the song. He played Dicks Hate The Police so much that   ** 
** it's burnt into Billy's brain, even now, almost 20 years later.         ** 
** Sometimes he wakes up in the morning with that opening guitar riff      ** 
** stuck in his head.                                                      **
**                                                                         **
** Joe even made a tape of the record so he could play it on the tour bus. ** 
** Which he did. From Vancouver to Halifax, from Halifax to New York, from **
** New York to Detroit, over and over and over.                            **
**                                                                         **
** In the end, Billy snapped and threw the tape out the window somewhere   ** 
** on the border between Ontario and Michigan. Billy was a lot less        **
** patient in those days.                                                  **
**                                                                         **
** Maybe he could have ignored it, if Joe hadn't always insisted on        **
** singing along and jumping around at the back of the tour bus while      **
** Billy or Pipe or John tried to drive, making a fool of himself, making  **
** Billy's teeth itch.                                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Billy can still see Joe, standing right at the back, his fat head       **
** blocking the rearview mirror, howling along: MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY LOOK AT  ** 
** YOUR SON, YOU MIGHT HAVE LOVED ME BUT NOW I GOT A GUN....               **
**                                                                         **
** Even on the thousandth listen, Joe hadn't lost his pure, childlike      ** 
** enthusiasm for that song, even though it was about becoming a monster.  **
** And something about the delight in Joe's eyes made Billy rip the        **
** cassette out of the tape deck and throw it on the floor and jump up and ** 
** down on top of it until it was broken.                                  **
**                                                                         **
** It all got kind of ugly after that. Pipe pulled Joe off Billy, then     ** 
** John made Billy get back in the driver's seat and keep going despite    ** 
** his bloody nose.                                                        **
**                                                                         **
** Thank God they were only a couple hours away from Detroit, and they had ** 
** a gig at the Greystone the next day. If they'd had a day off, the band  **
** might have broken up then and there.                                    **
**                                                                         **
** At the end of the tour, Billy bought Joe a copy of the new Dicks album  ** 
** to say sorry for trashing his tape. That was probably the last time     ** 
** Billy ever apologized to Joe for anything.                              **
**                                                                         **
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**                                                                         **
** Two - Kirsty MacColl - They Don't Know                                  **
**                                                                         **
** /They Don't Know/ was a piece of appalling sentimental trash by Kirsty  ** 
** MacColl, a record Joe brought home from England in 1979.                **
**                                                                         **
** Joe's trip to England was a whole story in itself. He got injured at    **
** work, won big compensation from the workplace safety commission, then   ** 
** blew most of the compensation money on a plane ticket to London. He was ** 
** gone without even stopping to tell Billy.                               **
**                                                                         **
** Joe came home two months later with stories about seeing the Specials   **
** and Dexys Midnight Runners and Crass and Adam and the Ants, and meeting ** 
** Johnny Rotten in the toilets at the Roxy, although Billy was pretty     **
** sure he was lying about that bit. Joe'd thrown out half the stuff in    ** 
** his suitcase to make room for stacks of records and zines and clothes   **
** from the King's Road.                                                   **
**                                                                         **
** And he can remember that Joe was embarrassed he had that Kirsty MacColl ** 
** record, and claimed he only bought it cause of the Stiff Records label  ** 
** on the logo.                                                            **
**                                                                         **
** It's funny - Billy can remember that, but he doesn't even remember what ** 
** city he had breakfast in yesterday.                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Joe liked the record, though. Billy remembers.                          **
**                                                                         **
** It was back in 1980, after they'd gotten the band back together, found  ** 
** John and Pipe, after they'd played a bunch of gigs in Vancouver and     **
** recorded their first single. It cost $1000 to have the singles pressed  ** 
** and put into paper sleeves with their artwork on it. It cost $500 to    ** 
** just get the singles pressed. So they'd gone for the cheapo option and  ** 
** had a party at Joe's where everyone had helped to fold and staple the   ** 
** sleeves.                                                                **
**                                                                         **
** It was 2am, and they'd run out of booze by 1am, so pretty much everyone ** 
** else had gone home or onto another party. Billy hadn't left though.     ** 
** Which nobody seemed surprised by, because Joe was his best friend.      **
**                                                                         **
** Joe hadn't left either, but that wasn't very surprising because it was  ** 
** his apartment. Also he was probably too drunk to walk anywhere.         **
**                                                                         **
** It was 2am, or a little bit later. Billy was lying on Joe's couch       **
** trying to sleep. The lights were still on, because Joe was still awake. ** 
** Maybe speeding on something, maybe just not feeling tired yet because   ** 
** he'd probably only woken up at noon anyway.                             **
**                                                                         **
** "Lights," Billy mumbled.                                                **
** Joe turned out the lights. But then he turned on the record player,     **
** because Joe wanted to listen to Motorhead.                              **
**                                                                         **
** Billy rolled over on the couch and tried not to feel too homicidal.     **
** After a few minutes, he gave up on trying to sleep and opened his eyes. **
**                                                                         **
** It was so dark in the living room now that everything looked blue and   ** 
** grey: still, he could make out some basic shapes.                       **
**                                                                         **
** Joe was sitting next to the record player. He'd taken Motorhead off,    ** 
** but put something else on, and the record was already spinning: Billy   **
** could see it as well as, just faintly, hear it.                         **
**                                                                         **
** As Joe lit a cigarette, Billy saw a brief flash of his face. Joe was    ** 
** looking down at the boxes and boxes of Hard Core Logo singles as the    ** 
** record started.                                                         **
**                                                                         **
** /You've been around for such a long time now / maybe I could leave you  ** 
** but I don't know how..../                                               **
**                                                                         **
** Billy couldn't really see Joe's face, but he thought he looked sad.     ** 
** Maybe he was, if that was what he thought love was like.                **
**                                                                         **
** /I get a feeling when I look at you/ Wherever you go now, I want to be  ** 
** there too.../                                                           **
**                                                                         **
** I thought I was following you, Billy thought to himself, and oh, shit.  **
**                                                                         **
** /No, I don't listen to the guys that say / that you're bad for me and   **
** I should turn you away/                                                 **
** /'Cause they don't know about us, and they've never heard of love/      **
**                                                                         **
** So never let it be said that Joe didn't know it was going to be a       **
** disaster. He just didn't know how to do anything else.                  **
**                                                                         **
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** Notes: The Motorhead single Joe listens to is "Ace of Spades". ***********
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**                                                                         **
** Three - Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers - Born To Lose            **
**                                                                         **
** /Born to Lose/ was a B-side, and trust a contrary fucker like Joe Dick  ** 
** to love the flipside of a record better. Trust a contrary fucker like   ** 
** Joe to love a song called /Born to Lose/.                               **
**                                                                         **
** Even Billy can admit that Johnny Thunders makes being born to lose      ** 
** sound pretty fun. /Born to lose...baby, I'm born to lose/, he croons,   ** 
** and it kind of sounds like a come-on, like a challenge, like an         **
** invitation. Why worry, when the worst has already happened? When losing ** 
** feels this good?                                                        **
**                                                                         **
** Johnny Thunders died a few years back, in a motel room in New Orleans.  ** 
** Overdose. No feelgood factor there, precious little romance.            **
**                                                                         **
** That was one thing you could say for Joe - he never got into heroin,    **
** even when the scene was awash in it. Slow suicide was not his style.    **
**                                                                         **
** After everything ended in Edmonton, Ed Festus swooped in. He organized  ** 
** Joe's funeral, settled his debts, put his affairs in order. Billy       **
** suspects that Ed also took the opportunity to get into Joe's accounts   ** 
** and grab control over his publishing and his royalties, which were      ** 
** about to be worth a hell of a lot more now that he's dead than they     **
** ever were when he was alive. But Billy can't prove anything, and after  ** 
** about thirty seconds of being furiously angry with Ed, Billy realized   ** 
** that he didn't give a shit.                                             **
**                                                                         **
** If Joe wanted his legacy taken better care of, he shouldn't have shot   ** 
** himself in the head. At least not without making a will first.          **
**                                                                         **
** Ed asked them all for help with the funeral service. John had some      **
** dumb poem he wanted to read. Pipe just wanted to know if they'd be      ** 
** serving food after the funeral, and what kind. Billy said that they     ** 
** should play Born To Lose as they carry the coffin out, and John said    ** 
** that they couldn't do that because Joe's sister the born-again          **
** Christian will be there and it'll just upset her, and Billy screamed    ** 
** /But it was his favourite song/! and threw an ashtray at John's head.   **
**                                                                         **
** He missed.                                                              **
**                                                                         **
** Born to Lose wasn't even Joe's favourite song. Top 10, maybe.           **
** Reflecting on it later, Billy thinks that maybe he just wanted an       ** 
** excuse to be mad at someone other than himself.                         **
**                                                                         **
** Billy left for rehab pretty soon after that. He didn't go to Joe's      **
** funeral. He heard later, though, that it was extremely well-catered.    **
**                                                                         **
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**                                                                         **
** Four - The Velvet Underground - Loaded                                  **
**                                                                         **
** Over the years, Joe had told a lot of different interviewers that he    ** 
** had a lot of different favourite songs.                                 **
**                                                                         **
** Usually, he named whatever single Hard Core Logo had just released,     **
** because according to Joe every record they cut was the best thing       **
** they'd ever done until the next one, and there was nothing wrong with   ** 
** thinking your own music was the best music in the world. Joe god bless  ** 
** him, believed his own bullshit a lot of the time.                       **
**                                                                         **
** Maybe he'd grudgingly acknowledge a Vancouver punk "classic", something ** 
** by DOA or the Dishrags. Then he'd always tell a story about how this    ** 
** band or that band were total assholes who'd looked down their noses at  ** 
** them for being suburbanites, and stiffed HCL for door money too. Billy  ** 
** sat through Joe's little interview routine a million times: he knew the **
** drill. He probably could have given his answers for him.                **
**                                                                         **
** Joe still hasn't worked out that nobody outside of Vancouver gave a     **
** shit that they were from Vancouver.                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Sometimes Joe would talk about really obscure punk records, the kind of ** 
** two-bit records by two-bit bands that turned up on Killed By Death      ** 
** compilation albums. Joe genuinely loved that shit: he not-so-secretly   ** 
** wished that he too had been in some gimcrack provincial punk band that  ** 
** broke up after a year because their drummer got in a motorcycle         ** 
** accident. The Feederz. The Eat. The Snivelling Shits, Satan's Rats.     **
** The Epileptics, who were really the same band as Flux of Pink Indians,  **
** just like the Fatal Microbes were basically the same band as Rubella    **
** Ballet, and Billy hated Joe for making him learn all this shit but he   ** 
** hasn't been able to forget it yet.                                      **
**                                                                         **
** He's pretty sure, though, that as much as Joe treasured                 **
** /1970s Were Made In Hong Kong/, it still wasn't his real favorite song. **
**                                                                         **
** Joe was not a bitter man in his heart of hearts. He was angry, sure,    **
** but Joe's dirty secret was that he was an idealist, a romantic. Punk    **
** cynicism didn't stick to him -- at least, not when it came to music.    **
**                                                                         **
** Maybe Joe was just born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. He    ** 
** would have been better off if he didn't have to play punk rock and talk **
** about Vancouver.                                                        **
**                                                                         **
** Some time during his millionth awkward US press tour, Billy had worked  **
** out that people didn't want their punk rock to be from Canada. New York ** 
** was cool. London was cool. Best of all, there was punk from war-torn    ** 
** places like Belfast, where bombs went off all the time and the punks    ** 
** probably ate cops for breakfast. Canada, though? Canada was not cool.   **
**                                                                         **
** It didn't matter that downtown Vancouver was as tough a place to live   ** 
** as downtown Detroit, or Akron, or Glasgow, or any of these other        **
** decaying industrial cities where punk bands mushroomed. Vancouver was   **
** in Canada. They drink tea there and they think they're British. No way. **
**                                                                         **
** Sure, Canadians could be successful in the US. Sometimes really         ** 
** successful, like Neil Young and Robbie Robertson and all those guys.    ** 
** But they hadn't got to where they were by talking about Canada all the  ** 
** time. They were all born in Canada in the 1940s, but then they went     **
** down to California and pretended they were born in America in the 1840s.**
** Well, except for Joni Mitchell, but Joni Mitchell was unique, like some **
** sort of mutant escaped from a government lab.                           **
**                                                                         **
** Joe would have been better off living back then. He never got over the  ** 
** sixties, even though he was about ten years old when they ended. Joe,   ** 
** god fucking help him, believed in rock and roll as a means of           **
** redemption.                                                             **
**                                                                         **
** Poor Joe. He never learned the first thing punks were meant to learn,   **
** which was that none of this meant anything.                             **
**                                                                         **
*******                                                               *******
**                                                                         **
** Billy went back to LA. He got his car back at the airport, paid the     **
** crazy fee for three weeks of parking. Billy put his bag in the back     **
** seat, got in the driver's seat. He turned the engine on, flicked on the ** 
** radio without thinking, pulled out of the parking space. He drove down  **  
** ramp after ramp until he was finally outside in what passes for LA      **
** sunshine and fresh air.                                                 **
**                                                                         **
** He put his sunglasses on.                                               **
**                                                                         **
** They were putting Joe's body in the ground about now, back in Edmonton. **
**                                                                         **
** He rolled the windows down.                                             **
**                                                                         **
** There was nothing but ads on the radio. Then a smooth-as-shit voice     **
** burbling about late nights on KWEST radio. Billy flicked the radio back ** 
** off and drove down the freeway.                                         **
**                                                                         **
** He turned the radio back on after a couple minutes. It's better than    ** 
** being alone.                                                            **
**                                                                         **
** /For requests, call 86750551./                                          **
**                                                                         **
** Joe wrote a letter to a fanzine in Saskatchewan once -- Billy had read  ** 
** it, because he was over at Joe's and there was a copy of the zine       **
** sitting in an envelope on Joe's coffee table (Joe had insisted that     **
** having a coffee table did not make him a yuppie, because it was just a  **
** normal kitchen table that had the bottom half of its legs sawn off).    **
**                                                                         **
** The zine was run by two high school kids. They had asked him to write   ** 
** about his influences and Joe had written about how much he loved rock   **  
** and roll in the early 70s -- Iggy, Bowie, Bolan, Lou Reed. His music    **
** magazines looked like rags once he'd cut out all the pictures to put on **
** his wall and admire. He'd written something about how they'd all died   **
** or gone straight in the end. Joe'd all but admitted that he was queer,  **
** almost daring them to ask him straight out, a dare they had been too    ** 
** chicken or too clueless to take on.                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Joe had written about the impossible dream of personal liberation       ** 
** through popular music. A dream that was clearly absurd, but so tempting ** 
** it could seduce otherwise intelligent men and women, especially if they ** 
** were emotionally weak. It was a dream that taunted you, tantalized you; ** 
** a dream that was just in front of you, but was always out of reach      **
** again by the time it looked like you might be getting close.            **
** /"Face front you got the future, shining like a piece of gold,          **
** but I swear as we get closer, it looks more like a lump of coal."/      **
**                                                                         **
** It was the best thing Joe ever wrote in his life. It beat the shit out  ** 
** of anything you might find in the Literary Review, it made you think    ** 
** that if the band broke up then maybe Joe could cut it as a novelist.    **
** And it was probably only read by about 30 people.                       **
**                                                                         **
** Joe would have liked that, found it romantic. Billy thought it was      ** 
** infuriating. That was the difference between the two of them.           **
**                                                                         **
** /We're with you into the night and through to the morning./             **
**                                                                         **
** Joe liked the Velvet Underground. Not the early shit though, the stuff  ** 
** that was cool to like: he liked the sellout shit. God only knew why:    **
** he never talked about it. Which probably meant that it was important to **
** him.                                                                    **
**                                                                         **
** /Thinking about that special someone? Call now. The request line is     **
** still open./                                                            **
**                                                                         **
** "Loaded". Billy only knew that Joe liked that album because he used to  ** 
** play it all the time. When he had a bad week and didn't even want to    ** 
** get out of bed, he'd play it over and over.                             **
**                                                                         **
** /Weather is calm. Temperatures moderate, with a slight nip in the air.  **
** After all, it's almost December, folks./                                **
**                                                                         **
** Billy kept driving, and driving.                                        **
**                                                                         **
** Just as he was turning into Santa Monica Boulevard, he suddenly decided **
** to pull over, skidding to a halt next to a bank of payphones. He turned ** 
** the keys in the ignition, got out of the car, and phoned in a request.  **
**                                                                         **
** Billy got back in the car. He's headed for Sunset Boulevard.            **
**                                                                         **
** /This is KWEST Radio Los Angeles, and we just got a request. This is    **
** from Billy, for Joe, and it's the Velvet Underground with               **
** "Sweet Jane"./                                                          **
**                                                                         **
** He drove on in silence.                                                 **
**                                                                         **
**                                                                         **
*******Anyone who ever had a heart / They wouldn't turn around and*********** 
******* break it / And anyone who ever played a part / They wouldn't********* 
******* turn around and hate it *********************************************
******* - The Velvet Underground, "Sweet Jane", 1970.************************
**                                                                         **
** The old sound was alcoholic. The tradition was finally broken. The *******
** music is sex and drugs and happy. And happy is the joke the music ******** 
** understands best. Ultrasonic sounds on records to cause frontal **********
** lobotomies. Hey, don't be afraid. You'd better take drugs and ************ 
** learn to love PLASTIC. All different kinds of plastic -- pliable, ******** 
** rigid, colored, colorful, no attachment plastic. *************************
** -Lou Reed, quoted in "Please Kill Me" by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.**
**                                                                         **
** Plastic lungs, plastic hearts, plastic cups were just the start!        **
**                                                                         **
** 1970s have been made in Hong Kong!                                      **
**                                                                         **
** Plastic crap, plastic crap that keeps going wrong!                      **
**                                                                         **
** - The Epileptics, "1970s Were Made In Hong Kong" EP, 1980. ***************
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*** End Notes: I used a quote from /All The Young Punks/ by the Clash *******
** (Give 'Em Enough Rope, 1978). All the bands named are real, even the ***** 
** Snivelling Shits. The Epileptics changed their name for a while after **** 
** the British Epilepsy Foundation wrote them a letter to complain. *********
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** Secret Track - Discography ***********************************************
**                                                                         **
** The Dicks - Dicks Hate The Police / Lifetime Problems / All Night Fever ** 
**                                                                         **
** Kirsty MacColl - They Don't Know / Turn My Motor On                     **
**                                                                         **
** Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers - Chinese Rocks / Born To Lose    ** 
**                                                                         **
** The Epileptics - 1970s Were Made In Hong Kong / Systems Rejects /       **
** Hitler's Still A Nazi                                                   **
**                                                                         **
** The Velvet Underground - Loaded                                         **
**                                                                         **
** [] Sweet Jane                                                           **
**                                                                         **	
** [] Rock and Roll                                                        **
**                                                                         **
** The Clash - Give 'Em Enough Rope                                        **
**                                                                         **
** [] Cheapskates                                                          **
**                                                                         **	
** [] All The Young Punks                                                  **
**                                                                         **
** Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps                          **
**                                                                         **
** [] Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)                                      **
**                                                                         **
*******                                                               *******
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******* It's better to burn out than to fade away ***************************
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