Reading It All: The King of Sunday Morning by J B McCauley

The King of Sunday Morning is a geezer. Not in the traditional sense of the word as in old man. This geezer is a face, a wannabe, a top notch bloke. He is the greatest DJ that never was. He should have been. Could have been. Would have been. Now becoming a has-been. Tray McCarthy was born into privilege but with the genetic coding of London’s violent East End. Having broken the underworld’s sacred honour code, it is only his family’s gangland connections that save him. But in return for his life, he must deny that which he has ever known or ever will be and runs to Australia where he is forced to live an inconsequential life. But trouble never strays far from Tray McCarthy and eventually his past and present collide to put everyone he has ever loved in danger. He must now make a stand and fight against those that are set to destroy him and play their game according to his rules. Set against the subterfuge and violence of the international drugs trade, The King of Sunday Morning is the tale of what can go wrong when you make bad decisions. Tray McCarthy has made some of the worst. He must now save those he holds dear but in the process gets trapped deeper and deeper into a world where he doesn’t belong. “I want three pump-action shotguns, about twelve sticks of dynamite and a blowtorch” THIS BOOK CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE, FREQUENT DRUG USE AND SEX SCENES - NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PEOPLE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE

Excerpt -
Top of The Pops

1989

How long ago did he take it? He knew it depended on weight and metabolism but he didn’t know for sure. It wasn’t an exact science. He had always banged the scotch down and smoked a lot of hash but this was different. This was the real deal. He’d heard it on the grapevine. These new pills from New York and Amsterdam were changing the social fabric of London. It used to be beer and punch-ups and now it was pills and loved-up. Arrests for unsocial behaviour were down and more importantly, the establishment was scared. It had been justly challenged with punk and then the gay abandonment and sexual ambiguity of Boy George et al nearly tore the nation asunder. But ironically Boy George then turned into every grandmothers’ favourite bingo partner and the urban landscape returned to its safe, apathetic roots and bland normality.

Then the people of the night tipped the world on its end. Space cadet record execs were bringing these pills back from New York. These little portents of love were apparently amazing. They took you elsewhere, gave you love in abundance and made the girls love you back. The summer of love, Woodstock itself, was being re-invented right in front of everyone’s eyes. The Sun and The Daily Mirror revealed the shocking threat to the nation and he believed the propaganda until his cousin told him to stop being daft.

He was nineteen and it was about time that he jumped onto the hedonistic bandwagon. He had missed out on punk and ska. There was hardly any rebellion in the 80’s. It was make-up and silly love songs. What had started out with the Sex Pistols and The Clash dived headlong into the rapture of Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran. There was no class struggle. Greed was good according to Margaret Thatcher and Reaganomics ruled the roost. Live now pay later. Ostentatious displays of wealth, cocktails and the word ‘yuppie’ were the order of the day. And guess what? The young had just about had enough.

The corporatisation of the weekend. The theme pub. The Saturday night super club. Big burly bouncers telling you, ‘Wrong shoes mate’, or ‘Wrong shirt’, even, ‘Sorry mate, just don’t fit the image’. Enough was enough!

Free parties were on the rise. Dance music was exploding. Warehouses were being taken over by huge sound systems and the kids and the drugs were everywhere. It was 1989 and the great British party massive had started.

They were in Slough, West of London. Slough was one of those peculiar afterthoughts of British planning. Pronounced ‘slau’, its name sounded ugly and its streets were much the same. A post Second World War new town. Pebble-dashed terraced houses built cheaply, without imagination and without soul. The only reason you went to Slough was because it was on the way to somewhere else. The English equivalent of Belgium.

It was one of the biggest holes he had ever been to but tonight it was his paradise. It was his conversion on the road to Damascus. For tonight he would experience the roller coaster ride that was MDMA and witness the world’s best on the wheels of steel. A warehouse. A laser. A bass bin. Tonight he would turn away from the beer soaked ravages of a football bender and become enveloped in the rush and the beautiful shiver of the white dove. Tonight he would be Top of The Pops.