The Danish Church

By

Joey Sherlock




Edited and compiled by Al Seminar




Editor’s note: The author of this book died six years ago on the 30th of December, 1999. His last words, before the lightning struck atop Kinder Scout, were: ‘It’s raining, I’ve got no reception and I’ve forgotten my mother’s fucking birthday’. He was twenty years of age, a bad student, good friend, stalwart drinker, great writer, formidable critic and avid rambler.

This is primarily his novel, although his own story and criticism is heavily intertwined with it. I have done my best to pull his sprawling material together in concordance with his personal vision of his writing, which we discussed many times. Gaps have been bridged, insertions made, and many octopodiously superfluous limbs amputated. Joey wrote like an exploding fire hydrant, often drunk or half asleep. Returning to a normal state he would chop out all the ‘gangue’, as he termed it, leaving a valuable seam of good writing to be used at a later date. I have naturally concentrated on these seams, although I have painstakingly unearthed a few semi-precious gems from the cast-off too.

That the novel itself flows relatively freely, if regularly jolted with necessary interruptions – indeed, that it even may be termed a ‘novel’ at all – is my doing, and my fault if you will. As one of his closest friends, and his sole literary confidante, I felt best placed to realise his unfinished vision. Therefore, certain linking sentences, the ordering of certain sequences and so on are down to me. This constitutes highly unorthodox editing, I know (at least, admitting that this is the case is highly unorthodox). However, I do not claim to be a competent literary editor – by the time you read this, it will have been picked over by just such a person – I only acted as I saw fit given my unique relationship with the author himself. I simply could not let such an extraordinary talent pass the wider literary world by. Throughout the work I have made interjections and notes as necessary. Rather than make these as footnotes or tradtional notation, I have taken the route of direct insertion into the text [like so].


I may claim credit for the compilation of this work; however the work itself is the product of Joey’s creative genius. I have retained certain idiosyncrasies of syntax, spelling and punctuation, as he frequently used these to some comic effect (even if only to himself). I claim no responsibility for any offence caused, persons slandered, or other such resultant negativity. The novel itself, I dedicate (as far as it is my place to do so) to the memory of Joey Sherlock, and to all those friends and family whose life he touched. He, no doubt, would have dedicated it to all the women he’d ever been in love with, and his beloved cat, Fritz.


Al Seminar, 2006, Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany





From Ram, issue 76, October 1998

Dig, if you will, the picture: of Noel Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft engaged in a kiss. These two heterosexual men, Lancastrian men at that, genuinely love each other. Can you, dear reader, can you picture this? No-one else’ll love em though, at least in the music press. But let’s go back a year, to August/September of 1997. I wasn’t around then. I was in India. Mother Theresa died.

Oasis was alternative music’s Maginot line against the evil forces of mainstream; Belle and Sebastien winning a Brit award was the equivalent of Dunkirk. Robbie Williams rode a panzer tank, holding a general’s rank. The US scene remained as Pontius Pilate; sympathizing but doing fuck all. So we all loved The Verve, formerly Verve, composers of the blockbustingly brilliant ‘History’, and little else. Then we get an orchestral Allen Klein sample, thunderously banal homespun Ronan Keating philosophy (‘life, right, it’s got its ups and downs, innit?’) and video of a man bumping into people – and boom! crash! epiphany! we have our saviours at last. Noel sez they’re dead good, anyway.

But now they’re finished, washed up too. They weren’t even that good anyway. The last spasm of britpop. So what now? My prophecy – buggerallski for the next ten, fifteen years. Good tunes, no doubt. But they’ll either come from genuinely alternative bands or they’ll be decent pop music. No great non-manufactured movement for the kids though. Britpop, cool Britannia, indie’s golden age, whatever you call it, is gone, and there’ll be no decent replacement until you and I are too old to be involved. My advice: go forth and mature. Pick and choose, go cross-genre, whatever. Stick with Jarvis, the Super Furrys and Supergrass. Forget the Manics, Oasis and Blur.

[This is fairly typical of JS's early journalism, frequently composed in the small hours of the morning, often inebriated. Whilst this unfortunately compromised the standard of the writing, the convictions, usually long held and well informed, remain unimpeachable - AS]

Blah, blah, blah, etc. etc. etc.

My monthly ejaculate for my shitty uni rag – crap, tossed off, but still a million times better than the forum for the common illiterate that is the remainder of Ram, a sheep-shagging joke back from when they were fashionable. A culture/music column for a mag in science uni. A science uni, a technical college really – it’s only technically an ‘old’ university, civic but not civil, built from figurative red-brick and actual brutalist concrete. If I ever finish my novel, I could call it ‘Pretty Fucking Far From Brideshead’. Then try explaining that to a pharmacy student.

[JS was frequently hostile to pharmacy students, whom he regarded as being 'mere tradesmen', devoid of higher reasoning ability, who nevertheless were prominent amongst the university's social elite. It is also worth pointing out, however, that JS counted several pharmacists amongst his friendship group - AS]