The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad (Orbit #5, 1969) opens with a music club manager signing a rock group called The Four Horsemen to perform at his venue. This initial scene displays the story’s entertaining period style:
First, the head honcho, lead guitar and singer, Stony Clarke—blonde shoulder-length hair, eyes like something in a morgue when he took off his steel-rimmed shades, a reputation as a heavy acidhead and the look of a speed-freak behind it. Then Hair, the drummer, dressed like a Hell’s Angel, swastikas and all, a junkie, with fanatic eyes that were a little too close together, making me wonder whether he wore swastikas because he grooved behind the Angel thing or made like an Angel because it let him groove behind the swastika in public. Number three was a cat who called himself Super Spade and wasn’t kidding—he wore earrings, natural hair, a Stokeley Carmichael sweatshirt, and on a thong around his neck a shrunken head that had been whitened with liquid shoe polish. He was the utility infielder: sitar, base, organ, flute, whatever. Number four, who called himself Mr. Jones, was about the creepiest cat I had ever seen in a rock group, and that is saying something. He was their visuals, synthesizer and electronics man. He was at least forty, wore Early Hippy clothes that looked like they had been made by Sy Devore, and was rumored to be some kind of Rand Corporation dropout. There’s no business like show business.
In the next section of the story we hear from a Presidential advisor planning to manipulate US public opinion to accept the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam (he complacently states, “the risks, while statistically significant, do not exceed an acceptable level”). It then becomes apparent, as the story progresses, that The Four Horsemen, with their disturbing visuals, very dark, death-metal like music (“I stabbed my mother and I mugged my paw. Nailed my sister to the toilet door….”, etc.), and other subliminal effects, are a psychological operation designed to achieve that end. Later, a TV network executive is compelled to screen their show uncut, something that disturbs him and others in the network, not least because the performance climaxes with a song called “The Big Flash” (which ends with the repeated refrain, “Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!”, and film of a nuclear explosion).
The rest of the tale mixes up scenes that involve, variously, military personnel (including two Minutemen missile operators and a Polaris Captain who are increasingly hypnotised by the band), a nuclear test at Yucca Flats, and then, finally, a climactic TV performance. Of course (spoiler), The Four Horsemen’s brain-washing has worked far better than planned, and causes the Minutemen and Polaris crews to launch their ICBMs.
This is an original piece that unusually combines rock music and nuclear weapons into an entertaining if disturbing piece. If I have one minor criticism it is that the final countdown goes on for too long.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 8,200 words. Story link.