I spent Christmas 2017 in Paris thanks to my mother in law’s skills as a wedding planner. She occasionally organises weddings for people and earlier that year had put together a successful wedding celebration in County Cork for an American family. They were so happy with it that they offered her use of an apartment which they had near to the Champs Elysees and so we spent 10 wonderful days there. I loved that holiday. Paris is one of the best cities in the world, the Parisiennes were, contrary to expectations, charming and welcoming and I would gladly go again once the COVID-19 crisis passes. However, I will freely admit that any time we were outside in Paris, my mind was in a 90/10 split between soaking up the atmosphere, ambience and sights while simultaneously preparing for a car to be driven at high speed at us or for a bomb to go off. Why? Because, we were on holiday and as history shows us, tourists stand a similar 90/10 split between either being ripped off or murdered. If we stopped to think about it in any great depth, no-one would visit any other country for pleasure given the potential - occasionally realised - for carnage. It could be Egypt, Tunisia, Nice, Stockholm or London; nowhere is really safe apart from Romania according to a 2015 global terrorism index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace. We just take our holidays hoping to come back with a headful of good memories and both of our legs.
This is by no means a recent development. Indeed, it’s intensely depressing just how little has changed since 1980 when the Forestville, California band, Felix Culpa released their sole 7-inch single, Terrorist Love Tourist, which picked up on the mood of global violence prevalent in the late 1970s/early 1980s and created a gem of a song. One which, according to Peel, was one of the most requested records from BFBS listeners. As a child, I lost count of the number of plane hijackings or attacks on airports which took place through the late 70s/early 80s and it’s against this backdrop that Felix Culpa recorded Terrorist Love Tourist.
Over an achingly-of-its-time “dry” production with guitars in the verses that sound like they’re being played through a bacon slicer and effects that sound like gunfire in the distance, a dispassionate vocal notes potential scenarios in which terrorists could strike at unsuspecting holidaymakers. It could be with rifles or grenades and we’re basically advised not to go shopping or on bus trips, perhaps inspired by the 1970 Munich bus attack, but its trump card comes in the final verse with its prediction of what could happen once the tourists return to the safety of their homes:
Tourist go home
Secure in your bed
Wake up in the morning
Gun barrel to your head.
The vision of a world in which violent death can follow you into your home is one that plenty of people live with, but in its simple way, Terrorist Love Tourist taps into the fear of anybody who in 1980 was lucky enough to go on holiday, that the dangers of a violent world could find them out and sacrifice them just as easily as those who lived in these dangerous hotspots full time. Europe in the early 80s was by no means immune to any of this. Ironically, the United States was considered less at risk from terrorism back then despite being equally dangerous thanks to their citizens’ constitutionally permitted right to carry arms.
This kind of nationally sanctioned domestic terrorism may have inspired the title of the only other record released by Felix Culpa, 1985’s compilation album, Small Arms.
At least two other bands have taken the name Felix Culpa in subsequent years, I hope they were inspired by the original incarnation and their sublime, stunning one-off single.
Video courtesy of eightiesrarities
Lyrics copyright of M.C. Welch
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