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will-kaye · 3 years ago

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Crashing Waves

“No, no, I’m serious! He said that! I shit you not!” Dan leaned against the amplifier red in the face, trying to keep himself from collapsing to the floor in a laughing fit. The rest too were in hysterics; Liz and Drew dropped to their seats (Drew to the drum stool he called “the Throne,” with exaggerated pomp each time he said it), though at this point it was hard to tell if they were laughing at Dan’s story or Charlie’s reaction to it. With each story beat the bassist burst out in a fit of high bubbly laughter, utterly infectious, a laugh that brought everyone into its mirth and kept them there on its own terms.

“Just — ‘timber!’—that’s what they said—” Dan continued, regaining some of his composure “—and he was just lying there, the whole store’s gone quiet, and his family is treating it like he just fuckin’ sneezed!”

“Didn’t anybody help!?” asked Liz, panting.

“Not a soul!” Dan exclaimed. “We looked at each other behind the counter, me and my coworkers, just like ‘should we call an ambulance?’ But before we had a chance, they were hurrying him out of the store, and we just went right back on working.”

“Just like that?” Drew asked.

“Just like that!” shouted Dan. His exuberance drew a laugh out of Charlie, and soon the group was back to gasping for breath.

“Shuffled him out and the managers were like ‘ME NE FREGO! THE CHOCOLATE MUST FLOW! GLORY TO MCCONNELL CONFECTIONERIES!’” Dan stood upright with an exaggerated posture as the rest laughed, and mockingly imitated the dictator’s overcompensatory look of machismo before cracking up along with them. Some time passed, and they were all somewhat back in control of themselves again. Dan sat atop his amplifier — a small Fender from the seventies he bought at a garage sale last spring that crackled if you moved the cord the wrong way — and sighed.

“So that was my weekend, anyways…any of y’all heard anything back from Tyler?”

A murmur of no’s came up from the other three. Dan scowled.

“Is he ever going to make it? Last time he flaked too.”

“Why do we need him again?” Drew asked.

“Because the keyboard adds a cool texture to the soundscape,” Dan said, grinning and staring off into space, waving his hands in a mystic manner. Drew rolled his eyes. “That is, it would if it were here…”

Dan paced around the room. It was almost cliche—they practiced in the cramped basement of Charlie’s place, a space that seemingly hadn’t been updated since the Carter presidency. Faux-wood paneling lined the walls of the space; the shag carpeting was a sickly shade of grey-brown accented by the ghost of a stain every so often; the basement windows may have been see-through at some point, but years of grit and grime had made them so opaque that one could only tell if it was light out or not; above them buzzed fluorescent lights encased in yellowing plastic that somehow overpowered the ambient feedback of the amps. It was far from glamorous, but it was a space.

And there in the corner the ensemble stood: Liz with her tenor, Charlie with his jazzmaster, Dan with his strat, and Drew sitting at the drums. A small rectangular space stood empty next to Drew, meant for Tyler, though rarely filled. They all looked strange together: Drew in all black, curly hair cascading down his shoulders; Charlie standing tall and broad, near twice the size of anybody else in the room; Liz wearing pastels with her straight blonde hair in a loose ponytail; and Dan in a Hawaiian shirt, bangs in his eyes lined with black and nails painted pine green.

Finally, Dan turned to the band. “Fuck it, let’s just play. Charlie—” Dan pointed, and Drew’s head shot up from his phone “—give us something, anything you want. Drew, you follow; I’ll take care of the rhythm; and Liz, you improvise over it.”

The rest nodded, and after some twiddling of knobs and preliminary plucks and bangs, the low booming notes of Charlie’s bass came through the amp in a driving tempo. The line was fractured, measured, as if a phrase practiced in a mirror time and time and time again. A few rounds, and the band was locked in; thoughts swirled in each of their minds as Drew tapped out his first notes of the session on his snare. Snare strikes and hi-hat hits cut through the bassline, highlighting its underlying rhythm, adding accents when needed and giving it concrete form.

Dan stared intently at nobody in particular as he listened; he felt his mind moved by the vibrations of the bass and the strokes of the drum, and felt the rhythm in his very being. He moved his hands up the fretboard, then back down, and picked out the notes of a chord in a driving arpeggio. He felt the strings vibrate under his touch with each strum and each pluck of a note. He listened to the bassline, and from his simple start devised ways to make it more interesting, to add new textures and new flavors to the sound they were crafting there on the spot. Ninths and diminished’s played off of one another, contributed a new sound, a new idea, breaking the mold just right.

After intent listening, Liz stood, and with a puff of air rang out the first breathy notes of a new melody. She preferred the sax to singing; with the voice, ideas had to come from the words, and got augmented by the notes. With a tenor, the middleman of language gets cut out; to Liz, it was all the better for it. Dulcet tones flowed freely from the brass bell, playing off of Dan’s chords and creating a synthesis of each’s ideas. The two were locked in, each riffing off the other, their sounds colliding and collaborating. But of the two, it was Liz who took the lead. Liz’s hands climbed up and down the instrument with fury, cascading notes falling atop one another and painting a picture of sound.

The whole band was then in sync; quick glances to one another communicated more than words ever could hope to. A glance and a nod later, and everyone stopped as Drew took center stage. His arms flying wild, he launched into his solo, making sure to give each drum its due time. He was unusual for playing traditional grip, but it offered him advantages that matched just didn’t afford him, advantages that rang clear in the subtle fury of his playing. Looking from the outside, it seemed as if every part of his body had a mind of its own, each working independent from the other in fluid harmony.

Drew’s solo grew quieter and quieter, and the band knew what to do. A strike! on the snare, and the band burst out in lush, full sound, the ending cue to a song well-performed, a call to shake the heavens and annoy the neighbors. And then, silence—vital silence. A moment of catharsis, of quiet reflection as the musicians drop out of the flow and remember life outside their craft, as if they were taken by some spirit only to be dropped a moment later.

The introspection was broken by a resounding “YEAH!” from Dan. Cheers arose from the group, and a flurry of high-fives were exchanged in celebration for the feat they’d just accomplished. It was the same feat (or a similar feat) they’d done time after time before, but each time proved to be just as exhilarating as the first.

“That was fucking sick!” Dan exclaimed. “Liz, when I went dodaladoodadaaahh and you went dodilidoooo-doooo-dodoooo~ oh my god!” The two laughed at Dan’s impressions of their instruments.

“Nah, but Charlie,” Liz said. “Shit! You were fucking going hard on that thing.” Charlie grinned wide.

“Dude, Drew though, holy shit,” Dan interjected. “That solo? Class, man, absolute class.” Drew laughed.

“God, we gotta start recording these,” Liz said.

“Nah, that makes me anxious,” Drew said. “What do you have to be anxious about, the way you play!?” Charlie exclaimed. Everyone laughed in agreement.

“Anyhow, I’m gonna go upstairs for a drink, y’all want anything?” Charlie asked, setting his bass on its stand.

“A fine chianti paired with bread from the bakeries of Naples topped with Genoan salami, drizzled in the finest Tuscan olive oil—extra virgin, of course,” said Dan. He laughed as Charlie dug into his shoulder.

“Just a water,” Liz said.

“Pepsi, if you got any,” Drew said.

“I only have Dr. Pepper,” Charlie responded.

“I’m good then.” Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah, not my thing.”

“If you say so,” Charlie shrugged. The band watched him as he gripped the banister, walking up the stairs out of the basement.

#fiction #realistic fiction #short story #music #musicians

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