Praise for Drums
"Written by a drummer with a passion for drums, music, and a beautiful woman. What better pleasures in life could one ask for? Enjoy!"
—Matt Sorum, drummer for Velvet Revolver / Guns N' Roses
"I was ecstatic...to find [a novel] written entirely from a rock drummer's perspective."
—Paula Bocciardi, Drum! magazine
"Thanks for a great book, Brad! Keep drumming!"
—Matt Cameron, drummer for Soundgarden / Pearl Jam
"I loved his descriptions of what it's like, musically, to be a drummer and I enjoyed getting this glimpse into what makes a guy, even a fictional guy, tick."
—The Davis Enterprise, Davis, California
"As the band's beat goes on...so each chapter begins, the reader wants to find out what triumph or tragedy is going to happen next."
—Tahoe Daily Tribune, South Lake Tahoe, CA, California
"Henderson's characters...are people that students will feel like they know, or have seen around...."
—Mustang Daily, Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo, California
"Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. 'And/Or' logic is out the window. Drums makes you feel the breeze."
—The Enterprise-Record, Chico, California
* * * * *
Drums
a Novel
by
Brad Henderson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
Drums: A Novel
Copyright © 1997, 2010 by Brad Henderson
First published by Fithian Press A division of Daniel and Daniel, Publishers, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-9829281-1-0
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
* * * * *
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Dave Cowden and Alan Hodge, two drummers who challenged me and inspired me early on, when I was first learning my craft,
to John McVarish and Rob Wullenjohn, two bass players who grooved alongside me, "in the rhythm pocket," many a fine gig,
to John Rechy and James Ragan, two master writers who granted me apprenticeships,
to Dave "Hawaii Five-O" Lewis, M.D., one lone trombone player who masterminded musical debut back in the fifth grade.
to Marie Afton "Re-Re" Hamel, my maternal grandmother, and Jessica Wolf Henderson, my first wife, who were both instrumental in helping me to begin my journey as a creative writer and to whom I dedicated the first edition of this book in 1997.
finally, to Fithian Press, my original publisher, and to Oak Meadows Press, my redux publisher for the digital stage, and to Jennifer Wilson and Evan Jones for their careful proofreading of the e-version.
* * * * *
For Sharon Campbell, to whom I am gratefully, graciously, and lovingly indebted for helping me to continue writing books from the heart and for being the indispensable developmental editor of Drums as an e-book re-release on the book's 13th Anniversary.
* * * * *
Drums: a Novel
Table of Contents
1. San Luis Obispo, California
3. Making the Rudiments Sound as they Are
6. Lake Tahoe, California – Nevada
8. Nightmares, Mushrooms, and Daytime Dreams
* * * * *
Chapter 1
According to L’Hôpital’s Rule, if the differential functions of both numerator and denominator yield a finite quotient, then the original equation is finite itself; but ultimately, who gives a damn…?
Fall, 1980
A good-sized crowd of students had gathered in the campus courtyard to watch our noon-time concert. Now, as the clocktower chimed one o’clock, we were playing the last song of the set. The single gong sounded dull and weak, almost completely masked by sharp, reedy jazz. Some listeners began to leave; most remained to listen to the finale.
Our final number was a Maynard Ferguson arrangement of “Spinning Wheel,” a song popularized by Blood, Sweat and Tears. It was a good tune for the Cal Poly Jazz Group since we had a talented trumpet section that year. The arrangement was also challenging for a drummer because during the solo section there was a meter change to 6/8 time, so that the trumpet solos created a swirling, spinning sound.
We were presently in 4/4 time. I was knocking out the downbeat with my right foot. I was hitting the 2/4 upbeat on my hi-hat and snare. My right hand was “ca-chink, ca-chink, ca-chinking” a jazz ride pattern on the big cymbal. And I was happy.
My eight o’clock class that day had been “Partial Differential Equations of Physical Systems.” Professor Wenzl began the lecture with a philosophical enigma:“The function F-sub-1 equal to ‘x’ as x goes to infinity is equal to infinity. The function F-sub-2 equal to ‘e raised to the power x’ as x goes to infinity is equal to infinity. Now, take the quotient of F-sub-q over F-sub-2. Call this equation F-sub-3. Ha! Infinity racing against infinity! This, if you will, is what I call a case of quantitative Darwinism.”
Dr. Wenzl paced up and down the length of the chalkboard, absently brushing against it. White dust collected on his shirt sleeves, as well as on the back of his neck where he had a habit of touching himself. He continued: “…as x approaches infinity, does the quotient of ’x’ divided by ‘e raised to x power’ blow up? No! Calculated quite simply with L’Hôpital’s Rule—it turns out to be zero, not infinity, but zero.” Wenzl smiled. Class, one must never forget the elegance of mathematics....”
Rhythm section solo. The bass player got down and played a funky riff. I stung his bass line with a matching, syncopated beat. A ripple of bass drum thuds and low-pitched notes moved lovingly in my chest.
My turn. The bass player accompanied me while I ripped out for 32 bars. I played as fast, as loud, as slick as I could. I let my arms gallop, sling energy like whips, deliver flurries of perfectly ripped blows onto centers of tom-toms, edges of cymbals. I wished my solo would last forever, but it didn’t. I ended up thinking about Wenzl.
What was the difference between him and me? Why wasn’t I a happy mathematician?
I, too, found math to be elegant. It was a powerfully objective discipline. The laws and postulates of math were without variance. Math problems always reduced to one definitive answer. No ambivalence. No interpretation. No opposing views. None of the subjectivism found in the Liberal Arts.
One plus one always equals two—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
But in spite of all inductive reasoning, for me, I knew, right then, the elegance of math paled next to the precision, rhythm. And mastery of drums.
* * *
“Hey! Hey!” A frantic guy yelled at me. His voice was sharp and nervous like a polka-dotted paper horn, the kind passed out at a New Year’s party.
He stood with a group of stragglers on the cement steps leading to the Student Union. I was packing up my drums. The rest of the jazz band had already left. The unnerving “Hey! Hey!” continued as he approached me, coming alone.
He wore black jeans and one of those Renaissance-type shirts with long, breezy sleeves and the breast laced up like a tennis shoe. On his feet he wore bright purple high-tops. He was slight of build and had a lengthy mop of dirt-blonde hair.
“You’re the drummer,” he said when he reached me. “Good show, man.”
“Seth Collins,” he continued, “lead guitar.”
“Danny Vikker,” I said.
“Do you play rock ’n roll?”
Before I could answer, one of Seth’s colleagues joined us. He was also frail and earthy, and twice as peculiar. This person wore motorcycle leathers with buckles and straps, and had a toy spider dangling from chain on his belt—a rubber tarantula as big as a rat. “I’m Spook,” he said.
“Danny might be the band’s next drummer,” Seth said.
“What?” I said.
“Good,” said Spook. “That’s hhooorrrr-ibly great.”
The guitarist explained to me that he was in a local band. They needed a drummer and he was inviting me to audition
“Are you in the group, too?” I asked Spook.
“Just a fan,” he replied. “You know I wish I played the harpsichord.” He petted his toy spider as if it were alive.
Seth and I exchanged phone numbers. “Gotta jam,” Seth said. “We’ll talk later about when and where.”
I hadn’t agreed to do anything, but Seth Collins acted like everything was all set.
“I have to go also,” said Spook. “Peace and darkness, man.”
“So long, guys.”
That was how it all started.
* * *
After garnering a “C” on my next quiz in Wenzl’s class, I called Seth.
He gave me directions to a house on the east side of town, in an old, run-down section where a lot of college students rented. When I drove to the east side, I usually took the 101 Causeway, which zips over downtown and passes by the college, but that night I opted for the slow route, the zig-zagging drive along downtown’s network of tidy, perpendicular streets.
As I cruised Marsh Street, the atmosphere was festive. Groups of people moved on the sidewalks, most of them traveling to and from the bars, positioned like neon oases along S.L.O.’s main drag. I passed Aces, the most popular dance bar, and heard the sound of thumping rock ‘n’ roll. A line of people at least a block long waited to get into the overcrowded club.I wasn’t an expert on the local club scene, but I had heard people mention that Seth’s band, Bandit, was supposed to be a hot act.
Imagining myself onstage behind a set of drums, I turned onto Johnson Street and disappeared into the east side. No more downtown bustle. Above silhouettes of boxy houses, street lights incandesced into frozen star-shapes. Everything else was lunar blue.
A Dodge van was parked in front of 29 Orchid Street just as Seth said it would be. I heard the faint sound of an electric guitar coming from somewhere inside. On the front porch there was a big wooden spool pushed on its side for a table; an unlit candle—almost completely melted into a wax puddle—stuck to the wheel-shaped top. Frayed beach chairs surrounding the spool were pushed out into a haphazard, open pattern, as though the chairs’ occupants had risen suddenly and ecstatically, not looking back. The doorbell button dangled from a thick, spiraling wire. It still worked.
An Asian fellow wearing drawstring pants and a striped, sleeveless T-shirt appeared in front of me. He was lean-muscled and tall. His crisp white outfit accentuated and made especially radiant his bronze, outdoorsy skin.
“Greetings, dude,” he said. “You’re not nearly as ugly as Seth said you were.” He smiled broadly, showing silver caps on each of his eyeteeth. “I take it you’re the drummer?”
"You win the prize,” I said. “I’m the drummer.”
“I play bass. The name’s Jay.” He gave me a healthy slap on the back. “Entrée, dude.” I followed behind him.
Aside from a state-of-the-art stereo and a large collection of record albums, the interior of the house was a collage of seashells, beer cans, grocery store house plants, and mismatched furniture. Typical college student living. Jay and I passed through a kitchen with a sink full of dirty pots and pans, and stepped into the “studio,” previously a garage.
The studio was wired with a variety of colored flood lights, but now a bank of overhead fluorescent tubes lit the room. Sound-absorbing carpet covered the floor and walls. It had taken several different colored remnants to complete the job. A beat-up armchair, some fat pillows, and a low table occupied one corner of the room. On the table was the P.A. console; P.A. speakers hung on opposite walls. In the middle were guitar amps, keyboards, microphones on stands, and an empty space left for a set of drums.
Old promo posters were pinned to the wall carpet here and there. One poster showed an air-brushed picture of a beautiful girl with green eyes; a sexy girl with long dark hair; a spunky girl wearing a dangerously short mini-skirt and pointed, knee-high boots. Her image was done in avant-garde smear, so that she looked as though she were in motion—singing, dancing, jumping all at the same time.
I wondered who she was.
Seth Collins sat patiently strumming his electric guitar. “Hey,” he said. “Good to see you.” He reached for the cigarette that was smoldering in an ashtray on top of his amp. Hang loose. I’m in the middle of transposing a new song I want us to play tonight.”
Seth motioned toward a third band member, who was bent over a disassembled keyboard, fiddling with the instrument’s electrical innards. The unbolted casing lay on the floor. It was painted red, white, and blue.
“That’s Uwe,” Seth said. “We’re ‘Bandit.’”
Uwe was a blonde, Teutonic-looking fellow, with narrow shoulders and a thick waist that made his hefty body look like a tree trunk. His face had a handsome shape, but was sore-looking, pockmarked. He ignored Seth, and also Jay and me, and continued to work on his instrument.
“I told you not to buy that thing,” Seth said.
“I’ll have it fixed in a minute,” said Uwe.
“It’s junk, and it sounds like junk. You’ve got a decent piano and synthesizer. That old organ is a dinosaur, man.”
Uwe’s lips twisted up in rebellion. “There,” he said. “Just a bad connection.” A piercing, circus-sound blasted out of one of the amps.
“Praise the Lord, man,” Jay said.
“I don’t know what Seth’s problem is,” Uwe told me. “A frat brother let me have this thing for 100 bills.”
“It would cost you 200 for him to take it back,” said Seth.
Uwe ignored the guitarist. “You see,” he confided to me and Jay, “I have some ideas of my own for this band. I’m the type of musician that’s always looking for a new sound. The Beatles used an organ. So did the Doors.”
“Whatever,” Jay said.
“I’m serious,” said Uwe. “I shit you not.”
Jay swung open the garage door. We unloaded fiberboard cases from the back of my Toyota pickup. I broke out my set.
Seth suggested that we start with a song by the Vapors that I’d never heard of.
“Let’s begin with standard fare,” said Jay. “A Stones tune. Maybe some Who.”
“How about ‘Johnny B. Goode’?” Uwe suggested.
I nodded. Of course I knew that one.
“Going way back,” Jay said.
“Way too pedestrian,” said Seth.
“It’s a classic,” said Jay.
“Maybe we can do something creative here.” Seth’s expression brightened and he showed Jay a new riff, which he hoped would spice up the old rock ‘n’ roll standby.
Chuck Berry would have hardly recognized the piece the way we were playing it. Seth and Jay’s guitar work was aggressive and new wave. Uwe’s synthesizer gave the song a space-age digital sound. Seth sang lead, and Jay sang backup vocals. Seth’s singing voice was scratchy like when he talked, but he hit all his notes and sang with raw conviction.
The song required a straightforward beat, but my arms, wrists, and ankles were sluggish from tense nerves. I was having trouble following him, and turned so that I could watch his fingers work the fat strings. I understood the language of his hands. Bass line and drum beat meshed.
Seth left his mike and played a guitar solo in front of my drums. A serenade. You’re doing it now, Vikker, the guitar said. That’s it.
We dragged out the piece a long time and had a lot of fun with it. But the jam continued to be an audition. When the guys were satisfied I could play a beat, they had me do some short, four-bar solos. One of them would improvise for four bars, then I took over and filled four measures with fancy drumming.
Seth went. I went. Uwe went. I went. Now. I counted as Jay finished his solo. Three-Two-Three-Four. Four-Two-Three-Four.
I went around the tom-toms playing sixteenth notes in triplet-like patterns, punctuating the fast patterns with the bass drum.
That count was: One-Eee-And-Dah-Two-Eee-And-Dah-Three-Eee-And-Dah-Four-Eee-And-Dah…
The hand-foot pattern was: (roto-tom #1) Right-Left-Bass (roto-tom #1) Right-Left-Bass (smallest tom) Right-Left-Bass (next tom) Right-Left-Bass (big tom) Right-Left-Bass…
I was eager to play on. Musically, I hadn’t done a two-and-a-half back flip with a double twist, but I felt confident: things were going okay.
There was a cassette deck wired into the P.A., and Seth put in a tape of more songs he wanted us to try with me playing drums. We listened to three tunes, one by the Police, one by the Talking Heads, and the third a dancey piece by Pat Benatar that Seth transposed earlier so he and Jay could sing it without busting their larynxes. I listened to each number several times, trying to digest the melodies and rhythmical patterns.
The audition lasted nearly four hours. We played all of the copy tunes Seth wanted us to do, then jammed on some of the band’s originals.
When it was over, the band members excused themselves and went in the house to hold a conference. I waited in the studio, and listened to the dull buzz of amps permeating sweaty, wrung-out air.
The guitarist, bass man, and keyboardist said nothing when they returned.
Jay lit up a bong. “Take a hit, dude.”
I grasped the long, bamboo pipe. Jay showed me where the carburetor hole was on the side, and I placed my mouth in the circular opening on the top, and drew in. I heard water bubbling in the chamber. Jay pushed my finger off the carburetor hole.
Cool, humidified smoke rushed into my lungs. It tasted like burnt pine. The volume of smoke in my lungs doubled, tripled, quadrupled. I couldn’t get oxygen. My eyes cried. I bent over with gagging coughs.
“Forgot to tell him it was expand weed,” Uwe chuckled.
“Sorry,” Seth said.
“You all right?” Jay asked. “You look pretty fucked up. You took way too big of a hit.”
The bong went around a second time. I let it pass.
We sat in the center of the room, Indian-style on the floor. Seth, Jay and Uwe buzzed on the pot—red-eyed, quiet.
Above us, beyond our circle, I saw the eyes of the beautiful poster girl staring sideways like the Mona Lisa. She dared me to seek an answer. She was impatient. So was I.
“Am I in?”
Seth began to explain, “We auditioned six drummers so far.”
“We were supposed to give one more guy a chance after you,” said Uwe.
“But the three of us talked. We liked you pretty well,” said Jay.
“We played this town for almost three years,” Seth continued, “then we lost our drummer. He left us for another band in L.A.” Seth scratched the stubble on his chin with his thin fingers. “Now, I guess, we’ve got that problem taken care of.”
Jay grinned. “You’re in, if you want.”
I accepted. It seemed like an elegant thing to do.
“Don’t forget to tell him about Abbey-baby,” Uwe said, “now that she’s made her grand entrance into town again.”
“Don’t be such a donkey,” Jay said.
“I’m just trying to make a point, that’s all,” said Uwe. We’ve got our new drummer. We could do fine without Abbey.”
Seth turned on Uwe, “She’s our ticket, you idiot! People love her. She’s a better musician than you’ll ever be.” Seth paused. “Maybe better than all of us.”
Seth puffed on his cigarette to calm down. “There she is...” He was pointing to the beautiful poster girl. “I painted her a couple years ago. Do you like it?”
“She’s a knock-out,” I said.
“About a year after we started the band, there were some hard feelings. She left town,” Seth continued.
“More like she totally disappeared,” said Jay.
“She’s back. We want her to sing lead again. We’re doing okay without her, but with her I think we’ll be able to really go someplace.”
“She’s stringing us along, man,” said Uwe. “She hasn’t said yes.”
“She will,” said Seth. “Give her time.”
“She digs the limelight, and it digs her,” said Jay. “How can she say no?”
“She can’t,” said Seth.
I looked once again at the promo poster of Abbey. I hoped Seth was right.
Chapter 2
Winter Quarter
Jay phoned and said he would stop by my place around eight. Spook’s party wasn’t supposed to start until nine or ten, but Jay suggested that we have a few beers before heading over.
“Got to get in the proper frame of mind,” Jay Wong reminded me before hanging up.
Thursday night we had played Aces and during break Seth’s ghoulish friend, Spook, invited all of us to this party. Friday we had played Chee’s Nightclub, and we were supposed to play again tonight, Saturday, but Uwe’s frat was having an exchange with some sorority and Uwe refused to miss it.
Seth wasn’t thrilled about cancelling the gig. Jay and I were bummed, too, but we decided to make the most of it and go over to Spook’s. Seth said he was going to lock himself in the studio and write songs.
I was still getting used to the idea of being a rock musician, and, as I got dressed for the party, putting on jeans and a button-down shirt, I wondered how I might look with a pierced ear like Jay, or with a mop of hair like Seth? After splashing on some after-shave, I examined myself in the mirror. I doubted if me and my pug nose and puny chest would ever make the cover of Rolling Stone.
I sat down at my desk, deciding that I might as well do a homework problem or two while I waited for Jay. Ironically, the one class I thought would be winter quarter’s cake-walk turned out to be winter quarter’s bear. “Senior Seminar for Math Majors” was hardly a breezy, round-table discussion. The professor assigned twenty or thirty tedious problems every damn class, and the solutions weren’t in the back of the book; the professor made up the exercises himself.
Gloomily, I reduced problem number twenty-four down to a messy integral—all problems in Senior Seminar invariably reduced to either a messy integral or differential. I was really getting sick of college. Sick of the whole business.
* * *
Earlier that day I received a phone call from my father. Dad and I did most of our serious talking on the phone—a medical doctor, Dad was a busy man.
I really preferred talking to him on the phone. I didn’t like the no-nonsense-turn-your-head-and-cough expression he put on his face when he harassed me about my grades.
“Are you giving your professors a run for their money?” Dad asked in his ex-All-American tight end voice.
“I guess so,” I replied.
“I hear the weather’s been exceptionally blissful down there at that resort where you’re going to school. Here in Sacramento, we’re up to our elbows in fog. It’s miserable. A lot of bronchitis going around.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Had a few spare minutes and gave Stanford a call on your behalf. My old alma mater. Stanford’s math department is topnotch. Of course their medical school is better.”
“I know. I know.”
“Someone’s application was not on file.”
“I’ve been sort of busy.”
“Yes?”
“Playing drums.”
“Christ almighty, you sound like some hippie person from the sixties.”
“Dad, I’ve been thinking—“
“What the hell is it this time, Danny. Still a loner? Still depressed because you left behind all your high school friends? I told you to join a fraternity. A good way to network. Crap! You could finally do something, son, if you’d get off your butt and mail in those applications. I say crap!”
“Screw you, Dad,” I yelled into the receiver.
But Dad had already hung up. I didn’t have the guts to tell him anything like that to his face.
* * *
Jay arrived.
“I hate to tell you this, dude, but you stink,” he said. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that the ladies prefer the natural aroma of a man?”
I sniffed the air and realized I had applied my after-shave a bit thick. “Screw you,” I said.
“Screw yourself, donkey.”
Jay was obviously feeling punk. He had threaded a safety pin through the hole in his ear lobe. The black button pinned to the breast of this Sex-Wax T-shirt read in orange, brush-stroked letters, “Abbey Butler and Bandit!!!”
Jay, like Seth, still seemed convinced that their elusive ex-singer was going to be with us again soon. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her.
“Dude, I had such a day,” Jay exclaimed. “The waves off Morro Rock were breaking perfect. Cold as a witch’s tit, but, fuck it, I surfed the big blue till dusk.”
“I spent the day doing homework. I’m still not done.”
“Bummer."
“School’s a drag,” Jay said. “That’s why I blew it off for a while. I just take people’s money down at the record shop and listen to good tunes. When the waves are good, the boss lets me skate.” Jay’s eyes squinted sleepily as he preached about the good life.
Sometimes Jay was so content it made me a little sick.
“You want to spin an album?” I asked, pointing to my stereo.
Jay selected Regatta de Blanc by the Police. He took the album out of the jacket then put it on the turntable. He applied the disc cleaning brush before letting the stylus drop onto the first track.
Sting’s cutting voice rang out the words to “Message in a Bottle” as I went to the fridge for brews. We drank a six-pack.
* * *
Spook, as it turned out, lived in a rented house not far from my apartment in the Arroyo Lake suburb. It was a pleasant West Coast winter night, but Jay insisted that we drive rather than walk.
“When I leave the party with some gorgeous babe,” he said, “I want to have some wheels right there.”
Jay’s statement sounded overly macho and I laughed. “Seriously,” he continued, “Let’s cruise in the van. I don’t like to walk when I’m wasted.”
The old Dodge engine didn’t have enough power to squeal the tires. As Jay lay on the gas pedal, the big van reared up front like a giant rocking horse, and I was pushed back into my seat. We let out crazy whoops and yells as Jay accelerated past the speed limit.
We ran out of breath. We stopped shouting.
I listened to Jay’s grinding downshifts of the engine. “Don’t want to get popped for a 502,” he muttered.
We inched along about 25 mph. We seemed to be stuck in time. I wanted to keep racing.
More and more, I didn’t like moments of stasis. When I had them, there was this holier than thou part of me that, given nothing else to do, dwelled on school, made me feel guilty, said I oughta buckle down, thought my father was right.
Yet there was another part of me that thought he was wrong. Piss on him. Piss on Wenzl. Piss on Senior Seminar in Math. This was the part of me that liked to play drums. This was the part of me that liked to keep moving, keep in rhythm with the here and now. This was a part of myself that was relatively new.
“Can’t you go any faster?” I asked Jay.
“We’re here,” he said.
I saw a house with jack-o’-lanterns in the windows. Cars everywhere parked on the street—some on the front lawn.
Spook greeted us at the front door.
“Hello,” I said.
“The pumpkins are bitchin’,” said Jay, “just like Halloween.”
Our host was in his glory, wearing a sweatshirt with the green face of Frankenstein on front and the brown jowls and white fangs of the Wolfman on back. He wore his black hair greased back, and had powdered his already pale skin death-white. From the neck up, Spook looked like Dracula, until he opened his mouth. His teeth were small, yellowish, and uneven—not big, white and sharp.
We passed a darkly lit room filled with people dancing. None of the other guests wore costumes like Spook, but many were unusual looking. I watched with fascination as a red-haired young man weighing about 300 pounds did blobbish somersaults across the middle of the dance floor. The dancers screamed with joy and jumped out of his way. “That’s Big Ben. He’s one of my roommates,” said Spook.
Through an aqua-black sliding glass door, I caught a glimpse of the backyard. I saw human silhouettes and amber glows that hovered like fireflies, joints and cigarettes holding the silhouettes together in clusters.
We passed through the kitchen, the only room with bright light. Spook side-stepped the line to the keg and drew Jay and me two icy beers. We declined the hors d’oeuvres—a huge bowl of chips, beside it a smaller bowl of haphazardly concocted guacamole, with bits and pieces of avocado skin included.
The room we ended up in had Spook written all over it. Eerie posters decorated the walls, and collections of plastic monster models were showcased on onyx black shelves. Jay pointed out a miniature guillotine that chopped the head off a little plastic man.
“It works,” Spook told us.
There were also textbooks, several bookcases of them. Many of them I recognized as required reading for science courses: Biology of Humans, Tipler’s Physics, Advanced Biochemistry. Above a small, organized desk, I spied a row of certificates. One was a Dean’s List award, bearing the name of its recipient, “Melvin Stevenson, Jr.”
Spook, a.k.a. Melvin, asked Jay to lock the door. He unfolded a triangular piece of paper, revealing a small pile of white powder and white crystalline mixed together. He let the mixture spill onto a mirror.
“Look at these outrageous rocks,” Jay said soberly, his eyes transfixed to the glass.
Cocaine. I had only smoked pot once before joining Bandit. Now I got high at least a couple times a week. Getting stoned after practice was a part of our ritual. But this seemed more serious.
The laws against cocaine were stricter, and you were up shit creek if you got caught with it. Also, the news was always reporting someone dying from it. Too potent.
I didn’t want any. Q.E.D.
As the party boomed beyond these walls, Spook used a razor blade to chop some white grains until they were dust; then he cut out three smaller piles from the large one. He said, “Some for me, some for Jay, some for Dan.”
“We can get some hefty snorts out of those. Thanks, man.” Jay’s voice was both polite and rushed. He was ready.
Spook made the three piles into twelve long, thin lines. He stuck one end of a short straw up his nostril and bent over the mirror so the other end of the straw could vacuum some powder. He changed nostrils and repeated this ritual. His eyes watering, he passed the straw to me.
“I’ll pass,” I said.
“Are you crazy?” Jay said. “There’s about a hundred bucks worth of blow here. Take it when you can get it, dude.”
“You go ahead.” I handed him the straw.
Jay rid the mirror of his share very quickly. Then he started eyeing mine. “What do you say, Spook—two and two?”
“Yeah, sure,” answered Spook.
“Danny’s a math major,” Jay explained to our host. “He’s cool, but he’s kind of straight.”
“I’m pre-med,” said Spook, rather ho-hum. “Go on, Jay. You first.”
Before Jay could get the straw up his nose, I reclaimed it. Gotta keep moving.
“Maybe you and my father could get together sometime,” I said to Spook.
Private joke. He didn’t get it.
I inhaled.
High in my nasal passages the substance gathered and then dripped onto the back of my throat. The taste of the substance was antiseptic, yet good—indescribable, really, in terms of other flavors and smells.
The first sensation came on fast. My gums became numb as if from Novocain. My lips hung open loosely.
The second sensation hit soon after: everything seemed so suddenly Right: everything was so crystalline like those white rocks.
In the room of textbooks and plastic creatures, Spook, Jay, and I bobbed our heads to bassy reverberations. We buzzed.
“Good stuff,” Jay complimented Spook, who was bug-eyed and fooling around with a small, green model of a lizard-monster. Spook let out a disconcerting roar.
I sniffed casually like Jay kept doing.
Someone pounded on the door from outside in the hall.
“The cops are here,” said a female voice. The knocking continued. “What are you doing in there? Come on, Spook, everybody’s scared.”
An entire liter of adrenalin shot straight into my heart. I felt sweaty, dazed, weak. “Shit,” I said. “Hide that stuff, Spook.”
Spook slid the mirror under his bed. “Bummer,” he said.
Again the voice sounded from behind the door, “What do you want us to do, Spook? The cops want to talk to the person in charge. They want to check I.D.’s.” The voice paused. “God, Spook, they want to bust us.“
Clipped images of jail cells and rusty iron bars flashed in and out of focus. I saw Jay pacing the room like a nervous zoo cat.
Two girls bowled over Spook as he unlatched the door. Another liter of adrenaline flowed into my chest. This time there was not enough room and some flowed directly into my brain. Straight adrenaline into my brain. It made me queasy. The girls crashed into Jay and me.
Our bodies tangled as we fell to the floor. No one spoke.
The girls erupted with giggles. One of them pranced over and slammed shut the door, trapping all five of us in Spook’s room. “Geeezzz,” she said, “we thought you guys were never going to open up.” Her face had a hard, sexy edge.
“Were you guys scared?” asked her friend who was slight and twiggy, and wearing a lot of blue eye shadow.
Spook was not the least but ruffled. “This is Jane, and this is Leslie. My two other roommates.” Jane was the cute, petite girl and Leslie was the rough, ravenous girl, who asked us to call her Flipper. I’d seen them before with Spook at one of our gigs.
“You know what I want?” Flipper asked.
“I can’t imagine,” Spook said.
“Come on, Spooky,” Jane said. “Where is it?”
“We did it all,” Spook replied.
“That’s shitty,” Flipper said. “You’re not being nice to your two girls.” She playfully shook her finger at Spook. Spook seemed on the verge of letting out a giant yawn.
He recovered his mirror, and all of us gathered around it. Jane sat next to me; Flipper sat next to Jay; Spook sat by himself. This arrangement pleased our host.
The girls hungrily snorted white powder, and the rest of us did some more lines as well. Spook said he had to get back to his party. As he left, he winked at me. It was a funny wink. He had a hard time holding one eye open while closing the other—it was more of a contorted squint.
“So,” I said to the girls. “This is some party.”
“Yeah, so it is,” Jay said.
“So what?” teased Flipper.
Jane pinched me lightly on the stomach. “So there,” she said.
“You know what?” Flipper said. “You guys are a great band. Jane and I saw you at Aces.
“I like drummers,” added Jane, who kept staring at me with her blue butterfly eyes.
“I like bass players,” announced Flipper.
Flipper hopped onto Jay’s lap. Jay couldn’t seem to stop grinning. “Bitchin,’” he said.
The cocaine screamed in my head like a high-pitched noise.
Jay and Flipper played with Spook’s toys. Jay raised the blade of the miniature guillotine and let it fall and chop off the little plastic man’s head. The head dropped into a little plastic bucket. Jay tugged the guide string and hauled up the blade, revealing a little plastic neck-stub painted red.
“Gross!” exclaimed Flipper. “Spook is so weird.”
“I think Spook is a pretty cool dude,” Jay said.
He and Flipper were hitting it off. I couldn’t think of anything to say to Jane. She kept staring at me with her blue butterfly eyes.
“Let’s go dance,” I said finally.
We made our way through the halls, through the cocktail darkness, dark-orange and purplish-blue. I felt like I had a fever and my skin prickled. My arm was around Jane. Paranoia nipped at me. Taking cocaine, Danny?! Crap!! Pathetic loser!!
I kept moving. I willed myself to blend into the noise and the frenzy, like lotion into skin.
I led Jane into the dancing. I liked to dance. It felt like I was playing drums with my body.
She had a good sense of rhythm. I wished for a slow song. Instead the electric music made us twist and jump.
We danced for five or six numbers. The music was exceedingly loud. I grasped her small shoulders and spoke directly into one of her ears. “Take a break?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
We went outside and stood in the cool, dark quiet. I liked Jane and fantasized about her and me making love. Yet, once again our conversation had stalled. That is, until she mentioned Domino.
“You’re not at all like he was,” she said.
“What?”
“Domino. The band’s old drummer.”
“You knew him?” I asked.Seth, Jay, and Uwe never discussed Bandit’s old drummer.
“Sure, everyone knew him,” Jane said.
I asked her why I was so different.
“I don’t know, exactly,” she replied. “For one thing, he was so show-biz.”
“What?”
“You’re more quiet. I like that. Domino used to get so obnoxious when he partied.” She paused. “Not like a jock or that type—he didn’t stomp around and break stuff. He just got real braggy.”
“I see.”
“He was full of a lot of B.S.”
“When I joined Bandit, all the others told me was that the last drummer quit because he got a better offer.”
“Yeah—that and because of him and Abbey,” Jane said, “because they broke up.”
I’d never met Domino or Abbey. But, nevertheless, Jane’s words skewered my gut. These two. Their legacy. I wanted to know everything.
But this is what I said: “I guess that’s their business.”
“Oh it’s not secret Domino and Abbey were lovey-dovey,” Jane said. “Then they had a fight and Abbey left the band. Domino and the rest of the guys kept playing and they did okay for a while.”
Jane recklessly crossed her twiggy arms and cast a look of reproach. “Abbey’s a bitch anyway, even if she is a great singer. You know, I heard Seth wants to let her back in. Maybe he likes her, too. What do you know?”
“Only gossip,” I said.
As Jane had the strange habit of doing, she reached out and pinched my stomach. “I like it that you’re in the band now.”
I should have stopped on that encouraging note. “So,” I asked rather smugly, “was this Domino a decent drummer?”
“Most people say he’s the best drummer they’ve ever heard. I bet he gets in a really good band down in L.A.” Jane’s blue butterfly eyes became apologetic. “Let’s do some more toot.”
I followed her back to Spook’s room and we located the mirror under the bed. Quickly she shoved the mirror in front of me and motioned for me to make us some lines, which I did as best I could. She sucked up two long ones. I did the same, and soon became full of that clear, perfect high I felt earlier. I was having fun again.
We each did another, and another. We hummed and twitched and sniffed through our nostrils. The medicinal energy that had previously sparkled my thoughts and made all sensation seem so Right and shiny, now centralized into one, single urgent drive to make it with Jane.
I also felt disoriented, anxious, and shy.
She changed that. “I’m so hot,” she said, her voice low and amorous. “Let’s go to my room and get naked."
We made love furiously. Jane still had her top on, and I had my pants around my ankles in an awkward wad. We rested and then finished undressing and climbed under her sheets. We did it again—this time more slowly and proficiently. Then we lay there, both awake.
The sweat and friction between our bodies dissolved most of Jane’s makeup. Her blue butterfly eyes were gone. This young woman, whose face was so near I could feel her warm, humid exhales, seemed naggingly, naggingly foreign.
* * *
It took a moment to place where I was. I did not move. I did not want to wake the girl. I needed to think, alone.
Fragmented voices played in my mind: “Domino ... So show-biz ... She disappeared … Cocaine ... Crap ... You loser.”
My nostrils were dry and my mouth tasted like chalk. I lay there feeling the presence of a naked stranger beside me, hearing the crisp hum of morning; when I played these sensations against flashbacks of the night it all seemed incongruent. I wanted to get out of Jane’s bed and out of her, Spook, and that other girl’s house.
I met Jay in the hallway. He had the same thing in mind. “Getting the hell out of Dodge?” I whispered.
“Breakfast with Flipper is something I don’t want to experience,” he said. “ She’s into some pretty weird stuff.”
“Oh?”
“She wanted me to tie her up and shit like that.”
“Marvelous,” I said.
Jay put his finger to his lips. “Sssshhh,” he said.
Inside the van, the compartment was cold and damp with morning. “So how come you bailed?” Jay asked. “Jane seemed pretty cool.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I asked him a question. “Did your old drummer really used to go out with Abbey?”
“Yeah,” he replied. He took a long time before he reached down and turned the key in the ignition. “But I guess, Danny, that’s like all water under the bridge.” Jay looked straight ahead as he drove, and made it a point to leave it at that.
Chapter 3
Making the Rudiments Sound as They Are
My first music teacher’s name was Mr. Luck. He was a peculiar, thin high-strung man with crooked and aged teeth. The thick, black vinyl frames of his eyeglasses were faded from the whiteness of sweat. The name “Luck” had no significance for me as a fifth grade kid. Now, however, it seems like the perfect antonym for what Meriam Luck had none of. There were five elementary schools in the Sacramento suburb where I grew up, and Mr. Luck was assigned to drive from institution to institution in his “music center on wheels,” a moth-balled school bus. The old bus was painted gray and all the bench seats were removed; in their place were racks for the band instruments that Mr. Luck loaned to his students. Along the right-hand side of the bus, underneath a bank of square, filmy windows, was a long counter hedged with metal stools. It was there I learned to play the snare drum.
Once a week I got to leave class, in order to visit Mr. Luck in the school parking lot for a lesson. He screamed from beginning to end.
“Didn’t I tell you not to put your drumsticks together with rubberbands? You’re going to wreck the finish on them. Rubberbands cause oxidation marks,” he ranted when I arrived.
If he would have told me what oxidation meant, and if two drumsticks bound together by a rubberband didn’t make such a good mock airplane propeller when one stick was wound against the other, I probably would have listened, but back then I nodded dumbly and mumbled, “Yes, Mr. Luck, I was just trying to keep ‘em together so I wouldn’t lose ‘em.” “Get those wrists warmed up,” he blurted next.
Upon command I placed a drumstick in each hand, gripping the centers of the sticks as if they were batons. I rotated my wrists back and forth, back and forth. That exercise is one I never forgot. It was a cool thing to do; while brass players got their mouth pieces warm by sucking on them like metal lollipops, and woodwinds started first by slobbering on their reeds, drummers merely twirled their sticks and yawned. Later, when I progressed to playing a drum set in a group, I still waited out the moments before a gig with that same routine I learned from Meriam Luck.
“How’s that roll coming?” Mr. Luck would inquire. “Okay, begin. Right-Right, left-Left, right-Right, left-Left. No. No. Start again. Your sticks aren’t in proper position. The angle’s wrong—too close to the rim. When I want a rim shot, by God, I’ll ask for one. Right-Right, left-Left, right-Right, left-Left. No. No. Accent the second sticking. Better. Better. right-Right, left-Left, right-Right, left-Left….”
In a couple minutes I would be buzzing out a choppy long roll. Bbbzzzzzzzzzzzz. At these times, Mr. Luck would grin his dirty, crooked grin, and I would grin back.
But these momentary calms were short-lived. “Now back down. Slow it up. No. No. Not so fast. Control. Use a little control.” Soon we’d be back to, “right-Right, left-Left, right-Right, left-Left.” Ten minutes into my lesson I felt as much a nervous wreck as he.
Mr. Luck taught me how to play a paradiddle, a flam, a five, seven, and nine stroke roll, and, of course, the infamous long roll, upon which he placed so much weight.
“Danny,” he would lecture, “first, you have to learn the rudiments. One must always start out with the rudiments. They develop a drummer’s speed and coordination, and all drum playing is built upon them.”
“Vikker,” he called me by my last name when he was most serious, “do you know how the rudiments get their names?”
“Not really, Mr. Luck,” I would say politely.
“Back in the old days, back when drummers marched with the armies, the art of snare drumming was passed from one drummer to the next by word of mouth. Each rudiment derived its name simply from how it sounded.
“Play ‘right-left-right-right, left right-left-left.’ Quickly now. Quickly.
“Now say, ‘paradiddle, paradiddle.’”
“Paradiddle, paradiddle.’”
“Paradiddle, paradiddle.”
“You see what I mean, Vikker?”
Mr. Luck loved that story. He told it to me often. “Rrrooolll. Rrrooolll. Fla-aamm. Fla-aamm. Paradiddle. Paradiddle,” he impressed upon me. “Rudiments are the beginning. Rudiments sound as they are.”
* * *
When the two girls and Jay arrived at 29 Orchid Street, I was sitting in front of the stereo with Seth and Uwe, listening to Pete Townshend’s Empty Glass album. There were a couple of songs on the record that Seth felt Bandit ought to try. Seth was putting together a new repertoire, or list—four collections of songs—sets A, B, C, and D—that each took an hour to play; four hours worth of music was enough material for a typical gig. About a quarter of the songs were originals, and the rest were copy tunes, borrowed from popular, big-name bands. Seth hoped eventually we would have enough originals that we didn’t have to rely on copy tunes.
“What took you so long?” Seth asked the three persons who spilled into the house. He was excited.Tonight was our first practice with the band’s former lead singer.
“I was starved, man,” Jay said. “We stopped at the Dark Room for some chow.”
Jay wore Hawaiian-print Bermuda shorts, an unbuttoned pea coat, and rubber thongs. Exposure to the brisk night air gave the brown skin on Jay’s face and bare legs a pinkish hue.
The two girls were sharing a dish of frozen yogurt. Abbey, whom I immediately recognized from Seth’s painting, took the plastic spoon from her girlfriend’s hand and placed a large carob-coated scoop in her mouth. “Care for a taste?” she teased Seth.
Seth didn’t reply. He lit a smoke and gave one to Abbey, then lit another match with a quick, deft strike and put an amber glow on the end of her cigarette.
Abbey and Jay continued to kid around with Seth. Abbey’s friend didn’t seem to mind not being included in the conversation. She ate her frozen yogurt happily, and didn’t offer any to me or Uwe.
After a while, the guitarist, bass player, and songstress stopped chatting, and Abbey Butler stared at me with penetrating green eyes.
She wore an unusual array of color and fashion on her slim, curvy body. A black and white checkered sport jacket draped her square, confident shoulders, and flowed down her torso with streamy, cosmopolitan lines. The lapels of the oversized man’s jacket flopped loosely; a necktie dangled well past her waist and was tied with a funny girlish knot. She wore tight blue-green slacks, high heel boots, and feathered earrings. As she removed her gaze from me to wink saucily at Seth and Jay, the weightless earrings brushed her smooth neck like naughty angels.
Her stare returned. “Well,” she said, “Aren’t you going to introduce yourself? The boys told me they found a new drummer. I’m not blind.”
“Cut the theatrics, Abbey,” said Seth.
“Oh shush,” Abbey said pertly. She returned to me. “Seth always tries to be so level-headed. You know what I think?” Her green eyes swam over me like a screaming gust of hot wind. “He ought to try letting go. It’s really fun. I do it all the time.”
“I’m Danny,” I said, “I—”
“They told me your name,” she said, cutting me off, as though I were being excessively dull. “I’m Abbey, of course. We already know that, don’t we? The point is that we’ve never met—in flesh and blood. Now we have. Savvy?”
I nodded. The physical space between me and the capricious girl vanished. It felt as though her sharp, painted fingernails were tapping on my chest. She was ten times more beautiful in person than she was in Seth’s painting.
“They say you play drums well,” Abbey continued. “I hope so. Seth and I mean business this year. Oh, I’m sorry—.” She stopped and looked up at Jay as if to acknowledge that he was a part of the plan, too, then she looked at Uwe more superficially.
Uwe said, “I knew she was going to do this if we let her back in.”
“Do what?” Seth asked.
“Do what?” Abbey repeated.
“She’s already taking over the whole show,” Uwe said.
“Mellow out,” Jay said.
Abbey said, “Isn’t a lead singer supposed to steal the show, or something like that?”
“Yes,” Uwe said.
“Then what’s your problem?” Seth asked.
“Nothing,” Uwe said.
Uwe did have a problem. Abbey didn’t like him. That was obvious.
Abbey’s friend was still finishing her frozen yogurt, daintily spooning the last bit from the bottom of a pink plastic dish. “Hi,” she said demurely. “I think it’s nice the band has a new drummer.”
Abbey announced, “This is Zoe Cleopatra Hash. Isn’t that a beautiful name?”
“Yes, it is,” I said cautiously. “Very beautiful, and very different.”
“Oh, my,” Zoe replied.
“Zoe and I are spiritual sisters,” said Abbey. “We live together. We talk about everything. And we get in all sorts of trouble—that is, when I’m not singing and Zoe’s not studying.”
The two girls batted eyes back and forth, communicating some sort of secret message. Abbey grabbed Zoe by the hand and led her to where the rest of us were in the living room. It was cute the way Zoe’s short blonde hair bounced up and down when she moved. Like her friend’s Zoe’s attire was unique. Her nautical blouse had a flapping collar and a sail boat monogrammed on the breast. She was taller than Abbey, and had long, tan legs under her jean skirt. Zoe Cleopatra Hash definitely had a subtle beauty, but next to Abbey she was no competition.
Uwe got up off the couch. Abbey and Zoe started to sit down in his place. “Don’t you think we should practice?” Uwe said. The Pete Townshend album had stopped playing on the stereo, and the speakers were making a popping noise. Uwe walked over to the stereo and flicked a switch on the turntable and ended the tone arm’s lonely spiraling in the record album’s center return track. Power off, the record platter stalled and greedily ate momentum in a dying spin.
“Uwe’s right,” Abbey said. “Let’s start. I can’t wait to sing.”
Uwe looked rather shocked that she agreed with him.
We went into the small studio and took our places. Zoe’s actions were as well-rehearsed as Jay and Seth’s ritualistic guitar tuning. She homed-in on the big, tattered chair in front of the sound board and plopped herself on it, then reached over and hit the P.A.’s power switch and twirled a few knobs.
“Thanks,” Seth called, as he helped Abbey with her microphone.
Zoe smiled at the guitarist and singer, then pulled a yellow felt pen and a book entitled The History of the Mideast out of her cloth handbag. Sitting cross-legged, her back straight and poised, she put on a pair of professorial-looking glasses and began her studies. She read diligently, high-lighting important facts with her marker. She seemed content and happy. I wondered if she had a good pair of earplugs.
“One, two, three,” Seth said into his mike.
“Three, two, one,” Jay said into another.
Abbey stood in the center of the room. “Test. Test. Ditto. Mine’s working fine, too.”
Seth stepped on one of the many foot switches in front of his amp, and the bank of overhead fluorescent lights popped off and gave way to dimmer mod lights which bled thick theatrical color; in unison, Zoe flipped on a small lamp next to the chair. Except for Zoe’s pale yellow reading light, the atmosphere of the studio was a blue and red dream-vision. My eyes were on Abbey. One cheek bathed with the color of ice, the other radiating fire.
She removed her jacket and laid it swiftly at the base of her mike stand. She unbuttoned the sleeves of her blouse and tugged them up her thin forearms, leaving the sleeves ruffled and ready for work; then she arched her back and recentered her hips with a spunky snap. Last of all, Abbey shook her long brown hair, and let it fan out, wild. “It feels so wonderful to be in front of a mike again,” she said. “To be with Bandit.”
Abbey looked at Seth. “Shall we jam?” she asked.
“Okay, Danny,” Seth said, “you start us. Here’s the tempo I want: 1, 2, 3, 4.”
As we fooled around and got the instruments warmed up, Abbey swayed with the music and played a tambourine. Soon she walked over to the keyboards and whispered something into Uwe’s ear. He returned a sour look. She leaned over and coaxed him a second time. Uwe got up and Abbey replaced him at the keyboards. Without a glitch made in our sound, Abbey joined in playing the right chords, following the improvisation with good instinct and style. Even more energetically, she played and swayed from side to side.
We ended the jam, and Uwe happily resumed his spot on the keyboards. Seth scanned our new song list taped to his amp, and picked a song for us to try.
Then for the first time I heard Abbey sing, and as she began, even Zoe looked up from the pages of The History of the Mideast. As Abbey’s voice delivered its first few notes of the evening, everyone, it seemed, shot me proud, welcoming signals. Here is the voice of Bandit, they said. Listen to her, Danny. Now you know the secret behind Bandit is Abbey Butler.
* * *
Jay Wong sat behind the cash register of “The Den,” or used albums and paraphernalia department, in Jetstream Records. There were several customers browsing in Jay’s area, flipping through alphabetized rows of thin, cardboard sheaths containing music magically pressed into vinyl. I didn’t have any extra cash for an album, even for one of Jetstream’s famous recycled records, but as I was driving home from class, I had an urge to see Jay.
“Can I help you, sir?” Jay asked, his voice earnest and professional. Then he let on that he recognized me, raised his eyebrows, and let out a robust laugh. “Hey, Danny-dude, nice of you to stop by. Pretty intense to see old Jay in the work element, huh?”
“A little,” I said.
A short, gate-like door swung open. “Come on back,” he said. “Make yourself at home. Maybe you can help me sell some teeny bopper chick a fuckin’ Barry Manilow button?” He shot me a wise smile, the kind in which he strained his cheeks and exposed the silver caps on his eye teeth.
A young boy appeared before the counter. “How much are those KISS posters, Mister?” he asked.
“Six bucks,” Jay said.
“How come so much?” The kid was pudgy and had a squeaky, pre-adolescent voice.
Jay pointed to the poster of the bass player, dressed in black leather and iron and surrounded by a ring of fire and smoke. Face painted and his tongue flicking like a snake, the heavy-metal rocker looked both like a demon and a clown. “That’s pure art,” Jay said. “It takes money to make a bitchin’ picture like that. So you want it, or what?”
“I think so,” the boy said.
“I’d buy it now,” Jay advised. “I’ve been selling a lot of those. The stock’s runnin’ low.”
The kid greedily bought four absurd-looking posters: one of each member of KISS.
After the boy left I said, “His mother’s liable to come in here and make you eat those.”
“I doubt it,” Jay replied. “He could be doing worse stuff than collecting that junk.” Jay paused. “Maybe he’ll end up being cool and playing in a band.”
“You should have sent him across the street to buy some drums or a guitar.”
“Whatever, dude,” Jay said. “When I was his age, I owned 113 rock ‘n’ roll posters, and ten of them were autographed.”
“Oh,” I said. “What’s up for tonight?”
It was Friday, and I was looking for something to do instead of study. Saturday night we all had plans. Bandit would be doing its debut gig with Abbey back on vocals.
Jay didn’t answer. He was changing the “Now Playing” album, putting on some reggae. “Dig this,” he said.
I preferred straightforward rock ‘n’ roll. Punk music was alright. Jazz was great. A little Mozart once in a while was nice, too, even if classical percussion was a bore. But I just couldn’t get into reggae.
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