The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus)
Page 31
During the second encore, Rhin always played “Slowly for Those,” a melancholy number that churned and pounded like the fury of a cyclone set to slow motion. While drummer Darren Garcia put the thumping snares into overdrive, the nauseating buzz saw of Rick Nuncio’s guitar induced seizures in several concertgoers and caused pregnant women (and in some cases, those who didn’t even know they were yet pregnant) to miscarry. Lead singer Cheetah tore through the lower depths of his range every single time he spat out “Slowly for Those.”
Despite the harmony of light and the weight of the dark, balance and counterbalance, there was one single element that made “Slowly for Those” a rock monster of a song. It came from India’s bass guitar from the very start of the chorus, but it built over eight minutes to an intolerable low rumble, like an airliner taking off inside each person’s cranium. To hear that bass line was to hear the howls of the damned. India had named the infamous bass line “the Elephant” in a Rolling Stone interview, and years later he was still signing CDs not just as India, but as India, “Keeper of the Elephant.”
Tonight, the first half of the show had been a showcase for the upbeat numbers, for the ones that got girls jiggling tits and frat boys swaying like sick cattle. The last half of the set, brooding and slow, always induced stupor in the crowd, but Rhinoceros didn’t mind. A trance was better than a cup of beer in the face. Of course, right before the encores, they always closed the main set with the punker thumper, “Hail to the Chief,” which Trent Reznor had once dubbed “a song worthy of christening the Anti-Christ to.” The crowd slam danced, oblivious to its own beer bellies and sagging faces. But no matter what happened, “Slowly for Those” was always, always the last song.
10:15, Saturday night. They were almost done now. Only one thing left to do.
The four band members looked at each other the way brothers might before a game of baseball, and the first notes of “Slowly for Those” began their magic. The dance of Cheetah’s raspy vocals, the pitter-patter of death from Garcia’s high hat and the Nuncio distortion brought tears of blood to the men in the audience. The women felt stabbing needles in their nipples, but that didn’t stop the audience from swaying in a single undulation as the song rolled out its waves of melancholy, hate and animals kept in cages for far too long.
It was unclear who felt the pain of the song deepest in their core. Was it those who had lost lovers? Or was it those who sought to find other miserable souls to share meager moments of all-too-brief lives? Or was it perhaps the four members of Rhinoceros who felt their guts wrung like strings of rope over abrasive rock?
“Slowly for Those” pounded through the walls of the Olympia, and from the street, the venue drew stillness to itself, the way a street might quiet down before a car bomber rips it to shreds.
Five minutes into the iconic last song of the last set of Rhinoceros, India began the death march of his bass line, heading for the final crest of a career both banal and monumental. He forgot about his hemorrhoids and his whore of a mother, his credit card debt, and about how much pain he felt every time he saw his ex-wife. He forgot he was India, bassist for Rhinoceros.
The Elephant stepped into the Olympia.
The last three minutes of “Slowly for Those” did not overindulge. No jam sessions, no guitar solos, just the throbbing menace of a bass line that transcended India’s fingers. Within three minutes, thirteen cardiac arrests, four strokes, nine cases of bloody diarrhea and 350 cases of spinal paralysis happened, not slowly and quietly, but instantly. Many would die, of course. About half of those who attended. But no one died in those three minutes of bliss. They all waited until after to do so. They needed to hear the Elephant. When the song ended, the applause died much too soon, because bodies had already collapsed onto the hardwood.
What happened that night in those last three minutes was difficult to ascertain. The song swelled beyond the mere scope of the speakers, and the light show faded as a purple light emanated from the backdrop, though its odd glimmer was not part of the show.
To this day, strange rumors of the last Rhinoceros set still float in the darker corners of the city and in the catacombs of the Internet. Many of the survivors report that the bass line of “Slowly for Those” spoke to each and every audience member as an elephant with black skin and white, milky eyes, a thing not of this Earth but of somewhere sinister, a place that had no business touching its edges to our own. And yet, for three minutes, everyone in Rhinoceros’ grip was said to have glimpsed the creature’s massive, bloody tusks and inhuman eyes that implied there was no end at the bottom of the spiral, only maddening smoke, eternal evil, endless concentric circles dancing in the notes of a rumbling bass guitar.
MORE BOOKS BY CESAR TORRES
The 12 Burning Wheels (2010)
13 Secret Cities paperback (Out December 2014 in the Amazon Store)
Cesar is currently at work on a new novel, due out in 2015.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cesar was born in Mexico City and studied journalism at Northwestern University. He is the publisher of Solar Six Books. He lives in New York City.
Cesar tweets at @13secretcities. You can also find him on Facebook.