Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Volume One

by Cecilia Tan

  I generally started an afternoon’s combing with the bargain bins. People left a lot of junk there, which always caused aggravation for the cashiers, because people would find stuff there that wasn’t on sale, but then try to get it for a sale price because it was in the bin. (We’d never give it to them.)

  Here was a stack of like twenty or so copies of a record by what looked from their album photo to be a kind of cross between Duran Duran and Psychedelic Furs. Their name was Platinum Blonde and there were three of them, sneering in parachute pants, on the cover. A Sade album was visible in the middle of the stack, obvious by the dark blue edge of the album cover. I pulled the Sade out—it wasn’t even her new one—and fingerflipped through the bin a bit more. My god, there was another Platinum Blonde album, four copies. I had to guess that their distributor or record company or someone just decided to sell off their overstock. I got a sad feeling in my stomach thinking about it.

  Bart thought he was sneaking up on me but I actually saw him out of the corner of my eye when he was on the elevator. For politeness’ (?) sake I pretended to be engrossed in the W-Z bin until he said "Boo."

  "Boo yourself."

  "Chipper this morning, aren’t you."

  "Bart, it’s like three."

  "Did you eat yet today?"

  "Course not. I get a dinner break at four, though." Though I was thinking I only had the cash in my pocket for a bagel. And bagels in Boston are really not worth the money you pay for them at any price.

  "Cool. Let me buy."

  "Either you read my mind or you’re not telling me something." I started the combing the A-D bin now. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were next to a recent really-not-that-great album from Heart, which was kind of a funny coincidence. The Petty would go back to the regular racks—the Heart stayed in Bargain but I moved it to the E-H slot.

  "I’m on a buying spree, too." Bart had some CDs in his hand.

  "You must be if you’re spending fourteen bucks a piece on those things." He had a Jean-Michel Jarre in there and I wasn’t sure what else. "The Jarre on vinyl’s only eight-ninety-nine. So, did you win the lottery?"

  "No, but I got forgiven."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Remember the wicked witch of the west?"

  "You mean your step mom?"

  "Yeah. Well, she turns out to have a fairy godmother side, too."

  Bob Marley was in with overstock of a Ziggy Marley 12 inch single. "Do tell."

  "She convinced Dad that just because I was throwing my life away and wasting every cent they ever spent on my education was no reason to let me starve."

  "You weren’t starving."

  "They don’t know that. They think all musicians are starving. Which isn’t that far from the truth in some orchestras, let me tell you. Anyway, I’m flush once again."

  "Flushed is more like it." He was blushing. I guess everyone has something fundamental to be embarrassed about. "Okay, buy me dinner. I only get a half hour though."

  "No problemo." He nodded to Jay who was coming down the aisle toward us.

  "I’m going on break," Jay announced. "Can you cover the register?"

  I gave him a little salute and he sauntered away, the laminated tags around his neck rattling. At Tower they made us wear these neck lanyards with laminates on them, like backstage passes or something, in some kind of weird attempt to seem insider-ish to the music industry, I guess. They’re kind of stupid, but better than a Formica engraved name tag that says "Hello My Name is..."

  I carried my stray albums up to jazz and laid them behind the counter. A small line of three people stood at the register, waiting for me. I don’t know if people just don’t realize they can go to any register in the store, or if they’re just stubborn and want to torture me. None of them had questions or made small talk, they each handed me their purchases with a kind of resentful stare. I handed them back their bagged stuff and change with the same look in my eye.

  Bart was still hanging around, waiting for it to be my turn for a break. "Daron," he said, his elbows on the counter, "are you as bored and antsy and tired as me?"

  "What the hell kind of question is that?"

  "I mean, come on, how long are we going to fart around?"

  "You’re not going to bring up the want ads again, are you."

  "No, you won that argument. But man, let’s get us some kind of gig, even if it’s not the one..."

  "Hang on, wait a minute. When we were playing with someone we didn’t like, you said we were wasting our time. Now you want to find something else that isn’t ’it’ either?"

  He pursed his lips. I put a John Zorn CD into the section’s player and let it rip. The few customers in the section betrayed no reaction to the sax screeches and cut and paste tempo changes, but I noticed that within a few minutes the floor was empty. Man, I liked Zorn. "Bart, I think what you’re trying to say is that you are bored and antsy. I assure you I’d much rather be doing something else."

  "You seem okay."

  "Ha. It’s just my implacable exterior." I blew stray hair out of my eyes. "Maybe we should go to more shows. Try to steal someone."

  "Maybe."

  The door between jazz and classical opened and Michelle swing her head in, her laminate swinging. "I thought that was you."

  "Hey." Bart went and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "We’re having a bitch session."

  "I actually came to make sure you," she said, meaning me, "were up here. Jay’s out back."

  "Yeah, he got me." Jay was probably out back smoking a joint—in fact I wasn’t really sure Jay was his name and not a nickname he’d picked up for his habit of choice. "So what do you think we should do?"

  Michelle gave me a look. "What, on the singer problem?"

  I touched my finger to my nose.

  "Good luck," she said, and swung back out.

  I looked at Bart. "Does Michelle sing?"

  He snorted. "Not even in the shower. Don’t even think it."

  "Why not? I mean, what if she could sing?"

  "No way. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone in the band. Bad karma, man. Bad idea. Plus, I don’t see us as working well with a ... oh man, this is going to sound sexist, but... with a chick singer."

  He was right, it did sound sexist, even if I agreed. "I won’t bring up Carynne, then."

  "I think she’s a little too shy. About her singing, I mean." Bart squinted at me a second and searched the inside of his cheek with his tongue. "You’re always looking for someone you know already, aren’t you..."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, you won’t go to the personals because they’re too impersonal, as it were. You want someone we know already. Like Roger, you were already rooming with him. And when we used to play with Mitch, when I was rooming with him. Even that girl with the flute we used to do the Copa with, you asked her in when I was sleeping with her."

  "I waited until after you quit sleeping with her."

  "I never really quit." He was not blushing now, I noticed. "But you see what I mean."

  "I guess so."

  "So maybe you’re going to have to either accept the fact that maybe, as professionals or career musicians or whatever, that we’re going to have to maybe work with some people we just plain don’t know and get to know them as we go along. Or, maybe, that we’re going to have to expand our circle of friends. Isn’t there anyone here who sings?"

  I shrugged. "Everyone who works here’s a wannabe of some kind. Except Michelle."

  An exceedingly tall, thin guy, bald, with a goatee and biker jacket came in and started bopping his head in time with the arhythmic Zorn.

  "Well?"

  "Well what?" I watched the guy make his way to the back of the section. It seemed unlikely to me that he’d shoplift so I looked back at Bart. "Am I supposed to explain something?"

  "Yeah. Explain this it’s-got-to-be-someone-we-know thing."

  "I don’t know, that’s just the way the world works. The Police didn’t find
Andy Summers with a general audition. That’s just the way it is. Someone knows someone who knows someone, and things either fit together or they don’t."

  "That sounds pretty fatalistic, man."

  "We’ll find someone."

  "I guess."

  I yawned. "Quit bitching. At least you have a gig for now. Me, I go home and play with myself." Ouch, now I was the one blushing.

  Bart laughed. "Yeah, if you can call jingles a gig."

  "You sure they don’t need any guitar?"

  "You’ll be the first person they bring in if Jeff breaks a finger or dies in his sleep or something." Bart was still laughing while talking and it made him sound sort of out of breath. "I swear to God."

  The customer came up to us with a Zorn album—a different one from the one I was playing—and laid it on the counter. I rang him up, bagged him, and handed him his change. He gave a little thumbs up and a tall-person hunching nod as he went out the door.

  "Did I tell you I’m twenty now?"

  "Fuck no you did not," Bart said, his face set with a frown that made me think he might have been genuinely affronted that I hadn’t told him.

  "Last week." I pulled out the misfile pile and started alphabetizing it. "I’m not getting younger either, Bart. I want to get on with it as much as you do."

  I could see Jay coming through the glass doors. He was blinking his eyes like he’d used too much Visine, which maybe he had. "Hey."

  "Hey." He took a step up onto the riser behind the counter and I stepped down. "You want to ring Bart up? I’ll meet you outside after I get my coat and punch out."

  There wasn’t anything else to say after that and I went through the doors from the land of screeching atonal saxophone into yet another rendition of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I took the elevator to the basement where my coat was in a locker, and punched my time card through the clock. The sturdy gray metal box of a clock ticked rapidly like some kind of bomb. I’ll avoid any references now about biding our time, running out of time, or time being of the essence. I was two decades old now and had to believe I still had plenty of time to do what I needed to do in my life. It was that or give up, and there’s no way I was going to do that.

  Let’s Dance

  By April it got warm enough that I started convincing Bart to come out and busk with me, to relieve some of the itch to play and boredom. But he was afraid to bring any of his good basses outside, so he bought a set of bongos and beat on them sometimes, and he had a second hand Takamine I liked to play that was nice but not too-nice-to-play-outdoors. We rigged it with a microphone just inside the soundhole and I blew a small chunk of my salary on a little battery-powered amp (and a warmer trenchcoat, one that wasn’t almost gray from age and worn-thinness) and we started getting better tips after that. We played everything we could fake, from Dylan to Boiled in Lead to The Cure. Neither of us sang, though.

  One day, we were in the park outside the subway station, on one of those sunny days that tell you summer is about to arrive. A roasted nut vendor was somewhere downwind of us making the afternoon smell marijuana sweet. The sky was blue with just a slight nip in the wind. A semi-circle of people had gathered around us to listen. If I’m remembering it right, we were playing something upbeat, "Just Like Heaven," I think. I wasn’t paying much attention at that moment, just kind of grooving on the afternoon and looking at Bart without really making eye contact with him.

  Then someone jumped out of the crowd, dancing, an orphan vampire child, dressed in layer upon layer of ancient clothing straight from the rummage bins at Salvation Army and his eyes ringed with heavy black liner. He had on at least three different patterns of plaid. His fingers pointing from fingerless gloves, he waved his hands over our eyes. He struck cat-like poses, sprang into the air, and laughed. He danced around passers-by, miming undecipherable stories, and then, sometimes, singing.

  He jigged over to Bart and said something in his ear. I couldn’t hear what, but I saw Bart shrug. The stranger pointed to the amp on the ground and said something more, a wicked smile on his face, and Bart looked bemused. Bart shared a look with me then and started the chorus again.

  The stranger dropped to his knees in front of me, cupped his hands to his mouth and began singing into the soundhole of the guitar. Bart watched, incredulous, but never missed a beat, and I never missed a note—not then, not ever. The hollow body picked up his voice, gave it an eerie wooden tone, and pumped it through the amp. He bounced on his knees, keeping his mouth trained on the hole. I wondered when he would stop. We did the whole song like that, with him hollering into my crotch, until his knees gave out.

  I stopped playing and gave him a hand up, my eyes on him and not the dispersing crowd. I had made up my mind. We shook hands.

  "I’m Daron," I said, "and this is Bart."

  "Ziggy. Hi, Bart." He smiled. "You don’t remember me."

  Bart did a double-take. "No, I don’t."

  "The party at Susanna’s. My hair was blond, then. At the end of the summer? At the loft by The Channel. And this must be the guy you were talking about." Ziggy turned his dark eyes on me, appraising something, I wasn’t sure what. "The bigshot guy from Nomad." He smiled at me from under his mop of jet black hair. "I thought you’d be taller." We saw eye to eye.

  I smiled back. "Well, I’m not."

  Bart shook his head. "I still don’t remember you, sorry. There were a lot of people at that party."

  "It’s okay."

  "Do you sing a lot?" I put in, trying to keep the subject on him.

  "In the shower," he said. He had to be underexaggerating. He’d known all the words and hadn’t flubbed any.

  Bart was looking at me like he wanted my attention, but I kept my eyes fixed on Ziggy. "I mention it for a reason."

  "Daron," Bart began.

  "We’re looking for a singer," I went ahead, "And I think you’re it."

  Ziggy’s smile never wavered. "So call it a cosmic coincidence, huh? Do you want me to audition," he spat the word out, "or something like that?"

  "I think you just did." I locked eyes with Bart now, and he nodded.

  Ziggy clapped his hands. "Cool. What do you call this band, anyway, Short Guy Trio?" He laughed, and we laughed and I set my mind on getting the particulars straight. Someday, if things happened the way I wanted them to, I’d be telling this story like it was part of some legend, and I wanted to remember it right. I’ve of course botched it by now, but that’s the gist of it, anyway.

  Electric Light Orchestra

  We had our first rehearsal as a threesome late one night at a practice room somewhere on the Emerson campus, where I guess theater arts majors could come to write show tunes if they wanted or something. Michelle still had friends there who signed us in and we settled ourselves into a cramped room with a small chalk board and upright piano. Crumbly white acoustic tile, the kind gridded with tiny holes, covered the walls, a few fluorescent flyers for campus concerts and events thumbtacked to it. We had carted with us two milkcrate-sized amps, two guitars, one electric bass and a table top drum machine, just in case.

  The Ovation would have been friendlier to the little room, but I could still play much more fluidly on the Strat, so I started with that. I plugged the guitar in and started to warm my fingers up. Bart did the same aross from me, while Ziggy sat on the piano stool and looked a little lost in the crossfire of notes. We were dressed almost alike—jeans, T-shirt, flannel long sleeve shirt—but what looked mundane on me looked hip on him. He had tightly laced Doc Martens on his feet, fashionably scuffed. He had lost the eyeliner since the last time we’d seen him. While Bart and I ran through a few riffs, he began to spin on the stool slowly, like a doll in a music box.

  "What do you want to start with?" I said to Bart.

  Bart shrugged. "You’re the boss."

  "How about ’Welcome.’"

  Ziggy giggled. "Seems appropriate."

  "Welcome" had a very straight-forward pop song structure and we’d even written out all the
words, so it was a good one to begin with. I pulled a staff book out of the Strat case and flipped to the right page. I had written the lyrics on one page, a sketch of the chord pattern on the other. Up until then I hadn’t needed to record things on paper in more detail. The melody was in my head. "Here are the words, anyway."

  "Just play me how it goes," Ziggy said, his eyes fixed hard on the paper in front of him.

  Bart and I played through the intro and then the first few verses, before I went back to play him the melody. "Your part sounds like this."

  He hummed it through once with me and I wondered where he’d learned to sing. "Let’s try that first verse slow." We went through it with Bart playing his part and me playing the melody for the first few lines, the chords for the next. Ziggy sang a little quietly, shyly, but kept up in a nice lock-step with us. "A little faster," I said.

  He was a quick study and within a half an hour we were playing pretty much the whole thing straight through. Bart gave me the eyebrows-up from across the room several times to say he was impressed.

  "Let me try it once without the paper," Ziggy said, shutting the staff book and holding it to his chest, his eyes closed.

  "Sure thing." Bart started the intro and Ziggy came in on cue. His earlier shyness was gone and he began to put some inflection into the words. When it came to the chorus, which was anthemic and large, Bart and I sang backup. Halfway through the last verse Ziggy stumbled on the words, though, and opened his eyes, one hand over his mouth. "Oops. Well, other than the crash and burn at the end there, how was that?" He looked at me.

  "Pretty good," I said in a voice cooler than I felt. "Pretty damn good. But you swapped some of the words around in the bridge."

  "Oh, you mean from ’Leave the door open’ to ’Leave open the door’?"

  "Yeah."

  He wrinkled his eyebrows and his eyes drifted aside. "It felt better to me to finish with it like that," he said. "I didn’t really think about it; it just made sense." He clapped his hands and recited "Leave the door open," and then "Leave open the door." He nodded where the stress of the words fell.