Blue Noise

by Debra Oswald

‘I’m joking.’

  ‘Oh right. Sorry,’ said Erin. ‘I mean, sorry for not realising you were joking.’

  Joel laughed. ‘Oh, it’s too easy to make you feel guilty. Where’s the fun in it? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.’

  ‘How many fish have you ever shot in barrels?’

  ‘How long have you been such a nut job?’

  ‘Don’t push your luck,’ Erin snapped back.

  ‘Oh. Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Now I’m the one joking.’

  It went on like that for some time. But Joel was in. Which meant two-thirds of Blue Noise still existed.

  On Monday, during lunchbreak, Ash took on the job of ringing the radio station to find out where they stood with the Ignition competition. He bunged on such a cool-guy, sophisticated voice on the phone that Erin had to clamp her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh.

  Ash explained that their band was going through some line-up changes and he wondered if that would disqualify them from playing their spot in the concert. After some consultation, the guy from the radio station said Blue Noise would be sweet to play, given there were only two new band members out of six. This was fantastic news, but terrifying as well. They had less than two weeks to pull something together for the Ignition gig at the Glebe Big Free Concert. Plus, Ash had neglected to inform the radio people that those two new band members didn’t exist yet and he had no clue who they would be.

  Erin had an idea about where to fish for a new bass player. During the second half of the lunchbreak, she loitered in the corridors of the music department until she spotted Darren Yang.

  ‘Hey, Darren, can I talk to you for a sec?’ she said, bundling him into one of the rehearsal rooms.

  Darren was in Year 9 and played classical double bass. Erin had been his accompanist once and she’d seen him playing in the school orchestra. Darren always looked supremely bored during orchestra sessions.

  ‘So, Darren, do you want to try playing bass in a blues band?’ Erin quickly jumped to the next sentence before Darren had a chance to breathe in and say no. ‘Before you say something like “Oh, I don’t know how to play blues music,” let me say, don’t worry. I mean, I felt the same way when I started and trust me, you have the skills to play this music and we can teach you anything else you need to know. In blues music, bass is big fun. The bass is the spine of the music. It lays down the bones of the song.’

  For a second, Darren looked like he might get a word in, but Erin kept talking. She felt the spirit of Charlie Novak driving her mouth.

  ‘Oh, and you know Joel, don’t you? He’s such a great saxophone player and you’d be playing with him. And anyway, you’ve seen the band. It’s a proper, good band. And we’ve got this amazing gig coming up. We won a competition and our stuff will be on the radio. You’d get to be part of that. Anyway, think about it. Don’t just say no automatically; ask me any questions and let’s talk tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘Uh, okay. But Erin –’

  Erin put up her hand to stop him making any objections now. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘No, I mean okay, I’ll be in your band,’ said Darren.

  ‘Oh … oh, that’s … great! That’s great! Rehearsal in the next couple of days. I’ll let you know details later.’

  Ash was a bit freaked out by the idea of a double bass.

  ‘I think it’ll work,’ Erin assured him. ‘Remember we saw that band at Mandawarra? Actually, there are lots of blues and rockabilly bands with double bass.’

  ‘True,’ said Ash. ‘And you reckon this kid is a good player?’

  ‘He’s a good musician and he’s so bored, he’ll give anything a try.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Ash.

  So now Blue Noise would have a massive upright double bass producing their basslines.

  Another item on the list of problems facing the band was ‘Ash: no guitar’.

  Having sold his old guitar to buy the new one and with the Fender in a pawn shop somewhere, Ash had no instrument to play.

  ‘What would Charlie do in this situation?’ asked Erin.

  Ash thought about that for twenty seconds and then went straight to Mrs Vallentine’s office. He lacked Charlie’s supernatural powers of charm over music teachers – but it didn’t matter. The Mulvaney High music department lent him one of the school’s electric guitars until he could source a new instrument for himself. The school guitar was pretty shabby, but this was no time to be precious about gear.

  Finding a lead singer was by far the most difficult problem. Everyone at school knew about the guy in Year 11 with the killer voice – a voice so powerful it could peel paint off walls – but he only wanted to sing heavy rock stuff while wearing animal makeup and a wig.

  There were endless rumours about singers; someone’s friend sang ‘brilliantly’ to the karaoke machine at a birthday party or whatever. Erin, Ash or Joel would chase up each lead but it always turned out that the nominated friend didn’t want to commit to a band or didn’t want to sing in public full stop.

  They ran a singing audition in Lester’s back shed. Most of the singers were out of tune or screechy or in some way hard on the eardrums. A few weren’t too bad but couldn’t get the feel of blues music to save themselves.

  One guy showed up with his nine-year-old sister. That girl had a monster voice, great tone and a lot of style for a little kid. But that was the problem. She was a little kid. Lester argued they should pick her anyway but the other four told him he was crazy. They couldn’t have a nine-year-old girl singing sexy lyrics, stuff like ‘You gotta help me baby’ and ‘If you don’t want my peaches, please don’t shake my tree.’ That would be creepy.

  But they couldn’t give up the search for a singer. Blue Noise hadn’t entered Ignition as an instrumental act, so they had to have a vocalist. There were still a few options out there. Someone always had a friend or a guy in their soccer team who knew someone whose cousin was an amazing singer.

  In the meantime, the band had work to do. They needed to get thirty minutes’ worth of material into good shape for the gig, including teaching Darren Yang the basslines. They had long rehearsal sessions – either at school or at Lester’s place – with Erin softly warbling the vocals as a temporary fill-in. She felt like an idiot doing the lead vocals but it was the best way for Darren to learn the material. And there wasn’t time to allow embarrassment to get in the way of what they needed to do.

  Darren was such a good bass player, he quickly learned the numbers and was developing a real feel for the blues. For the sake of speed, Ash got Darren to copy all of Charlie’s little signature flourishes. There were moments it felt sad and almost disloyal to ‘steal’ Charlie’s ideas and hand them to another player. But Ash reckoned that Charlie wouldn’t mind. In fact, Charlie was communicating with Darren via email from Guatemala, helping him get a handle on the music.

  As a bonus, it turned out Darren had a reasonable singing voice for backing vocals. To begin with, he found it awkward to lean in to a vocal mike while holding a double bass but with a bit of stretching, he worked it out.

  One week before Ignition, the singer situation was getting desperate. No one dared to say the problem out loud – as if saying it out loud would make it more real. But then, just when things appeared hopeless, a rumour spread through the school that Lily Opara hated being a model (too much standing around being poked and prodded by stylists). According to the gossip, she would return to Australia the next weekend, in time for the Glebe gig.

  Erin knew that someone like Lily – who loved to be looked at – would not turn down the opportunity to perform at Ignition. Maybe Lily Opara didn’t want to stick with Blue Noise long term and maybe they didn’t want her to. But she could do this one important concert with them and save the day.

  ‘Who’s going to do the talking onstage? We need someone to announce the songs, say who we are and stuff,’ Ash pointed out. Charlie had always been the person who did the stage patter.

  Joel and Darr
en both refused outright.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Erin.

  ‘You do it, Ashman,’ said Lester, and there were noises of agreement from the others.

  ‘Oh. Uh … okay,’ mumbled Ash. He looked very unsure about the whole business.

  But during rehearsals, Erin noticed that gradually – without Ash even realising it himself – he was becoming the bandleader. The rest of them all looked to Ash for signals: when to go back to the head of the number, timing the finish, when to take a solo. Ash was morphing into the leader of Blue Noise whether he liked the idea or not.

  There were moments, when Ash was concentrating or nodding encouragement to Darren or whatever, when he looked so gorgeous that Erin could hardly stand it. Sometimes it was too much and she had to drop her gaze to stare resolutely at the keyboard. But there was no time for drooling and fretting over a guy. Blue Noise had too much work to do.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  A few days after Charlie Novak hit Guatemala, he got himself hooked up to the internet and began bombarding Ash with communiqués. Occasionally, emails disappeared in the dodgy cyberspace between Sydney and Guatemala but mostly they bounced back and forth efficiently enough.

  Ash and Charlie went in for a fair bit of mutual apologising to begin with but they soon let that drop. What was the point of going on and on about things they couldn’t change? There were more important matters to discuss.

  Charlie wanted to be kept in the loop about Blue Noise. He didn’t sound the least bit hurt that he’d been replaced. He was stoked they’d found such a good bass player and he considered Darren Yang another convert to the mighty Church of Blues Music.

  Charlie loved to talk strategy for the Ignition concert, how to handle the radio people, how to milk the event for every possible advantage for Blue Noise. He campaigned fiercely about what the set list should be for the gig.

  ‘You MUST do half original songs,’ he wrote in one email. ‘Don’t let Erin talk you out of it!! Tell Erin her songs are good.’

  The band decided on the set list for Ignition without too much argument. They went for a mix of classics and originals: a fairly jazzy version of ‘Trouble in Mind’ that Joel loved, ‘Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down’, Ash and Erin’s ‘Mandawarra’, ‘Tongue-tied’, and one of Erin’s more recent songs. They’d finish up strongly with ‘Help Me’.

  Charlie wasn’t nearly as worried about the lead singer issue as Ash expected. Joel had left messages on Lily’s phone. There’d been no reply, but that didn’t mean much, Lily was never too bothered about returning messages. Ash suspected that Charlie was secretly in contact with Lily Opara and knew that she’d be there to sing on the day. Typical Charlie: he’d love the high drama of Lily turning up at the last possible minute.

  The night before the Ignition gig, Ash received one more short email from Charlie. ‘Buena suerte, hombre! (that’s Spanish for “good luck, man”.)’

  It must have been hard for him. Right from the start, the band was Charlie’s project that he’d dreamed up, assembled, kept alive and fuelled with his unbelievable energy. And now – at the moment of their big break – Charlie was left out. He put on a good show of being positive about the whole business but still, it had to hurt.

  The Glebe Big Free Concert was held on a Sunday in a park down by the water. Along one side of the park were rows of small white tents with cone-shaped tops and coloured pennants flying above them. Inside the tents were market stalls selling clothes, food, massages, whatever. There were environmental displays and an area roped off for a not-too-serious dog show. Prizes were given out for the best-dressed dog, the weirdest-looking dog and the dog that looked most like its owner. But the main event of the day happened on the music stage at the water’s edge.

  YES-FM was sponsoring the concert and their banners were draped around the scaffolding and along the front of the raised stage. Humungous towers of speakers stood on either side of the stage, with the sound-mixing desk in a marquee at the back of the audience. That fancy set-up wasn’t there in honour of the young Ignition bands though. In the evening, two getting-quite-famous indie bands were scheduled to play and then finally Powderfinger were booked to be the big finish. The eight Ignition bands were just the warm-up acts during the afternoon, filling time until the proper concert at night. But the junior bands still got to play on that big-deal stage with that fantastic sound system.

  Lester’s dad used his work van to transport the drum kit, keyboard, amps and other Blue Noise gear to the site. There was a tent beside the music stage where the bands could stow their equipment while they waited for their turn to play.

  Ash stood outside the equipment tent and screwed up his eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun bouncing off the white fabric. Up on the stage were two DJs from the radio station, a guy and a girl, who were the emcees for the Ignition concert. They were introducing one of the bands, doing a little spiel on them. The guy DJ had deeply cool clothes, deeply cool hair and he was unbelievably skinny, so skinny it was hard to imagine where all the organs fitted in his body. The girl DJ was pretty like a doll, with a breathy, enthusiastic way of speaking.

  Ash had been trying to listen to the bands playing before Blue Noise, but it was impossible to concentrate while his head was buzzing with nerves about their own set.

  He spotted Erin weaving through the conical tents towards him. She was wearing a new blue top she must have bought to wear at this gig. It looked good on her. Better than good.

  Ash Corrigan had thought a lot about the night when he’d climbed in Erin’s window. Replaying it in his mind, there were moments he wished he’d dived right in and kissed Erin. He had wanted to kiss her, no question. He would love to kiss her right now, in the middle of the park, if he had the courage.

  That night, making a move would have been a seriously intense thing to do, considering that it was 2 am and he was in a girl’s bedroom. And the one moment when it had seemed possible, when he could have moved in for the kiss, Erin had slid back a bit against the wall. He took that as a signal that he should back off.

  Maybe it was just as well. Boyfriend–girlfriend dramas could tear bands apart. It was probably better if they all remained just friends, with no romantic complications. And anyway, Erin Landers had never given him any sign that she was interested in him in that way.

  ‘There you are,’ said Erin as she scooted over next to Ash. ‘Has Lily turned up? Called you or anything?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Ash replied.

  ‘Right. Okay. Right,’ said Erin, nodding. ‘Shall we cancel now? Tell them it’s all a mistake – we’re actually rubbish and can’t play?’ She gave a strangled laugh as if it was all a joke. But even a deaf, blind, brain-damaged wombat could see how nervous she truly was.

  Everyone – Erin included – had been so sure Lily Opara was going to show up on the day to sing. Lily hadn’t replied to Joel’s messages, but her friends had told them she was flying in from Vanuatu that morning and would show up for the gig. Ash had talked to the concert organisers and requested that Blue Noise be scheduled as late as possible in the line-up of bands, giving Lily longer to get there. Blue Noise were playing the last slot out of the eight bands but, even so, here they were, an hour and a quarter from hitting the stage, and there was no sign of Lily.

  Ash and Erin stood together by the tent, watching the sixth of the Ignition bands playing their set. They were a pop band and pretty good, even if they used the keyboard effects too much for Ash’s taste. Like every other band that afternoon, this lot had rounded up packs of their friends to come to the concert and whoop and applaud like hysterical fans.

  The girl lead singer in the pop band was dressed like an anime character and bounced around a lot, as if she had Inspector Gadget springs in her shoes. She had a sweet, high-pitched voice that suited the music they were playing.

  ‘She’s got a good voice,’ said Erin.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ash agreed.

  ‘Let’s ask her to sing for us. We
could give her our lyrics on a piece of paper and she’d manage.’

  Ash laughed. He liked the way Erin could joke around even when she was so nervous she was barely functional.

  The next band played metal, with two guitarists taking turns on lead vocals. Well, one of them spoke the lyrics more than sang and the other guy opened his mouth to make a sound like a bag of rocks being dragged along a gravel road. Not that they were terrible. The way those guys sounded worked for the music.

  As soon as the first guy started to sing, Erin was onto it. ‘He’s okay. Let’s ask him to be our singer.’

  After that, Erin became even more desperate, pointing out all kinds of people in the crowd they could appoint as the lead singer of Blue Noise.

  ‘What about that guy? He looks like he could sing.’

  The more nervous she became, the sillier she got.

  ‘That dog over there – the Jack Russell – it’s got quite a musical bark,’ said Erin, pointing out a dog wearing a tuxedo. ‘Good pitch. And it’s better dressed than any of us. Let’s ask the Jack Russell to sing lead vocals.’

  By now, Joel, Lester and Darren were huddled by the tent too, waiting. Blue Noise was supposed to be the next band after the metal outfit. Joel was constantly scanning the sea of faces for a sign of Lily. Lester was silent-drumming on the tent ropes to keep his nerves under control.

  The afternoon light was fading and the crowd in front of the music stage was building up, ready for the headline acts coming on later. There must have been five hundred people out there and more arriving every minute, keen to get a good spot in time for the real bands. Because Blue Noise was the last in the schedule of junior bands, they would be facing the biggest crowd by far.

  Ash recognised friends from school, not surprising since the band members had been madly sending messages to hustle up fans for the concert. He spotted friends of the Novaks’ too, people he’d met at those huge dinners in the Novak house. Charlie had obviously been working his networks to get a friendly crowd there for them.