J and I had a long, slow meal at the Oyster House, and it didn’t even occur to me that oysters are supposedly an aphrodisiac. I was too busy talking about the upcoming tour, which J wanted to know all about, and dissecting the show we’d just seen.
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Colin had called a cab while I was still drying off, and of course for once they came right away. So I had soaking wet hair and nearly broke my neck trying to pull a boot on and cross the living room at the same time. Turned out the insole had gotten twisted inside. I tossed the boot across the room and pulled on my high tops instead and didn’t tie them until I was in the back seat of the cab and we were on the way.
We got into traffic a few blocks from Lansdowne Street. “Ballgame traffic,” the cabby said. He was a bulk of a man with almost no hair and a neck like a whale’s belly, tattooed with something I couldn’t read. That was kind of surprising to me, given that I expected to see neck tattoos on guys like Colin and not ones twice his age.
“Let us out here. We’ll walk the rest of the way,” I said.
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I worked on “Infernal Medicine” when I got home. I still just had fragments of lyrics–I’d crossed out far more than I’d left on the page. That was normal for me. But I started playing around with the sound of it, trying to get the aural equivalent of something deceptively sweet with a razor blade hidden in it. I ended up in the basement with my beat-up old four-track, dubbing one track with the Strat and one with the Ovation, then scrapping the Ovation in favor of the orphan Yamaha we’d unearthed.
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In the morning the sound of a vacuum cleaner near the elevators woke me, and for a few moments I racked my brain trying to remember which city we were in and whether I had put the Do Not Disturb sign out and if I should worry because Carynne would make sure I was up if I blew it…
Then Jonathan rolled over next to me and memories of the night before came rushing through me like a wave. Continue Reading »
Playing as an instrumental threesome felt distinctly weird. Like missing a limb, or something. We often played without Ziggy in rehearsal for a minute or two at a time, but to go a whole hour without him? It just felt strange. On the other hand I could hear things I normally couldn’t. Maybe because we were each trying to fill that missing space. Maybe because we were a little rusty. By the end of the hour it felt good, but it had sent my brain spinning in a way I hadn’t expected.
I didn’t expect to keep discovering new things in songs we’d written years ago and had played a million times. But somehow I did. We only played for an hour–didn’t want to overdo it. We headed back to town in the van and I hardly said a word the whole time.
Ziggy being absent worked out in an odd sort of way, then. For more than one reason. You see, after we got home I went straight back out again. I took Green Line into downtown Boston to meet Jonathan, who was coming in for the weekend on the train. Continue Reading »
After all that, Ziggy had to miss our first meeting with the light tech. He had to do some movie-related press junket in New York, and he called Carynne and told her instead of calling me. Which I suppose was okay. She was in charge of arrangements, after all, and I was fine with that. She called to ask if we should reschedule.
“Well, the thing is,” I said, “we’re supposed to start rehearsals, too. When’s he back?”
“Not until Monday. Want to push it off?” Continue Reading »
I was in my room the next night, half spaced out listening to Led Zeppelin–which I blame entirely on Chris, who was always trying to get me to listen to more “classic rock” even though I didn’t actually have any deficiency in that area–when I realized someone was knocking on the door. I pulled the headphones down around my neck. “Come in!”
It was Colin. “Hey, it’s warm out. Want to walk to Herrell’s for some ice cream?”
“Er, I actually had ice cream for dinner,” I had to admit. Continue Reading »
Chris distracted me the next day by hatching a plan to clean out the junk room. He’d been inspired by the place where we’d gotten the piano, I think, and besides, since we couldn’t get the piano downstairs it had to go somewhere or just keep sitting in the middle of the living room. Plus the weather was good and tons of students were moving out of dorms into summer sublets and stuff; it was now or never. Continue Reading »
One morning I was woken by the doorbell. By the time I got down there, Chris was there too, and we opened the door to see Bart standing there in a plain white T-shirt and very dark sunglasses.
“Want a piano?” he asked.
“What?” Continue Reading »
There was press. Christian did some photo shoot for Esquire or GQ–or maybe it was Details, I couldn’t remember–that was called “Beauty and the Beat,” and it was all supermodels paired with rock drummers and wearing Armani or whatever. He even got to keep the Armani suit, which was tailored for him. He looked good in it, if a bit like a mobster, especially with his hair in a pony tail. And Jonathan did another article about us, this one for Musician, using material that hadn’t been in the Spin piece.
He called to tell me about it. Continue Reading »
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Daron's Guitar Chronicles has won the 2010 Rose and Bay Award for crowdfunded fiction!