(This bonus post triggered by the generous donations of readers.) Reggie gave me another beer and he and me and Colin shared a joint in the back room, sitting on milk crates and talking. If they noticed any change in my mood they hadn’t said anything yet. When I asked if the goateed security dweeb […]
When the band was done I helped Reggie move his gear to the side while the next band came on. “Come on upstairs and have a beer,” he said. I followed him to the crowded stairs, wondering if Bart was up there as we worked our way up between the people loitering there and the […]
By eight pm Ziggy was still nowhere to be found, and I still hadn’t read the main part of the article. I sat in the basement with the Ovation in my lap noodling until Bart finally said “What’s wrong with you?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, what’s going on in your head, Daron?” He […]
Christian woke me up the next morning knocking on my door. I’d slept maybe four hours and sat up in bed with all my clothes on, wondering if the house was on fire. “The mail’s here,” he was saying. I pulled open the door and he thrust an oversize envelope into my hands. “What is […]
The next day went about the same, except we noodled around half the time with Windfall and half the time with another one that had no lyrics and no title. I’d latched onto a riff with a flamenco feel but Bart and I weren’t quite nailing it. And while my fingers were trying to do […]
Dim stars burned like distant pinpricks through a blacked out window. “If I had to put a label on it I’d guess… it’s yet another anti-establishment song about divorced parents fucking up your life.” Bart drank some Yoo Hoo and looked at me. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” He was still […]
The first day all four of us actually got together to begin working on new material wasn’t until several days later. At three o’clock in the afternoon we gathered in the basement with my stack of cassettes and scribbled lyrics. I don’t know why I was surprised to find Ziggy there with a notebook. He’d […]
We played until about one in the morning when Colin came down and said he had to get up for a temp job at 8am. Bart and Michelle went home and Christian and I watched half of a late night movie before he fell unconscious on the couch. Of our other two housemates, there was […]
When I looked up in the fluorescent tube lights Ziggy was still sitting there, the beer in one hand resting between his legs, his eyes fixed on me. He lifted the bottle to his lips and tipped it back, his eyes never leaving mine as he took a swallow and returned the bottle to its […]
We had our next business meeting in the kitchen at six o’clock on a Tuesday night. I’d have done it in the living room, but the thing in the forefront of my mind was Christian signing his contract, and it seemed right to have an actual table for that. Our kitchen was not a room […]