Featherless Bipeds (6 page)

“Uh, wow, Lola,” I struggle, “I like the new look.”

“Thought I'd try to look the part,” she says, with a sort of bashfulness I never, ever would have expected from her. She snaps out of it immediately, though. “Besides, why the hell should I hide away my breasts and hips? I'm female! I've got breasts and hips!”

Phew. No argument here.

“So,” I say, desperate to change the subject, “how about we play a tune while we're waiting for James to finish his smoke out there.”

“Hey, Lola, how 'bout that Hendrix tune,” Akim says, all business. “Dak, you've gotta hear this woman sing!”

Akim gives the volume knob on the Twin a healthy clockwise twist. “The three of us have been working on this one,” he says to me. “Go nuts, Dak!”

And, with that, Akim lets fly that howling lead from Hendrix's “All Along the Watchtower”. All those years of practicing arpeggios and rundowns on his classical guitar have given Akim Herculean fretboard fingers.

Tristan and I pound along underneath Akim's wailing, all of those nights of jamming away in our dorm room making us play like we're sharing the same brain. The metallic-purple body of Tristan's Washburn has a yellow and red warning sticker on it, which reads: “DANGER! Only
Authorized Personnel
should access this equipment!” and Tristan wastes no time in proving that he is, indeed, Authorized Personnel when it comes to handling a bass guitar. He looks like a cross-breeding experiment between a Death Valley buzzard and Shaggy from
Scooby-Doo
, but he plays the bass like Jack Bruce from Cream, Geddy Lee from Rush, and Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers incarnated in one body. I toss in a couple of syncopations at one point, just to see if I can throw him off, but he follows along as if he can
smell
the changes coming. A lot of bass players are simply frustrated guitar players, but Tristan is the real thing.

And Lola, oh Lola . . . damn, the girl can sing! She's got a powerful, raspy, sexy blues-on-the-Bayou kind of voice, the grit of Janis Joplin with the control and volume of Aretha Franklin. Any sore feelings I had left towards her temporarily melt away as we sizzle and rumble and slash and bang our way into the second chorus.

We finish the song with a crash-n-smash, thank-you-very-much-goodnight roar.

“Whoa!” rasps James Tanner, or Jimmy T, or whatever the hell his name is, as he reappears from outside, “That was hot, baby. You rock!”

“Don't call me
baby
,” Lola warns. “I'm a woman, not an infant.”

“You sure as hell are!” he says, “You sing as hot as you look!

Jimmy T's band is gonna
kick ass
!”

“
Our
band,” Lola corrects, who seems to be blushing from something other than anger. “
Our
band will kick ass.”

I look at Tristan and Akim. They both shrug.

“I get the sense that this is going to be one
bad
jam session, dudes,” Jimmy T says, while removing an entry-level Fender Squire from the gig bag. He looks at Akim and says, “and by
bad
, of course, I mean
wicked
! Like, wicked
good
!”

“Thanks for the explanation,” Akim says, annoyed. “I was about to go get my
Dictionary of Slang
.”

“How long have you been playing guitar, James?” I ask.

“Jimmy T, bro,” he says, “call me Jimmy T when I'm playin' rock ‘n' roll. And I've been wailin' on the guitar for almost a whole year now, bro.”

He begins strumming a four-chord blues progression, his undersized Traynor bleating harshly like an old AM radio with the treble knob turned all the way up. The sound causes Akim's face to contort.

“Um, you wanna play through my MosValve, Jimmy,
bro
?” he suggests.

“Nah,” Jimmy T says, still strumming the blues progression, “I like to use my own equipment. Looks more professional, eh?”

“Are you going to take off your sunglasses,
Jimmy T
, or is that supposed to look
more professional
also?” Akim says, rolling his eyes.

He looks around at the rest of us.

“I'm keepin' my shades on so we can play some
bluuuuuuuues
,” he croaks. “You guys wanna play some
bluuuuuuuues
?”

It's like asking a bunch of five-year-old kids if they would like to eat some candy. We all join in, our volume overwhelming the whine of his puny Traynor.

Tristan plunks out a deep, propulsive blues bass line. I jump in with a simple mid-tempo blues shuffle beat, leaving lots of space for Akim to stretch out into a make-you-want-to-cry guitar solo. When Akim's lead guitar appetite is finally satisfied (for the moment, anyway), I lean into my mike and begin singing the lyrics to a song I wrote while playing in a sloppy, alcohol-oriented band in high school. It had originally been a punk-rock song, but the lyrics lend themselves really well to the rhythm of blues. Both Tristan and Akim nod their heads along as I growl, with my best blues snarl:

It was Saturday

I washed my car

Drove up and down the dock past the ice cream bar

See and Be Seen

It was the Summertime Law

Billy called shotgun

Ray back with Dean

Cranked down the windows

Turned up The Max Machine

One-arm-suntan-poses

Were critical

Amazed that I can remember the whole first verse, I plunge right into the chorus, which also translates extremely well to blues:

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Lola quickly catches on to the melody of the chorus (which is the beauty of a blues jam), and joins in with a sweet, raspy harmony vocal the second time through:

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Akim turns in another tight, colourful solo, then I continue singing, still amazed I can remember all the words:

Beach and ocean

Through a rose-coloured windshield

Sun-bronzed bodies

Like wheat in a sand field

If I dare to touch one

Will she die in my hands?

Every day like a pop song

All backbeat, no danger

I steer the car with my knees

and dream safely of strangers

Speakers thump out bravado

It's critical

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Jimmy T joins in with a third, even higher harmony line, way up above Lola's voice. Maybe this guy will be useful after all. For the first time in my life, I am playing in a band that can successfully sing three-part harmonies. And I know that Tristan is a passable singer, too. The possibilities are endless!

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

The last night of August

When Summertime ends

She leans through my window

It's half-past ten

No longer pretending

It's critical

She says “Let's go to the boardwalk”

I say “okay”

The buzz of the Radio

And seagulls and waves

I ‘ve got beers in the trunk in a cooler

Also critical

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

I nod to Tristan, who breaks into a surprisingly melodic bass solo. When he's finished, I began to howl the final verse, and I throw in a wicked drum fill, just because I can.

My heartbeat thunders

Deep in my ears

It may be passion

It may be fear

The boys will wonder why I was late

Don't know what to say

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

We finish the song with a loud crash-cymbal and bass-run finale. Tristan is ecstatic.

“Whoa, who wrote that tune? Joe Walsh?”

“You liked it?” I ask.

“Gotta get that album,” Lola says.

“Well, you'll have to help us record it first, because I wrote it.”

“Wow,” Lola says, “not bad, Sifter.”

For some reason, Jimmy T doesn't seem to appreciate Lola giving me a compliment, even one as mild as that.

“Yeah, yeah, great, great,” he grunts, “but isn't
Lola
supposed to be the singer? I think the band will be a lot more marketable if we let the hot chick do the singing.”

Lola is caught off guard. She looks unsure whether to be flattered or offended by being referred to as a ‘hot chick'.

“It's okay, James,” Tristan says, “Dak sounded good on that one.”

“
Jimmy T
! In the band I'm
Jimmy T
,” he says. “But, hey, dudes, why don't we play one of
my
songs now.”

“You write songs?” Akim says, his expression brightening.

“Well, not exactly,” Jimmy T says, as he bends over to remove a soft covered songbook called
101 Easy Popular Songs for Guitar
from inside the hollow back of his amp. “I can play anything in this book. Anybody got a music stand?”

So we play some songs from Jim's guitar-for-beginners book. Easy, open-chord stuff. Top Forty Pop. Good-natured Tristan plays along without complaint, and I tap out the simple four-four beats pretty much on autopilot, focusing instead on imagining Zoe dancing in front of my drums (she loves to dance to this sugary pop fluff). Akim stares at the ceiling as he plays what are, for him, insultingly simple guitar parts. Jimmy T struts around like every video pop star ever manufactured by a record company, strumming his Squire, sure that he is impressing the panties off Lola, envisioning thousands of screaming women showering the stage before him with bras, thongs, and bits of paper with their telephone numbers written in lipstick.

For the rest of the evening (and it is evening by this time), Akim plucks at the strings of his guitar, his eyes rolled up inside his skull. He excuses himself frequently for “drink breaks,” muttering to himself on the way out the door that the songs we are now playing are boring him to death. By the time we get to “Under the Boardwalk” in Jimmy's alphabetically arranged songbook, Akim declares that it is time to call it a night.

“By the way, guys,” Jimmy T says, as he slides his Squire back into its gig bag, “we'd better get practicing, 'cause I've got a gig set up for us in two weeks at a bar called Harlock's Rockpile. The owner does a lot of promotional events with Sanderson's Brewing, so we've got some pull there. Anyway, we better get enough tunes under our belt for the gig.”

“You already booked us a gig?” Tristan asks. “Before you'd even played with us?”

“That's pretty freakin' bold!” Akim says.

“Quite a go-getter,” Lola says, sounding not unimpressed.

“Hey, whatever, dude,” Jimmy T says to Akim. “Is there anyone here who's opposed to getting paid a hundred bucks each to play the same tunes we've been playing here for nothing?”

All is silent but the hum of the amplifiers.

“Great, then!” Jimmy says. “Can everybody get together for a rehearsal on Friday? We can draw up a set list for the show then.”

“I'm good for Friday,” Tristan says.

“Sure,” I add.

“Whatever,” Akim says.

“Cool,” Lola says, “we are going to kick ass!”

“Damn right, ,” Jimmy says, patting her behind. Oddly, Lola lets this go unchallenged. Could it be that she
likes
this guy?

“See ya next week, then, dudes,” Jimmy says. “You need a lift somewhere, baby? Er, sorry, Lola? There's an empty seat in my car.”

“Sure,” she says, and he and Lola depart.

I look at Akim. Then at Tristan. Tristan looks at Akim. None of can believe that all of this just happened.

“Well,” Tristan finally says, “it looks like we've got us a band, boys.”

Akim just grunts, “We
had
a band . . . until that talentless frat boy showed up and lowered the musical ante. What will we play for an encore?
Three Blind Mice
?”

“Akim,” Tristan says, “he's already got us a gig. Besides, people
lik
e those songs, even if they are easy to play.”

“His guitar sound sucks,” Akim says.

“You can help him fix that,” Tristan says, “you're the guitar gear guru! He's already got us a
gig
, Akim!”

“He's an
idiot
!”

“He got us a
gig
!”

Akim looks at the floor, and sighs a heavy sigh.

“Well, okay. I suppose he might be of some use to us. We can wait
a little while
before we kick him out.”

Akim glances over at me. “Wanna play one more? Just the three of us?”

“How's the ol' battle scar holding up?” Tristan asks.

“What battle scar?” I tear into a roll that leads the three of us into a wicked power-trio jam.

The slash across my belly sizzles with pain from the exertion of playing the drums for such a long session, but it's
beautiful
pain.

I am in a band. I am playing rock ‘n' roll. And I am alive.

Be Alive
(Rock Anthem)

Lyrics — D. Sifter, Music — A. Ganges, T. Low, D. Sifter
From the album
Socrates Kicks Ass!
recorded by The Featherless Bipeds

stop

speak softly

and carry

nothing but questions