Struts & Frets Read online

  “Are you all idiots?” screamed Joe. He stalked into the room, his chains making little ching sounds with each step of his steel-toed boots. His fists were clenched so tight that the knuckles were white. “Do you want us to get kicked out of here?”

  “Sorry,” said TJ as he mopped sweat off his face. He didn’t seem bothered by Joe’s tantrum. In fact, he seemed even more relaxed and peaceful than usual.

  Joe stalked closer. “If we get kicked out of here because of your dumb ass,” he said, getting right up in TJ’s face, “I will take you apart.”

  “Okay,” said TJ, utterly indifferent.

  Joe stood there, glaring at him for a moment, his jaw grinding back and forth, his forehead pushed forward in a caveman frown. TJ just adjusted his cymbals and snare, which had gotten a little out of whack during his extended drum solo. He didn’t even seem to notice that Joe was right in front of him, ready to throw him through the mirrored wall.

  After a few incredibly long moments of silence, Joe said, “Put your shirt back on, you scrawny faggot.” Then he spun around on his heel and walked over to his mic stand. Laurie sat down on a stool next to him, but her eyes were on TJ. She was staring at him with a wide-eyed expression, like she had never seen him before. Maybe Joe noticed too, because he tapped her on the forehead with his finger and said, “Hey.”

  She flinched a little, then looked up at him.

  “Get my songbook,” he said, and gestured over to the door where he had dropped his bag.

  As she walked over and started rummaging through it, he turned back to us.

  “Okay,” he said. “After Saturday’s suckfest, I decided it was time for me to take charge of things. Maybe that’s been the whole problem. You guys clearly need a leader. I thought maybe you could handle at least some of the responsibility, but I guess not.”

  At this point, Laurie came back with a little notebook. He took it from her and started flipping through it. She went and sat back down on her stool.

  “Uh,” I said. “Joe, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking,” said Joe, still flipping through his notebook, “about dragging you guys kicking and screaming into being a real band. Starting with”—he stopped and looked at a specific page in his notebook, then turned the page in my direction. Like I could read his handwriting from five feet away—“new songs.”

  A strangled noise came from Rick. I looked over at him and he was frowning and chewing on his lip. That was what he always did when he was trying not to laugh. I turned back to Joe.

  “New songs?” I asked. I had to have misheard him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re not the only one who can write music, you know.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “What’s the matter, Sammy? Can’t handle a little challenge? Afraid someone else could be a better Conor Oberst wannabe?”

  “Uh, no, Joe,” I said. “If you wrote a song, that’s cool.” I didn’t say that because I was scared of him. It was because I just couldn’t believe that he had actually written something. “Let’s hear it.”

  Joe smirked like he had just won some major victory. “Let me see your guitar.” Then he held out his big, meaty hand.

  “My guitar?”

  “I’m not going to sing a cappella, you idiot,” he said. “Come on, Gollum. I won’t hurt your Precious.”

  I must have been in shock by that point, because I actually handed over my ’61 Gibson SG reissue. Joe grabbed it by the neck with a rough carelessness that made me wince. Gramps always said that a man treats his instrument like he treats his woman. Looking at Laurie, huddled meekly in the corner, it looked like Gramps might be right on that one.

  Joe slung the strap over his head and plugged in. Then he let out a few dirty chords. Not that I’m some chord purist, but if you’re playing them open and letting them ring out, they should probably sound like a bunch of notes that go together. But he nodded to himself, pleased.

  “My stuff is real hardcore,” he said. “You guys are going to shit your pants when you hear this.”

  “Probably,” muttered Rick quietly.

  “You want a pick?” I asked, fishing around in my pocket for one.

  “Nah, that’s why I have such a long thumbnail. I don’t need a pick.” He held up his thumb to show us. I hadn’t noticed before, but it was really long. And dirty yellow.

  “Wow,” said Rick. “Just . . . wow.”

  “Shut up and listen,” said Joe. Then he let out another half-tuned chord and began to sing in a slow, heavy, measured beat, “Welcome to the sanity closet, you know we are here!”

  There was a pause as he changed his fingering on the guitar to a different chord. Then he strummed again. “Pulling down the wishful thinking of the young in years!”

  Another slow chord change.

  “Stepping down on their emotions, heedless of their tears!”

  Another chord change, but it went sour. Joe cursed under his breath, adjusted his fingers, then tried again, this time mostly right.

  “Greeting their pleas of mercy with a thousand leers!”

  Then he just banged at the open strings, screaming “REFORM!” over and over again for a few minutes.

  “And you get the idea,” he said, waving his hand at us. “That’s just the first verse. Obviously, I’m not a guitar player really. It was just to give you an idea. So?” He looked at us, half expectant, half daring us to say something negative.

  “Uh . . . ,” said TJ.

  “Who knew,” said Rick. “Who knew you were capable of . . . that.”

  Joe’s face crinkled up into a snarl. “You know what, fuck you guys. I’m out of here.” He practically threw my guitar at me and I barely managed to keep from dropping it.

  “Come on, Laurie,” he snapped.

  Then he grabbed his bag and started walking to the door.

  “Wait,” I said.

  He stopped.

  “Come on, man, don’t be like that,” I said. “We can work with this.”

  I heard a hoarse “What?” escape from Rick’s throat. I ignored him and looked pleadingly at TJ to back me up, hoping he understood that if Joe walked out that door, Tragedy of Wisdom was dead. Then I turned back to Joe.

  “It’s not really our sound, okay, sure,” I said. “But maybe we can work it in. Maybe we can meet in the middle somewhere.”

  “Yeah.” TJ nodded, a little unsure. “A totally new sound no one’s ever heard before.”

  “Or would want to hear again,” muttered Rick.

  “Seriously, Joe,” I said. “Let’s at least try.”

  He let us squirm for a full minute before he finally rolled his eyes, dropped his bag on the floor, and came back over.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, like it didn’t really matter. “It was just a basic structure, of course. I expect you guys to fill in the details and stuff.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So what were those chords? E-A-G-A?”

  “Okay,” Rick said during the drive back home after rehearsal. “What I want to know is, how do you greet somebody with a thousand leers?” Then he burst into the belly laugh he had been holding in for hours.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “It’s just one song.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You were throwing a fit about him naming the band, and now you’re letting him write a song? What is wrong with you?”

  “I just . . . ,” I started. “He was going to walk out of the band. That would have been it. No more band. I need a band.”

  “But we don’t need him,” said Rick. “He sucks. You should be leading anyway.”

  “We’ve talked about this a million times,” I said. “I can’t sing in front of people.”

  “That was just the one time. At that crappy open mic.”

  “It was the only time,” I said.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “It was the most embarrassing moment of my life.”

  “Sammy, you just have t
o—”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  would be weird and awkward and I didn’t want to do it. But I also didn’t want that weirdness in the band anymore. And if I could suck it up and let Joe contribute a song for the good of the band, I could at least talk to TJ about me dating Jen5.

  The next day, TJ and I were lab partners in biology. The two of us stood in front of a table and stared at the formaldehyde-stinking clam in a dish. We were supposed to dissect it and label each part, but it was hard to know where to begin, since it just looked like a big slimy lump.

  TJ prodded it with the scalpel experimentally. “I think this might be its stomach,” he said without much confidence.

  “Look, TJ,” I said. “About me and Fiver . . .”

  TJ nodded, looking about as uncomfortable as I felt. But I forced myself to go on.

  “You know this wasn’t planned,” I said. “And I didn’t mean to . . .” What? I wasn’t exactly sure what I had done wrong, but I really wanted TJ to be cool with it.

  “No, it’s great,” said TJ. “Really. I mean, you and Five are, like, perfect for each other. And you’ve been friends forever . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. I felt like he wanted to say more, so I waited.

  “I mean,” he said, “I was upset. Especially since it took someone else being interested to make you step up. But then, after rehearsal yesterday . . .” His eyes darted everywhere in the room except to me. He chewed on his lower lip.

  “Yesterday?” I prompted.

  “Laurie called me up and asked if I wanted to hang out.”

  “What?”

  “And we did. And it was really cool. Really cool.”

  “Laurie?” I repeated. “You. And Laurie?”

  TJ shrugged. “You and I have the same taste in girls.”

  “Wow,” was all I could say.

  “So I guess . . . ,” TJ began, before throwing up his hands. “I don’t know. I hope you’re cool with that.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not really sure until the words came out of my mouth. “Yeah, actually I’m totally cool with that.”

  “Really?” asked TJ.

  “Really,” I said. “Weird as that is.” Then I realized what that meant for the band. “So, does Joe know?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “But things get around . . .”

  “Right,” I said. “He’s going to shit himself.”

  “Yeah,” said TJ. He looked at me pleadingly. “But what am I going to do? Tell her we can’t date?”

  “You’re not really asking me that,” I told him.

  “No,” he agreed. “I’m not.”

  She was the hottest chick in school, after all.

  “We’ll figure something out,” I told him.

  We turned our attention back to the clam, comparing our diagram to the blob.

  “Maybe that’s a lung,” I said.

  “Oh, I thought it was the foot,” said TJ.

  “Hmm,” I said. “You might be right.”

  We poked at it a little more.

  “Oh,” said TJ. “Both Joe and Rick stopped me in the hallway and said they couldn’t make it to rehearsal tonight.”

  “What?! Do they know the contest is only a week away?”

  TJ shrugged.

  “Why don’t they tell me these things?”

  “Probably because you’d react like this,” said TJ.

  “I can see that with Rick, but I seriously don’t think Joe cares how I react to anything.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said TJ. “But then, I don’t think you notice what kind of effect you have on other people anyway.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know. I guess that you don’t give yourself enough credit. After all, you’re the only thing that’s keeping this band together.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” I asked.

  TJ shrugged and poked at the clam some more.

  “This sucks,” I said. “I was really in the mood to play tonight.”

  “Me too,” said TJ. “You wanna come with me to play over at Alexander’s house?”

  “With Alex?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s he going to play? His hand farts?”

  “No,” said TJ, surprised. “Didn’t you know? He plays bass.”

  “Alexander plays bass?” I repeated.

  “He’s pretty awesome, too.”

  “You’ve played with him before?”

  “A couple of times.”

  “Why didn’t I know he played bass? Why didn’t he ever mention it?”

  “You know. It’s Alex. He’s a weird dude. So how about it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s just jam.”

  “Cool.” TJ nodded. Then he hesitated. “Laurie’s going to come along. Maybe you wanna invite Jen5?”

  “I can ask her,” I said. “But she usually isn’t interested in tagging along to a rehearsal.”

  But when I asked her after school, she was interested.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “Sounds like fun.”

  “You’ve never wanted to come to practice before.”

  She let out a huge sigh, like she couldn’t believe I was so dense. “That’s because Joe was there. You know I can’t stand that guy.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then, “Well, Laurie’s going to be there.”

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  “I thought you didn’t like her.”

  “I didn’t like you liking her,” she said. “Now that I don’t have to worry about it, she’s cool.” Then she raised an eyebrow and said, “But what are you going to do about Joe?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe he broke up with her and doesn’t really care who she dates.”

  “Yeah, that sounds real likely,” she said.

  “Maybe he’s so blinded by the joy of getting to contribute songs, he won’t even care.”

  “You’re letting him write songs for the band now?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  I’d never been to Alexander’s house before. He lived a little farther from school in one of the suburbs with big houses and big yards and no sidewalks. I tried to avoid going to places like that as much as possible. When Jen5 and I got there, TJ’s car was already parked out front. We knocked on the door and Alexander answered.

  “Hey, guys. This is great! Nobody but TJ ever comes this far out.”

  We got a brief glimpse of the rest of the house. It had that warm, homey feel, with lots of knickknacks scattered everywhere. But we didn’t spend much time in the rest of the house, because Alexander led us down to his furnished basement.

  It was like walking down a set of narrow wooden steps and finding paradise. There was a big TV, a game console, a huge stereo, a brand-new Apple computer, and just about every kind of musical instrument and piece of music equipment you could think of.

  TJ was already warming up, just playing a light little combo. Laurie was sitting on a couch watching him. She had gone through some kind of makeover since the night before. She’d switched out the goth princess look for some kind of glam retro ’80s thing that went perfectly with TJ’s modboy hipster look. That wasn’t the only change, though. She also looked kind of . . . happy. Jen5 plopped down next to her and they started chatting like they were buddies.

  Alexander showed me where to plug in. He handed me a cord and my eyes followed the sleek, clean rubber casing to the amplifier that had more knobs and switches than I knew what to do with. Then my eyes followed the cables from the amp to a full, beautiful speaker stack that was to be the conduit for my sound.

  Then he said, “Here’s a pedal board.” He handed me a shiny piece of rectangular chrome and black plastic. It had four pedals on it and more little knobs and switches. “It’s kind of simple,” he said. “But it’s got all the basics: distortion, flange, chorus, and echo. And it’s really e
asy to use.”

  What did I say? Paradise.

  While I was setting up, Alexander strapped on his bass and started playing. TJ had been right. Alexander really was good. He and TJ didn’t have much in common as people, but listening to them play a simple rhythm section, you could feel that rare kind of rapport between a drummer and bassist that gave every song a solid groove. When I joined in, skimming a melody off the top of their jam, it was so easy because they gave me so much. I understood in that moment something that Gramps had told me over and over again. That you had to be able to trust everyone playing in your band.

  When we were taking a little break, I said, “We’re playing kind of loud. Are your parents home?”

  “They are,” said Alexander.

  “Do you think they mind?” I asked.

  Alexander shrugged. “The basement’s soundproof.”

  Heaven.

  “So who’s going to sing?” asked Alexander. “I have a mic with a stand.”

  We looked at one another. We looked at the girls on the couch.

  “No way,” said Laurie.

  “I don’t know any of your music,” said Jen5.

  “Why don’t you sing, Sammy?” asked TJ. “You know all the words to everything. Don’t try to tell me you don’t.”

  “But I can’t sing very well,” I said.

  “You sound better than Joe.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t—”

  “Oh, shit, you’re just fooling around anyway!” said Jen5. “No record label guys are hiding behind the stereo.”

  “Yeah, Sammy,” said Alexander. “Come on. Someone’s got to do it.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. I was totally blushing and at first it was hard to relax, sing, and still play guitar. But after the first few songs and nobody laughed, I actually started to have fun with it.

  And what did we play? Pretty much everything, from the more pop kind of stuff like Arcade Fire and Death Cab for Cutie, to established stuff like Tom Waits, Modest Mouse, Dinosaur Jr., Soul Coughing, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Alex knew them all. I even pulled out more obscure bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Mercury Rev, My Bloody Valentine, and Sparklehorse. Most of those he knew too. And the best thing was, if he didn’t know them, after listening to a little bit of it, he would just make up something that was pretty close. It was unreal. A musical genius right under my nose, and I never knew it.