A low hum filled the room. Landlord Tlug Blone grabbed his dog by the collar and took him upstairs, thus remedying the situation. Among the relieved assembled an excited murmuring arose as Reggie and the Rockouts approached the stage, then subsided as in true rock'n'roll fashion they veered off and headed to the bar.
It was Monday night! Oh most exalted of nights! For this is the night when nothing happens! So Blone, faced with the prospect of an empty pub, had initiated the First Annual Battle of the Bands on said weeknight. Tonight the first band on were the aforementioned Reg and the R's, who having purchased sustenance now mounted the stage with more purposeful intent. Picking up their instruments, they launched into the opening number, Rockin' With Reggie.
All dressed in black, save for Reggie who wore a gold lamé tuxedo, the Rockouts were a good ol' down-home rock'n'roll band. Unfortunately their home was Pilmo, not known for its bop sensibilities. Guitarist Donny Osgood played all his favourite licks from the scratchy 45's he had purchased at great expense from sundry record fairs and stacked in his sundry coffee house juke boxes which he had purchased at even greater expense from sundry auctions. Luckily he was a lawyer and had more money than integrity; unluckily he had more legal skills than musical talent. On bass, Pete "Bloke" Snoke played the same riff in different positions on every song. Keyboard player Micky Smiff spent most of his time straining to get his foot on the keys, and drummer The Drummer was having his usual trouble trying to stop the various pieces of his slapdash kit from walking away or falling over.
None of this mattered to Reggie, who knew the fans only cared about the singer, and he sang his little heart out with all the soul of a true egotist and hit the notes with the same accuracy a blind darts player employs in failing to avoid the board. He had all the moves, but none of them in the right direction.
The net effect of the sum of the parts was a whole which smote the Pilmotes with a metaphorical plastic cricket bat from the Everything a Pound shop, and being the locals of said location they didn't know any different and clapped politely after every song, thus giving the impression that Reggie and the Rockouts were very much their cup of tea indeed, though they might be coffee-drinkers all. In this manner the Pilmo local band audience ensured that most Pilmo local band players continued in much the same vein as R & the R's, considering that if you played what the people so obviously appreciated, you would get gigs. And this proved to be almost true.
So, for the next three quarters of an hour Reggie and the Rockouts plied the crowd with twelve-bars and chugalugs, leaving the stage to ragged applause and the feeling of a mediocre job averagely done, which was as good as they thought it was going to get.
The next band on were Arse, last-minute replacements for the cancelled Fred Bloggs and the Steam Engines. Arse were a different barrel of pants, drawn wriggling from the underground scene where commitment and attitude played a greater part than the more usual cover versions and near-competence of the they're-quite-good-actually-aren't-theys of the semi-pro out there in broad daylight scene.
Arse nevertheless followed the guitar-bass-drums-singer tradition, a deliberate decision democratically arrived at by the four Arses; Fly, Stark, Diva and Spunky the Frog. The first number was a rollicking roar of thundering drums, throbbing bass, screeching guitar and raw throat, an aural attack which as it slammed to a close left the audience completely unmoved and responding with polite applause. To which Diva exclaimed in disgust and disappointment, "Arse!"[1] and all band members swapped instruments. Drummer Stark was now on bass, Spunky the singer took up the lead axe, bassist Diva sat behind the drums and guitarist Fly stood before the mike. Thumpa thumpa thumpa went Diva and the guitars kicked in with tonk tonk and scritchetty scratch, a tuneless plod over which Fly sang nothing at all, being terminally shy.
After 40 minutes of improvised uselessness the audience responded with polite applause.
Spunky the Frog approached the microphone; "You could have danced if you'd wanted." He was immediately felled by a flying guitar, belonging to Donny Rockout, thrown by Diva out of Arse.
"Namby-Pamby Hippy Old Guard Flannel Washer!" she snarled, immediately packing her gear and leaving the venue in disgust.
Fly and Stark ambled vaguely after her - Fly in the manner of a man with a personality count of zero, Stark with similar ambience but with an ironic twist - while Spunky the Frog lay contentedly before the stage area dreaming of toast with a ring of chirping tadpoles circling his addled head. Soon it would be time for Band Number Three, also known as The Third Band.
Although in fact they were called Zx, the feminine case of zx, or possibly the neuter plural. The band themselves were in the feminine plural and turned out to be the five women gathered about a table at the back of the room, sharing an orange juice with five straws, who had thus far sat impassively without even politely applauding and had therefore been marked out as a little strange. This may or may not have been deliberate.
All at suddenly they rose, each taking a handful of paper from the pile in the table centre, and wove distributing such about the persons there assembled.
While the leafleted perused, bemused, this unformation, the perpetrators, having diverged, converged and disappeared behind a curtain at the rear of the stage area. Before so vanishing, the one with the golden orange hair fingered what must have been a remote control, for the tattered backline provided by the venue slowly slid away into the shadows to be replaced by a raised platform supporting strange machinery and two consoles, while at the front there came into view something which could only be the bass due to the thickness of its strings and a small collection of other devices. The only recognisable instrument was a guitar, and that was a Stellarama, of which just the one was ever made.
The voice spoke; a soft, yet forceful, tone, husky and seductive, above a subdued purr of sound.
You wanted country and western, to cry to
into your beer
You wanted rock'n'roll, to remind you of the
days
You wanted ballads, to tell you what it's
like to be in love
You wanted disco techno trance - is there
more to life than dancing?
You wanted pop, to save you from the depths
You wanted heavy metal, to make you feel like
an outlaw
You wanted punk rock, because you're
different
You wanted music from the movies, because the
film was so good
You wanted jingly jangly indie, because
you're sensitive
You wanted acid jazz, to make you feel
intelligent
You wanted traditional folk, it's so
eco-friendly
You got this.
Zx presents:
Adventures in Time and Space
At which point the women emerged to a crescending swirl, no longer in dirty raincoats but resplendent in red and gold satin, chiffon and lurex, angels with a sense of style; proceeding to their stations they began to produce the chiming music of the spheres, at first gently probing, then growing in confidence to stroke the air with a strong but sensitive lover's touch.
Then the beat began.
The rest was a blur; a pulsing whirlpool of synthesia, notes of silver and steel tinkling against the walls and ceiling, cushions of creamy white, pink and purple surging, dark balloons and little planets pumping, myriad shapes and smells in all the colours of the sonic rainbow. And oh, the visions! Static rushes, darts and sweeps, manic movements evoked by the raising of an eyebrow, the tone of a look. Now they were demons, next they were dreams, sometimes a mirror and sometimes a movie.
The words… they were of cosmic proportions, yet in the tiniest detail; they told of souls in torment, hearts in ecstasy; they spoke of life, of death, of love; the exquisite torments, the magic of being. They were about the universe itself, about the archetypes that spoke to everyperson, about the generic and the specific, but most of all… they were about you.
And they were sung by the voices of angels, none more ethereal than the golden orange girl, who drew you into the vortex by more than virtue of her position front and centre; whether she was spearheading at the microphone, arms emoting, face beautiful even in the throes of vocal contortions, retiring stage back strumming the bandolouki, or roaming freely while parping the electrotrompolet, she was clearly the brightest of the stars who held our attention and helmed our voyage through the phantasmagoria that was Zx.
At some point they must have introduced themselves, because we knew this was Zeva; Zara on our left was the one who was surely born complete with guitar, Zola the dusky beauty filling out the lower registers with sounds previously thought impossible to produce merely by inducing a string to vibrate, while Zyma and Zylch stood high at the stern producing the washes and pulses that drove and embellished.
Too soon it was done, and the women were gone before we realised in our gradual descent back to ground level. It had been a wondrous journey, an epiphany, the ultimate proof that music was magic.
The audience responded with polite applause.
I had no response to give that would not seem tawdry or in some way insufficient. I was simply glad that I had sneaked back in, despite the risk of facing Donny Rockout's wrath after my maltreatment of his beloved axe; I could never resist the temptation to find out what a new band was about, even if it meant an hour of thumb-twiddling waiting for them to go on followed by a hasty exit after five minutes of the usual nonsense. I had never dared to dream of experiencing the glory of the past hour on any of these occasions.
I had rediscovered my faith in the power of music, rekindled my inspiration to force the twisted exclamation marks that were my thoughts and feels out of my head, down my arms, through my hands and into an agency of expression that could articulate them. And what is more, now I knew what love was.
It was Zeva.