AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 53

Giles Griffin slung the guitar over his shoulder like a stud in pajamas, but he couldn’t hit the right notes.  He was fast, fingers flying; a lot of noise, all over the place, his back-up musicians gamely trying to hold the jam together, but Griff couldn’t even get the timing right.  His gain was so loud it was hard to hear the drums, the bass player, the dude on organ, or the synth-player.

Reed was rock-ready: he had a little bit of toilet paper stuffed in each ear.  No ultra-destructive tympanum-bursting dBs were going to send his ears to the graveyard.

The Mansion was well-stocked with Sidekicks, establishing and maintaining an overabundance of the female species——Courtney had guessed or joked 3:1, but that seemed about right.  Here, the Sidekick groupies had taken over.

The sound-system was a joke: a raucous roar out of expensive but completely inferior sound-reinforcement loudspeakers.  There were terrible dips and peaks in the frequency response of the sonically bright, cavernous room.

Reed was about to play with his environment——go backstage, and then edge his way onto a live instrument and into the jam——when Peach swept onstage for a fast few.  It was a trip to watch all the Griff-groupies freak, hate, and croak with envy.  A roomful of women, well-lubed, not-so-quietly waiting for their hero’s hair-splitter.

Peach made a frantic motion with her hand, while looking straight down at Byron Reed in the audience, and he realized that she wanted him to come up on stage.  She repeated the gesture and gave him a nasty face when he didn’t move; so Reed did move, and climbed up on the stage.  Griff tweaked Peach’s ear fondly with two fingers, between two chords that could not have sounded more out of place or inappropriate if he had tried.  They shouted at each other, to be heard over the music.  Griff looked at Reed for a sec, and then played a slightly damaged solo while Peach shouted into his ear, clinging to his arm, wrapping her leg around one of his legs, pulling at him, rubbing her body up against his——she was definitely in the Beg & Plead mode.  Reed caught a few words as he climbed up to join them.

“. . . she can take an Earth-bath for all I care,” Griff said.  “I’m playing hot tonight, baby!  If Princess wants to pose, that’s another scene; till then, tell ’er . . .”  Griff got on the microphone with his distressed, gangling voice.  “. . . It’s My Orgy, ’n I’ll COME if I want to, COME if I want to, COME if I want to . . .”  Without telling any of his back-up boys, he went from a loafing MONY MONY to a mangled IT’S MY PARTY.  They struggled to keep up, switching gears, chords, keys, and songs as only professionals can.

In the middle of his geetar so-low, Griff shoved his right hand out at Reed, hanging the sonic scream on digital hold with a tap of his foot-pedal.  “Glad to meet you, Byron!”

“Likewise, Griff!” Reed yelled over the rasp of screaming electric distortion.

“Let’s do some tunes!” Griff shouted, doing some obscure hand motioning to one of the players.  The guy doing back-up chords on the master keyboard stood up and offered Byron Reed his chair.

Peach disappeared Bidirectionally.

Reed wanted to quiz the guy a little on the set-up, but the guy walked immediately backstage.  The master keyboard was connected by MIDI to synthesizers and sound modules back off-stage somewhere.  But no matter what patches Reed selected, he got boring and useless sounds or electronic beeps, wheeps & freeps.

Giles Griffin paused to bask in groupie glory, and then launched into TUTTI FRUTTI.  But this was no TUTTI FRUTTI Reed had ever heard, and didn’t much resemble the Little Richard version he was used to.  Also, Reed couldn’t figure out what key the song was in.  Feeling like a total idiot, Reed went over to the tall Black bassist.

“’Lo, Byron.  Ain’t seen you in awhile.”

Reed recognized the guy then.  He yelled into his ear, while the guy popped out his baseline without half-trying.  “OK, Mark, I give up,” Reed yelled, “what key are we in?”

“The key of Griff,” the guy said with disgust.

Reed nodded.  He whacked the guy’s shoulder and walked backstage to see if he could figure out what sounds were available to call up on the master keyboard.

Reed familiarized himself with the sound-module racks, and had some words with the stage manager.  The only sounds available were the factory-presets.  Useless.  Like a rubber screwdriver for serious assembly work.  Like applesauce sandwiches for a starving man.  Remember candy cigarettes?  Reed bummed a pair of headphones and spent a few minutes backstage editing some custom sounds of his own.

Giles Griffin was really into the Golden Oldies.  ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK.  WOLLY BULLY.  TALAHASSIE LASSIE.  GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY.

Reed edited.  When he had some fat, awesome, survivalist graffiti sounds that would slice the ear hairs away when he cranked the vol, he distracted the woman on the mixing board long enough to up the gain on Griff’s stage monitor, and then Reed backed off Griff’s feed to the house mix: Griff would think he was louder, but his guitar would really be back to a more sane volume level.

Then Reed went back out front to do it with the boys.  He said into Mark’s ear, just before he sat down at the master keyboard, “Let’s see if we can herd this guy back to harmony.

COURTNEY, Chapter 54
 

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