AT 29 Read online

  “Buckman, third floor with the pothead and the psycho, right?” Jimmy nodded. “No problem. I’ll take you off.” Relieved, Jimmy turned to leave. “Kid across the hall signed you up.” Jimmy stopped.

  “Who?”

  “Royce, from Massena, New York.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “We get a name we put it on the list. Doesn’t matter how it gets there. He put himself up, too. Maybe you should talk to him.”

  “Just take me off the list.”

  “Okay.” The proctor waved him off and returned to his book.

  The curious thing about the room across the hall was the music that blared from its interior, all kinds of music from the latest pop to less familiar jazz, blues and obscure heavy rock that hurt the ears. Once, on his way out to class, Jimmy glimpsed one of the room’s occupants standing in its center, alternately playing air guitar and drums to the blasting music. The student he saw was short, but powerfully built with long black hair. He wore dark rimmed glasses, a yellowed tee shirt, dirty jeans and no shoes or socks. Apart from the eyeglasses, there was something of the cave man to his look. Jimmy thought about this character as he climbed the stairs.

  Sure enough he heard music blaring from the room. He listened for a moment before knocking hard on the partly open door. Inside, he spotted Royce, standing with his back to the door, reading an album cover. With the music filling every corner of the room, it was clear that he had not heard the knock. Jimmy crossed to the stereo and turned the volume down. When he turned back the other boy was facing him, showing neither surprise nor concern.

  “I tend to crank it up.”

  “I’m looking for Royce.” A mischievous smile crossed the other student’s face. Jimmy caught the look. “I have a message for him.”

  “Would it be about the talent show next week?”

  “Yes, I’m out.”

  “You want me to tell him?”

  “I just did.” Jimmy was back in his own room when the music blared again.

  He smiled as he remembered the next time he saw Kevin. The cafeteria was half full with dozens of empty tables. Nevertheless, Royce put his tray down opposite Jimmy and sat down without a word. They ate in silence for an uncomfortably long time. Jimmy kept his attention on his textbook. Kevin never looked up from his plate.

  “See the paper yet?”

  Jimmy looked at Royce, suspicious. “No, why?”

  Kevin set down his fork and felt around in his pants pocket, eventually bringing out a crumpled page with the unmistakable Crusader banner. He laid it on the table and smoothed it with his hands. “Here you go.” Then he stood up and carried his tray across the room where he deposited it to be washed. Jimmy watched him exit then turned his attention to the paper he left behind.

  Duet To Perform Friday Night

  He read the headline with alarm as he saw his name linked with Royce in an article for the show. Later, he confronted him across the hall as before. The notes of a saxophone bounced off the walls from the stereo speakers in all four corners. Seething, Jimmy turned the volume down once again.

  “I told you I’m not doing the show!” Royce calmly walked to the tuner and turned the volume back up just enough to be heard without interfering with their conversation.

  “I try never to be without sound in my space. Coltrane’s one of the best. Do you know his stuff?” Jimmy shook his head. “Name’s Kevin.” Royce stuck out his hand. Jimmy shook it, sensing he was losing control. “You strike me as a loner type. Then again, with the guys you’re living with I’d be a loner, too. Come to think of it, I already am.” Royce pointed at the two empty bunks along the wall. “My two roommates have already left school. Maybe I scared them off.”

  Jimmy tried to regain the upper hand. “That’s likely.”

  “I get this place to myself for a while until they get around to assigning me some others. Of course, after the show, if everything goes good you could ditch those two losers and move in with me. I’ve been listening to you down in the basement.”

  “Good for you. I’m still out.”

  “I know. You only play for yourself, personal enjoyment, that sort of thing. I bet you’ve never set foot on a stage. Just you and your guitar alone someplace.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m a drummer. Sing a little, but mostly just beat the sticks. The other guys in my band, the ones like you, much more talented than me. They all needed a nudge in the right direction. That’s what I’m doing for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never held auditions. I went after the best musicians in school. The fat, shy kid on trumpet in the school band, the pimply kid in his garage, amping the hell out of his second hand electric, trying to mimic Keith Richards, never realizing he already had a sound all his own. I had my eye on this girl, good-looking, straight arrow type. Best thing about her is the way she plays the piano. Picture the personality, recitals and state competitions, planning to go to Julliard. Never even thought about rock’n with a band. I put her on a keyboard, her putting me down and telling everybody she was just humoring me. Got her hooked in a single afternoon. Dropped all her pretensions and went wild, short skirts, looks as hot as she plays.

  “Front man was the toughest. Once I had her, all the jocks wanted in. Crushed when I sent them away without even listening. I already had a guy in mind, my little brother. Played an acceptable base, which was good ‘cause we needed one to fill out the sound. Not sure about the heritage in my family. I mean, look at me, not the best-looking guy in the world. Dickie, that’s his name, tall and handsome with a voice that can handle anything. Being brothers, it was pure hate. Beat the crap out of him from the day he came out of my mother’s womb. I took him every time until middle school when he got bigger. You get the picture, we plain didn’t get along, but my band wasn’t going anywhere without a solid front man. He was it, whether we liked each other or not. You know how I made it happen?” Jimmy shook his head, trying not to seem interested.

  “Same as I’m doing for you. I entered the band in a contest. Put his name on the list with the rest of us. He didn’t know anything about it until the day of the show. I casually dropped it over dinner with him, my mother and father all sitting around the table. He refused, but I knew my folks would make him do it. They have this thing about family. Loyalty is big with them. He punched me hard in the face while we were driving to the show. Didn’t matter to me, we won. They’re all still playing together back in Massena. I’ll be back with them, too, as soon as I flunk out of here. That’s another story.”

  “I’m not playing with you.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Just not interested.”

  “I was careful not to let you see me downstairs. I know most of your stuff, but one of the songs is new. Did you write it?”

  “Just the one, Lulu.”

  “It’s good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll back you up, just tap the rim, maybe run the brushes over the snare.”

  “No.”

  “You’re scared to put yourself out there. It’s easier than you think. The others will make fools of themselves, you won’t.”

  “No.” Jimmy turned to the door. Kevin continued.

  “You have a gift, I think. No sense hiding it.”

  “You don’t know me or my music.”

  Jimmy walked across the hall to his own room. The door was barely closed when it flew open again. Royce came in fast, almost bowling into Psychopath who was seated in front of the television in the center of the room. He looked up at Jimmy and the intruder, not sure what was going on. Jimmy faced Kevin, this time ready to push him out, no longer willing to talk. He stopped when he saw the fire in Royce’s eyes.

  “I know everything about guys like you,” he exclaimed. “The loner more worried about how things look than how they are. The wannabe who doesn’t know how to fit in, so he puts on a cool for others, just so long as they don’t get too close and find out i
t’s nothing but a front. I know you better than you know yourself, alone in the library, alone in the cafeteria, skulking off to the basement with your guitar. You think people don’t notice? Or, maybe you want them to notice, to wonder about the mystery guy with some unknown purpose. Better to keep others at arms length.

  And YOUR music, like you invented it! There isn’t a thing you do on that guitar that hasn’t been done a million times before and a whole lot better by others, famous and unknown. Over there in my room, I’m playing the best jazz saxophonist who ever lived and you’ve never heard of him. Meanwhile, you mope around, protesting the best chance you’ll ever get to go with your talent and see what happens.” He walked behind Psychopath and touched his shoulder.

  “You want to sit here like this guy, watching television, watching the world go to others with less ability all because you don’t have the guts to answer the call when it comes? Well, I’m calling! Don’t know anything about you or your music? I know you taught yourself how to play. Probably alone someplace with nobody around because you were afraid they’d see you make a fool of yourself, and you sure did. I know because nobody with professional lessons would hold his guitar up high like you. Nobody would have the strings upside down and backwards so you have to stretch your fingers ‘til they ache. There are maybe, five well-known left-handed players in the world who hold a guitar that way. Of course, you don’t know that, either.

  “Maybe you think rock ‘n’ roll was invented by white guys in blue suede shoes shaking their hips. No, you wouldn’t know about rhythm and blues, boogie, gospel, soul, southern jazz or the half dozen other black styles. Yes, black, because they’re the ones who invented your music for you. Of course, you’ll protest that you can’t be playing their music, you don’t sing or play loud, there’s no wire running from your guitar to an amplifier. Your music is more natural and, guess what? I agree, and I’ll grant you it’s good. But, I’m standing behind the vending machines downstairs and I’m hearing something more than Peter, Paul and Mary. I’m hearing B. B. King, Muddy Waters and other black guys you never heard of fighting to get out. I know it’s good because I made a tape of you and sent it to my uncle. He’s in the business and I plan to work for him just as soon as I get out of here. Still think I don’t know?

  “Ever heard of Bo Diddley? I hope so because he’s the godfather of every rock ‘n’ roller since. But HIS godfathers were Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker, just a pair of unappreciated black guys in rumpled suits who taught themselves to play the best blues you’ll ever hear, strumming their way from town to town for whiskey and women. No amps behind them at first, just like you, smooth and clean with a mystery in their voices that carried listeners to some place they never wanted to leave. That could be you.

  “Who gave us the solid body electric guitar? No, not a hollow one, like your Gibson over there. That kind has had wires running from it since electricity first came to New Orleans. I’m talking about the ones you see strapped over the shoulder of every rocker with a hit record. Do you know? I’ll give you three names; Airoldi, Dopyera and Rickenbacker. I’m gonna skip them because that was way back before the rock revolution. Let’s talk about two others; Leo Fender, yeah, I see by your eyes that you’ve heard of Fender. And, guess who? Lester William Polsfuss, also known as Red Hot Red and Rhubarb Red before he morphed into Les Paul. I have his records, too, with Mary Ford singing vocals. No rockin’, but you can hear it coming in his play, just around the corner in 1952. He carried his wooden contraption all over the country for a decade, always hearing no and a lotta laughs from the companies he asked to make it. Then in 1950 Leo Fender opened shop and came out with the Broadcaster, commercially successful almost overnight. The traditional guitar companies stopped laughing and the biggest one called Les Paul in a hurry. That company? Why it’s the same one that made your guitar, Gibson. But they don’t make many of your kind anymore. The solid body electric is the moneymaker for them.

  “Oh, and rock ‘n’ roll, just what is this music? It’s all the black styles fused into magnificent vibrations. But only because a few gutsy labels like Sun and Chess, got together with courageous radio stations like WLAC and broke the segregated silence that prevented ‘race music’ from being heard by the masses. All those great blacks who never had a chance to profit from their talents in the years before World War II, saw white guys like Presley, Lewis and Pat Boone, of all people, take their music to the top of the charts. That opened the door for new black talent, like Diddley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, who might otherwise have been silenced if a few greedy white guys didn’t make their music suddenly acceptable to the bigots of America.

  “The term rock ‘n’ roll, where’d that come from? Naturally, it’s black. You don’t know that, either. Sure, you can guess it has some connection to the music that came before, but like the rest of our generation, you probably think Dick Clark coined it on his radio show in Philadelphia. Even he’s a latecomer. If Any DJ came up with it, it would have been Alan Freed, the crooked Cleveland king of fifties radio, who finally kick started the revolution when he migrated to New York City. No, it wasn’t him, either. Nobody really knows. Plenty of songs had it in their lyrics, even as far back as 1923 when some black guy was singing about boogie rockin’ his girl. Code for what every man wants from a woman. Later, a guy named Roy Brown wrote a song called ‘Good Rockin Tonight’. He and a fantastic woman named Wynonie Harris came out with competing versions in 1948, rhythm and blues for sure, but rock ‘n’ roll as far as I’m concerned.

  “Do you still think I don’t know anything about you and your music? I can take you to school! Right now we’re being invaded by a wave of Brits who know our music better than we do. Eric Burdon, you ever really listen to that guy? Pure southern blues. What’s he doing singing our heritage better than us? You could do that. Certainly not with his hard edge because that’s not who you are. He’s unplugged half the time. Give a listen to him and you’ll hear what can be done with the beautiful sound our black brothers gave us. Even the Stones, making a hit out of Howlin Wolf’s Little Red Rooster, they carry his forty fives around with them wherever they go, study him and all of our incredible black virtuosos so they can copy them and evolve their own unique style. Who are the white American guys and girls doing that today? Too few to count because, like you, they don’t know where their music came from. They’re too lazy to make the effort and too stupid to recognize that without the foundation of what came before, there’s no hope for originality in the future.

  “Maybe I ought to give you a picture of that future since that’s where you’re going. Well, maybe not, since you don’t have the nerve to start here and now. But, let me paint it for you anyway. Right now, the music’s fused together. That’s our rock ‘n’ roll; all bunched up with rhythm and blues, southern jazz, gospel, boogie and swing, tightly bound. The pendulum swung that way at the end of World War II because all those guys came home from the war aware that they were lucky to be alive and eager to pursue anything that signified enjoying life to the fullest. They knew how short it could be. They had no interest in being tied down by the superstitions and artificial barriers of their parents. Remember, they had already seen it all; death, destruction, utter despair. So, if they heard something they liked, they allowed themselves to enjoy it and they didn’t care one bit about where it came from. That’s why Sam Phillips and his peers didn’t give a damn about who was making the music or the classifications between this kind and that kind. Throw it all together and see what happens, that was the mantra. Now, we are well into the revolution. In a few years the pendulum is going to start swinging back. Rock will begin to split into subcategories where its practitioners will go deeper into unique styles and types. For my money it will be future fabulous black musicians who will lead the way again. Maybe we’ll hear horns muscle today’s king guitar out of the way. Maybe there will be artificial machines that branch off into a completely new sound. Then in our old age or after we’re dead, it will all fuse together aga
in and on and on. But, so what? You don’t care! Your music is only for you. Nobody knows you. Nobody knows anything about your music.

  “The fat kid, the pimply kid, the beautiful girl, my brother, you’re just like all of them, raw talent that needs a push. Go ahead, sit here with this psycho, but don’t ever say you didn’t have a chance!”

  He left the room, slamming the door while Jimmy and Psycho stared wide-eyed in shock.

  “What was that?” Psycho asked.

  Jimmy left the room without answering. He tiptoed across the hall and sheepishly peered through Kevin’s partially open door, spotting him fiddling with the knobs of his stereo. He pushed the door wide.

  “Tell me more.”

  ***

  Wilder Auditorium housed a bandbox theater on the edge of campus. Backstage, there was little room for the volunteer performers who huddled together, some quietly nervous like Jimmy, others whispering jokes back and forth, unconcerned. Good-natured catcalls mixed in with applause as the show worked its way through each act. Most were amateur takeoffs of well-known songs with a few hilarious skits mixed in.

  Kevin and Jimmy had decided what they wanted to do the day before. They closed the door to Kevin’s room and ran through two songs with Kevin doing a soft beat on his set of drums in the corner. Jimmy stood in the center of the room, pretending to sing into an imaginary mike. The real thing would be in front of him onstage. He’d never stood before an audience and, therefore, had no idea what to do with a microphone.

  “You’ll have to get up close like you’re kissing it,” Kevin said. “Whatever you do, sing naturally like you would if it wasn’t there. Let it carry your true voice.”

  Jimmy closed his eyes, trying to imagine what to do. He sang a slow version of Neil Sedaka’s, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, then waited several moments for Kevin to set the beat to Lulu.