from us. Not from Dad, from us. ”
I didn’t know what to say. It seemed an odd thing for Mum to want, especially after all this time, but it kind of made sense, in a way. It would explain why she never visited us and why she was seeing Dad again and why she’d left in the first place…
But explanations don’t change anything, do they? They don’t make you feel any better. You either like something or you don’t, and if you don’t like it, then knowing why it happens doesn’t make any difference—it’s still going to happen and you’re still not going to like it, so what’s the point?
Wednesday night was The Katies night. We practiced every week in a drafty old warehouse that was owned by the local arts group. They used it mostly for theater rehearsals and exhibitions and stuff, but to make ends meet they hired it out when it wasn’t being used, and it wasn’t used all that much, especially in winter. So every Wednesday night—and occasionally on weekends—we’d book ourselves in for three or four hours, set up our gear, and make lots of noise.
That’s how I approached it, anyway—a bit of fun, a bit of a bash, and lots of high-speed noise.
The others were a bit more serious. They’d been together for quite a while before I joined the group, and they were all at least a year older than me, and much more ambitious. Before I joined they used to play some really heavy stuff, all gothy and dark and gruesome, but then they started hanging around the skateboard park where I used to hang out with my friends and they started hearing the stuff that we were listening to—which was still pretty heavy, but not heavy heavy, and not so pretentious, either. And then…I can’t really remember exactly what happened. I think I just got to talking to them one day. I didn’t really know them, but I knew who they were from school and I knew they played in a group, so when I heard them raving about the bass line on a New Found Glory track that someone was playing, saying that that was the sound they were looking for, I just happened to mention that I had a bass and I could probably play like that…and things just progressed from there.
We practiced a lot, wrote some decent songs, started getting a few gigs, made a couple of demo tapes, and nowthings were really starting to move—better gigs, more money, a bit of record company interest here and there. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but the others were really keen.
When I turned up for the practice that night, everyone was going on about this gig we’d got lined up, the one in London I’d told Gina about. They were discussing what to wear, what to play, what to do if we got offered a deal. Very serious. I listened for a while, not really joining in, then I just kind of drifted away and started messing about on the guitar.
It gets a bit boring playing bass all the time, and it’s nice to strap on a guitar now and then, especially when you can play it really loud—the crackle of the pickups when you plug it in, the expectant hum of the amp when you crank up the volume, the incredible buzz of power when you slam out the chords…
“Hey!” yelled Jason, the singer. “Hey! HEY! ”
I stopped playing and looked at him. “What?”
“We’re trying to talk here.”
“Sorry…I’ll turn it down.”
Chris—whose guitar I was playing—gave me a dirty look, then he turned back to Jason and Ronny, the drummer, and they all got back to their big-time yapping. The whole thing struck me as a bit ridiculous—telling me to turn it down, like they were my bloody parents or something. I mean, if all they wanted to do was talk, why bother hiring the warehouse at all? Why not book a table in a nice quiet restaurant somewhere?
I turned the volume down, then went over and sat cross-legged in front of the amp and kept playing. I’d been working at home on the song I’d started the night I metCandy, and I began playing it now. It sounded a lot better on an
I didn’t know what to say. It seemed an odd thing for Mum to want, especially after all this time, but it kind of made sense, in a way. It would explain why she never visited us and why she was seeing Dad again and why she’d left in the first place…
But explanations don’t change anything, do they? They don’t make you feel any better. You either like something or you don’t, and if you don’t like it, then knowing why it happens doesn’t make any difference—it’s still going to happen and you’re still not going to like it, so what’s the point?
Wednesday night was The Katies night. We practiced every week in a drafty old warehouse that was owned by the local arts group. They used it mostly for theater rehearsals and exhibitions and stuff, but to make ends meet they hired it out when it wasn’t being used, and it wasn’t used all that much, especially in winter. So every Wednesday night—and occasionally on weekends—we’d book ourselves in for three or four hours, set up our gear, and make lots of noise.
That’s how I approached it, anyway—a bit of fun, a bit of a bash, and lots of high-speed noise.
The others were a bit more serious. They’d been together for quite a while before I joined the group, and they were all at least a year older than me, and much more ambitious. Before I joined they used to play some really heavy stuff, all gothy and dark and gruesome, but then they started hanging around the skateboard park where I used to hang out with my friends and they started hearing the stuff that we were listening to—which was still pretty heavy, but not heavy heavy, and not so pretentious, either. And then…I can’t really remember exactly what happened. I think I just got to talking to them one day. I didn’t really know them, but I knew who they were from school and I knew they played in a group, so when I heard them raving about the bass line on a New Found Glory track that someone was playing, saying that that was the sound they were looking for, I just happened to mention that I had a bass and I could probably play like that…and things just progressed from there.
We practiced a lot, wrote some decent songs, started getting a few gigs, made a couple of demo tapes, and nowthings were really starting to move—better gigs, more money, a bit of record company interest here and there. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but the others were really keen.
When I turned up for the practice that night, everyone was going on about this gig we’d got lined up, the one in London I’d told Gina about. They were discussing what to wear, what to play, what to do if we got offered a deal. Very serious. I listened for a while, not really joining in, then I just kind of drifted away and started messing about on the guitar.
It gets a bit boring playing bass all the time, and it’s nice to strap on a guitar now and then, especially when you can play it really loud—the crackle of the pickups when you plug it in, the expectant hum of the amp when you crank up the volume, the incredible buzz of power when you slam out the chords…
“Hey!” yelled Jason, the singer. “Hey! HEY! ”
I stopped playing and looked at him. “What?”
“We’re trying to talk here.”
“Sorry…I’ll turn it down.”
Chris—whose guitar I was playing—gave me a dirty look, then he turned back to Jason and Ronny, the drummer, and they all got back to their big-time yapping. The whole thing struck me as a bit ridiculous—telling me to turn it down, like they were my bloody parents or something. I mean, if all they wanted to do was talk, why bother hiring the warehouse at all? Why not book a table in a nice quiet restaurant somewhere?
I turned the volume down, then went over and sat cross-legged in front of the amp and kept playing. I’d been working at home on the song I’d started the night I metCandy, and I began playing it now. It sounded a lot better on an
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