screens.
■ ■ ■
They stepped through the beaten doors of Moto’s haunt, The Round, a pedigreed rock club on the courtyard’s eastern edge. The bar itself was no more than a low-ceilinged corridor line with a dozen cherry stools. Behind it were three local drafts that Moto attested never changed, and a modest shelf of spirits, mostly common stock, though spiked with a few rarities the owner apparently enjoyed, things like Green Spot, or Yoichi.
No one was tending bar. Moto scraped past the two vintage Rickenbacker F-holes hanging on the wall and clutched the shoulder of a bearded man on the farthest stool. Larent, who had slowed at the head of the bar, near the door, searched the eyes of the four men for the bartender, the one indulging his regulars in the slow hours of early evening, he assumed.
Before he could single him out, Moto caught his eye and waved him on past the bar. By the time Larent entered that cube of a room at the back, Moto was comfortably seated at a long unvarnished table near the entryway. Larent looked over the stray music gear that demarcated the small stage beyond: the Korg keyboard, the well-used twelve-string, two pre-war steel strings in slightly worse shape, and the powder blue Fender bass with oversize tuning pegs like cloverleaves.
Clustered near the gear, around what looked like a plastic patio table, were several twenty-something girls, all of them in threadbare sweaters, one in white jeans, and two more like twins, though not, in leggings and gauzy skirts. A bottle of Campari sat on the table, and their mouths moved violently, probably with gossip. What else inspired that kind of passion? But all he could hear was the Fahey record jangling through the sound system. The music soon vanished the girls from his mind, and as it did he began to study what was left in that peculiar blue-walled space, what Moto would later point out was actually a white-walled space bathed in pale blue light (hence the peculiarity).
You couldn’t say what Fahey was, really, Larent thought. Or how exactly he’d arrived at the music he did. Probably Fahey couldn’t have told you either, even afterward. Or he’d give you the wrong explanation. No one seemed to think that was a problem. Larent liked the thought. Maybe he needed it too.
He hadn’t sat yet. He looked back at the bar from the doorway. “Drinks, yeah, he knows, he’s coming,” Moto said over the music as he ran his hands through his hair.
Finally Larent sat, still bemused. Moto began to tell him of the bands of distinction who’d played there—The Fall, Embrace, Can, and twenty years on, Gastr del Sol, June of 44, Polvo—often to audiences that were, though modest in an absolute sense, large enough to make the room, not the audience, seem to be what was too small.
All of this was mostly lost on Larent, preoccupied as he was with the musical failures of that first rehearsal. It was fine to talk of seminal bands, but what could the two of them hope to achieve, if that , the flatness of the afternoon, was ground zero? Beginnings mattered. Nothing was just practice. Or you could say practice told you more about everything to come than you would ever have wanted to believe. And he hadn’t liked what he’d heard. He could remember this same feeling, with other musicians, on the cusp of stillborn projects.
The worthiest material Larent played that day was never heard. It came in between, after they’d let a feeble improvisation shrivel and die. He was hunched over his double bass, with his right hand blindly fingering chords, or if not quite blindly, then in the dimmest light. Nothing could be heard because nothing was sounded; his left hand lay flat along the strings. He had that talent for hearing unsounded notes, and what he was hearing seemed to him to make more sense than it strictly should have. It was something to unravel, these new instincts his hands were turning up more and more now.
It helped him ignore what he was
■ ■ ■
They stepped through the beaten doors of Moto’s haunt, The Round, a pedigreed rock club on the courtyard’s eastern edge. The bar itself was no more than a low-ceilinged corridor line with a dozen cherry stools. Behind it were three local drafts that Moto attested never changed, and a modest shelf of spirits, mostly common stock, though spiked with a few rarities the owner apparently enjoyed, things like Green Spot, or Yoichi.
No one was tending bar. Moto scraped past the two vintage Rickenbacker F-holes hanging on the wall and clutched the shoulder of a bearded man on the farthest stool. Larent, who had slowed at the head of the bar, near the door, searched the eyes of the four men for the bartender, the one indulging his regulars in the slow hours of early evening, he assumed.
Before he could single him out, Moto caught his eye and waved him on past the bar. By the time Larent entered that cube of a room at the back, Moto was comfortably seated at a long unvarnished table near the entryway. Larent looked over the stray music gear that demarcated the small stage beyond: the Korg keyboard, the well-used twelve-string, two pre-war steel strings in slightly worse shape, and the powder blue Fender bass with oversize tuning pegs like cloverleaves.
Clustered near the gear, around what looked like a plastic patio table, were several twenty-something girls, all of them in threadbare sweaters, one in white jeans, and two more like twins, though not, in leggings and gauzy skirts. A bottle of Campari sat on the table, and their mouths moved violently, probably with gossip. What else inspired that kind of passion? But all he could hear was the Fahey record jangling through the sound system. The music soon vanished the girls from his mind, and as it did he began to study what was left in that peculiar blue-walled space, what Moto would later point out was actually a white-walled space bathed in pale blue light (hence the peculiarity).
You couldn’t say what Fahey was, really, Larent thought. Or how exactly he’d arrived at the music he did. Probably Fahey couldn’t have told you either, even afterward. Or he’d give you the wrong explanation. No one seemed to think that was a problem. Larent liked the thought. Maybe he needed it too.
He hadn’t sat yet. He looked back at the bar from the doorway. “Drinks, yeah, he knows, he’s coming,” Moto said over the music as he ran his hands through his hair.
Finally Larent sat, still bemused. Moto began to tell him of the bands of distinction who’d played there—The Fall, Embrace, Can, and twenty years on, Gastr del Sol, June of 44, Polvo—often to audiences that were, though modest in an absolute sense, large enough to make the room, not the audience, seem to be what was too small.
All of this was mostly lost on Larent, preoccupied as he was with the musical failures of that first rehearsal. It was fine to talk of seminal bands, but what could the two of them hope to achieve, if that , the flatness of the afternoon, was ground zero? Beginnings mattered. Nothing was just practice. Or you could say practice told you more about everything to come than you would ever have wanted to believe. And he hadn’t liked what he’d heard. He could remember this same feeling, with other musicians, on the cusp of stillborn projects.
The worthiest material Larent played that day was never heard. It came in between, after they’d let a feeble improvisation shrivel and die. He was hunched over his double bass, with his right hand blindly fingering chords, or if not quite blindly, then in the dimmest light. Nothing could be heard because nothing was sounded; his left hand lay flat along the strings. He had that talent for hearing unsounded notes, and what he was hearing seemed to him to make more sense than it strictly should have. It was something to unravel, these new instincts his hands were turning up more and more now.
It helped him ignore what he was
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