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September 07, 2009
Devil Music
Johnny Rocck could tell the crowd wasn't into the show, and if he was honest with himself, he wasn't either.
Rocckstar was a talented band, for sure, but what had really made them a chart-topping phenomenon was their ability to play to the audience, to whip them into a frenzy with just a few riffs and power chords. Chris Kyller might be the voice of Rocckstar, but Johnny Rocck was its heart and soul, and when he played, people listened.
Of course, there were a lot fewer listeners these days. They had worked hard to move up the charts, but the fickle tastes of the public had changed, and they were now playing "intimate" shows, as their rep put it. Gone were the sold-out football stadiums of just a few short years ago. Now they were back in the same half-full small clubs where they'd been only an opening act before their big break.
It wasn't the lack of publicity or money that bothered him the most, though. It was the apathy. Rocckstar might as well be lounge singers, the way people were carrying on conversations while he hopped across the stage, shredding up and down the neck of his custom guitar.
Chris was howling the chorus, spinning around the mic. But with the ho-hum response, he looked foolish, just a has-been reliving his glory days before an indifferent audience.
Johnny looked down at his effects pedals, lined up neatly in front of his monitor. There was his vintage orange fuzztone, the chorus pedal that had been made just for him back when he could still get endorsements, and his very first distortion box, the labels on the knobs long since worn away so only he was still able to tune it to just his custom sound. And at the far end, a dark red box with a single, silver switch on the surface, and an old-fashioned red bulb at the top.
He had come across the pedal in a secondhand music shop in some backwater city, years ago. "Plug your guitar into this," the strange man in the strange little shop had said, "and you'll wail like never before. Your solos will be unstoppable. You'll tear up your fretboard like the Devil himself."
"What's the catch?" he had asked.
"I'll sell it to you cheap," he said, "but there's a price to be paid for playing the Devil's music."
At the time, he had been going through a phase--his rep had suggested that he dabble in the occult, to give his persona more of an edge. So he bought it. But something about the man made him feel uncomfortable in a way that pentagram tattoos and Ouija boards didn't, and so he never plugged in his new purchase.
But a few nights ago, before yet another show, he had come across it in the bottom of a trunk of gear, and hooked it into his effects bank on just a whim. The show had gone fairly well, so he had left it turned off, and the same happened the next night, and the next. But tonight, he was bored. His audience was bored. And Chris looked ridiculous.
The little red bulb gleamed in the stage light, beckoning.
Chris got to the end of the chorus. "C'mon, Johnny, rock it!"
That was his cue for the solo. He was going to try it. He stomped the switch. The red bulb flickered, then brightened to a warm glow.
The guitar began to growl with a sound he had never heard before. He almost missed a note in sheer surprise, but the absolute perfection of the harmonics brought him back. Slowly, he began to work his way up the fretboard, carefully at first, teasing out one note at a time.
Then, without warning, he tore into an off-time arpeggio that screamed from the amplifier, threatening to leave the rest of the band outright, but then bombing back into the main rhythm with a bend on the tremolo that sent the pitch diving far below the bass and almost to the height of human hearing in a single sonic shockwave. He didn't even know what scale he was playing, but it seemed filled with unlikely third-steps and 17th-steps, strange and twisting chords that filled him with violent passion.
His fingertips burned as he worked his way back up the fretboard, and he realized that he was kneeling at the very edge of the stage. He couldn't see the audience; he couldn't hear anything beyond his own playing; he felt the music assault his ears, his lungs, the depths of his stomach. It was so loud, so bone-crushing, a face-melting, soul-destroying solo of unprecedented power.
His vision was fading to static and his head was spinning as he leaned back to the floor. How worth it this was! His eyes were filled with shimmering lights; all he could feel were the strings vibrating in perfect unison beneath his calloused fingers. He wished he could see the audience. They must be loving it, he thought. They must be wailing, screaming, burning alive with the sheer pleasure of the sound blazing forth from his fingers...
---
Mrs. Bellweather had lived through plenty of new musical styles, thank you very much, but she did not care at all for the sort of folks who frequented the club down the street, and if you asked her, it was little surprise to see sirens and smoke coming from the vicinity. The street was cordoned off with yellow tape, and it looked like half the fire departments in the city were outside, as well as a good number of police.
In fact, a pair of them were leading a handcuffed man to a squad car as she wheeled her grocery cart by.
"You don't understand, man! It wasn't me! It was that pedal!" he was shouting, half-sobbing.
"Please, Mr. Rocck," said one of the officers. "You just walked out of the worst fire I've ever seen without so much as a singed eyebrow. You're only going to make it harder on yourself if you keep lying to us."
"Hey, the judge might go easy on you if you're honest," said the other. "I think he's a big fan of your second album."
Mrs. Bellweather stopped and glared at the man, at his tattoos, long hair and ripped jeans. "Hmph. Devil music, if you ask me." She turned away with a sniff.
The man stopped walking, staring back at her, then began to sob all over again. The officers stuffed him into the back of the car and slammed the door. The street was silent, except for the crackle of flames and wail of sirens.
Posted by Mark at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2009
6 Lessons We Learned In Napa
We learned about more than just wine on our recent trip to the Napa and Sonoma winemaking regions in California. Here are 6 things that stuck with us, even after the headache went away:
1. Hiring a Professional Can Be Worthwhile - According to Dennis, our driver, the costs associated with a DUI in California are somewhere near the 10K mark. Ok, he's definitely a biased source. But considering that hiring a limo, van, or car for your wine tour comes with local expertise even while it's keeping you out of the slammer, that $70 an hour quickly becomes very worthwhile. Don't know where you're going? Ask Dennis. Not sure if that next winery is worth the tasting fee? He sure does. It's short money when you consider everything you get. And nobody has to get stuck with DD duty.
2. If You Don't Love People, Stay Out Of Service - If one thing separated the truly amazing winetasting experiences from the duds, it was the person behind the counter. At some wineries, the pourer clearly didn't care whether we enjoyed the wine or not, nor did he or she have much interest in us as potential customers. And at the best wineries, we were treated to friendly banter, instruction, and even a rap about Napa's climate. Regardless of whether we were wine celebrities (we weren't) or average Two-Buck Chuck drinkers (we were), the best places made us feel like we were the most important people ever to sip a glass of Chardonnay.
3. Love What You Do - Richard Graeser left an unsuccessful farming business in the mid-80s to take care of some family affairs after his father passed, and ended up planting grapes on some land he inherited in the upper Napa valley. Over 20 years later, he was cheerfully serving his own wines (with his picture on one of the bottles) to us in the lobby of our B&B as part of a free tasting. I doubt he got any sort of fee for being there (if it was, it was probably pretty marginal), and he didn't bring a single bottle or brand-imprinted corkscrew to sell. Just himself, his stories, and his product. Needless to say, he's found his passion, and it showed in his personality, and his wine.
4. There's Nothing Like A View - By the end of the day, when your taste buds are muddled with oak, tannins, grapefruit, kiwi and loamy earth, a spectacular view across green vineyards and dusty hills is like waking up in a Monet. The wine could be grape juice, and I don't think we would have cared all that much. But add substance (like Domaine Carneros's amazing sparkling wine) to style (like their stone patio overlooking the rolling hills of their estate and the rest of wine country) and you've got a recipe for success. But if you can't wow 'em with taste, at least wow 'em with beauty.
5. Price Doesn't Always Equal Quality, But It Sure Does Correlate - Time and again, we would introduce ourselves as "anti-wine-snobs," and we were pleased to hear that, even in Napa, folks drink plenty of Two-Buck. But prior to this trip, our wine budget rarely went above $8 or so a bottle...with so many palatable wines in the discount bin, how could we justify spending more on something we might not like? But once we had tasted and seen the goodness of California grapes, $20-30 seemed like a bargain for such quality. Oh, we'll still have plenty of budget offerings in our wine fridge...but you'll see a lot more Artesa and St. Supery amongst the Yellowtail.
6. Save the Best for Last - The weekend before Napa, we went to the Hudson Valley in New York for another wine tour. We did it in the right order: while upstate NY wines are fine in their own right, they simply don't compare to one of the world's premiere wine regions. If we had gone the other way around, it would have been like going to Foxwoods or any other Indian casino before a trip to Las Vegas. Now that we've been out west, it'll be a lot harder to justify buying a case on the Finger Lakes. Everything is relative, of course--you wouldn't eat steak every night--but once you've had filet, you stop paying top dollar for rump roast.
Posted by Mark at 04:30 PM | Comments (1)