Chapter Nine #2
Unlike Mickey and his batch of ten strategy, Diamond had all fifty-two drummers standing at the back of the stage, and damn near every last one of them looked like they wanted to puke, flee, or were hoping for a hole to open up beneath them.
Even the three who didn’t watched him with some level of awe mixed with cockiness.
Something told me they’d be among our finalists, so I made a mental note to keep an eye on them.
“Alright, let’s get rolling,” Diamond said, nodding to Wolf to do his thing.
First guy up hit the skins exactly seven times before his drumstick flew out of his hand, forcing a couple of the guys behind him to duck.
Diamond pointed at the door, growling take a walk, and that was the last we saw of him.
Second guy lasted twenty seconds before Diamond dismissed him, while the third guy decided to treat the drums like a fucking machine gun.
Diamond never sat, he just paced and glared at them, occasionally turning enough that we caught sight of the resting bitchface he was wearing and cringed, sinking lower and lower into our seats.
In an impressive display of drumming, one guy was allowed to play for a minute before Diamond told him to stick around for round two.
Sure as shit, he was one of the three guys who hadn’t turned green when faced with the rules Diamond had laid out for them at the start.
Half of those who showed up never made it past twenty seconds, less than a quarter made it to thirty.
Only five guys were allowed a minute of his time, and those were the five he had left at the end of the first two hours.
If it wasn’t for seat and pedal adjustments, which sometimes took more time than the audition, he’d have probably had the pack whittled down in half of that.
“Alright you five, this is what we call the lightning round,” Diamond said as the last of the dismissed drummers trudged towards the door. “Raise your hand if you know Iron Maiden’s Be Quick or Be Dead.”
All five hands shot up. I sincerely hoped no one was bullshitting because he hadn’t tolerated a single shred of bullshit over the course of the morning.
One guy had been so wild and out of the pocket when he’d started his audition that Diamond had slammed his hands down on the stage and glared at him until he’d stopped playing and had silently taken his sticks and skittered for the door like a scalded cat, and all without a word from the terrifying man who looked like he could bench press half the room.
Tibby, Tony, and I had silently passed a clipboard back and forth, each with a different name out of the top five that we thought would be the final drummer, not that I was about to voice my opinion when I knew nothing about the technical aspects a drummer needed to have to make an impact in the industry.
“Good deal,” Diamond said. “I’m gonna give you each one shot at it.
The guy who stands out the most gets the job.
If no one stands out, I’ve got a backup song.
If only a few of you stand out, then the ones who don’t can hit the bricks, and whoever’s left will keep on playing until somebody earns the job, or I get so damned sick of listening to you that we toss names in hats and draw one, got it? ”
Various responses ranging from nods to murmurs to one grumbled-out ‘yes, sir’ made up their collective responses, and then bang, we were kicking off round two of the auditions.
These five that were left had some serious skills, but the third one in blew them all away, the same as he did in round one, playing tight and controlled but fierce as hell when he’d banged out his song.
He was also one of the two guys none of us had circled.
There was a reason for that, too. As soon as he was done, he knew he’d fuckin’ nailed it and crowed like a goddamn rooster about it too.
“Now that’s how you play the fuckin’ song, baby!” he howled, waving one of his sticks in the air.
“Yeah, that’s how you play the song. Now get your ass back in line and shut up about it while we let these other two guys audition,” Diamond snarled.
While he didn’t dare say another word about it, no one could miss the sour-ass look on his face when Diamond didn’t heap praise all over him.
According to the clipboard, his name was Claude, and that look on his face turned from sour to pissed when Diamond announced that there would be a drum-off between him and a drummer named Slade, especially when Diamond declared that Slade was gonna go first. Claude looked like someone was taking steel wool dipped in gasoline and scouring it over his skin as Slade played AC/DC’s Back in Black, the round two song Diamond had laid out for him.
All I could think, the whole time Slade was playing, was please pick this guy, please, for the love of the metal gods, pick this guy because Claude was already coming across as a showboater, reminding me way too much of the guy I used to be.
The clipboard nudged my leg, and I accepted it from Tibby, who’d circled Slade’s name, the same as Tony had.
Now I circled it too and hoped like hell Claude fucked up the song somewhere, especially after Slade flubbed a tiny section, though he recovered beautifully.
Claude didn’t flub, he didn’t falter, and he didn’t miss a goddamn thing, at least not to my ears, and I had damned good ones.
He also didn’t holler and hoot about it when he finished this time, just sat there smirking triumphantly, while Tony muttered son of a bitch beneath his breath and Tibby just groaned.
Yeah, son of a bitch was exactly my way of thinking too, especially when Diamond turned to look at us and announced. “There’s your new drummer; you’re welcome.”
A glance right and left showed the same look on Tony’s face as the one Tibby wore. None of us could muster up the words to say thank you. I knew I couldn’t not when the only word running through my head was fuck!