Chapter 31
(Rebel)
Our three weeks at the lodge had been amazing, as always, but stepping into the studio always flipped a switch in me.
The other guys were the same way, which meant our sessions ran smoothly, for the most part.
There were always those times when one of us became overly critical, usually of our own playing, but sometimes of someone else’s, which led to a bit of a blow-up.
I was hoping we’d be able to refrain from that for Kit’s first recording session. He was nervous enough as it was.
“Just treat it like a show,” I told him.
“And remember that Ozzy will be in the booth to help you every step of the way. You guys have already worked everything out between you as to who’s playing which songs, so have fun with it.
Don’t worry about whether it’s perfect or not.
As soon as you start thinking, it won’t be. ”
“You’re going to have to teach me some of that Zen shit when we’re out at your place,” Kit muttered.
“What Zen shit?”
“All that stuff you just said,” he replied. “Were you this calm the first time you were in the studio?”
“He was the only one,” Johnny said as he leaned against me, a chuckle slipping out. “The rest of us were trying to rewrite shit at the last minute, and completely fucking it up, I might add, while he just sat there on the couch, the picture of calm, rolling a guitar pick over his knuckles.”
“You weren’t worried at all?” Kit asked.
“It was too late for all that,” I replied. “We were there, with a limited amount of time to record the best album possible; worrying would have just gotten in the way.”
“He’s right, you know,” Johnny said. “We wouldn’t be doing this if you weren’t ready. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t ready. We need you to believe that, trust in yourself, and do what you love.”
“That simple, huh?” Kit muttered.
“Naa,” Johnny said. “It’s the hardest thing in the world, but once you can, the possibilities are limitless.”
I saw when it clicked with Kit, and he pulled Johnny into a one-armed hug, then hugged me fully, murmuring in my ear.
“Thank you.”
“You’ve got this,” I told him and let him go so he could confer with Ozzy.
“So, how long have you guys been dating?” Johnny asked. “I know I miss a lot of shit not sharing the bus with you, but when did you make it official?”
“Official?” I said, watching Kit talking to Ozzy. “We’re not…”
“Dude, you are so dating,” Dash said, nudging my shoulder. “Everyone can see it.”
I glanced between my two best friends, both nodding with stupid grins on their faces. “Yeah. I guess we are,” I admitted, face stretching into a goofy grin when I watched Kit crack a smile. “It just happened. I love him.”
“I can tell. It’s a good look on you. You need to be sure to tell him that too.” Johnny said. “But we will hogtie you, cover you in French fries, and leave you for the gulls to find if you break his heart.”
“Why am I the one getting the shovel talk?” I asked, elbowing Johnny.
“Because we know you,” Dash said, so I flipped him off.
At exactly nine forty-five, Kit stepped into the studio while Ozzy joined the audio engineer in the booth, and things were soon underway. As I always did, I retreated to the couch, flopped down, and closed my eyes.
I didn’t expect to nap, but my mind drifted, and the next thing I knew, I was being prodded awake by Dash and told that it was my turn to record.
Wow. If he was done already, that meant I’d been out for a while.
“Dude, do you want to know what we’ve had to endure for the last two hours?” Johnny said and held his phone up so I could listen to myself snore.
Laughing, I headed in, did my usual checks to make sure my guitar was tuned the way I liked it, closed my eyes, and thought back to the moment that had spawned this song.
Pure chaos.
Stage diving.
Outdoor festivals were the best. Wild. Primal. Bodies colliding. Trying to mosh the stars from the sky.
Energy. Exhilaration. Tapping into what I’d felt that night was easy. The breathless rush that followed flinging myself off the stage. Being crowd surfed, with beach balls flying overhead, bright against a night sky crisscrossed with laser lights, was an almost mythical experience.
Trippy.
One of the most amazing shows of my life.
Only Dash had viewed it differently, because he’d had nothing but technical difficulties that night. Somehow, we’d managed to weave his frustrations with my jubilation, into one long, twisted rollercoaster ride of a song.
I tweaked it a handful of times before I got what I was after, minor things that made certain parts stronger. We ran through it a few more times, and then that was it for me on that track. On guitar anyway.
Johnny joined me to record the vocals. No need for a break.
I was so dialed into the song, the memories, and the motivations behind us writing it, that I just wanted to get it down.
Johnny was of the same mindset, which always made it easy to just slip into the zone with him.
We sang it like we intended to perform it, with every ounce of passion and raw energy, even if there wasn’t any jumping around.
We knew when we nailed it. We never needed anyone to tell us that, hugged, and headed straight for the lounge and a cold bottle of water.
“Ready for the next song?” I asked Kit, who was already on his way in.
“Now that I’ve gotten a taste for what it’s like, hell yeah,” he replied, looking far more confident now.
I was glad he’d gotten over his initial hesitation. His playing was brilliant, with quirky little flourishes that never failed to excite the crowd.
“You can pick your tongue up off the ground now,” Johnny said.
“Huh?”
“You’re still staring at the door Kit walked through like, a minute ago,” Johnny pointed out.
“Mind your business,” I grumbled and finally went and got that drink.
Of course he followed. It was Johnny.
“Don’t start,” I muttered as I pressed the cool bottle to my forehead before uncapping it.
“Total change of topic,” Johnny said.
“Thank you.”
“We have officially been challenged to take part in a bubble cannon war at Rocktoberfest this year,” Johnny announced.
“By whom?" I asked.
“Well, remember last year when me and Jagger were running around trying to drown one another in bubbles?” Johnny asked.
“And anyone who had the misfortune of being anywhere near you,” I replied. “Yeah, I remember that.”
“Well, we accidentally blasted Winter, who took it upon himself to put a team together to challenge us at Rocktoberfest.”
“Who does he have on his side?”
“See, that’s where things get interesting,” Johnny said. “Winter posted about it on social media, and other people we blasted got wind of it and decided to put teams together too. It’s up to eight teams now, from almost twenty different bands, twenty-two if we accept the challenge.”
“And if we don’t?” I asked, because I knew Winter, and he wasn’t one to leave anything to chance.
“Open season.”
“So basically, we’re in for a bubble cannon war whether we want one or not,” Dash groaned as we joined him on the couch. “How do you always get us into these things?"
“How was I supposed to know Winter would take it so far?” Johnny squeaked.
“Because it’s Winter!" I said, throwing up my hands. “Whether you meant to blast him or not, you had to know he’d find a way to get you back.”
“And drag the rest of us into your chaos,” Dash said, rubbing his hands together. “Guess we’d better start shopping for the biggest bubble cannons we can find.”
“Uh-huh, admit it, you’re happy to be hauled into the fray,” Johnny said.
“Hell yeah! In that heat, the only thing better than a bubble cannon war would have been super soakers,” Dash said.
“And no one is going to waste precious water on that,” I pointed out before one of them got it in their heads to suggest it.
“Talk about the perfect sendoff for Ozzy,” Dash mused. “Knowing him, he’ll find a way to strap a spare cannon on his back just so he doesn’t have to waste as much time with refills.”
“Yeah, we need to research how much bubble solution those cannons hold and stock up accordingly,” I suggested. “The last thing we want to do is run out of ammunition in the middle of the war.”
It was going to be crazy, epic, and downright amazing. Dash was right; it would be one hell of a farewell for Ozzy too.
“I can’t believe this is the end of an era for us,” Dash said as he glanced over at the studio door.
“It’s surreal,” Johnny said. “On one hand, the band will keep truckin’ on, business as usual, but Ozzy’s always been the heart of the band. I’m going to miss him tossing random-ass comments into the middle of conversations.”
“I’m gonna miss hitting him up in the middle of the night for help with whatever stupid shit I’ve gotten myself into,” I admitted. “Or advice. It was always better to just go to him before something ridiculous happened.”
“We’ve had our share of it, haven’t we?” Johnny mused. “Man, remember the night we lost the van keys in that waterpark in Virginia? Or at least, I think it was Virginia. Around Williamsburg somewhere.”
Dash chuckled. “Who could forget? That’s exactly where we were too. Williamsburg. I don’t know what possessed me to stick the key in the pocket of my board shorts instead of leaving it in my jeans.”
“Because someone made the brilliant argument that if we got a locker, one of us would still have to put the locker key in their swim shorts, so what was the point?” I reminded him.
“I’m willing to bet they have master keys for their lockers,” Dash mutters. “The van, not so much.”
“Putting a new starter and ignition in that thing was a bitch,” I grumbled.
“You’ve still never explained how you knew how to hotwire it,” Dash pointed out.
“You know how everyone has that one friend who’s just one misadventure away from getting everybody arrested?” I asked.
“You were that friend, weren’t you?” Dash said.
“Naa,” Johnny said, leaping to my defense; out of all our bandmates, he was the one I’d known the longest. “It was always Louie.”
“The same Louie that didn’t tape the wires after putting in a new CD player and wound up with sparks landing in their lap in the middle of a road trip?” Dash asked, having been privy to some of our Louie stories over the years.
“That would be the one,” I said.
“Rebel was a major shitshow magnet back then,” Johnny pointed out.
“Here’s hoping Knightly was the last,” I said. “I’m more than ready to leave all that bullshit behind me.”
Dash chuckled. “Every time you talk about Louie, I think about my friend Mitchell. If he could dig himself a bigger hole trying to get out of a small one, he would.”
“Is he the one that hauled a junker car home filled with bees?” I asked.
“That’s the one,” Dash grumbled.
It was nice to kick back and just shoot the shit now that the first song was in the bag. The tone had been set for the session. What better way than reminiscing about the moments that shaped us to keep us in the right mindset to record an album driven by memories and dreams?
“He’s also the one responsible for the scar on my calf,” Dash explained.
“I thought you said it was a moped accident?” I asked.
Chuckling, he just shook his head and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “It was. Who do you think was driving?”
“Damn,” Johnny replied, letting out a long whistle.
“Talk about a comedy of errors from beginning to end,” Dash said.
“When he said he’d just gotten it, I should have asked if he actually knew how to ride one, but no, my dumbass just hopped on the back, and off we went.
It was fine as long as he stayed on side streets.
The moment he turned onto the Ave, we were fucked. ”
“What happened?” I asked.
“A car pulled out in front of us, and he barely stopped in time,” Dash explained.
“At that point, I wanted to get off, but the car behind us started honking, so Mitchell took off again, and we made it three blocks before he decided to weave around someone who was parallel parking, and their front end hit our wheel, and we slid.”
“Why do people do that shit?” Johnny moaned, "Like, you seriously can’t wait thirty extra seconds for somebody to park.”
“Okay, let’s be fair here,” Dash said. “I don’t care if they do make it part of the driver’s test; parallel parking is not most people’s strong suit. Think about how many cockeyed cars we used to see when we were out bombing the Ave.”
“What I always wanted to know was who the fuck came up with that phrase in the first place,” Johnny asked.
“Wish I knew,” Dash replied, “it was before my time too.”
“Whoever coined it, it’s been awhile, my old man called it bombing the Ave too,” I pointed out.
“I bet all of our dads did,” Johnny said. “So, I take it no more mopeds after that?”
“Hell no,” Dash said. “To top it off, the cops showed up and wound up ticketing him for having a passenger on the back when he only had a learner’s permit.”
“I bet he just loved that,” I said.
“Dude, this fucker flew off the handle when we got to his place,” Dash explained.
“He tore half his room apart looking for the driver’s manual, just so he could find the passage that said motorcycle riders weren’t allowed a passenger with a learner’s permit, but that the book classified mopeds as motorized bikes, which didn’t come with the same restriction. ”
“Okay, fair. I’d have fought the ticket too, then,” Johnny said.
“I couldn’t fault him for that, or for calling the station and giving them the name of the officer and ticket number and reading them what the manual said.”
“So he beat it,” Johnny said. “Right on.”
Dash chuckled at that and chugged the last of the juice at the bottom of the bottle he held.
“He beat that one, which was thirty-five bucks. He’d have been better off paying it, though, since the permit he’d given the officer wasn’t even his.
He’d stolen it out of another friend’s glove box.
So the information on the ticket sent the cop to our friend’s house and he brought the cop to Louie’s place, where the cop tore up the first ticket, and issued three more, totaling over two hundred and forty-five dollars. ”
“Dayum!” Johnny screeched, while I just sat there shaking my head, because, holy shit.
We laughed at that, sipped water, and reminisced some more, the stories changing as we rotated in and out, but like the songs we were recording, the memories would linger for the rest of our lives.