Boring Girls(65)

They played for an hour, and at the end of the last song, Marie-Lise threw herself down on the ground, thumping the last notes of the song out of her bass. She lay close to the front of the stage, and I saw hands reach out and grab her hair, tugging it. She let them, and when she sat back up, they all respectfully let go of it. By this time the black makeup around her eyes had melted in her sweat and streamed down her cheeks like tears. Her lipstick was gone, and her hair had fallen out of its ponytails. She looked insane, and sitting on the stage, she grinned at the crowd one last time.

The lights went out and in the darkness the band left the stage. The crowd screamed, but they weren’t coming back out. The house lights came on.

“That was great,” Edgar said, and I agreed. Fern’s face was shining with excitement. I wondered how long it was going to take before she went shopping for Pegasus bleach.

xXx

“Socks, what’s your goal with the band? Why do you want to do it?” Fern asked as we drove home. Craig and Yvonne had gone in Craig’s car, and it was the four of us, with Fern and me in the backseat.

“Having fun,” he replied immediately. “I like to have a good time. I’d love to go on tour, see the world, all that.”

“What about you, Edgar?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and thought for a moment. “You know, I guess maybe I’d like to make a difference. Leave something behind, you know? Be remembered.”

“All the more reason we gotta get in a studio and record,” Socks said.

“Studios are expensive,” Fern said. “We don’t have any money.”

“Yeah, but if we maybe knew someone with a good computer program and a space to record,” I said, “couldn’t we do it ourselves? We recorded our rehearsal at your place, Socks. Couldn’t we do a full CD the same way?”

“You’re right. If we had software where we could record each instrument as a separate track, then mix them together at the end of it . . . we could. My computer’s crap. I could call a few friends and see what I can come up with. We might be able to do it really cheap. That’s a good idea.”





TWENTY-FIVE


Socks had a friend named Ken, who played in some local bar band, and they rented a rehearsal studio down by the river. In that rehearsal space, Ken had a recording set-up. He said he’d help us record for pretty cheap, so we all pooled our money. I pitched in my birthday money, as pathetic as the sum was, and as the school year ended we went into the “studio.” It was fun — we created a schedule with Ken where each of us would record our parts one at a time, and condense all of it into a few hours a day for a week. Socks was first on the schedule, and we all wanted to be there, of course.

The room was in a small building with five other rehearsal spaces in it. Ken explained to us that most of the rooms were empty at the moment, and when we got our first look into their room, I was so relieved that we used Socks’s basement for band practice. The rehearsal space was filthy from years of use. The rug was an undistinguishable colour, the ceiling had water damage stains mushrooming across it, and the walls were covered with spray paint. Ken and his band had brought in some clean furniture and tried to tidy it up, but there was only so much that could be done with such a place. The good part was that it was soundproofed, cheap, and it was nice to go and sit by the river if you felt like taking a break.

Ken seemed like a good guy. He was probably in his early twenties, a bit older than Socks, and I was pleased to see him wearing a DED shirt. Socks had told us he was into good music, even though his band played generic rock covers at their bar gigs.

He had some good mikes and let Socks play on his drum kit, because the kit was in better shape than Socks’s. The only thing we did bring along for Socks was the snare drum, because we preferred it to the way Ken’s sounded.

Ken sat at his computer while Socks flawlessly played through all twelve of our songs. I was impressed by this — I familiarized myself with my parts by feeding off cues from the music. Socks just knew the rhythm of the songs. I supposed that was his job, but it still impressed me.

Ken suggested that Socks run through each song one more time, to ensure a good take or a different option, and Socks sturdily played through again. Edgar, Fern, and I sat on a couch, watching and trying not to make any noise that could be picked up by the mikes. Socks made a few mistakes this time through, but happily began again when it was required.

The goal was to get one of us done a day, and the next day was Edgar’s turn. He listened to Socks’s drum parts through headphones and played along, his amp miked. Ken sat riveted to the computer. Multicoloured tracks appeared, scrolling across the screen, representing Edgar’s bass lines. He definitely started and stopped a lot and it became clear that his parts were going to take awhile. So Fern and I wandered out to the river, sat in the grass, and I watched her smoke cigarettes.