Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

FLASHBACK: ROCK THIS TOWN

FLASHBACK: ROCK THIS TOWN (Remo's Point of View)

I named my band Nomad because I imagined we would travel the highways and byways of the world–or at least the country. But for a while it became a bit of a standing joke–I mean, in five years we'd never played outside of two states. There were about a dozen bars in the area where we were a draw and we just went around that circuit, over and over.

Not that it was a bad life, you understand–we were all paying our bills for one thing, and we had a nice little following, one or two local cassette-only releases–not a bad life if you can live it making music. So I can't say I wasn't happy with it–I could have done that another ten years. But I had to believe we'd travel someday, I had to believe we'd attract some attention sooner or later.

You can't let yourself get too anxious about waiting for fame, though, because it means a lot of let-downs. If you spend all your time aspiring, you'll end up with that feeling you get when you are having a wonderful dream, and then you wake up to find you slept in your clothes in the living room.

Ouch. Yeah. The sun streamed in the windows and I thought, is this my house? But it was. I guess it was a good thing I was already sitting up, because I don't think I would have been able to move otherwise. As it was I sat there for a long time, just looking around the room, trying to warm up my brain before trying anything strenuous like standing up. I had a nice living room–hardwood floors, piano. So what if some of the furniture was secondhand? The room would have made a nice recording studio if something could be done about the windows. Yeah, a nice rackmount reel-to-reel right next to the piano, right where the old cassette player was. I smiled. Nice living room. But not as nice for sleeping in as the other room–the bedroom. At that moment I couldn't remember what it looked like.

I don't want you to think I drank to blackout every night back then, because I didn't. But when you spend as much time in bars as I did in those days, it was sometimes inevitable. We'd been at Maddie's the night before. Maddie, John Madison, is a good friend of mine, and he never charges the band for drinks. And Maddie likes to have a good time after hours sometimes. That might have been what had happened last night.

So I was sitting there, trying not to move my head too fast, trying to remember what had happened the night before. I remembered coming home, but for some reason I hadn't moved to the bedroom. Why had I sat down in that chair?

Right. The phone had rung. Had to have been three o'clock in the morning, so I'd tried to move fast to answer it. The last thing I needed was my upstairs neighbors complaining about noise. (As it was I'd had to get the piano written into the lease.) I'd moved too fast, and stumbled into the chair after barking my shin on something while answering the phone.

I recall the conversation went something like this:

"Remo, it's Martin."

"Jeez, Martin, there's people sleeping around here." Martin was our drummer.

"Did some guy from Arista Records call you?" What Martin lacked in common sense, he made up for with enthusiasm.

"No, Martin, you're the only one who's called me in the middle of the night."

"Sorry." He whispered as if trying not to wake my neighbors. "Well, John said a guy from Arista was there tonight and that he's going to call you."

"Thanks, Martin. I'm sure if he does it'll be tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Okay?"

I heard the crackling in the receiver as he shrugged. "Yeah, I knew that. Well, goodnight, Remo."

So, maybe I would be getting another phone call that day. Or maybe it would be another fake lead. I couldn't sit there waiting for it to ring. I got up the gumption to move, and headed straight for the shower.