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 Deep End (excerpt from Got To Make It!) I hopped down the long flight of black tile stairs to Tom's basement for band practice. The guys were already there, lazing and joking around. "You guys've got to hear this," I said. "What now?" They sat straight up. "It's a long story, but Stanley-this old guy at work-died the day before last." "So," they said. "Well, I wrote this trilogy of songs to honor him. Based on this incredibly cool dream I had." I sang all three songs I had written, each a part of the rock operetta I called Stanley's Visit To Kerkle Morff. When I finished, they didn't say anything. They just looked at me with these dumb stares. "Please, give it a shot," I said. "I'm really picturing a lot: effects, crowds . . . " "It's, I don't know . . . incredible," Tom said. "Really." "I think it's . . . uh . . . different," Crow said and he rolled a rat-a-tat-tat on his snare. "Let's give it a try," Al said. "It might have possibilities." I have to admit, that night we all but hobbled through the trilogy. The guys were confused at first, but eventually Tom caught on, then the others. The more we played it, the more they could picture the end result I had described. Then Al seemed to actually be digging it. "If we work hard, we'll be able to feature it at the Deep End. Oh, I forgot!" I said. "We're playing there on Friday, February 12th." "That's only a week away!" Crow said. Tom hung his head. He hated being under the pressure I created sometimes. "You want to introduce this Stanley thing there?" Al said. "Great. I'm into embarrassment." By Friday, the day before the Deep End performance, sure enough, Stanley sounded really different than anything we had ever done; probably different than anything anybody had done. Like most new songs, it wouldn't be real tight until we played it at its first performance. But it was hard to tell: Stanley really didn't sound like a typical rock song. Now, I might have been favorably biased because I wrote the song, but to me it sounded ready to go in its own quirky way: a playful-cartoony-funky showtune. |
