The Summer of Kicks Read online

  ‘It’s a process of elimination,’ I tell them. ‘I’ve heard you all. Your national anthem efforts at assembly straight up suck. Sorry, guys, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only choice we have for a front man.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ Hemmo says. ‘Be the singer. Take all the glory.’

  ‘So once we find something for Hemmo to do, we’ll have drums, keyboards, a singer … we still need someone to play guitar. Someone who can actually play guitar.’ I look at the three faces of my bandmates. ‘Anyone?’ But there’s no response.

  ‘Maybe we need to find someone else,’ Bailey suggests. ‘Someone that’s not the four of us.’ It’s a feasible idea. Given our collective musical abilities, we might just need some outside help.

  ‘Hey, what about that dude,’ Hemmo says, ‘from the vinyl shop? I was walking past there on Saturday with my dad and I dropped the thing I was carrying right outside Vinyl Analysis, and so I’m bending over to pick it up, and there’s a sign sticky-taped to the window that says this guy plays guitar and is looking for a band to join. His name’s like Shine or something.’

  ‘Scene,’ says Polar Fleece.

  ‘Scene?’ says Hemmo. ‘What the hell kinda name is Scene?’

  ‘It’s actually Sean. You know, S-E-A-N, but he pronounces it “Scene”. Spells it that way, too.’

  ‘I heard he murdered his granny,’ Hemmo says.

  ‘I heard you shagged yours,’ Reece says.

  ‘That’s just wrong.’

  ‘How do you know how he pronounces his name?’ Bailey asks.

  ‘I don’t know. I just do. We’re both in retail; you hear things,’ says Polar Fleece Reece. ‘I’ll get someone to drive me down this arvo and I’ll ask him if he wants to join a cool new band.’

  ‘We already know he wants to join a cool new band,’ says Hemmo. ‘He wrote a sign about it and stuck it in his window, you dork. What we want to know is if he wants to join our cool new band.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘I can get off at the mall and walk home after.’

  The mall is the only decent-sized shopping complex for a thirty-kilometre radius. It’s claim to fame is that it’s home to seventy-two specialty stores. Among them is Vinyl Analysis.

  ‘He’ll want to know stuff about the band,’ I say. ‘You know, what kind of music we play. Who our influences are.’

  Blank faces. It seems that these are tough questions.

  ‘Well, he’s not going to want to join a band that doesn’t even know what it does,’ I say. ‘We at least need to tell him our band name.’

  ‘What is our band name?’ Bailey asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Think of something.’

  ‘How about …’ Bailey says, thinking. ‘How about Strong?’

  ‘Strong? You need to take a time-out and adjust your bra strap, my friend,’ says Reece. ‘Our name has to be better than that. So much better.’ He pats Bailey on the back. ‘I read this thing in a magazine at the dentist about coming up with a really good name – it has to tick, like, three boxes.’ Reece reaches into his hip pocket and whips out his phone to scan through his photos. He settles on one, zooms in and reads from the pirated dentist magazine page. ‘It says that the best band names have to be: One. Easy to remember. Two. The kind of name that will instantly make people want to know more about you, and three, a name that people are going to feel cool telling other people. As for Strong, the only people who would feel cool telling their friends about us would also be excited about their tickets to Dudes Dating Dudes – The Musical.’

  ‘So what’s your idea?’ Bailey asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Something like … um …’ Clearly Reece has nothing of his own to offer.

  ‘What about a name that relates to things we’re into,’ Hemmo says. ‘You know, stuff we like.’

  ‘Like what?’ says Reece. ‘Are you suggesting we call our band Burritos or Starrphyre’s Mum?’

  ‘She is hot,’ says Hemmo, clearly dangling the bait. The other two laugh along with him. It’s a standard joke, and I’ve always let them think it bothers me, but it doesn’t. I know they’re only tooling about. ‘She’s single, right?’ Hemmo adds.

  ‘But sadly out of your league,’ I say. It’s not my best retort, but I move forward. ‘The band name, Hemmo, what were you saying before you started drooling over my mother, the woman who gave birth to me?’

  ‘Nice image, Starrph. Thanks,’ Hemmo says. ‘I was thinking about TV shows. Movies. You know – Lord of the Rings, Star Wars. Maybe a name that references them both at once.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us wants to be in a band called Ring Wars, do we?’ I say. Reece, Bailey and Hemmo are laughing now. ‘There’s a chance, just the slightest chance, that although our main motivation for starting a band is to garner the attention of girls, a name like Ring Wars might attract a different clientele.’

  ‘I was thinking more like … Tolkien’s Vader.’

  ‘Tolkien’s Vader?’ says Reece. ‘I think I just had your baby. Personally I like the Ring ones. What about Han Solo’s Ring?’ he says, and laughs at his own joke. ‘Or C-3PO’s Ring. Hold on, he’s a droid. Do droids even have rings?’

  ‘Denethor Deathstar?’ Hemmo suggests.

  ‘Real easy to say. What if we have fans who are dyslexic or stutter?’ Reece says. ‘Not very inclusive, Hemmo.’

  ‘Wait … wait … how about this?’ Hemmo shares his suggestion and the look on his face tells me he’s serious. ‘It’s a pretty cool name, right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not so sure,’ I say. ‘Girls don’t go for guys in nerdy-sounding bands. It’s documented.’

  ‘But it ticks all the boxes – it’s easy to remember, intriguing and, seriously, who wouldn’t feel cool telling people about us?’

  ‘It sucks,’ I tell him. Because it does.

  ‘Until we think of a better name, we should stick with this one,’ Hemmo says. ‘Who’s with me?’

  Surprisingly, Hemmo, Bailey and Reece all raise their hands.

  And just like that I’m in a band called Empire of Gandalf.

  Chapter 9

  Real men wear vinyl

  I get off the bus and Fritz, the weird German driver, offers me a shallow wave.

  ‘See you, mate,’ he calls out, then the exhale of gas follows and the door unfolds to a close. Today Fritz is Australian.

  Four minutes and I’m out of the heat and breathing chilled air in the mall. Vinyl Analysis is adjacent to Big W and I’m walking the checkerboard floor, trying to hold myself back from stepping only on the black tiles – black to black in a diagonal fashion – like I’ve done since I was five years old. I have to look cool. I’m in a band. This guy is going to look at me and judge me straightaway. Do I look like the kind of guy who anyone would want to be in a band with? Do I look rock ’n’ roll? Not quite, but I have a plan. I stop, reach into my backpack and pull out the Led Zeppelin T-shirt that has been book-squashed at the bottom of my bag for the past week. I head to the toilets to change, and as I enter a cubicle and hang my bag on the door hook, I pull out the shirt. It’s not Led Zeppelin. It’s supposed to be, but it’s not. The one in my hand isn’t grey and worn and adorned with the stony tenement building from the cover of Physical Graffiti. It’s blue. Chalky blue and it has two large faces on the front. The faces belong to Bert and Ernie. They’re wearing sunglasses, which makes them kind of cool, I guess, and underneath them it says, I wear my sunglasses at night. Even though essentially it’s a Muppets shirt, I decide that it’s marginally cooler than my school uniform, so I take off my shirt, pull on the tee and ruffle my hair with open palms, as if I’m drying it with a towel. So rock ’n’ roll. If Bert and Ernie ever started a band, I’d be the first person they’d call.

  It’s crazy, but this is the first time I’ve ever stepped into Vinyl Analysis. I’ve shuffled past loads of times, pressed my face hard up again
st the glass to try to read the band names on some of the albums I didn’t recognise. And the music – it’s dragged at me like a magnet, but this is one cool store and I’ve always felt that if I walked in I’d set off the uncool alarm. I’ve seen the people that work in here with their dyed hair and their body piercings, but as my feet cross the threshold and head inside, I instantly feel connected to the place, like somehow this is my world. It’s not like a team of stylists has burst through the door and given me a ‘Geek to Chic’ reality TV makeover. I don’t actually fit in, but this store makes sense to me. For Hemmo, what rings his bell is Lord of the Rings. Orcs and goblins. Nerdy computer games. But for me – looking around at the tour posters tacked to the walls, some of them authentic, like The Cure and the Violent Femmes at Fairgrounds Coliseum, Salt Lake City in October ’84, and some obvious reprints such as Springsteen’s first gigs at the Gaslight in ’72 supporting Dave Van Ronk, Elvis’ opening night at the Vegas Hilton in ’69 – it’s all about the music. Generations of artists like Mick and Keith from the Stones – two regular guys who sat in a room armed with nothing but a notepad and a loose guitar riff and turned it into ‘Satisfaction’ – have shaped the musical landscape with their brilliance. Beatles, Zeppelin, Bowie – again and again history has planted the seeds, thrown together the perfect combination of individuals who have woven together their hearts and minds and ideas and words to create the most immediate and important sounds of their time. Music. So pure and complete. And it craps all over World of Warcraft.

  Behind the scattered album covers and posters, the walls themselves are plastered with clippings from old music magazines and street press from the last forty or fifty years. It’s gritty and mean, making no apologies, and it draws me in like a strong undercurrent. I’ve wanted to step inside this place for a long time, to sit, drink coffee and soak in the atmosphere, but Mum likes The Coffee Club. She’s a club member, which means she gets half a per cent off her quarter-strength soy macchiato every twentieth visit.

  The music is loud. Lenny Kravitz, ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’. He’s telling me he was born long ago. He’s the chosen. He’s the one. And right now, that’s me.

  I step up to the counter.

  ‘Hey, I’m here about the notice,’ I shout, and point to the display window at the front of the store. ‘In the window?’

  He looks me over. Up and down, like he’s been commissioned to raffle me off. His hair is death black. A T-shirt is hanging from his body, torn at the armholes. It’s Bowie. Aladdin Sane. He’s sleeveless. Tough. Cool. Everything I’m not. If I was a gambler I’d say the odds right now of him joining our band are about a zillion to one.

  ‘Nice shirt, spaz-wad,’ he says, and the gap between us, between his distracted rock ’n’ roll coolness and my Sesame Street-cred, broadens. ‘OK, here’s the drill,’ Scene continues. ‘Like the sign says, it’s Thursday nights, Saturdays and Sundays to start. If you’re not a sphincter and you do what I say you’ll get more shifts if they come up. Brandon’s a frickin’ moron, and I think I’m gonna fire his ass soon, so …’ He trails off, reaches under the counter and the volume on Lenny Kravitz dips a little, and I can now hear the buzz of coffee conversation and the tinking of teaspoons against porcelain mugs, and the smell of the brew fills my nostrils. I suddenly realise that this sleeveless rock guy might have just offered me a job.

  ‘Sorry, um … man,’ I say. ‘What was that?’

  ‘The frickin’ job, Ernie,’ he says with a smile. ‘In the window?’ And now it’s him pointing. ‘Do you want it or not?’

  ‘Um, yeah, cool,’ I say. ‘Totally. I’ll take the job. That’d be … rockin’,’ and instantly I want to punch myself in the face for sounding so lame.

  ‘Saturday, ten o’clock,’ he says and turns his back to me, starts flipping through a high stack of LPs on the opposite counter. The interview, it seems, is over.

  The pile is sorted now into two stacks, maybe keep and ditch piles, and I see Scene, my new boss, turning back to face me.

  ‘What?’ Scene asks. ‘Did I forget to kiss you goodbye? Get outta here.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ I say nervously. ‘In the window.’ More pointing. ‘You play, right?’ And his face instantly changes. It seems like now I have his attention.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I play. I used to have a Telecaster. Not a Squier, an actual Tele – forty bucks at a garage sale, forty bucks! – but some asshole lifted it. Now all I’ve got’s a crappy old Flying V knock-off, but it still kicks out. With a decent pedal you get enough bite to make it work, you know?’

  I don’t have a clue. I wouldn’t know a flying V from a ukulele, but I offer a knowing nod, like I’m part of his musical posse.

  ‘Why’re you askin’?’

  ‘It says you’re looking for a band, and …’ I hesitate. ‘I’m in one. You know, a band?’ I sound anything but convincing.

  ‘You’re in a band?’ he asks and his mouth broadens to a smile. ‘What the hell band are you in, the frickin’ Wiggles?’

  ‘We’ve only been together for a while,’ I say, and I can feel the truth stretching in my gut. ‘We’re looking for a guitarist.’

  ‘Yeah, well, as long as you’re not those ass-wipes from Sin Fingers who dumped me for James freakin’ Jamieson – assholes. What’s your band’s name?’

  ‘We’re …’ I hesitate. I can’t bring myself to say Empire of Gandalf out loud. He’ll think we’re a bunch of dorks, which to anyone watching from the sidelines we are.

  ‘You’re what?’ he asks, dividing his attention evenly between my answer and flipping to the next track on the iPod that runs to the store’s gamut of speakers. Chili Peppers, ‘Give It Away’, and he’s banging his head in time to Flea’s bassline.

  ‘We’re the …’ I begin and there’s an immediate feeling in my gut. At first I think it’s nerves. Then it just comes out.

  ‘We’re the Brittney Pigs.’

  Straightaway I feel a hot rush to my throat and that feeling of nervousness deep in my gut has been joined by something else.

  Betrayal.

  ‘Cool name,’ he says. ‘Now get outta here.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  ‘Saturday,’ Scene calls out. ‘Better not forget, man.’

  I’m almost outside, stepping on black and white tiles again.

  ‘Hey! One more thing.’ Now he’s yelling across the store. I turn and look in his direction. ‘Don’t ever wear that lame-ass shirt in here again.’

  Chapter 10

  The mandatory bring-along

  By six o’clock, the smell of rosemary lamb cutlets under the griller is filling the kitchen. Mum’s throwing cracked pepper and drizzling olive oil over a salad of rocket, cherry tomatoes, avocado and goat’s fetta, and Nanna’s ouija board is being pushed to the far end of the table, making space for the dinner plates that will soon follow. Nan reaches out to me as I pass her and gives me an affectionate poke in the ribs, just as my phone chirps to life, blipping its familiar text tone.

  It’s Dad.

  Three Eagles songs. Don Henley on vocals. Go …

  You know those kinds of guys who connect with their dads by watching bucket-loads of sport together or by fishing and hunting together or by going away on fishing and hunting weekends that also include watching bucketloads of sport? Well, Dad and I have always been into our music. It’s something we both have a pretty thirsty interest in, and it’s a few notches more entertaining than sticking a hook through a fish’s head. He has a ridiculous capacity for useless trivia – and his recall is impressive, a gene that I think landed in my pool as well. Mum says it’s hardly a useful skill being able to remember the names of everyone in a band that broke up sixty years ago when you can’t remember three things at the grocery store without a list, but there you go.

  So Don Henley. He has a pretty distinctive voice. Inside my head I hit play on ‘Boys of Summer�
��. Not an Eagles song, but I know it’s Don Henley, and I can hear his voice in my mind, as clearly as if it were pumping through speakers. Now, from here I just need to mentally match that vocal to a bunch of Eagles songs I know. Simple. ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ pops straight into my head. Check. ‘Hotel California’. Check. ‘Heartache Tonight’. Check – no wait, scratch that – not a perfect match. Must have been Glenn Frey. Or that other dude. ‘Desperado’? Now that’s a check. And within moments I’m able to shoot the answers straight back to Dad with an accompanying new challenge.

  Three songs by Kings of Leon.

  There’s no glory in googling and we pride ourselves on our ability to stick to that one and only rule – no researching. Once the challenge is set it all has to come from your brain. Dad’s musical knowledge is vast, but it dries up significantly around the middle of the nineties, so in the same way he likes to test me on sixties, seventies and eighties music, I like to push him with everything after. I’m attempting to bridge the gap from Bon Jovi to this century. This one should keep him busy for a while.

  I wish him good luck and hit send.

  ‘So, Nan, anything good in the cards today?’

  ‘Not the cards this time, knucklehead,’ Nanna says, smiling. ‘But the ouija – oo-wee. It was giving me some love today.’

  ‘Did it tell you that you’re going to meet a rich, handsome stranger, Mum?’ Mum asks, squeezing half a lemon anti-clockwise over the salad.

  ‘If only,’ Nanna says. ‘It’s the strangest thing, though. I was asking the same old questions as you do, you know, about love, good-looking strangers and the like, and it kept spelling out the same name, over and over – Elanor.’

  ‘Elanor?’ Mum asks. ‘That doesn’t sound too promising for you, at least not on the dating front.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I was thinking. It’s not part of my plan to date a woman. I’m not in any hurry to try that again, but you can’t fight the ouija.’