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22.2.03
from the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski, cahier 1, page 81
"Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm, and yet will make Gods by dozens."
-- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays, bk. 2, ch. 12, "An Apology of Raimond Sebond" (tr. by John Florio, 1580). The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
Around 11, we began subtle gesticulations at preparing ourselves to go on stage. Albert, exhausted by a combination of beer and the heavy ride trying to balance his stand up bass on the bicycle on the way here, was leaning up against one of the pillars in front of the stage, a Winston unmoving between his lips save for an occasional labial twitch and puff of smoke. His eyes opened when I got nearer. "All I know is that I'm not pedaling that fucking bass all the way back into town when this nightmare has finally concluded" he hissed with the cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth. "No problems" I reassured. "I've already spoken with Jan about the bass riding back in their van with them. We'll be meeting with them at Fabriekzicht afterwards." Albert snorted and removed the cigarette to replace it with his mug of beer. "A little late now, eh? I'm so exhausted already I'll need another half dozen beers before I can stand straight."
The band ahead of us, electric violin, screeching guitars and a belchy, subterranean growl from the lead singer, were winding up their last song, building a crescendo, sweating beneath the lights while an overly enthusiastic group of junior high aged girls swung their arms and shook their legs, wild, tangled hair in every direction. The crowd was diverse enough but following music like this was a bizarre mix, an embarassing fart of jazz to let leak out on their uninitiated ears. As usual, we had tried to prepare the talent pickers for the fact that we were talentless, inept, embarassing. But the more we said that, the more convinced they became that we were really something special. Something unique out of America, an unspeakable hipness that would blind them all with its profound exhuberance. Holding the sax, I looked through the crowd at familiar, expectant faces. Our friends of the last week, complete strangers in other lives a month ago and now we were going to humiliate ourselves with an unmatched zeal.
Once on stage, we'd planned on an elaborate verbal waste of time to get us through the early expectations. A note hit here and there for emphasis, but basically, a ridiculously elaborate history of the song piece, a virtual encyclopedia of liner notes on a song we'd just rehearsed only two days before for the first time. By lulling them to sleep with the vocabularies and translations, the sheer enormity of the words and sentences to the point of incomprehensibility, the strange and unequally timed jazz number, completely original and completely without skill, would be an almost welcomed respite, no matter how bad it was. Billing ourselves as avant garde lent itself an automatic elasticity where this sort of performance art jazz was concerned. Simple chords, in a chaotic enough fashion, sufficed.
I could tell, a few minutes into the second number, that we had them right where we wanted them: uncertain as to whether we sucked or we were great. Logically, had we actually been great, the chances that we would be playing in this little neighborhood festival were pretty slim so for me, it left the door wide open to the idea that we sucked. Fortunately, Albert and I had worked with this incompetence long enough to have learned how to dress it up a little, enough to create that uncertainty. They sound like they suck, but they look like they know what they're doing. We'd perfected it through watching years of talentless musicians performing on MTV. While we lacked the pyrotechnics of talent, we were able to create enough sparks to get people to believe the burning was only a matter of time.
The last number involved getting the audience to participate, making noises that ran, more or less, in tune with Albert's thumping key notes over and over again. There's no doubt if we'd had a talented drummer, we could have really sounded like we knew what we were doing, but lacking the drummer, we used the audience. And of course, being one of the last bands to play, everyone was pretty drunk by the time we'd gone on. My vacant preambles on music history only made them drink faster. So by the end of the last number, we were all in on the conspiracy, the conspiracy that we'd created together. That's how Albert and I had come up with the name to begin with: The Deadbeat Conspiracy.
When it was over completely, we were such a hit, Jan was somehow able to fit both Albert, his bass, which he now carried around with him like his date, and I in the van along with the other guys in his band. People were everywhere, crawling on top of one another, laughing, singing loudly over the stereo as we rattled along the canal in the van back into town.
8:11 PM
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