Music, Demons and Time

--First appeared in The Braggart (2007). Re-posted by special request of Edward M. Ely III--

Guitar bands come and go it seems. They hang their sound on pegs in small town and big cities, playing bars and passing the time before they inevitably disband and are never heard again. The members going their separate ways, no longer grocery clerks who play guitar but now working stiffs who used to be in a band.

These are the fates that those now living have learned by rote. It's as expected for your friend's band to disappear as it is that they will play for drinks and a piece of the door, all sign your t-shirt and never quite get the vocal mixing right.

But so what? For that one year you followed them from club to club, town to town. Even though you and the second guitarist would have to be to work at five a.m. to meet the delivery truck. Still you listened and attended and learned the songs by heart, rocking the life out of Tuesday night.

It's a pageant, not a right of passage. Only a right of moment because there is no next stage. It just dead ends. The time must be good on its own since it all comes to so little; a copy of their demo and slightly dulled ear drums. Consider yourself lucky if they were a metal band with a sense of humor. If on occasion they wore star spangled hats and always soloed as though the fires of hell licked at their fingers.

There is no great secret to youth. It is a frothing brew in a leaky cup. Whether you drink it up or just let it drip around your fingers, it will run out. So your friend's band, for that one good year, is the sound you will still hear when your body has slowed and senses have dulled and all the world is full of only reminders.

There is no great secret to age. It comes unbidden and collects in every space. It is the lack of that strange and vital brew of youth. But what of metal bands with the best drummer in town and the grocery clerk guitarist that ride the wings of demons from one town, county, club to the next and never make a dime?

They are that vital brew. Youth's own outrage and rapturous fascination with time. If they were good then it was worth getting older.

© 2011 Yorgo Douramacos