Short Story: In The Days Before Trickery

Short Story: In The Days Before Trickery

The sax riff kicked in and Stan dropped his bin-bag. He stared at the speaker. ‘That’s me.’ His eyes were all watery. ‘Nineteen fifty-nine.’

Stan’s sax break, a tilting bebop figure bending sensuously in and out of a stolen surf-guitar lick, was an integral part of Eskimo Strut. The white label was colossal in the clubs, we’d signed a distribution deal, and Eskimo Strut was set to make a skip load of gravy. But this particular sound-collagist-stroke-DJ-stroke-sonic-sculptor hadn’t bothered to clear the samples. After all, who remembered them? Faceless sessioneers parping clichéd horn parts or prodding guitars set to space tremelo before sloping home to claggy bedsits.

‘I blew that riff with the Ross McManus big band.’ Stan went on. ‘First sax. I’ll never forget ‘cos I had a new reed and it was squeaking. You can hear it.’

I sharpened my focus on the blaring horn but it didn’t sound any different to the other brass riffs I nicked. And I’d nicked a lot.

‘Show me the cover.’

A shiffon-clad lovely with long thick eyelashes stared back at him. She was holding a cherry delicately by the stem and nibbling it. Across her large cleavage were the words abeatin’ and aboppin’ – ice cool grooves for the modern hipster. Stan’s lips moved as he read the liner notes.

What could I do? If Stan contacted the record company I’d have to shell out a shit load of lucre. Don’t get me wrong, I’d share the wealth if there was any. But I’m no billy-big-biscuits. I’ve been doing this for years and I’m still eating out of the bin.

‘It’s out next week.’ I said. ‘You’ll hear yourself on the radio. We should celebrate. Come to the club tonight. You’ll be guest of honour.’

***

The audience went wild and Stan took dozens of bows to much whistling and whooping. He supped Guinness after Guinness after Guinness and could hardly stand when we locked the door and began the after party.

‘Nice one Stan.’ I lit a fat joint and passed it to him. ‘Bet there was a load of pills and weed back in your day, eh? The old big bands?’

‘Pot, speed, the lot,’ he said. ‘We hoovered it up, just like the pop bands – but it never got in the papers.’

‘You tried E?’

He grinned. ‘No. But I’d like to.’

I gave him a fistful of special K. ‘Take them all - for the full effect. What time’s your wife expecting you?’

‘She passed on. It’s just me now,’

We played Eskimo Strut a dozen times and Stan sat there nodding his head and smiling at the sound of his sax crawling though the static from fifty years ago. The Special K kicked in, he got a bit agitated, then finally he fell asleep. We took him home to his place and lay him on his sofa. I never saw him again.

I remixed Eskimo Strut. The art of a good collage is to make it your own, to juxtapose sounds so unusual, so startling, that the musicians on the original records would never recognise themselves. The new mix was incredible. I was glad that Stan had helped me out. Those old musicians, they really knew how to play, but it was just a job to some of them, like an assembly line, knocking out any old song while thinking about your laundry. Old Stan was different. He had a light in his eyes that danced when the music played.