Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is our weakly contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Hosted by Denise, governed by the Rule of Six
This week’s prompt word:
BAND
“Big wheel’s rollin, gotta keep ’em goin’
Big wheel’s a rollin’, movin’ on…”Bobby Harrington’s voice held more twang as he sang his favorite Merle song than any of us believed possible, gathered in a second floor tenement apartment in Providence, Rhode Island in the mid-1970s; as I played the closing riff, we shared smiles of relief, like cans of Budweiser in a high school parking lot, knowing we’d found a singer for our band.
All of a week before, I got a call from a guy who said he was a friend of Cyanide Jack, a mutual acquaintance who ran the plating department in a jewelry plant where I’d spent a year in the middle of grad school, re-assessing my goals and ambitions in a setting guaranteed to minimize familial pressure while enhancing the delusion that time was a condiment, rather than the main course.
Bill Haywood was putting together a country band and heard I was between bands, of course, the latter was accurate only if you considered a group of musicians who wanted to play in front of people badly enough to wear matching polyester floral-print shirts, a band; I was asked to leave, ‘Brass Tacks’, (‘When you’re ready to get serious about music, it’s time to get down to Brass Tacks‘), because I had a habit, while the rest of the band was playing ‘On Blue Dolphin Street’ as the wedding party ate dinner, of turning the volume off on my guitar and practicing the music I enjoyed playing.
So we listened to Bobby sing his Merle (and Waylon and Willie) and the evening’s good mood got even better when the drummer announced that a friend in a house band at a small club just outside the capital city told him we could have the stage right after their second set on Saturday night.
Saturday arrived, the place was half-crowded and, after a brief introduction, we got up on the small stage, plugged in and I immediately went into the guitar intro to ‘Movin’ on’ followed by dead air; now everyone misses a cue now and then, so we played through the instrumental lead-in again and as we approached the part where the vocals come in, I turned to my left and there was Bobby Harrington …frozen solid; apparently in the five days of rehearsals in the living room, no one thought to ask Bobby if he’d ever sung in front of an audience.
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About clarkscottroger
I got to be first to like “…we shared smiles of relief, like cans of Budweiser in a high school parking lot…”. Excellent line!
Although “…while enhancing the delusion that time was a condiment, rather than the main course.” comes in right behind, if not at the same time, as favorite, lol.
An enjoyable read, and glimpse into, a moment inhabiting your timeline.
(yeah, enjoyed the second quote)
The one question you don’t ask is what’ll knock you flat. Great story!
this is very true… we (the rest of the band) were quite surprised and somewhat embarrassed
Denise beat to me to acknowledging your best lines but many thanks for bringing back a lot of memories, including the delusional ones. :-)
yw
fortunately, with sufficient passage of time the funny stays funny and the ‘WTF?!?#’ gets kinda funny too
Small errors with dire consequences…
I concur. (We all went our separate ways)
Yep, that’s young life for you – everybody wrapped up in their own story and poor Bobby too scared to tell them he was terrified to sing in front of an audience
…an interesting illustration of the scale of perspective, i.e. he sang in front of strangers (in the living room) but being on a stage with the lights and such is a trigger to a response we’re all subject to, but it could have been easier, had he thought to keep his eyes closed. If you don’t see it, how can it hurt you?
;p
Curses! Flagged at the goal line!
Denise claimed a FRIST! to state what most of us thought upon reading your (not weakly) SSS.
Of spotlights and other demons…
That master volume knob sure came handy, lol!
A truly Vintage piece, Clark.
[Btw, beautiful Gretsch with Bigsby and Filtertron pups]
lol
ikr?
it was a fun phase
you get soooooo much into these. we are polar opposite writers.
I agree (about the opposite thing)… so, shouldn’t we try to write a Six together?
lol who said I was weird… totally serious. I like your style, the Hemingway style (from what I hear, don’t really know much about the guy other than he liked to fish and hunt and, supposedly had a hand in writing the ultimate short-short story (at least according to wikipedia)… the famous baby shoes thing
let me know your thoughts about a co-Six
What amuses me is that your high schools have ‘parking lots’
True. But we needed relevant goals when there… (there was a subset: student parking) that is what we, growing up in the Land of Freedom as Defined by Tachometer would aspire to: getting to drive to school and park in the student parking lot. (Besides, there had to be a place, in sight of the student body, where adultly-illicit activities could be on display.)
… so, over there, what did they call the place where the common modes of conveyance were stored when not in use?
Sorry, my first comment should have gone here. The only way i can comment on your blog is on my phone and the small screen means errors.
am working towards getting myself to be likely to get someone to update and improve the functionality of this here site here.
thank you for the effort (try doing stuff on my phone, but my fingers are too big and my eyes are too small)
Fame beckoned then punched them on the nose!
ain’t it the way?
“no one thought to ask Bobby if he’d ever sung in front of an audience.” Is a fantastic ending. Loved it!
Ty Nicole.
Too bad for the band. Those lyrics somehow reminded me of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song 🤔
well the country wasn’t too far behind Lynyrd Skynyrd an them
Somewhere along the dusty tour bus roads of the blogosphere, I remember you telling me elements of this story before. Good to read some additional riffing.
“enhancing the delusion that time was a condiment, rather than the main course.” is my fave line among many.
High comps: Your Six could easily sneak into the pages of Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Nocturnes’, which I recently re-read on my trip to Paris.
love that: ‘...dusty tour bus roads of the blogosphere‘
…yeah I had me a bit of a jones for the lotuseses of the college campus
Ha! Things were going so swimmingly too! Well played, Sir, I did not see that one coming.
Behind the Scenes: Neither did I! lol