“You’re joining our band,” says Ruff, “we need you.”
“I’m not joining your band,” I tell him, and I really mean it this time.
“Come on, man,” he moans, lighting up his Camel. “We need you, seriously.”
“You don’t need me. And I don’t need to be in a band called Bronchitis.”
“Bronchitis is just a temporary moniker,” says Ruff, struggling with the latches on his bass flight case. “We were actually thinking of calling ourselves The Scurvy.”
Henwood the drummer comes into the rehearsal room eating a pasty. He acknowledges me with a brief nod and sits behind the drum kit.
“I have to go,” I say. “I’ll see you later, Ruff.”
“Wait a minute!” says Ruff, “You haven’t heard my new song. I want your opinion.”
I really don’t want to hear his song right now. I give him my best ‘oh-yes-sorry-I-forgot-go-on-let’s-hear-it’ facial expression but I don’t think he was fooled by it. I try to over compensate.
“So what’s it called then?”
Ruff doesn’t answer immediately, and I can see he’s still not convinced. All I can hear is Henwood and his constant nom-nomming of that bloody pasty.
“Is it like the last song you played me?…er, ‘Golden Shower’…?”
“‘Meteor Shower’,”says Ruff. He shakes his head, “If you don’t want to listen then all you gotta do is say. It’s no drama. I’d rather you were just straight with us-with me- and say you don’t like it than standing there pretending. It’s bad for my soul. Man.”
I’ve been exposed as a phoney once again. I smile apologetically and back towards the door, fumbling for the handle. I look at them both as I leave; Henwood picking up pasty crumbs from the snare drum with both his index fingers, and Ruff with his back to me tuning his Fender jazz bass. I close the door and head out of the rehearsal room which by day is a church youth hall. The last thing I want to do is be bad for anyone’s soul. Actually, that’s not strictly true. The last thing I want to do is drown in a vat of sweetcorn, but a quick sweep of my surroundings reassures me this is unlikely.
