Evolution of Sound

Adam’s limo drove by the music club at half speed to take in what he hadn’t seen in years — a line that wrapped around the block. Typically, it was a ghost town at The Castaway, a live music dump in the middle of the west village that had seen better days. The club had meant something in the 70’s and 80'sm and for the early part of the 90’s, but then music lost its soul for good and all rock venues turned into shadows of their former self, barely making enough to keep the doors open. Adam was no different himself. He was a relic, a has been, or a never was, depending on who you asked. And what did he know about today’s music anyway? It sounded all like soulless crap being fed through computers and beat machines, inspiring nothing but violence and greed.

But he remembered that there was a time when music mattered. He thought about that now, how at least he had lived and breathed a moment of it. He was privileged enough to have tapped into it with his own sound, and for that brief moment he felt untouchable. But that was all over — it went by so fast. The good times always did and now he felt like a man who had squandered his lottery winnings on bullshit.

Today there was a line though. His name was on the Marquee and people where there to see him. But he was a prop. He became something of a curious attraction ever since one of the up and coming rap artists decided to reinvent one of his songs. Sweet P was the guy’s name, at least the name he went by. Adam wondered what would posses a grown man to adopt a name like that and worse still, how did anyone ever take him seriously as a thug. It was a strange world he was visiting and at 54 years old, he felt he’d entered his age of absurdity a bit too soon.

But at least there was a crowd. People usually waited for hours to see this fool strut around; and when they got wind of the fact that he was going to be performing with the Tempest, a 70’s rock band that had a minute of fame with a tune called Last Rites, the lines got long quickl . His manager had called Adam earlier in the week to up a launch party for the collaboration — at the club where his band was first discovered.

But they were still working out the particulars of how this was going to happen, Adam was still unsure about whether he wanted to give away the rights to the track so that it could be cut up and used up and spit on. He agreed only to the night’s performance and they would talk after. But the attention felt nice. The last time Adam’s band played to a packed house, guys were sporting mullets and women were teasing their hair so high it looked like modern art. He was enjoying the second coming of his 15 minutes of fame.

He pulled up to the club in the limo and couldn’t recognize the crowd. Not the pale suburb faces of kids in metal gear, but the sleek urban beauty that came in an assortment of styles and flavors. He walked past them all unnoticed. They weren’t here to see him. He was the puppet dancing on the string. The band greeted him backstage, excited to be playing a big gig again. He tried to match their enthusiasm but all he could muster was a polite smile and some words.

About 20 minutes later, sweet P staggered in with an entourage of people. He shook all the band members’ hands and made small talk. When he was done he pulled Adam to the side.

“Hey man, just wanna say it’s an honor to be doing this with ya. You know our peoples been in touch with each other but we really haven’t had a chance to sit down and go through all this. So I was thinking…”

Adam cut him off in mid sentence, “look man, I appreciate all of this but we really don’t need to get all that into it. I’m going to sign the rights away and then you can do whatever you want with the damn song. I get that you rap guys gotta do something different, and reaching back in time with a ‘has been’ like me is a great gimmick.”

Sweet P’s expression changed and he looked visibly upset.

“Man, this ain’t about that,” the rapper said in an angry tone. “Figures your jaded ass would think that.”

He walked over the piano and started playing Adam’s song, but he changed the melody from a major key to a minor one. All of the sudden, the rock anthem that had previously excited a generation of kids took on a melancholy luster. It wasn’t too somber, just enough to evoke a bitter sweet response — as if remembering a childhood memory, and being painfully aware that it was gone for good.

“Yo T, bring the box over,” sweet P yelled.

One of his entourage came forth with a drum machine and hooked it up to the amplifier.

“Punch up beat 54 and slow down the tempo to match this.”

Less than 30 seconds later there was a drum beat that matched the melody perfectly, creating a rhythm that propelled the song forward with urgency.

“Now check this out.”

He continued to play the melody with his left hand but added a new bass line with his right hand. A few seconds later, he came with his lyrics — a story about his mother in the kitchen, listening to the original song, as the boy played with his toys in the corner. The next day, his mother was gone, and the boy was left with nothing but the cassette player to remember her by. All he could do for the longest time was play that same song, that same melody; but to him, it sounded different than it did to everyone else. It sounded like this, what he was playing now, the melody and the memory together.

Then he stopped. He looked up and let the silence linger, staring into Adam’s eyes as if he could pierce the man’s soul with raw emotion.

“You get it now,” sweet P said, his voice was stern, not angry and there was a hint of melancholy to it, one that conveyed the deeper truth of what had been trying to do all along.

Adam didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded. It was then that he realized that it was him all along — he was the one pushing the strings trying to make this kid the gimmick. There was no soul to anything Adam had done since his band stopped pumping out hit records. His time had passed, not because the audience had changed, but because he couldn’t make new music anymore.

This new world no longer belonged to him, it belonged to others, more capable than himself. He knew this and felt washed up. But then gratitude took over, because at least for this night, he got to live in the light of someone else’s talent. That is more than a second chance — it was definitely more than he deserved.