I found a week’s worth of phone and e-mail messages waiting when I sat down at my desk, and it took quite a while to wade throughit all. January was normally a pretty slow month, but the amount of business coming through the door was either a fluke or a very gratifying upturn.
Writing up work orders took pretty well the rest of the day, and after filling out a deposit slip, I decided to cut out a bit early to stop off at the bank on the way home. As I headed for the back door, Johnny was the only one around. The other lads hadn’t got back from the movie shoot delivery and would probably be several hours yet, since they’d have to set up all the gear and test it. That would be duck soup for Hamed, who could play guitar pretty well (imagine a Palestinian heavy metal guitarist, if you will) and loved showing off with some hot licks on a high-volume rig. Kevin could play bass well enough, too, so if a drummer could be found kicking around the set (not such an impossible thing), they would have everything needed for an impromptu concert. If there were some babes hanging around (also not hard to imagine on a movie set), so much the better, as far as they were concerned. I wished them well.
“Can we crack open the mellotron case tomorrow and take it for a test drive?” Johnny asked.
“Sure. Get out one of the Hiwatt stacks and a drum stool. Don’t turn it on, though, until I go through the check list the Rugely lads gave me. We don’t need the mellotron to eat its tapes as soon as we hit the mains switch.” I took a look at the next day’s duties on the clipboard. “If you want to get a jump on things for tomorrow before you leave, there’s that Hammond B3 and Leslie going out early. Make sure it’s working properly. I’ve marked which one I want you to send.” Handing Johnny the board, I walked to the door. “And don’t forget they want bass pedals. For heaven’s sake, send the good set!”
The cold hit like a hammer blow as soon as I opened the door, making me wish I’d decided to settle someplace like southern California.
On the way, I stopped at a supermarket for a few things, including a frozen meat pie for dinner, then made a beeline for home and warmth. Tonight was an evening for a roaring fire and a good book.
After dinner and a glass or two of wine, I wound up behind thepiano instead. I noticed with some disgust that the tuning had slipped again, mostly because I’d turned down the heat when I’d left for the UK.UK
I had a Mozart sonata I’d been casually fooling around with lately, and that kept my fingers and mind occupied for over an hour. Gradually, though, my thoughts started wandering into other channels, and my fingers followed suit. First it was a couple of jazz standards: “What’s New?”, “Lover Man”, moody things like that. Then the rock and roll started creeping out of the dark recesses: a mindless boogie progression in G. Finally something, from where I have no idea, insinuated itself into my brain, and my fingers began following its trail. A melody popped into my head, and I began humming over the chords. It started so innocently, and it felt like it always had in the past when the creative juices began flowing.
I jumped violently to my feet, knocking the piano bench over. Slamming down the keyboard lid as if the piano were somehow responsible for what had happened, I stomped over to one of the windows overlooking Lake Ontario, pulled the curtain aside and stared out. A few stars gleamed brightly in the cold, hard night sky. The air was so clear, you could actually pick out several craters on the nearly-full moon.
I stood looking out for a long time, thoughts both good and bad flipping through my brain at ninety miles per hour.
***
Next morning, I got my sorry arse out of bed at a reasonable hour. After taking a long, steamy shower and actually stopping for breakfast on the way, I arrived at the shop even before Johnny. As I had feared, the fourteen-foot van was not in its usual spot blocking the loading door. Hamed and Kevin had probably made a late night of it.
If someone were really determined to steal equipment, I didn’t harbour any illusions that it couldn’t be managed. I tried to make things difficult only to keep the casual thieves at bay. Good locks, an efficient alarm system and a big truck in front of the loading doors saw to that. Even if Kevin had gotten well into the booze or drugs, Hamed, who didn’t indulge in either, should have driven the truck back. I’d have to speak to them.
Two years earlier, I’d moved Quinn Musical Equipment out of an inadequate and over-priced space in downtown Toronto into one of those anonymous industrial malls that any big city has springing up in its nether regions like pimples on the landscape. I sometimes suffered a guilty pang from the knowledge that my business stood on what had once been a productive farm, but the mall had already been built by the time I leased space, and if it hadn’t been me doing it, someone else would have set up shop regardless. The farm was gone forever.
Almost the whole of our three thousand square-foot space was taken up by floor to (twenty-foot) ceiling shelving units containing amplifiers of all descriptions and wattage, speaker cabinets, drum kits, various keyboards old and new, monitor systems, a few small mixing desks, in short, anything that might be needed on a stage during a musical performance. Quinn didn’t supply sound reinforcement systems or stage lighting, since they were too specialized and needed trained crews to set up and operate them, but if a client requested it, I knew people in the business whom I could book for those duties. Recording studios were increasingly renting our vintage equipment, mostly keyboards, for various projects. Those contracts were lucrative and easy to deal with. The tough ones were one-day concert rentals. The first few of that type of gig I’d done when I was starting out made me aware of how much Neurotica had owed our road crew. Talk about a thankless job. Try moving a few tons of equipment twice in one day.
The front of the building housed my small office and a rehearsal studio/demo room, where clients could try out equipment before renting. I attempted to keep everything orderly but had given up most of that fight long ago. As long as the condition of the place didn’t cross the line into squalor, I could live with it.
In my office, after bringing my computer to life and checking emails, I listened to the answering machine. With nothing urgently needing my attention, I went back out into the warehouse area, where Johnny had taken my latest acquisition out of its baby-blue flight case. One of his mates must have picked him up the previous evening, since he couldn’t have opened it by himself. From my briefcase, I got out Rugely Electronic’s list of “Things to check before switching on your mellotron” and had the back off the cabinet with my head inside when Johnny arrived.
“Absolutely amazing,” he said, peering over my shoulder. “Who would believe that something like this could actually work! Does everything check out, boss?”
I flipped off my pocket torch and stood up. “Seems so. Connect a jack to the line out, and let’s fire her up.” Johnny had gotten out a classic Hiwatt stack to use for amplification. The mellotron had its own onboard speakers, but they’d sounded pretty wimpy when I’d briefly tried the instrument before buying it. “Turn it up to five,” I told him and switched on the mellotron.
It made an odd, soft clanking noise as it sprang to life. I glanced at the sheet Rugely had provided listing the voices and their location on the mellotron’s tapes.
“What do you want to hear first?” I asked Johnny.
“It’s got to be those violins.”
The classic mellotron sound. I looked at the sheet: right-hand keyboard, Station 2, Track A, and checking again to make sure I was doing it correctly, pushed the required buttons. The mellotron whirred and vibrated under my hand. Sliding back the cover, I could see the right rear cylinder turning. Everything seemed to be doing what it was supposed to do. Sitting down on the drum stool, I put my foot on the volume pedal and depressed it halfway. Fingers over the keys, I pressed down the notes for an open F Major triad.
That sound filled the room. Johnny’s jaw literally dropped open, and I have to admit that my heart beat a bit faster. I played a couple of chord