of international superstars – until a worldwide banana shortage exposed the hoax for what it was.
For bands that choose not to travel, the largest problem is they can often become extremely egotistical. The fame and adulation they receive at home can seem like a microcosm of a global phenomenon, even when the record sales seem comparatively meagre.
When the family rock band Dumbass decided, after thirty years of local success, to launch on their first major tour, they were received so badly that they were sent screaming from the stage under a barrage of rotten fruit25. Badly shaken, they vowed nevermore to play away from home. True to their word, they never left their mother’s garage again. Some think they are still there – and they’re thankful not to be the neighbours.
But, for all the psychological risks of local music scenes on wannabe prima-donnas, local music scenes can still be a good thing for music as a whole. The networks of small clubs and bars serve as breeding grounds and filters for local talent, creating a primordial soup of latent musicality and filtering out the lumps before serving it up to the nation.
Some might say that keeping music local encourages great music to be kept a secret, others would say it keeps the bad music quiet. Perhaps the only way really to tell if a band has talent is to forcibly remove them from the cosy familiarity of their own backyard at a time before they would have chosen, before they have become too set in their ways. Those with the ability to adapt will take elements of the different scenes they encounter and produce a musical fusion that can cross boundaries in a way that, perhaps, a sound bred purely locally could not.
‘The drummer isn’t bad,’ said Riff, casually toying with his half-empty glass as he did so.
‘You’re just saying that because he’s a robot,’ said Ben.
Riff ignored the slight. ‘Just watch how he handles the hi-hats,’ he said. ‘The bot’s got technique.’
Ben watched the cabaret a little more closely. The drummer – the band’s only robot – seemed to be twisting his wrists slightly every few drumbeats. When you concentrated - watching and listening at the same time - you could see that the movement was varying the volume of the beats and complementing the staccato playing of the bass.
Ben nodded along to the soft jazz for a few seconds, the music grabbing his attention far more thoroughly once he’d studied it. Then he forced his attention away and looked around, taking in the opulence of the ship’s lounge.
The overall impression was one of wealth: the walls were lined with black velvet and the deep purple carpet liberally sprinkled with circular tables, each edged with phosphorescent tiles. This wasn’t some dingy little basement café with a house band.
Yet, oddly, it might as well have been. Despite being in the best lit part of the room, most people were ignoring the band, sitting around their tables in groups drinking and chatting amongst themselves or attempting to catch the attention of one of the robot waiters that were busily rolling from table to table with trays in one hand and bill-pads in the other.
Ben turned to Nutter, who was sitting quietly to his left, watching the drummer onstage intently. ‘What happened to your drink?’ he asked.
Nutter shrugged. ‘D-Don’t know,’ he said. ‘It h-hasn’t arrived.’
‘You would have to order something complicated, wouldn’t you,’ said Vid. ‘Why couldn’t you order a Lube like the rest of us?’
‘They h-had c-cocktails. I’ve n-never h-had a c-cocktail.’
‘Why would you want to? It’s just the stuff they use to clean the sink with a little umbrella in it.’
‘I’ve got a cocktail,’ said Ben.
Vid gave Ben’s glass what appeared to be an appraising glance, a monocle appearing round one of his digitised eyes. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said in a fluty voice. ‘I see we are having the window-cleaner with an olive.’
‘Stop playing the ponce. It doesn’t taste like window-cleaner.’
‘And you’d know, would you?’ Vid didn’t give Ben time to reply. ‘You’re only drinking it for the alcohol, anyway,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just admit it and buy the cheap stuff?’
‘Because I happen to like it,’ said Ben. ‘Besides, it’s something different. Unlike some robots I could mention, I’m open to new ideas.’
‘Through the bottom of a glass, the whole world looks the same,’ said Vid. ‘If you want to try something different, you ought to try some of my pint.’
‘Wouldn’t that be poisonous?’
‘No idea. Perhaps it’s a good time to find out.’
Ben glared at Vid, but the robot’s face was an impassive mask.
‘M-may I t-try some of y-your cocktail?’ said Nutter. Ben nodded and passed the glass. Nutter took a sip, swirled it around in his mouth for a few moments, then swallowed. ‘It’s not bad,’ he said.
Ben looked at him curiously. ‘Anything like robochol?’
‘Not really.’
‘But you’re not stammering.’
‘Perhaps it has a similar chemical structure or something.’
‘Now who’s the ponce,’ said Vid.
‘Not all packing robots are stupid,’ said Nutter.
‘No. Some are just clinically insane. How do you know that stuff isn’t destroying your insides?’
‘All drinks do some damage,’ said Ben. ‘That’s why you have to moderate.’
Vid shook his head. ‘Not so,’ he said. ‘The whole point of robochol is that it’s relaxing but non-damaging. Lots of research gone into it just to make sure. After all, it wouldn’t do to destroy property, would it?’
‘So why don’t they make alcoholic drinks that are totally safe for humans?’
‘Why would they? Nobody owns you, so they don’t have a vested interest in your well-being.’
Keys, who had been watching the band quietly, took a swig of his drink and looked at his friend. ‘You’re getting very cynical in your old age,’ he said.
Vid shrugged. ‘The more you learn, the less you want to know. I used to think that being in a band was about playing music, now it seems to be more about staying one step ahead of the man with the gun. It does shatter your illusions somewhat.’
‘It’s hardly a typical thing,’ said Keys. ‘Besides, you should look at it as an experience – there might be a song in it somewhere.’
Vid seemed to muse on this. ‘Musicians on the run,’ he said. ‘I suppose there could be something in it. It’s just that, all things considered, if it came to a choice between writing dull songs and risking my life I’d settle for the dull songs.’
‘That’s probably all you can write,’ muttered Ben, but nobody paid him any attention.
Time passed, although, in the constant dimness of the lounge only the steady accumulation of glasses marked its passage. At twenty-four glasses past the hour, Ben, struggling to stay awake, waved a lazy arm in the direction of the table. The sound of a breaking glass jerked him from his torpor and he struggled into an upright position. For a moment he was distracted by the small, scurrying form of a vacubot, but this quickly lost its appeal.
‘The thing,’ Ben began, waving a finger without the vaguest indication of what he was attempting to indicate, ‘the thing that gets me is what it is.’
‘What what is?’ said Keys.
‘What it is you get out of being in it.’
Vid arched an eyebrow. ‘What’s the monkey gibbering on about?’
‘What monkey?’ Ben glanced around. ‘Are the Sirian Peanut Troupe on board?’
‘Never mind,’ said Keys. ‘You were saying something about being in something.’
‘Yes.’ Ben paused, leaving the robots uncertain as to whether he had lost the thread or completed the somewhat macramé tapestry of his argument. ‘Being in a band,’ he said after a moment. ‘What do you get out of it?’
‘What do you mean?
‘Well, I mean, we… that is humans… we go in for the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, don’t we?’
‘Do you?’ said Vid. ‘I thought you were in i
t for the bananas.’
Ben ignored him. ‘But I mean, you robots, you don’t… you know.’
‘We don’t we know?’ Vid feigned incomprehension. ‘So much for erudition.’
‘You know,’ Ben persisted. ‘You don’t make other robots.’
‘Naturally. They have specialist robots for that.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Ben groaned. ‘You know damn well what I mean.’
‘No,’ replied Vid innocently. Keys and Riff shook their heads too, grateful for their inability to grin.
Ben turned hopefully to Nutter. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’
The drummer’s look was almost as hesitant as Ben’s own. ‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice perfectly free from stammering, but his head twitching slightly. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’
Ben took a deep breath. ‘You don’t have sex,’ he said with deliberate emphasis.
‘No,’ said Vid. ‘They have specialist robots for that too.’
Ben groaned and dropped his head onto the table. Several more glasses toppled off, prompting the vacubot to scurry back out from wherever it had been hiding. Ben looked up, his forehead stained with stale beer.
‘So what do you get out of it?’ he asked.
‘What do we get?’
‘Yes.’
‘From being in a band?’
‘Yes.’
‘We get to play music.’
‘And that’s it?’
Keys motioned to the empty glasses. ‘I suppose we have drugs of a sort,’ he said.
‘But no sex.’
‘None.’
‘I haven’t seen many women around you either,’ said Vid.
‘That’s because we haven’t stayed anywhere long enough. You wait until