Bandwagon

band formerly known as Gearhead, paused with his plectrum poised over his guitar strings.

  ‘Four,’ Ben told him. ‘Did you only play waltzes before?’

  ‘What’s a waltz?’

  ‘Never mind. What did you do for a count before?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just came we were ready, I suppose. I just thought, you know, now we’ve got a manager we ought to be a bit more professional, like.’

  Ben smiled grimly. Things were not going well: Gary, the drummer, had already lost a drumstick somewhere backstage when trying to show off his twirling; Mark, the bassist, had spent several minutes playing terribly before anyone had realised that he had strung his instrument upside down and Vic, the keyboardist, was refusing to talk to anyone because the religion he subscribed to insisted on three hours of total silence each day. The lack of speech was more disconcerting than actually debilitating, but it didn’t bode well for any band discussions later on.

  Probably the worst thing, however, was that the five of them had pooled their musical resources and found that there were only five songs that they all knew. Even without Ben, the band only knew six – the sixth being their pièce de résistance, Jack of Clubs. Ben refused to learn that particular song, partially because he didn’t want people to think he’d joined Gearhead, but largely because he thought that it was rubbish. Gary, as the song’s writer, had initially raised objections to this, but eventually he’d conceded that Ben had a point.

  Which left them with five standards, plus three new songs Ben had written, this including a revamped version of his ode to the prostitute Sheila. Ben’s tenure in Blood and Oil had given him enough music theory to write the songs down, but Gearhead’s somewhat longer career seemed to have been less enlightening. Ben had been forced to hum each song to allow his companions to work out their accompaniment. He’d then had to hum suggestions to prevent them simply playing the same thrash backing from Jack of Clubs behind every song.

  It still left them with only eight songs. Stuck for an alternative, Ben had been forced to accept Dobbsy’s suggestion that the concert should be split into two halves, separated by an extended jamming session – a device which Gearhead had frequently used to make up for lack of material. Now, as Dobbsy finally managed to count them in and the band began to thump away at something vaguely resembling Sheila, Ben took a deep breath, closed his eyes and prayed the gods of music weren’t too offended.

  Vid was still humming She Was Standing Over There an hour or so after the band’s practice session. He trundled around his hotel room, at a loss to know what to do with all the space. The en-suite bathroom was, of course, completely superfluous to a robot, but he had spent a few minutes turning taps on and off for the novelty value.

  Now he’d become bored of that particular game and had returned to exploring the bedroom. In the plastic rack on the side table was a tourist guide to Fadora. A few minutes passed as he glanced through it and wondered if the new regime would give him time for tourism. Caught by the distinctive architecture of the cathedral, he decided to see if it was visible from the hotel.

  The room didn’t have a window, as such, but a pair of transparent plastic doors opened out onto a small balcony, which housed two sunbeds and a number of exotic pot plants. Vid rolled between the two chairs and leaned on the rail, overlooking the city. His room was on the top floor of the building and looked out behind the hotel, where the land sloped away towards the sea and gave the robot a commanding view of the city suburbs and the port.

  The cathedral wasn’t visible, but he didn’t mind: the room at The Turret had looked out onto a brick wall and the only time that there had been anything to look at had been when one of the locals had decided to use the alley as a urinal. This view had held little appeal to Vid, however, so he had simply stopped looking out. Happy with the change of scenery, the robot looked out over his new surroundings, marvelling at how organised it all seemed from here. The movements of people were almost invisible and the vehicles so small that they resembled iron filings, drawn along the streets as if the edges of the town formed the poles of a huge magnet.

  The only people who were close enough to appear vaguely humanoid were those in the neighbouring hotel and Vid found himself temporarily distracted, watching the occasional glimpses of people behind the plastic of the hotel windows. Unlike the Grande, the neighbouring hotel only had balconies on the two upper levels and these were currently unoccupied, despite the pleasant warmth of the evening sun. Just as Vid was turning to go back into his room, his eye was caught by a glint as the fading light reflected from a glassy surface. Automatically, he turned to look towards the source of the reflection. The light appeared to be emanating from inside one of the balconied rooms, beyond its open doors, but it wasn’t clear what was causing it. As the robot stared intently, the glint disappeared and he caught a brief glimpse of a figure closing the balcony doors.

  The closed doors cut off Vid’s view, but he’d seen enough. He rolled back into his own room and closed his own doors: it had only been a passing glimpse and at quite a range, but the jacket the man was wearing was a very distinctive shade of brown.

  Riff looked out through a gap in the curtains and eyed his prospective audience critically. Even with the limited view offered through his peephole, the auditorium appeared to be packed. The audience was mixed with people from across the social spectrum, but most appeared to be dressed for an occasion. Riff shrugged – there didn’t seem much point in putting on your best clothes in order to sit in the dark and watch someone else, but if that’s what they wanted to do then he had no objection.

  He pulled the curtains together tightly and returned to his microphone. ‘Do they look like a rock crowd?’ Vid hissed at him.

  Riff tapped his mic to make sure that it wasn’t on. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They all seem to be dressed up. Not a leather jacket between them.’

  ‘We’re probably safe with an acoustic set, then,’ said Keys.

  Vid nodded. ‘How come the mics work and our amps don’t, by the way?’ he asked.

  ‘Longer power cables,’ Hal explained. ‘They run them from the lighting ring.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Vid. He adjusted his grip on the double-bass and tried to get comfortable. ‘What are we opening with?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Riff. ‘I’ve been so busy working out how to play some of the songs acoustically, I hadn’t really given the set-list much thought.’

  ‘It’s got to be a blues,’ said Hal. ‘What about one of the standards – St Benedico’s Bay, Your Shoes are too Small – they usually go down pretty well.’

  Riff shook his head. ‘We don’t want to be seen to be too cliché,’ he said. ‘I think I have a better idea. Keys, grab a guitar and come over here.’

  Keys picked up an acoustic guitar from the stands at the back of the stage and floated unhurriedly over to Riff’s side. He strapped the guitar on and checked the tuning then looked to Riff for guidance. Riff said nothing, but simply smiled enigmatically as the curtain went up. The lighting engineers, following the performers’ gaze, brought a number of spots down on the guitarist and the audience sat in an expectant hush.

  Riff gave Keys a hand signal and Keys nodded silently then strummed a single minor chord. The lighting engineers, quick to respond, brought a second pair of spots to bear on the floating robot. Now, as Keys continued to strum gently, Riff picked out a light, flamenco style lead, gradually building in complexity and speed until his fingers were a blur on the fretboard. After he reached the point where it appeared that he couldn’t possibly play any faster, he slowed the tempo right down and played a single lick, leaving the sound floating in the air.

  Hal, now fully aware of Riff’s intention, turned to the tom-toms at one side of his drum-kit and began to tap out a rhythm. After a few bars, Riff played on, mutating the song into the familiar phrasings of Rooms by the Hour. Vid joined in with his bass and Keys began to play a counter-melody to Riff’s lead. The audience, now recognising the so
ng, gave an enthusiastic round of applause. Riff rode the moment with a few bars of gentle strumming, then he began to sing, his voice bringing a rich quality to the song’s cynical narrative. When the song ended, after a prolonged guitar duet from Keys and Riff, the crowd cheered and applauded loudly. After a brief nod to the audience, Keys returned to the back of the stage and put his guitar down on a stand, before taking his seat at the grand piano. He flexed his fingers as he waited for his cue – he had a feeling that it was going to be a good night.

  Half an hour into the concert at The Inferno, Ben had been firmly disabused of any similar notions. The best that could be said for the musicianship of the band was that it had consistency: cement has consistency but you wouldn’t use it to make a cake.

  And it wasn’t that the band had no idea how to play their instruments. They played the right notes – sometimes in the right order – but each musician seemed to have a different sense of rhythm and harmony. Mark’s bass-playing was so rarely on the beat that Ben found himself wondering whether the man was on the same planet as the rest of the band, let alone in the same concert. Even the drummer seemed, somehow, to be out of tune.

  None of which was helping Ben with his performance.