way.’
‘Now you see why I don’t play in public. Not much call for a musician who drives audiences away.’
Ben closed his eyes in thought. ‘Can you play the kind of thing that other band was playing?’ he asked.
‘A toaster could play that,’ said Riff, ‘even without a power supply. Why would we want to?’
‘It was just a thought.’
‘Not a very good one – even for a human.’
‘Yes, but what if you sort of combined the two. What if you put the same kind of experimentation and expression into a normal song like they were playing?’
‘Why?’ Riff asked.
‘More people would like it.’
Riff looked nonplussed. ‘Why would that bother me?’ he asked.
‘I suppose you could play more often,’ Vid suggested. ‘You might not be limited to open mike spots.’
‘You might even get a few converts to your jazz music,’ Ben added.
‘Couldn’t happen,’ said Riff. ‘You can’t sell a solo act in this day and age.’
‘Who said anything about a solo act?’
‘You see a band anywhere round here?’
Ben said nothing, but gestured to the whole group.
‘Us!’ said Keys. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’
‘Why not?’
Riff, said nothing but looked at them thoughtfully. ‘We’d need more instruments,’ he said eventually. He looked to Ben. ‘Can you play?
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d like to have a try at a harmonica,’ he admitted, ‘but I don’t know where to get one.’
‘He could sing,’ said Vid.
‘Sing?’ said Ben.
‘Got to have a singer if you want people to listen.’
‘What about you?’
‘What? Sing?’
‘Well? You’ve got a finely tuned voice for sales.’
‘Yes, but it’s got a limited range. I wouldn’t mind having a go at a bass guitar, though.’
‘You think you could handle that, then?’
‘It looks easy enough,’ said Vid. ‘Only four strings, after all.’
Riff nodded. ‘That just leaves us needing a drummer,’ he said.
‘Why don’t we just use a drum machine?’ Ben asked. Three robots stared at him in silence. Although only Vid could render lines on his face, Ben still got the impression that, on some level, the other two robots were frowning too.
4
Pop and rock bands have varied in structure considerably through the ages, but in general, the most successful line-ups have been those with more than two members and fewer than ten. One notable exception to this came from Sirius Major, where a successful novelty act used the gimmick of producing music with a hundred trained monkeys, each monkey playing a simple part of the overall piece.
It was a hugely successful experiment. The band sold millions of records and the vast choice of favourite band members led to a thriving industry in posters and other merchandising. It was, however, a short-lived experiment. The vast size of the band led to complex internal politics and after the first flush of success, concerts would frequently break down into arguments or bouts of banana throwing, and subsequently the band line-up changed continually as members left to take jobs in journalism or to attach themselves to other projects, such as one where a team of monkeys were attempting to construct a believable history of the world from first principles.
Eventually, the group was disbanded by an act of the Sirian Parliament. The politicians reasoned that the number of ex-members of the band currently flooding the employment market was disadvantaging their more evolved competitors, particularly since they were so cheap to employ - working, quite literally, for peanuts. The ruling was not, however, passed without some public complaint: critics pointed out that the band was popular, their music original and highly exportable, and that the civil service advisory committee had been bribed with a very large shipment of bananas.
Most modern bands are much smaller than the Sirian Peanut Troupe, not so much for reasons of politics or banana scarcity as for reasons of musical integrity: one has only to listen to an average school symphony orchestra to realise what happens when you try to organise the playing of a large group of amateurs, and whilst a good conductor can wave his baton and produce something slightly more palatable than the death rattle of a tone deaf elephant, rock musicians are considerably more difficult to direct – they won’t take stick from anyone.
South of the river was a small park, a place popular with the elderly residents who lived in this usually peaceful slice of suburbia. As the shadows lengthened on this particular evening, however, the mood was slightly less intemperate. The darkening sky found one old man stood shivering in the shade of a tree. It wasn’t that it was particularly cold or inhospitable – although the clouds did look ominously like rain – but the strange emanations from the small, red-brick museum in the centre of the park were not conducive to his relaxation.
The squealing, scraping noise echoed dismally around the empty hall, prompting looks of critical dismay from two of the observers and actual physical pain from the other. Vid took in the reactions and interpreted them, correctly, as not being particularly impressed.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You don’t scrape the strings,’ said Riff. ‘You pluck them.’
‘Pluck? You mean like a chicken?’
‘No, like a rubber band.’ He made the appropriate gesture. Vid emulated it and was greeted by a twanging noise.
‘Better?’
‘A bit.’
Vid plucked a few more strings.
‘It might sound better if you weren’t playing it upside down,’ suggested Keys. He winced as one of the strings snapped and lashed at his arm. ‘And not so hard – it’s not an instrument of torture.’
‘Most instruments can serve either purpose,’ observed Riff dryly. ‘It depends who’s playing them.’ He passed Vid another bass, and accepting the damaged one, set himself to restringing it.
‘Where did you say the harmonicas were?’ asked Keys.
‘I’ll go,’ said Riff. ‘You have a go at restringing this bass, and make sure mister eight thumbs here doesn’t break any more.’ He passed the instrument over and drifted out through the door.
The main hall of the museum was mostly given over to glass cabinets, aisle upon aisle of them standing in solid ranks across the room. Between them, they displayed a vast variety of instruments from throughout time and space. Ben looked up as Riff approached him.
‘It’s amazing,’ he said. ‘I never knew there were so many different instruments.’
Riff shrugged. ‘Most of them are based on the same kind of principles,’ he said. ‘A lot of them are very simple, as well – not really good for complicated music. That’s one reason so many of them are just voices on drum machines and synthesisers these days.’
Ben looked into the nearest case. ‘What are those?’ he asked, pointing to a series of pipes, strung together with string.
‘Andalasian volcanic pipes,’ Riff told him.
‘Volcanic pipes?’
‘The people used to believe they could be used to cause volcanic eruptions.’
‘Why would they want that?’
Riff shrugged. ‘Atmosphere. Either that or for military purposes.’
‘Do they work?’
‘They play music. Doesn’t seem to have a profound effect on the plate tectonics, mind.’
Ben moved on. ‘There’s a dead animal in that one,’ he said, pointing to another case. ‘How did that get in there?’
Riff followed Ben’s gaze. ‘That’s a whirrcat,’ he said. ‘There’s a tribe in the rainforests that use them when they go into battle.’
‘What do they do with them?’
‘They swing them by the tail and they make a wailing noise as they go round and round.’
‘And that drives the enemy away?’
‘I don’t know,’ Riff admitted, ‘but it scares the hell out of the
cat.’
Riff turned to one of the wall-mounted cabinets and slid an electronic key into the lock. A red light blinked briefly and then the door opened. He extracted a small bronze instrument from the display and closed the cabinet again.
‘Here you are,’ he said, passing it to Ben.
Ben recognised the instrument as a harmonica. He took it, holding it delicately in his hands. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Isn’t it part of the collection?’
‘We’ve got a few of these,’ Riff told him. ‘They’re not as old as most of the other instruments; not as rare.’
Ben ran his finger over the surface of the instrument to remove the dust. ‘I just blow into it,’ he said. Riff nodded. Ben placed the harmonica to his mouth and blew – the sound that emerged was, if anything, actually worse than Vid’s experiments with the bass. Ben took it from his mouth and looked at it suspiciously. ‘Is it supposed to sound like that?’
‘Not if you’re playing it right, no.’
He played another salvo, prompting Keys and Vid to come into the room at a run. Vid was holding a bass guitar with only two strings under his arm.
‘What was that?’ Keys asked.
Riff nodded in the direction of the harmonica. Ben, his face flushed, held it up for inspection.
‘You should have started him with the whirrcat,’ said Keys.
How people ever become musicians is one of the great mysteries of the world. The first contact between man and instrument is rarely a truly harmonious event – the guitarist Lee van Slick once described it as ‘creative rape’ – and it requires passion, dedication and sometimes ear defenders for the budding artist to progress to whatever the instrumental equivalent is of a great lover.
Those who have persisted far enough