the tolerance wars - 21
a song of righteousness
every week
until it’s done
begin at the beginning—chapter 1
the tolerance wars
21.
a song of righteousness
we didn’t have any gigs for the next week or so. whenever that happened i usually tried to fill in the time working on putting together recordings for people. there was always something on the go. stuff to get down. four punks need something down so they can get first gigs and you know what the tunes’re pretty good sure let’s do this thing, friend’s friend has been asked to make the music for a movie that’s maybe gonna make the rounds of the film festivals do i know where they could record and mix it yeah i might, she’s playing good festivals with just her voice and a guitar if she had a cd of it available there she’d make her rent that month maybe the next so let’s get some of those songs down maybe even see what they’d sound like with some other instruments but maybe mostly we’ll just get i dunno ten really good performances like what they heard tonight i bet we can do that, somebody’s got a song that’ll get some serious radio play it’s that good let’s get the bones down and see what we might make of it maybe fly it on a few dance floors round here while we’re at it and i might slide a couple of mixes to this guy in sheffield i met on a what do i do with this gear message board who’s got a pretty happening bunch of people of all the colours who love to dance we could do worse than see how it grooves among the good folks there. all of that. and whatever else came along. none of it was serious money. every now and again there’d be a label involved and five or ten grand might make the next couple of months a little easier, but more often it was a few hundred here or there if they had it, maybe a bit more if they’d got some support from a serious fan or maybe a grant from one of the few places that still did that kind of thing, mostly it was this is worth doing let’s make the good music and figure out the money when we get there. i wasn’t special, there were guys doing the same kind of thing all over, anywhere there were people making music, even more than a few women which was nice to see in a no big deal while also hell yeah kinda way, every one of them taking the songs that people were playing around them and getting them down, all different, everywhere from here to down in the states and across the ocean where right now those same kinds of people were building a scene in places like nottingham on the foundation of what northern soul had laid down in the 70s, or berlin where that seriously weird instrument of far-out classical music the synthesizer had been brought in out of the cold and encouraged to groove and by gosh yeah it did so. wherever there was some kind of music trying to say something there were a whole bunch of people doing that. always will be. but that was out there in the world. meanwhile i had my own mix of all of that to try and somehow push along.
and then there was tony.
every gig we played there would be some new line of hers that would turn your head and make you pay attention. or she’d put some lyric you’d heard before right up against something else that had pretty much always been a part of your life, only now it was saying something it’d never said before. now it was something new. just because of where it was sitting. and how that made it sound. what that new setting made it mean. and every audience that heard it knew they were listening to something special.
and as she was spinning out the magic i knew it would be my job to try and get it down. somehow. again.
we’d tried recording the band live at shows. but there was always some kind of noise in the room that didn’t seem like much when you were standing there at the time but became all you could hear when you listened back to it later. or the hydro was bad and everything you recorded had a nasty buzz slathered all over it that wasn’t there when you were listening to the actual performance that night especially when the freezers kicked in since they were on the same circuit as the stage because of course they are. and yeah the mix always felt great for the band and for the audience when we were all there together, but listen back to the recording and there was nowhere near enough bass, never enough rhythm guitar, and even though you’d recorded everything on separate mics going into separate tracks the drummer’s cymbals were too much into everything, and when you tried to bring up the volume of just the singer’s mic to get it into that pocket of sound you’d had that night everything else came up with it. because frankly everything was everywhere. great for your sense of zen. lousy for trying to build an actual mix.
so recording a live performance of tony with the full band in front of an audience at a gig just didn’t work. even though that’s where the real magic happened. but i was driven to try and figure out a way of getting it down anyway. if only to document some of my friend’s genius. and tony was game. so whenever we had time, and my friend felt inspired, we’d get together at my place and see what we could do.
sometimes i’d take a few days beforehand and put together a version of whatever we’d had fun with at a gig that weekend, recording one instrument at a time until it all came together and i had something approximating the majestic groove we’d all spun out so effortlessly. tony always worked with what i gave her and turned my workmanlike joinery into something much finer. but we always found it was somehow never as satisfying as what she’d done live on the night in question. so we kept at it.
sometimes i’d get josie or killer to come over and i’d mic up a set of drums in my not-huge recording space that used to be the master in a two-bedroom apartment above the bookstore that served as my princely accommodation and stuff my guitar amp into the closet that i’d sound-proofed for just such an occasion then i’d get tony to stand in front of the lovely vocal mic which i’d placed just so on the secondhand oriental rug in the front room with a view of the big window and with her back to the bookshelves so there wasn’t too much sound reflection for the mic to deal with then even though we couldn’t actually see one another we’d all put on headphones so we could at least hear everything and we’d spend some serious time with the three of us wandering through the same musical territory the singer had made her own the last time we all played together. and it was always nice. and useful. and instructive. but never as amazing as when we had in fact all played in front of an audience together. so we kept at it.
and sometimes i’d run a long mic line from my rig in the ex master bedroom and another long line for the guitar then i’d press record and we’d sit together in my front room. waiting for inspiration.
like now for instance.
“are you sure we’ve had enough coffee?”
“i’m sure. you do you.”
“it’s never good when the band is more caffeinated than the singer.”
“or less?” she checked in with her band. which right now was me.
“brings a few benefits. like a tendency to play behind the beat. which can lend a certain kind of grooviness to proceedings. but things can get a bit, i dunno—”
“—whiny?”
“like now, for instance?”
“maybe a bit.”
“you want a little less of that in the headphones?”
“we’re not wearing headphones.”
“it’ll make me feel like i’m doing something useful.”
“just being here is useful. doing this.”
i knew she was right. and that somehow in the past couple of years we’d managed to catch line after line of her best work, and given her countless jumping-off points that she’d used to marvellous effect when we were working with a full band in front of an audience, despite what seemed like hours of false starts, and blind alleys that led to nothing, and frankly nowhere near enough coffee now that you mention it. and that yes a lot of that good work started with us doing exactly what we were doing right now. “staring at one another?”
“i am not staring. i’m memorizing your expression.”
“one of endless patience and incredible zen?”
“i was thinking you’re having a little trouble today. mister ‘trust the process and let’s run that chorus again because we’re still speaking to one another’. which you told me the first time we ever did one of these sessions. and i still think is one of the funniest things anyone’s ever said to me while they were genuinely trying to be helpful. and i’m okay with it. just not normal coming from you.”
she wasn’t wrong. “shall we try something different?”
“sure.” she smiled. “you first?”
“that sounds like a dare.”
“uh uh. i know better. just a question.”
“i was wondering how we got into all of this.”
“you heard the sound of me thinking. and asked if you could help.”
“apparently the answer was no. i’m no help.” i got up and leaned my guitar against my chair in that way that remarkably few guitar players know how to do safely without making a roomful of people twitch, then walked over and stood in front of the big window. not watching the parade. that also wasn’t happening. timing is everything.
tony came over and stood beside me. also not watching the parade. then after a minute or so she said, “you didn’t mean the tunes.”
a small sigh from me. then, “no.”
“same answer,” she said. “you heard the sound of someone thinking. and asked if you could help.”
“at least i’m consistent.”
“it’s an admirable trait in a rhythm guitar player,” she reminded me. “or a friend.”
“i know you’re right. i’m just not good at not being able to help.”
“yes you are,” she smiled at no one in particular. “actually you’re very good at it.”
“not helping?”
“not needing to help,” she corrected. though we both knew what she’d meant. “you don’t have an overwhelming need to rush in and fix things. you are very good at just being a supportive presence while someone works things out for themselves.”
“now, for instance?”
“uh uh.” she shook her head. “no. right now you have things on your mind. and it’s a distraction.”
“i should go for a walk?”
“you should give your head a shake. and remind yourself of all the good work you’ve done over the years. and trust that you will do good work again. if the best way for you to do that is a walk, then i’m in favour.”
she wasn’t wrong. and it didn’t bother me that my friend was using my own magic against me. much. “okay.” i looked over at her. “call it ten minutes?” she nodded. “put the coffee on. when i come back we’ll try and run that section again. see if i can give you something more inspiring.”
“call it ten minutes.” she agreed. “then we try something new.” she saw me start to respond with my usual, but headed me off with a casual, “remind me, which one of us is the genius?”
when i stopped laughing i gave her a hug. “ten minutes,” i said as i headed for the stairs.
“coffee’s on.” she replied. “and we have the rest of the afternoon.”
“i’ll be less helpful when i return.”
“i’m counting on it.”
down the stairs and out the front door onto the street. tony had parked the wagon just around the corner. but this was a walking matter not a driving matter so i headed in the other direction. might make it as far as the park. but ten minutes isn’t long. just enough time to, well, give your head a shake.
and she was right, of course. when we worked together it was my job to be fully present while she made with the magic. the work we do needs an audience. or maybe, as she’d so wisely put it one time, ’an informed witness’. but that audience being distracted was, well, a distraction. so while i was trying to be helpful all i was really doing was putting a big hole in the process. yeah, time to get my thoughts in order. whatever they were.
i guess two big questions were just a bit much for my feeble brain.
my thoughts about tony’s work were much larger than whatever we were trying to get down in that day’s session. see, a big part of her genius was that ability to take sections of several songs you knew and by mashing them up against one another say something more than what was in the original works. it was like when be-bop jazz cats in the fifties took their turn at a solo. coolest thing ever was to be able to play a small but immediately recognizable phrase of a whole different melody right there in that solo. called it ‘quoting’ a tune. making it fit neatly was essential. and making it fit in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect was highly prized. suddenly a bit of an old song was saying something new again. here, where you didn’t expect it.
tony’s work was like that.
but there was a problem. it was perfectly legal for her to do all of that in a live performance in front of an audience. as long as the venue paid their annual license fee to our nation’s performing rights organization we were fine. we just had to fill in a report telling them whose material we used that night and in due course the writers would get their royalties. an excellent state of affairs.
the reality was that you could only make so much money from live shows. the real money was in doing recordings that people could buy. but if tony wanted to try and sell a recording of her work—which might involve her quoting from a dozen or more sources over an hour of recorded material—she would have to get permission from every one of those writers. or more specifically their publishing companies, the people who actually owned the rights to record that song that she was quoting. and lord knows we’d tried to do the right thing. but i don’t think they understood what we were asking. in the end it turned out that a seven minute song containing a setup and two verses original to tony combined with part verses and some bridge-quoting from three other songs that floated around in the popular consciousness meant we would have to pay a full recording license fee for three whole songs. not just what was quoted. and that fee was going to have to be paid based on every single disc we manufactured. but a full album might have six or seven more of those combinations. each one costing significant money. and that was money we just didn’t have.
so until the legal situation changed, tony was going to be an artist known for her live performances. who couldn’t afford to record what she actually did in those performances. and who had to live off only what she made when she played live. and the money for live performances hadn’t really changed much since the 70s. so her choice was to do this full time and live below the poverty line. or get a job and do it as a hobby.
but none of that seemed to bother her. at least not as much as it did me.
it’d been a little over three years that we’d been getting together every week or so. just to try and catch what she’d been up to lately. or what she might get up to next time we played. and she’d insisted we record all of that. so now we had a whole whack of gorgeous material. hours of it. none of which was legal for her to make any money off. at least not until the business world made some changes. and we all know how that goes. as slowly as possible. if at all. ever.
as a guitarist i’d pretty much resigned myself to the life of an impecunious musician. but tony was something special. that talent deserved better.
so yeah, that was on my mind.
and then, of course, because my life wasn’t weird enough already, there was the whole ’nice lady doing weird science that gets people shot at so now who’s got the hat?’ question. with a side of ‘are you kidding there’s spies for that and some kinda secret society makes me wonder if i even know my friends any more’.
i guess tony was right. maybe i just needed to think less.
i’d just laid all of that out in my mind—getting a better understanding of the terrain, part of the process that can help turn wordless fear and anger on behalf of good people into what might become some kind of action—and figured i should maybe turn around and head for home, when i saw a car i thought i recognized. coming towards me. it slowed and pulled over. the passenger window slid down.
“you got a minute?” limner. perfect.
“do i have a choice?”
“i’m not your enemy.”
“you’re not my friend.”
“are those the only two choices? really?”
he had a point. life is complex. people insisting it’s not are usually trying to sell me something. that i really don’t need.
i got in.
he pulled away from the curb and started driving again. looking like he was going no place in particular. just out to clear his head. i knew the feeling. i once drove to halifax to clear my head. ten hours. worked too.
“so how you doin?” i asked. the best defence being a good offence. even one as weak as that. oddly, i could’ve sworn i saw a twitch of a smile.
“not bad.” he made the turn, heading out of downtown. kept his eyes on the road. “you?”
“same.” which was the natural response. if a little surreal in the circumstances. i waited for another response. nothing. a couple of blocks went by. “not meaning to be rude, but i don’t have a lot of time.”
“you working?”
“sort of.”
“with the singer?” i held myself still, but must’ve nodded. “she’s really good.”
a fan? okay this is getting weird. i mean weird-er. “great set of pipes,” i tried, just to see if humouring him was what was called for. do not poke the bear.
“yeah. although i was thinking more about what she does with ‘em. lady’s got a way with words. if i had more time i’d be going out to hear her. she deserves the support.”
a charm offensive? i may have said it out loud because he snorted. we went on for a couple more blocks. then, as casually as if he’d just seem a deer in between some houses as we drove by, “nina simone.”
“pardon me?” no, not where i expected this conversation to go at all.
“i’m a huge fan.” he made a left at the lights and drove on. “the woman had something to say. and she said it.”
i imagined dude cruising down the highway as the miles rolled by with “wild is the wind” blaring out the open windows for all the world to hear. probably on an eight-track. i could see it. which somehow kinda bothered me. i’m not always comfortable being forced to check my assumptions. “why are you telling me this?”
“no reason. i’ve just been listening to “‘nuff said” a fair bit lately. got “i got life” in my head. not a bad way to start the day. she was a righteous woman. and it pretty much killed her.”
i couldn’t disagree with any of that. he took another left. looked like he was circling downtown. like maybe he knew i didn’t have much time and didn’t want to get too far away. thoughtful? yeah, i was confused. so i asked. “you were looking for me?”
“not really. just come from a meeting. thought i’d swing by.”
“you’re serious?”
again the snort. another pause. then, “i’ve got a few questions. not sure who to ask. thought maybe you might be able to help me out.”
“why do you think i’d wanna do that?”
“because i’m not your enemy.”
“who is?”
“not my point.”
“what is your point?”
he sighed. we rolled on in silence for another few blocks. then he made another left. we were headed back to my place. then he said, “you have any idea what your buddy’s up to?”
“sparechange?” he nodded. “not really.” which was completely honest. if not the fullest of explanations. “have you tried asking him?”
“yeah.” a small smile. “i know when he’s not telling me something. he’s very good. but i have been at this a while.”
“so you thought you’d ask me?”
“doesn’t hurt to ask.”
i tried to weigh up everything in my mind. if this was a game of secrets i was the last person who should be playing. my style is more about being clear and straightforward. when i’m not being accidentally enigmatic. and obtuse. well, he did say he was trying to keep archer out of trouble. and sparechange vouched for him. after a fashion. and he was probably going to find out anyway. so i said, “he’s looking for something.”
“we’re all looking for something.” again the small twitch of a smile. “anything in particular?”
i didn’t know what to say. so i didn’t.
another pause. then, “she lost it.” wasn’t a question.
i tried to be coy. “lost what?” i’m not good at coy.
he sighed. which read more than a little like ‘i am surrounded by amateurs’. and specifically right now was absolutely true. we passed the turn to my place. he kept going. apparently we weren’t done yet. “your buddy’s a good man. maybe a little rough around the edges.” a small shrug. “and the people he hangs out with. while i’m not always in favour of what they do, i admire why they do it.”
“you’re a fan?”
“not sure i’d go that far.” he made a right. towards the park apparently we were doing one more loop. though in this direction it’d be a short one. i could see him thinking again. then, “he’s been helpful to me and mine. i’d hate to lose him.”
“is that a threat?”
“absolutely not.”
“okay. so what is it?”
“i’m expressing concern.” another right. the silence sounded like words being weighed. “the people he hangs out with. they’re good people.” a stop at the lights. another right. another weighing. “not everybody’s like that.”
”this is news?”
“you’re not hearing me.”
“not sure what i’m listening for.”
“common sense.”
“shooting, murder, whacking. and then there’s the perfectly normal science that puts you in touch with some kinda almighty. right now there’s not a lot of common in what’s going on around me.”
“she lost something.” he kept on. through the lights and under the train bridge. “he’s looking for it.” he glanced over at me then back to the road. “and i know some of the places he’s going to be poking around in. they’re not safe.”
i thought of buddy and how he handled the fight at the party. “i think he can manage.”
“i’m not so sure.” we made the last turn and pulled up in front of my place. he turned off the ignition. neither of us moved.
“is that it?”
“yeah,” he said. “a little drive, a little talk.” a small shrug, a small smile. “i was wondering. you helped me out.”
“i did?”
“absolutely.” the door-lock popped open on my side. “and i’m grateful.”
“for what?”
“confirmation.” i didn’t move, i was so busy trying to figure out what’d just happened. clueless. again. and i guess it was obvious. he looked over at me. definitely a smile, though why i didn’t know. “go on.” then a small nod in the direction of the door to my place. “you’ve got work to do.”
i got out. took a half a step towards the front door to myplace. limner’s car didn’t move. through the open passenger window there was a particular sound i remembered from my younger days, a small satisfying clack-clunk as something plastic settled mechanically into a place where it could do its job. there was the hiss of tape that i hadn’t experienced for a while, living as i did now in a world of digital recording. as i half-turned and saw him pull away from the curb i heard a few bars of music. at a serious volume. loud enough to annoy the neighbours. but just right for cruising down the road. then, just before he turned the corner, an unmistakable voice i’d known and loved most of my life. “baby, you understand me now…”. and he was gone.
i stared after him. for three whole beats. and blinked. not moving. not thinking. just taking it in. whatever it was that’d just happened. eventually my lizard-brain signalled that i wasn’t breathing. and could maybe use some oxygen. so i took in some air. it felt good, so i did it again. still staring. limner was gone, but i was hearing the rest of the song in my mind. a song of righteousness. and love. “oh lord. please don’t let me be misunderstood.” yeah, the universe is a funny place.
when the song faded, i turned back to the row of buildings, took the couple of steps to myplace, opened my front door and headed up the stairs. i could smell coffee. and toast. and i could hear my favourite voice humming to herself. it was a melody i hadn’t heard before. although it had a taste of something i didn’t connect with at first. then she looped it again. and i recognized the flavour. nina. of course. i found myself thinking that just maybe we were going to be okay.
as i got to the top of the stairs i heard a voice from the kitchen. “how was your day, dear?”
i wasn’t sure what to say.
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