Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [20]
Baz led us to a basement door, unlocking it with a rusty key. As he yanked it toward him, flakes of paint fell off.
“Et voila!” he cried, leaning back to afford us an uninterrupted view of the narrow hallway beyond.
No one spoke.
“Now, don’t mind the standing water,” said Baz calmly. “I’ve just laid rat traps.”
Ed followed Baz inside, pressing himself against the least mold-ridden wall, as if that might reduce his chances of contracting something contagious.
Baz retrieved another key, this one glinting like solid gold. He slid it into the lock on a second door, pushed the door open, and stood back once more.
I don’t know if anyone else spoke, but I’m pretty sure that I gasped.
Behind the door was a studio control room—a real one, with banks of electronic equipment that looked like it had been lifted from NASA headquarters. Behind the controls, separated by at least a couple panes of glass, was the studio. True, it had a peculiar odor, but it was a real studio with microphones on stands, and headphones for the musicians.
I looked at Dumb, and for a split second I could tell we were all thinking the same thing: We’d arrived.
Baz ushered the band inside, told them where to sit and how he’d control things like balance and reverb from the control room. To deter him from involving me in decisions about the band’s sound, I retreated to the corner of the control room and studied his notice board. One of the notices was for KSFT-FM, a local radio station looking for new bands to promote, so I scribbled down the e-mail address. Then I began snapping more artistic black-and-white photos of Will sweeping his hair back, and Josh manhandling two microphones at once—the kind of pics that would be collector’s items once Dumb became a household name (ha!).
It was 12:30 before Dumb was ready to begin recording, by which time Baz’s effervescent exterior had cooled somewhat. He signaled that I should stop taking photos, and indicated that my place was on a chair beside him. Then he closed the door and began relaying instructions to the players on the other side of the window. I wondered if their hearts were beating as quickly as mine.
I was delighted to discover that the control room was completely soundproofed, which had the advantage that I could hear Baz surprisingly well as long as he spoke up. I understood his commands, his approach, and what he wanted from the band. I even began to wonder if I was a natural in the recording studio.
Ten minutes later, I was aware of what a disadvantage it was to be able to hear Baz. I understood perfectly his confusion, bemusement, and general disgust. I was also able to decode at least one in three of his expletives, which equated to about one every ten seconds.
And it wasn’t exactly hard to see why he was so pissed. Tash and Will seemed completely overwhelmed by the experience of being in a real studio, fumbling around like their guitars had grown extra strings. Even Ed looked a little stage-struck. And at the front, the ball of energy known as Josh Cooke squeezed the headphones against his ears as he jumped and jived to a beat that must have been coming from a different song. Baz told him to sit down; Josh said he couldn’t. Baz told him that his movements were being picked up by the microphone and would ruin the song; Josh said his movements were an intrinsic part of the song. Baz opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
After two extremely deep, calming breaths, and a few seconds of total silence, Baz turned to me. “Is there another song you’d prefer to work on?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Okay,” he tried again, “let me rephrase that. Which song would you like to work on now?”
“The same one,” I said, but timidly.
“It’s utter crap. Pick another.”
“We don’t have another.”
Baz’s mouth hung open long enough for me to count his cavities. “Now that is the most depressing news I’ve heard since the judge put me behind bars.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 12:50. We had another two hours, but