Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [21]
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
I peered through the window. I knew Ed was frustrated at himself for letting us down, but Tash and Will still looked freaked out. And Josh was as clueless as before, rehearsing his movements like they had any relevance whatsoever in a recording studio.
When I didn’t answer, Baz clapped his hands together. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen: Dumb is going to perform the song over and over for the next hour. I’ll mark the useable sections of each track, then we’ll spend the last hour editing them together into a single track.” He smiled, but it was a patronizing smile that made me feel even more useless than before.
I looked at Dumb again, all of them still now, wondering why the instructions had dried up. Which is when I realized that Baz had turned off the connection between the rooms. My conversation with him was for our ears only; no point in battering the band’s morale any more. Baz’s offer was about as generous as we could hope for, I knew that, but I also knew that a true manager wouldn’t settle for it, and I knew I couldn’t either.
“Wouldn’t it be better for them to do one complete, perfect track?” I asked.
Baz snorted. “You’ll be lucky if they can pull off one complete, perfect verse.”
I have to say I liked the ebullient Baz much more than the obnoxious one. “Please turn on the speaker in the studio.”
“I don’t think you want them to hear what I have to say.”
“Yes, I do,” I said decisively. Baz shrugged as he flicked a switch. “Listen up, guys,” I said, staring through the window at the band. “We have two hours left. We’re going to run the song over and over, with a one-minute break between each track. If you need a drink, grab a bottle of water from my bag in the corner. Otherwise, sit still, focus, and let’s nail this thing.”
Baz leaned back and prepared himself, but he wouldn’t make eye contact.
After half an hour, Dumb had performed “Let Go, I Feel Crappy” eight times. Seven of those were incomplete versions, aborted mid-song following catastrophic collapses that caused the entire group to surrender en masse. The other one was bad enough that Ed looked deflated and Tash looked psychotic.
Another half hour, another six versions (four of them complete!), but I didn’t need to hear Dumb to know they were playing out of time with each other. To make matters worse, they were wearing down now and I knew they didn’t have many more renditions in them. Even Josh reluctantly sat down between takes, as dismayed as the Energizer Bunny to discover his batteries were running low.
I told Baz to take five, and I joined the band next door. They all removed their headphones, but only Ed looked up as I walked in.
“So here’s the deal. Baz wants to edit useable sections of each track together to make a single good performance,” I explained.
Tash was already nodding vigorously. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
I held up my hand. “If that’s what you all want, fine. But I think we can get one perfect continuous take.”
“Who cares?” Josh shrugged. “No one’s going to know either way.”
I gave the others a chance to have their say, but no one else seemed to have the energy. “It’s true, no one else will know. But you will, and I think you can do it. I saw you on the school steps, and you had everyone transfixed. You’re too good to cheat your way out of Dumb’s first original song.”
I don’t know what I expected anyone to say, but I certainly didn’t imagine that Will would be the one to agree. “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head in slow motion. Then: “Yeah.”
Suddenly Tash seemed to have a change of heart as well. “I guess it would be more satisfying to nail it.”
“Okay, good,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “So how can we make this work?”
“Well, the problem is, I’m not used to wearing headphones while I play,” explained Tash gruffly. “And the clicks are throwing me off. And my guitar sounds weird.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. I hate not being to hear the others the way I normally do. It’s weird.”
Everyone else nodded too.
“So leave the headphones off,