Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [43]
“A song with the whole world in it. The good and the bad, the beauty, the pain,” Jules says.
“Christmas and funerals, coffee and rain. Bruises and roses and shit and champagne,” Virgil raps.
“Cigarettes, garbage cans, silver skull rings. These are a few of my favorite things,” I add, in my best Julie Andrews voice.
Virgil high-fives me.
Jules ups the ante. “Come on, Kanye, give us some.”
“With what? A mandolin?”
“Baby,” Jules says. “Girl. You a man? Step up.”
He leans over the bar, grabs an empty ice bucket, turns it into a beatbox. I walk back to the stage, pick up my guitar, and start giving out some loose, poppin’ Chili Peppers chords.
Virgil grins. “Yeah?” he says, looking at me.
“Yeah,” I say, looking back.
“Yeah!” Rémy says. “You want to eat? Get your skinny ass up there.”
Virgil pats Rémy’s head on his way to the stage. Rémy swears at him. The three of us noodle around for a bit, work out some beats. Jules snatches one, stretches it, decorates it.
“That’s it,” Virgil says. “Right there.”
I mess around with a few chords until I get something that’ll work as a chorus, something else that’ll back a verse.
“Yeah, that’s good. I like that,” Virgil says.
He takes off his hoodie. He’s got a white T-shirt on. His arms are ripped. His butt looks nice in his jeans. So nice, in fact, that I bungle a chord staring at it.
He turns to me. “Nervous?”
“Yeah. No. Um, yeah.”
Somebody shoot me.
“Me too. When I hold up my hand—like this—it means switch to chorus,” he says. Then he starts laughing, and says, “This’ll never work. You know that, right?” He turns to the audience. “This is called ‘Banloser,’ ” he tells them.
Jules and I start to play. Virgil listens for a few beats, then holds up his hand. We shift to the chorus. He starts rhyming. And he’s good. He’s really good. We switch to the verse, stumble a bit, then pick it back up. And suddenly, it’s happening. The beats and rhymes and chords come together, and everything each one of us is giving becomes bigger and stronger than ourselves. Becomes music. Becomes magic.
“Hey ho Banloser
Call me robber, boozer
And substance abuser
Hey ho Banloser
Call me dole-cheating,
Work-beating welfare ruser
I don’t want to be no
Bad boy for life
Feeling rife
With the strife
And a knife
In my back
But I’m on the outskirts
Trying not to get hurt
Living in a desert
Of poverty and fear
I try to conform
Do no harm, be the norm
But I can’t transform
I can just persevere
I go to an interview
Try to get through to you
Show what I can do
But you don’t want to hear
You smile, but you won’t hire me
And if you did, you’d fire me
Cuz you do not admire me
You wish I’d disappear
Hey ho Banloser
Call me carjacking, bomb-throwing
Guided missile cruiser
Hey ho Banloser
When all I want is to stay off
The evening news, sir
Mr. Sarkozy
Can you hear my plea
Take a look at me
What do you see
You see a delinquent
But I work for my rent
And I’ve got the intent
To undo my torment
Mr. Le Pen
You’re not my friend
France says never again
But you were almost voted in
I say it’s time to bend
Time to amend, to transcend
Before history repeats itself
Again and again
Hey ho Banloser
Call me bruiser, refuser,
That’s what your views are
Hey ho Banloser
Can’t take it no more
Got to face my accuser
Feel my anger, my ambition
It’s a war of words, a war of attrition
Going to change my life, my condition
Through my own volition
Cuz out here it’s a competition
Every day’s a combat mission
I gotta ask permission
When all I want is admission
I’m no politician
Just a simple musician
Got my beats for ammunition
Going to rap my opposition
Cuz it’s plain to see
Out here in Clichy
That liberty, equality, and fraternity,
Are for the boys in the sixth
Not for me”
24
He finishes. There’s applause and whistling and cheering. It worked. Some damn how, it worked. We’re all laughing. Even me. Jules grabs an empty breadbasket off a table and passes it. It comes back with bills and coins. We do more songs. Some are Virgil’s—tunes that Jules knows