Free Joe Vampire by Steven Luna Page B

rhythms and coming up with some mad beats to hold everything up.  I put in some slinky funk over top of that, which really limits my contribution to about three notes per song at this point. Between the two of us, we set up a mighty righteous groove. Then Lazer gets his ham-fisted mitts on it, puts all kinds of crap over top of what Hube and I have laid down – eerie, inappropriate machine noises, ghostly electrified voices, human barking, orgasm sounds – and shits it all up without even trying, really. Overall, it becomes a mess, yet it lends a qualifying sense of truth to the band’s name. His knack for taking the beginnings of a great idea and turning them into looped, squawky dreck with a few clicks of a wireless mouse is almost awe-inspiring. By the end, he’s overridden nearly all of our input and thinks he’s created a masterpiece. And we let him, if only because he has a better synth rack and studio set up than we do. Somehow, this has also given him the deciding vote in the look of the band, which does no one here any favors. Safe to say leather pants don’t belong on anyone over the age of twenty five. 
    Or who weighs more than one hundred and twenty pounds. 
    To his credit, he has also leveraged his massive Facebook presence to garner a fairly regular following for VN, though they aren’t the most savory of individuals. But they make loyal appearances at the shows, and they all pay admission when necessary, buying up our t-shirts and scuzzy memorabilia like it’s the rage. So if we only split the door, at least there’s door to be split. And if the promise of free glow-in-the-dark condoms and silicone logo wristbands as giveaways keeps them coming, then it’s worth it to have an audience to hear us play our crappy tunes. Someday, though, I’d like to do more with my music. 
    Sadly, this is enough for now. 
    Hube has talked recently about saving funds for a return to college, to study music this time since his BA in Pre-Columbian South American Pottery hasn’t made his dreams come true like he thought it would. He wants me to do it, too, and I definitely would have been open to it if the vampire thing hadn’t cropped up. Seems there are a lot of things that This has moved to the back burner. I would rather that music not become one of them. I’ve always been more creative than calculational, and there will be no fulfillment for me in finance. Eventually, liking my co-workers and having a benefits package isn’t going to be enough to keep me in my job. So maybe Hube’s educational renaissance will prompt me to jump back into university life as well. Although at mid-thirtysomething – or later by the time the piggy has enough coin in his belly – starting anything new is a challenge, especially when it involves placing yourself among people younger, smarter and hipper than yourself. And a vampire diving into a sea of kids raised thinking the Nightfall books are some sort of historical text for vampire life doesn’t sound like such a swell idea. But the music study thing does. 
    So we’ll see. 
    What musical drive is left over after my enormous and ultimately futile contribution to Vomiting Nonsense I dump into my own compositions. They’re not very complete; some go on for about nine minutes and end up as sort of solo jam sessions. I think of it as the musical version of doodling, something to keep my hands busy while my mind drops to zero for a while. But now that I’ve got the vampire in me and everything has changed a little, the music in me is different, too. It’s gone from tuneful and pop-ish to almost gothic and downright classical. Chamber melodies fall out of me like some kind of Symphony for the Changed – darker than I’d like them to be, and way more pretentious. But pretty, too… tunes I’d imagine Chloe would like, if I ever worked up enough chutzpah to play something for her. It might never happen, though. In fact, depending on how This progresses, none of my music