Free The Kill Riff by David J. Schow

feel relief. First customers were traditionally whacked out. They were either the eternally browsing unemployed, who never bought anything but always walked out with the free music papers and whatever else they could shoplift, or older folks -the seniors who rose with the mushroom-cloud blast of dawn just to ask for records Garris could not possibly get for them in a century.
        This man fit Garris' loose definition of normal. His hiking boots were splashed with thin, tan mud, maybe clay, out not clodded with shit that would come off on the store's carpeting. He was tall and rangy, with a healthy backsweep of amber-gold hair just starting to streak with silver. No male-pattern baldness. A broad, pleasant face with character crags around the eyes. A Marlboro man, for sure. He was dressed in stiff new Levi's and a chambray workshirt that had, happily, seen real work. The sleeves were rolled up and the top buttons freed to reveal gray insulated longjohns. Garris' first blush was that this guy had come for some Willie Nelson or maybe the sound track to Honkytonk Man.
        The customer surprised him by requesting Whip Hand. It was turning out to be an interesting day after all.
        "Ah-ancient history," he said. "Your basic three-song band." On seeing the man's questioning expression, Garris elaborated: "Ahem-any of the multifarious, one-note, mostly faceless bands cluttering up our airwaves in phases."
        "Sounds like you have a theory," said Lucas.
        "I'm proud of it, too." Garris leaned on the counter. "A band required to pull one FM hit every six months… or they get the bargain-bin torture. Whip Hand had more than three countable hits. But their musicianship and compositional ability are summed up in three songs. That's as far as they grow. Grew."
        "You're pretty good at this, aren't you?" Lucas was already amused by the performance.
        "You have come to the source, my friend. Let's see if I can do this from memory. Whip Hand's big three were…" Garris paused and squinted. " 'Riptide' was the first hit single, the image establisher. Your basic head-banger in four-four time. Lots of chunka-chunka guitar riffs. More flash than skill. What Frank Zappa called wank-wank music for hockey rinks. Chord bashing."
        Lucas riffled some albums in bins. No telling where Whip Hand would be hiding, in this place.
        "Song number two has gotta reinforce the first hit, right? It's in the same style. Or antistyle, if you prefer. 'Attack Dog.' The lyrics went beyond monosyllables in this one, just barely, and Whip Hand began to embrace the death-and-destruction fix of most basic metal. Um-
         Fangs'll shred ya
         Teeth'll tear ya
         Blood and thunder
         My attack'll scare ya…
        The harmony line was devolved blues, but of course nobody gave a crap about that."
        "You mean there's a line of descension from the Fleetwoods to Whip Hand?"
        Garris broke into an a cappella rendition of "You Mean Everything to Me," then continued: "Then cometh number three. The compulsory ballad. 'Love Mutant.' Real gooey stuff. A lot of double-entendre sexual suggestion, garbage designed to make the readership of Tiger Beat slide outta their seats. Everything else Whip Hand ever did was in the mode of those three. They did way too many covers for my taste."
        "Covers?" Lucas was still reeling from Garris' monologue.
        "Y'know, remakes of old songs. If it was a hit once, it can be a hit again. Beats creativity. Or thinking. They did… christ, everything. 'Changing All Those Changes.' "
        "Buddy Holly."
        "Righto. They did 'Turn Around' by Dick and Dee Dee, and another version of Edwin Starr's 'War.' They weren't the first. They did 'Out of Limits.' They did 'Big Girls Don't Cry,' a heavy metal version, with Jackson Knox's lead guitar substituting for Frankie Valli's falsetto. It was pretty strange."
        " 'Out of Limits' was by