JambeAux

First Look at a new novel

Along the main road into town, the ghosts of once-elegant, sprawling, New Orleans-style mansions loomed over prefabricated houses--long history and new silence. Galveston, an island originally inhabited by cannibals, was now gone to whorehouses and run-down gas stations, and those were wiped away with casual regularity by hurricances. A monolithic sea wall ran along Seawall Boulevard, sloping dowm form the street to an embankment of granite boulders that stretched away to flat, sandy beaches. The loose sand would swallow a car up to its rocker panels if the driver wasn't careful, and Galveston on a Saturday night wasn't exactly famous for careful drives.

All weekend cars prowled Seawall Boulevard, cruising the length of the beach, stopping frequently to discharge vomit or urine or two or more enraged customers bent on assaulting one another. Summer of "74 and just the ride into town was enough to drive a man to drink. Page already sounded weary as Link turned the car toward the beach.

"This is God's country," Page said. "He just comes back to claim it from time to time."

The sea wall itself was impressive testimony to the endless struggle between men and the ocean. The embankment was there to stop the sea on those frequent occasions when it shrugged, sending a wall of water slamming across the island. Page felt a twinge of satisfaction in the certain knowledge that, with the inescapability of all natural wonders, a hurricane in the megaton range would cut across that Gulf once again and wipe the slate clean.

But tonight was just an ordinary Galveston evening, the temperature soaring to giddy, stroke levels, the air an overdone gumbo of fish-rot and salt. The place where Link and Page played was nothing more than a slab of concrete surrounded by walls of stout bamboo and hung with a sign that read The Riptide Rendezvous. But it was a big club, decked out for serious business. It was what Page called "an in-earnest, for-sure, fullbore, go-ahead, hard-boogie, rock-and-roll night club."

"Saturday night," he sighed as they entered, and added with a shrug, "Rock and roll." It was a verbal tic he had picked up earlier on another continent, when choppers used to take them out on assault missions. According to procedure, after they passed a certain point beyond which the platoon was committed to fighting, someone would shout, "Line of departure. Lock and load," and everyone would chamber a round and slam home the bolt on his weapon. But the first time Page went on such as assault, he thought he heard the man shout above the batting of the rotors, "Line of departure. Rock and roll!" and it stuck with him.

Link went to the bar and Page moved toward the stage. It was a confusion of hardware: microphones pointing their heads attentively this way and that, horns lined up rigid and military in their stands, great banks of gaudy, vinylcovered amplifiers and speakers in outrageous colors--metal-flake crimson, sky-blue sparkle, orange sunburst and massacre red--a bramble of electrical cord that made it nearly impossible to navigate the stage floor, an imposing walnut Hammond B-3 with two Leslie speakers off to one side, a black, speckled drum set resembling a rare, gawky bird, all chrome legs and beak. And placed here and there, the electric guitars and basses, bright sci-fi psycho fantasies that looked more suites to producing death rays than music.

Page made his way past the hardware to the back of the stage and reached up to hit a switch. He had to admit that, even in this nightmare place, a stage full of space-age instruments came to life in the floodlights. The metal-flake custom speakers glowed like candy and the flatbodied electric guitars burst like astronomical phenomena. The brass horns were complex rivers of molten gold, formed into streams and switchbacks by supernatural craftsmen.

Page felt a surge of excitement as he took out his guitar. He strapped it on almost tenderly, the way a locked-on junkie ties off before firing up: Oh, blessed relief. But not for long. That same sound--a sound he'd been hearing for years--started up in his head, he'd heard it for so long now that it took a lot of chemicals just to turn the volume down. And he knew he was going to have to play a job tonight and it sure wasn't going to match that music--his music. Tonight it was going to be basic, prefabnight-club fare. It was like being horny and in love and a thousand miles from her--you were going to hate yourself in the morning when you woke up with someone else.

"Gone be a crowded motherfucker," Link said as he came across the room with two beers. Page took a beer, drank off half of it and went back to his instrument. He plugged his guitar into the amp and adjusted the knobs. His fingers moved lightly across the strings. And then something happened that was all out of proportion to this delicate movement: A stretch of Galveston beach 400 meters long exploded with the sound of his chords, like cracking an electronic whip, the real thing, pure essence of rock and roll. Up on the sea wall, though Page could not see it, puzzled heads turned as the club gave off its eerie, semitonal cry. The manager of The Riptide Rendezvous had the right idea. Other club managers up and down the island hated him because with his two bands, each sporting nine horns and megawatts of brutal power, he could blow everything clear off the beach.

"You know, Little Buddy," Link said, "we got enough equipment in here to fill the Grand Canyon." He strapped on his bass and hauled his bulk onto the stage. Page played him an E and Link tuned to it. The throaty bass sounded like a gong struck in some great hall in hell.

The club had started to fill at the first sound of Page's guitar. And when it filled on a Saturday night, it filled quickly and to capacity. People were now taking up positions at the various bars inside, mostly slack-limbed men at this point, leaning with that hip-shot indolence only hard-core white trash can exhibit. As Page surveyed the growing swarm, he felt a wave of nausea grip him and tried to descend further into his music, seeking that sound. But it was impossible to block out the input from a club that size.

He watched a couple make their way across the room. The man, short and lean, with tooled boots, tattoos and tight jeans, wore a Western hat and a decorated shirt. The over-all impression fell somewhere between ersatz cowboy and borderline fag, though if you had suggested that to the customer, he would have taken you outside for a roll in the sand and a deep puncture wound. The girl was bigger in both dimensions, with massive breasts. Her blonde hair was elaborately sculpted and sprayed into place, and she walked as if the top half of her body were some exotic sign language. Soon the couple was swallowed up in the Saturday-night crowd that was flowing in.

There was a seemingly endless procession of couples, singles, hookers and crooks. Oil riggers, cat operators, jerks and truckers, waitresses, secretaries, clerks and bookies--Cajun, Indian, cowboy, freak--losers and loners and hungry women, dandies, dudes, cops and robbers, veterans of wars both foreign and domestic, the lean, the mean, the hairless and legless, stoned and sober, straight as Interstate 10 and crooked as a refinery catwalk; they came alone or with reinforcements, in groups of two and three, in armies and cadres--small attack units of swinging dicks and vast divisions of pussy. For it was Saturday night and they had come to slake their thirst for noise and booze and sex and action, love and death and human contact in all its most graphic mutations. They came and reeked of sweat and piss and beer and all the glorious, livid discharges of their animal couplings. They came in their manifold ruttings and rubbings to squirm in the arc light and obliterate the horror of it all. But Page knew why they really came. In the final analysis, they came to boogie.

Page and Link left the stage and huddled in a corner to drink beer and just watch it all come down before their first set.

"I don't think I'm gonna make it through the night." Page's voice shook. "I'm getting too old to take this shit.

"Then take this shit." Link held out his hand. Between his thumb and forefinger was a dark, elongated capsule bearing pharmaceutical hieroglyphics and the numbers 18-875. Page rocognized it as an old favorite: the famous Pennwalt 20-milligram Biphetamine, so dark in color it was popularly known as Black Molly or Black Beauty.

"Ahhh," Page smiled, "la negrita." He opened his mouth and Link dropped the capsule in like a priest administering the Holy Sacrament.

"The Black One," Link said.

"Our Lady of Sympathomimetic Amines." Page swallowed and chased it with beer. When he opened his eyes, he was faced with a young, very drunk girl.

"You're page," she said. She had a vague, farm-girl prettiness somewhere behind her stoned expression. Page nodded and smiled uncertainly. "I think y'all's is the best bank on the beach."

"Melanie," she said, listing to one side as if she might fall over.

"Are you alone?" Page wanted to know. She didn't answer at first, She stared at him, admiring his high cheekbones, the deep skin tones, the great cloud of dark hair. Page dropped his eyes, thinking, Yep, she's definitely one of them, another Gulf Coast casualty, a genuine mattress-backed sweetie from Bossier City or lake Charles or Pasadena. Or from Texas City, where the effluvia poured into the air by the oil refineries were so thick and potent that the residents walked around in a constant, demented drunk. Page felt the was losing his grip. He'd been doing this for too long.

"Yes," the girl finally said.

"Well, Melanie," Page began uncertainly, "We're going up there and play some of the music now, but I'll catch up with you later on."

"I'll be right over there," she waved vaguely and lurched away into the crowd.

Pate turned to see Link frowning.

"I wouldn't fuck her with you dick," Link said.

"You'd fuck anything that's warm," Page laughed, a little too high, a little too easily, In another 20 minutes, he felt the Biphetamine kick in. His heart went into a canter. Oh, yes, oh, yes, nothing finer. Page always imagined it was what (continued on page 134)Jambeaux(continued from page 126) fighter pilots felt when the popped their afterburners.

"Rock and Roll." Page now felt the speed grip him as if he'd grabbed a high-tension line. "I feel good enough to kill somebody." Link's laughter was drowned out by the ambient crowd noise. The club was revving up its generator and all it needed was a little rock and roll to complete the circuit, then watch the sparks fly.

"Line of departure, Coach," Page pointed to the band assemblig on the stage. He and Link fought their way through the people.

To get things rolling, Page called The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show by Robbie robertson. He and Link set up the bass and guitar intro, a syncopated, slaphammer, plunking lead. The drummer came in pumping, sizzling as Page took two steps forward until his lips nearly touched the Shure microphone. He grimaced as if he had some really bad news to tell, then sang the raw-boned, rangy melody. Link stepped up to his mike to sing the harmony part in an incongruously high warbling tenor. Page watched the people and listened to the band behind him. He felt the guitar humming in his arms and put his voice on the line. It came back to him a thousandfold, 130 decibels of it, raking up and down the beach.

The people were moving now, jerky and ataxic, as if a mad scientist had created a bad benzodiazepine dream that danced. Page surveyed the entire scene with a detached, almost innocent horror, listening to his own voice. (who is that guy singing?), hearing the second trumpet player honking out of tune (where did we dig up that dude?). He tried to concentrate on the sound he and Link made with their instruments, with their voices--he desperately wanted to hear it--for sometimes, against the holocaust backdrop of this band, Page was able to focus, filtering noise, and even tranplant himself and Link into some mythical band that could do no wrong, the band he had always heard playing in his head. He held the sound for only seconds at a time, though, as he called another tune and then another, rushing through the set.

It wore on and got old very fast; nothing like stale music to make you want to pack it all in. When it finally ended, Page took the microphone. "Evenin', floks, thank you, thank you. I think the drus are beginning to work," light ripple of approval from the crowd, "so stay with us. The Hurricanes'll be up here in a minute to play a set while we take a short beer and pussy break, so don't go away." And Page thought, Do, do go away, far, far away, all of you, as the band played a fast break tune behind him.

They wound it up quickly and scattered to different corners of the club, eager to get away from the stage. When Link came over to the corner with two beers, he saw that Page was shaking. "You all right?"

"Man, I don't know how much more of this club I can take. Look at me." He held out a hand and it trembled visibly.

"Man, they just a bunch of kickers." Link slapped him on the shoulder. "No sweat. Just play is all."

"I don't know, I think we better find something else to do pretty soon." He thought for a moment. "Maybe I could get some nice quiet work, like smoke jumping."

When they mounted the stage half an hour later, it was worse.

"Sympathy for the Devil," Page called. The song just about matched his mood. Besides, it was long and he wouldn't have to think for a while. After that, he went through some old favorites for the Louisiana crowd--Otis Redding, Bobby Blue Bland, They Temptations. But then it hit him again, about halfway through the set: that sound. That sound. At times he had even spent long afternoons writing out parts for the musicians so he could teach them one of his won songs, but the actual sound was never there when they played one of his pieces. Now he longed to hear it and knew he wasn't going to, not tonight, not in any damned Riptide Rendezvous, you better believe it. As the last song wound down, Page took the microphone again.

"Thank you, floks." His voice came through the sound system like that of some delirious good, panting across the little island in foot-high letters. His eyes scanned the acres of flesh. The only thing that kept back the nausea now was the Black One coursing through his veins. He was about to start his standard rap when he spotted the couple he'd seen earlier, the ersatz cowboy and his busty girlfriend. He watched with mute wonder as the girl opened the cowboy's fly and started working him over with a skillful, vigorous fist; it was the first time Page had seen a hand job in this club. He couldn't quite believe she was doing it as he felt Link lean over his shoulder and whisper with astounded reverence, "Well, I'll be dipped in shit."

"All right!" Page hollered into the microphone. "Don't let your meat loaf, cowboy." Page felt himself slipping now, as if some internal gear had just ground itself smooth. Now the girl's head was thrown back in hysterical laughter. The cowboy was hunched over, trying to get his pants back together. Page wanted to turn away, but he couldn't take his eyes off the couple.

"Yes, sir," Page went on, "we got a man here just got his lizard whipped!" No one could ignore that. The room coughed up a cosmic, surreal chuckle and outside, people began to force their way into the club to see what was going on. "That's right, stud," Page pointed at the man. "How' d it feel?"

"Great!" the cowboy yelled, and his girlfriend nearly collapsed with laughter.

"Well," Page said with a savage grin, "I've got twenty bucks here says you two won't do the crocodile rock right there on the floor." Page pointed as if aiming a weapon. Link moved up closer behind him, seeing him skittering across the icy surface of hysteria now.

Page's challenge had cracked across the beach like the sound of artillery and heads turned toward the club with dim, reptilian curiosity. Inside, a low, dangerous roar went up from the crowd, which grew larger and louder as more people tried to get in the door.

"Let's have it," Page screamed into the microphone. "Git some!" The girl covered her face in a giddy gesture of embarrassment, while the cowboy waved his hands in the air like a champ entering the ring. At last Link closed the set down, pulling Page away from the mike. The other band mounted the stage and the club manager tried to make his way through the crowd as the cowboy and his girl actually went through with it. She hiked up her skirt gingerly, pulled down her panties and lay on the filthy concrete. The cowboy dropped his jeans and began gong after it, pumping and jumping spasmodically. Page passed close enough to drop two ten-dollar bills onto the cowboy's back before Link led him into the night air. The club roared its approval like a Roman Colosseum. Page shook uncontrollably and something deep in his chest split painfully.

Link kept him out on the beach for half an hour, until they had to go back in for the midnight set. Page thought they should just leave--fuck it. "I'm warning you," he breathed, wide-eyed, "I can't predict what's gonna happen up there."

"You gone be all right," Link said. "Just one more set is all."

"It's your ass." Page shivered, freezing (continued on page 221)Jambeaux(continued from page 134 in the 95-degree heat.

And when they began again, Page started calling the fastest, loudest numbers he could think of, one after another, He screamed at the microphone in a weird alien voice until he was hoarse and the trumpet players were begging him to slow down and call an easier tune.

"Eat shit!" Page hollered at them. "If you can't play good, play loud," and he lauched into yet another hard, fast song, wearing the crowd down, actually working it, as if by sound alone he could force them to dance themselves to death. His voice went out to them like a directed-energy weapon, lethal and unrelenting. Without realizing it, he was singing better than he ever had. The crowd was going wild, but Page couldn't tell. He stood there in the white-hot light, screaming and sweating and shivering.

And the something shifted deep inside him--an enormous piece of emotional cargo loose on the deck--and the wall of pretense collapsed then and there. He turned around to call the last song of the set and Link could see that Page was practically blue. He gave Link a sick grin and grabbed the microphone before naming the final number.

"Oh, my," he said, hoarse and weary. "We lit that hard boogie light, didn't we, now?" The crowd roared at him and it shook him. He hadn't noticed they were paying attention. "My, my," he sighed. "We gonna slow it down a little. Might play a little number called Rivers of Babylon. Might just do that." He was breathless and a pool of sweat had formed at his feet. "Oh, yes, yes! And if we did, it might just go something like this." He raised his hand in the air and when he brought it. As he sang, no one had any idea how far over the edge he had really gone. even Link, who had seen the brutal ugliness on Page's face, didn't Know. Link stepped up right beside Page and sang harmony:

"But the wicked carried us away captivity,

Require from us a song.

How can we sing King Alfa song

In a strange land?"

•

That last night at The riptide Rendezvous wasn't just another lost gig in the long line of lost gigs they'd played since Vietnam coughed Link and Page back into the World. Their last night in Galveston, landmark time.

When Page awoke the following morning back in his apartment in Houston, the only thing he could remember about it was Link's hand pulling him away from the mircrophone and the club manager screaming at him from beneath the stage. "What happened?" Page asked Link.

He sat heavily on the disheveled couch, as discouraged and depressed as he could be, yet somehow glad to be out of it, to know he wouldn't have to go back to The Riptide Rendezvous.

"Oh, there was that Melanie chick you met. She caught up to you while I was getting our stuff from the stage and you was out in the Land Yacht humping her when her boyfriend showed up."

"What?"

"Yeah, I just happened to come out there. I think he was fixin' to kill you a little bit, too."

"No shit."

"They was pretty haired of, her boyfriend and two others. Kind of calmed down, though, when I showed 'em my bidness." What Link called his bidness was an Ithaca Auto and Burglar, a cutdown 20-gauge dowble-barreled shotgun that had been sold in the Twenties for home protection. It was small enough to stick in your waistband.

"I'm really sorry, man." Page covered his eyes and hung his head.

"No sweat," Link smiled tolerantly and went to take a shower. Page just sat there, looking around the living room. The apartment unit was on Timmons Lane in one of those motel-style complexes that had been thrown up in ever-expanding fairy rings around Houston as they city grew outward, uncontrolled. Link and Page had shared the furnished apartment for some time now and it had take on the character of so many bachelor-musician apartments. It had two bedrooms decorated in ascetic motel style, airless and lightless and cluttered. It always smelled of tobacco and grass and stale beer, just like a night club. The pseudo-imitation tangerine rat fur of the rug came out in great hanks, like hair off the head of a chemotherapy victim. the thin Sheetrock walls transmitted sound with remarkable efficiency.

The shades were drawn tight against the hammer heat of the Texas latitudes, shrouding the room in half darkness through which Page made out the litter of ashtrays, dirty dishes, clothing, sheet music, records, toys, manuscript paper, female underclothes, used guitar strings, cigarette pagers, magazines and various trash from McDonald's or Church's or pizza places--the musician's C rations. Page knew there was no beating it. It was as if entropy crept in every day at dawn and rattled their world: the second thermodynamic law of music. Page shivered in the air conditioning, slowly coming to the realization that something would have to be done. The same fatigue that had thrown his panic switch last night manifested itself right here in this apartment: He didn't even have the inspiration to pick up after himself.

"So what do you want to do now?" Link came in toweling himself dry.

"Start a band," Page said without hesitation.

"Never happen." Link didn't even look up.

"Oh, yes." Page leaned forward. "This time I want to do my songs. We put together a band. You, me, Butch, Blye and Scoop. We make a demo. We do the entire number, you know, money, fame, satisfaction," Page smiled. "Nooky." Link was not amused.

Nevertheless, over the next few days, Page rounded up the musicians. And when he did, everyone was so pleased by the reunion that they decided to have a little party. They wound up drinking and smoking and gobbling up whatever potions and pills they could find lying around, until a gray light came creeping around the edges of the drapes and doorways like an extraterrestrial force seeking entry. Page watched Butch lurch across the room toward him. Butch put his hand on Page's shoulder in a sloppy gesture of affection.

"So what'll we call the band?" Butch asked.

Page just leered at him. "You lookin; real fine, Coach. You eyes nearly as red as mine."

"Fucked up like a ten-dick dog," Butch agreed.

"Let's call it Jambeaux," Page said.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

"Then how come we should call it Jambeaux?"

"Now, how the fuck should I know that?" Page asked indignantly. "Can't you tell I'm drunk?"

"You musta got it somewhere."

"There's a Swahili word, jambo, that means hello." Page lost his balance and found Link beside him. Link straightened him up.

"Why Swahili?" Link asked.

"Because musicians are the niggers of the artistic world," Page allowed thoughtfully. "And the e-a-u-x ending makes it look Cajun, dig it? That's the sound I been talking about, Afro-Jamaican-Cajun funk."

"I can fade that," Link said.

"And the word jam, too," Page continued. "You know, sounds like you're jammin'."

"Jambeaux." Butch weaved, half in a trance. "Yeah, and the French, les Beaux Jams."

"Right. What do you say?" Page turned to Link.

"I can definitely feature it."

"Jambeaux," Page repeated. He didn't remember much more of the evening. Somehow, they all managed to get home alive.

•

Link popped out of bed at one in the afternoon and began crashing around the apartment. He shook the couch where Blye was sleeping.

"Haw! Fok!" Blye shouted, instantly awake. "Shouted, instantly awake. "Splice the main brace! Avast, me bloody beastly fucking hearties!"

Once he was sure that Blye was on his way, Link picked up the phone to call Scoop and Butch. By the time Page appeared, gasping for breath from the cold shower he'd taken, Link had made coffee and scrambled eggs. Page's stomach lurched against his ribs at the smell of food, but he ate anyway. They had a lot of work ahead.

After breakfast, they went to Butch's place. He had apparently showered, dressed and lapsed into a profound coma. A girl who looked to be about 11 years old wandered into the room, yawning and rubbing her eyes, stark-naked. When she saw the home invaders dragging Butch out, she let go with a yell like a cat set afire and locked herself into the bathroom. As they half-carried Butch, all he could say was, "Whatzit? Whozit?" And they just laughed.

"Daman," Link said, "you're sure not acting like a star."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Page intoned, "the esteemed Senator from Utah."

"Whozit?"

They found Scoop leaning against the wall of his apartment with a Lone Star beer in his hand, fast asleep, naked except for sunglasses. Half an hour later, they had him propped up on the stage at the Burning Spear.

Soon the sounds began to come through the thin club walls and blossom out onto Fannin Street. The bell-like guitar and bass notes, like the call of some futuristic satanic church, beckoning to the faithless. The slash of a Zildjian cymbal, the crisp crush roll of a snare. Finally, the great golden bird, the molten honking of Butch's tenor saxo-Phone. The beauty is on duty, Page thought, listening to Butch play over Link's hell-gong bass-line.Page didn't realize the microphone was open when he started to speak. "Rock and roll!" he said, and the sound lashed across four lanes of traffic. He cut the switch and spoke to the band, laughing. "Line of departure, boys. Lock and load. Time to play some mew-zik. How about I Shot the Sheriff?" he asked. "In A?"

"You singing lead?" Link was changing the chord that ran from his bass to the amplifier.

"Yeah," Page said.

"Where's my flute?" Butch searched through the jumble of instrument cases and wire. He found the slim black case and assembled the silver tube and they all tuned to the piano.

They began the song three times and Page stopped them. The harmony was wrong. Page, Link and Butch were carrying the triad and someone was off. So Butch sat down at the piano and played out the parts until they had them right. They began again. Page stopped them once more in the middle of the song and asked, "Captain, say, you want to put an extra rim shot in there where I say 'Deputy'? On the end of three?"

"Super, yes. You mean like this?" Blye made two explosive sound, using the head and metal rim of the snare simultaneously, like 16th-note gunfire.

"Yeah," Page said. They tried it again and this time ran all the way through. Link's bass line moved up and down the lattice of sound like a muscular vine. Blye's drums were crisp as autumn in Michigan, covering fire with heavy artillery in the background. Scoop's guitar solo was a laser-guided missile, still on the drawing board but pure essence of rock and roll. And the rangy flute Butch played, humming over the actual note, was like a jungle lizard watching the entire operation, heavy-lidded, missing nothing.

There it is, Page thought, as he tuned his ear like a wire, that sound. Rough and raw as it was, blurred around the edges of someone else's song, he heard it, embryonic, pulsing.

When they finished, even Scoop was smiling. They had actually played a song together. It wasn't much, it was terribly unpolished, but the peculiar sounds of those five men mixed like the strange ingredients used in gumbo--bats and roof rabbit, filéand alligator and unheard-of spices. It would clearly take a while ofor the flavors to blend, but the smell that filled the kitchen was dizzying.

Page knew the felling: like the very first time he'd taken down a girl's underpants. And the woman in this case was endless, boundless. However crude the initial grope, they had made music together. And be could see the others had heard it, too. But there was no time to savor it. Jambeaux had to play five real seats that night, for money, to a live audience. The whole thing had suddenly ceased to be theoretical. Raw or not, it was a working band.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," Page called. "Key of C."

"You want me on organ?" Butch asked.

"No, piano, remember?" Page played the five-chord intro on his guitar to illustrate.

Butch went over to the club's old, beat-up piano. "Is this thing miked?"

"I don't think so." Link crossed the stage and moved two of the boom mikes over to it. Butch played the five chords and shook his head in dismay.

"Man," Butch said, "this really blows it."

"Come on," Page said. "Let's play the son of a bitch."

"Oof!" Butch said, ringing into the introductory chords as Blye kicked the first note with his bass drum.

"Yes, yes," Page said into the microphone, ignoring the sad sound of the piano, digging it, it was their sound. he came in rolling: "Virgil Cain is my name and I served on the Danville train."

Scoop filled with subtle, discreet bursts of guitar until they went into the chorus: "The ni-i-i-ght they drove Old Dixie down."

"Hold it!" Page shouted; and the music machine rolled on under its own momentum. "Hold it!!" Finally, it ground to a halt. "We've got those harmony parts all fucked up. I'm singing the three there."

"Yeah?" Butch leaned around to look at him.

"You should be on the tonic." Page plucked a C on his guitar. "I'm on the work night."

"Ni-i-i-ght," Butch sang a C.

"Right, and you're on the five." Page turned to Scoop. "G, right?"

"I was on the tonic," Scoop said.

"Sing the five next time around, Geee?" Page sang the note, tilting his head to one side, questioning. Scoopnodded assent.

"Link sang in two steps, two distinct notes, modulating, "Niii-iiiight," and explined: "D and then C."

"Ahh," Page smiled. "There you go. Fine." He turned full around to nod at Butch and Blye to begin again. This time, when they hit the chorus, the voices were all there, right on the good notes, and Page wanted to leap up and down because it sounded so slick. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and then he just sang it out, whooping at the end of the song. "ROCK AND ROW-WOOL!" he shouted. A few songs later, they were so intent on the music that the applause took them completely by surprise. Scoop jumped clear off the stage. When he realized what was going on--that some customers had come in and were drinking beer and having a good time--Page looked around at the others to see their reaction. Link was grinning wildly.

"Pucker, motherfucker," he laughed at page. "I didn't even see 'em."

"Nearly took an embolism." Page shivered with the giddiness.

"Jesus wept," Blye whispered, picking up the drumsticks he had dropped.

"Oh, this is gonna work." Page said it like a prayer. "I can smell it."

They rehearsed through the afternoon, the excitement so high they didn't even take a beer break. This was the largest afternoon crowd the Burning Spear had had in months. After a five-hour rehearsal, the band had enough standard nightclub numbers roughed out to get them through the night's work, however haltingly.

By the fourth set of the night, they were exhausted. Flubbed notes began to creep into the performance. They were short on material and had to go back and repeat some songs from the first set. But page just grinned through the pain, there it was, his band, he could hardly believe it, it had been so many years now.

When they ended the night with You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, Page had to fight to keep his throat open to sing harmony behind Link's bold, warbling, gravel tenor. No one wanted to party that night.

They awoke refreshed the next day--not a hangover in the crowd--and page made arrangements for an early rehearsal that was more concentrated, lasted longer and left them with the feeling that they might actually be gaining on something.

By the third week of this, they were skating through the night's work, packing the house. Page began springing his own tunes on the audience. Jambeaux was averaging eight hours of playing a day and Page talked the club manager into letting them play only four sets a night for the same money. He could hardly refuse. Business was too good.

After six weeks of solid playing. Jambeaux had become a single organism, all systems functioning with graceful interdependence. They had become obsessive about it and constantly discussed now songs, endlessly going over the tiniest problems that arose. They rehearsed new harmony voicings while riding in the car and even got into heated arguments about such minutiae as an additional half-beat rest somewhere. But the thing began to tighten down, the spaces closed so that nothing could slip through. And as they put together each new song that Page wrote, it was like watching a pyrotechnist assemble a shell for a fireworks display--these pellets here, this powder there, wrapped tight as a drum--so that when it finally detonated high in the sky, it would be in perfect symmetry. And as one rehearsal blurred into the next, the days and nights ran together and the weeks whipped by.

Then one day came the realization that there was nothing left to do with the band. Page's next move had arrived: studio time. That sound he'd been hearing for so long in his head was no longer just a notion, it was something anyone could come into the club and hear for the price of admission: the real thing, that sound. Now all page had to do was get it on tape. Then maybe they could get out of this town.

"The club was revving up its generator and needed a little rock and roll to complete the circuit."

"No one knew how far over the edge he had gone, and only Link saw the brutal ugliness on his face."