Blue Muse, part 3
In which a bass player is acquired, and Miniver resolves to no longer hate his slightly unusual name...
It took a week and a half or so for the advertisements and rumor mill to start stirring up interest in auditions, during which time Miniver, Nikki, and Jenna spent their days planning how they would handle potential group members, trying to get the word out louder and better, and punctuating periods of business with spontaneous jam sessions. For Miniver, it was a refreshing change from the usual “nothing” he usually did all day when he wasn’t travelling. Pickles had his own projects that kept him busy most days-it was nice, Miniver thought, not to start feeling like a housewife during down times. He and Nikki had exceptional songwriting chemistry together that only got better when Jenna was there to keep them focused. The steps they took were small and often without clear direction, but they never felt unproductive.
They’d been working together for nearly two weeks when they held their first auditions. Jenna had arranged for the use of one of the hotel’s conference rooms rather than Nikki’s disastrously chaotic suite where the three of them spent most of their days together (they had upgraded from his original small room when it became clear that it was to also be the band’s center of business operations and make-due studio). Jenna, like the guitarist, was an indefinite resident of the hotel two floors down, and seemingly had been for some time. Being on good terms with the staff, she had charmed them into allowing the band to use the room at no cost as long as no one else needed it and they left it clean. The trade-in for not having to pay for it was, of course, that they could only use it at odd hours. Not that this proved to be an issue, really-there are few people, Nikki estimated, more willing to compromise than an unemployed musician.
Xzavier Verdant Quertermous-Quibodeaux always won at Scrabble. It was his superpower, he had explained to the disbelieving faces of Nikki, Miniver, and an unusually expressive Jenna. A blessing from his parents, whom he had never known, but presumed to have been fairly eccentric individuals prior to their having been prematurely extinguished on the third day of their son’s life in a freak accident involving a curling stone, a tourbus full of inexplicable Moroccan gentlemen (in CANADA, in the WINTER), and a very unlucky goose. He’d even handed over his birth certificate, which he always had with him to verify it really was the name he’d been born with, and a newspaper clipping detailing the accident that had revoked his parents’ third dimension and their lives. These were necessary proofs demanded of him with understandable frequency.
Verdant, as he insisted on being called, did not look like the owner of such a… distinguished name. He looked, the other three all thought but did not say, like the sort of man one would expect to be still living in his mother’s basement-someone you’d expect to be called Bob or Mickey or John or… Bobby, he reminded Miniver a great deal of his father Bobby. He was older than the others by some five years or so (older than Jenna by a decade). Standing before them in an ancient teeshirt and jeans (both clean, though unironed), he was unshaven, unkempt, and smelled faintly of cheap cologne-all of which Miniver suspected was at least partly affectation-and remarked upon the world with a casual air and an easy smile.
Verdant, like all the others who had auditioned during the previous three days, played bass. Hardly the easiest instrument to judge, but as the band had not yet determined what else would be necessary, it was what they had called for. Verdant was the sixteenth in a string of almost identically boring players. When finally they gave him his cue and he played for them, the quality of his playing was not strikingly better than anything else they had heard, but he had an energy the others lacked. He Was a natural showman: he did things loose and fun, and when Nikki got up with his guitar to play with him, Verdant showed that he didn’t just know the right notes to play, he understood why he was playing them. He followed Nikki’s lead into a solid rendition of Kashmir, and continued to meet his challenges to improvise until the two of them were making it all up as they went along. Once that became clear, Jenna hopped off the table to join them with her violin, and Miniver listened until he found their rhythm and sang along, making up words as he went. It was nursery-rhyming nonsense, but it worked.
Verdant was in-again, they said, on a trial basis, but they suspected there would be no need to have that technicality to fall back on.
He had his own place to crash nearby; it turned out to be conveniently half way between the hotel and Miniver and Pickles’ place. They sent him back with instructions to be ready for Miniver to pick him up on his way to the hotel the next morning, then the three of them spent the evening reorganizing the communal office and the music rooms in Nikki’s suite to make spaces their fourth member could call his.
The following day, while Nikki and Jenna worked on drafts of new ads to put out, Miniver introduced Verdant to their studio. Aside from the desk space used to dump papers onto haphazardly, everyone now had one drawer that was sacred, to be touched by them alone, and one shelf on the music room bookcase. Verdant took all of 20 seconds to toss a few folders he’d brought with him into his desk drawer, then whipped out a bottle of good whiskey from his briefcase and set it down in front of Jenna like an offering to the gods.
The four of them spent the rest of the day together in the studio with their music. Verdant fit with them as well as if he’d been there all along. He was easy to get along with-clearly attracted to Jenna but playfully tolerant of Nikki and Miniver’s advances towards him and each other.
That night, the four of them took Verdant’s bottle and drank it on the roof while they discussed what they would call themselves. It was Nikki’s drunken crooning to the near-full moon over their heads that inspired Miniver’s ultimate decision.
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will hold
I heard somebody whisper please adore me
And when I looked to the moon it turned to gold…
They emptied the dregs of the bottle into their paper cups. They passed the bottle from hand to hand until it reached Miniver. They raised their cups and drank. Miniver flung the bottle from the rooftop and announced it to be their christening.
They were Blue Muse.
It took a week and a half or so for the advertisements and rumor mill to start stirring up interest in auditions, during which time Miniver, Nikki, and Jenna spent their days planning how they would handle potential group members, trying to get the word out louder and better, and punctuating periods of business with spontaneous jam sessions. For Miniver, it was a refreshing change from the usual “nothing” he usually did all day when he wasn’t travelling. Pickles had his own projects that kept him busy most days-it was nice, Miniver thought, not to start feeling like a housewife during down times. He and Nikki had exceptional songwriting chemistry together that only got better when Jenna was there to keep them focused. The steps they took were small and often without clear direction, but they never felt unproductive.
They’d been working together for nearly two weeks when they held their first auditions. Jenna had arranged for the use of one of the hotel’s conference rooms rather than Nikki’s disastrously chaotic suite where the three of them spent most of their days together (they had upgraded from his original small room when it became clear that it was to also be the band’s center of business operations and make-due studio). Jenna, like the guitarist, was an indefinite resident of the hotel two floors down, and seemingly had been for some time. Being on good terms with the staff, she had charmed them into allowing the band to use the room at no cost as long as no one else needed it and they left it clean. The trade-in for not having to pay for it was, of course, that they could only use it at odd hours. Not that this proved to be an issue, really-there are few people, Nikki estimated, more willing to compromise than an unemployed musician.
Xzavier Verdant Quertermous-Quibodeaux always won at Scrabble. It was his superpower, he had explained to the disbelieving faces of Nikki, Miniver, and an unusually expressive Jenna. A blessing from his parents, whom he had never known, but presumed to have been fairly eccentric individuals prior to their having been prematurely extinguished on the third day of their son’s life in a freak accident involving a curling stone, a tourbus full of inexplicable Moroccan gentlemen (in CANADA, in the WINTER), and a very unlucky goose. He’d even handed over his birth certificate, which he always had with him to verify it really was the name he’d been born with, and a newspaper clipping detailing the accident that had revoked his parents’ third dimension and their lives. These were necessary proofs demanded of him with understandable frequency.
Verdant, as he insisted on being called, did not look like the owner of such a… distinguished name. He looked, the other three all thought but did not say, like the sort of man one would expect to be still living in his mother’s basement-someone you’d expect to be called Bob or Mickey or John or… Bobby, he reminded Miniver a great deal of his father Bobby. He was older than the others by some five years or so (older than Jenna by a decade). Standing before them in an ancient teeshirt and jeans (both clean, though unironed), he was unshaven, unkempt, and smelled faintly of cheap cologne-all of which Miniver suspected was at least partly affectation-and remarked upon the world with a casual air and an easy smile.
Verdant, like all the others who had auditioned during the previous three days, played bass. Hardly the easiest instrument to judge, but as the band had not yet determined what else would be necessary, it was what they had called for. Verdant was the sixteenth in a string of almost identically boring players. When finally they gave him his cue and he played for them, the quality of his playing was not strikingly better than anything else they had heard, but he had an energy the others lacked. He Was a natural showman: he did things loose and fun, and when Nikki got up with his guitar to play with him, Verdant showed that he didn’t just know the right notes to play, he understood why he was playing them. He followed Nikki’s lead into a solid rendition of Kashmir, and continued to meet his challenges to improvise until the two of them were making it all up as they went along. Once that became clear, Jenna hopped off the table to join them with her violin, and Miniver listened until he found their rhythm and sang along, making up words as he went. It was nursery-rhyming nonsense, but it worked.
Verdant was in-again, they said, on a trial basis, but they suspected there would be no need to have that technicality to fall back on.
He had his own place to crash nearby; it turned out to be conveniently half way between the hotel and Miniver and Pickles’ place. They sent him back with instructions to be ready for Miniver to pick him up on his way to the hotel the next morning, then the three of them spent the evening reorganizing the communal office and the music rooms in Nikki’s suite to make spaces their fourth member could call his.
The following day, while Nikki and Jenna worked on drafts of new ads to put out, Miniver introduced Verdant to their studio. Aside from the desk space used to dump papers onto haphazardly, everyone now had one drawer that was sacred, to be touched by them alone, and one shelf on the music room bookcase. Verdant took all of 20 seconds to toss a few folders he’d brought with him into his desk drawer, then whipped out a bottle of good whiskey from his briefcase and set it down in front of Jenna like an offering to the gods.
The four of them spent the rest of the day together in the studio with their music. Verdant fit with them as well as if he’d been there all along. He was easy to get along with-clearly attracted to Jenna but playfully tolerant of Nikki and Miniver’s advances towards him and each other.
That night, the four of them took Verdant’s bottle and drank it on the roof while they discussed what they would call themselves. It was Nikki’s drunken crooning to the near-full moon over their heads that inspired Miniver’s ultimate decision.
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will hold
I heard somebody whisper please adore me
And when I looked to the moon it turned to gold…
They emptied the dregs of the bottle into their paper cups. They passed the bottle from hand to hand until it reached Miniver. They raised their cups and drank. Miniver flung the bottle from the rooftop and announced it to be their christening.
They were Blue Muse.