This is one I was never so sure of. It would have made the cut into the story, but it does contain a very long paragraph that tries to describe music to a reader.
Chaos music is now completely original. It was easy to point out songs from the period in the first two and a half books that the band played. You could look them up and listen. How does one describe music that has never been played? A small hint from Tony was that their signature hit Invisible Lover was, "just a thinly disguised song about masturbation." The final paragraph of State of Chaos tries to impart some sense of it. But, you can't hear it, and, well, it's music.
As a writer, it's pretty hard to do. Then the scene shifts gears and I seemed to end up with a bit of a poignant scene with the senesthesic and the non.
Tina leapt off the stage travelling several feet towards the sand below only to be snatched out of the air by Riley, who was in on the stunt. She laughed heartily as he swung her around once and set her on her feet in the sand.
The concert had been an almost liberating experience. There were no stuffy production management types running around insisting the band do things just so in order to have the lighting do just this or have a pyrotechnic go off on that beat. It was just what they'd wanted it to be: playing music on the beach for their friends. About four thousand of them.
Still they'd pulled it off. Some people were wondering why the stage had been built through the week, but the concert had only been announced that very morning as a free event for locals. A free Chaos concert announced any sooner probably would have drawn tens of thousands from out of town.
Four thousand people attending on twelve hours notice out of a population of only around a hundred thousand was still pretty impressive.
"God that was fun!" she said, drawing Riley down for a kiss.
Riley looked down at her, still in awe after a year that this amazingly talented and beautiful girl came to him when she left a stage. "It sounded like you guys were having fun. That thing you guys just did, that was amazing!"
That thing had been a thirty-minute improvisational version of Invisible Lover that was nothing short of superhuman. It started when Tony literally intercepted the third verse with a guitar bridge that rolled back into a solo that he handed off to Dewayne, then he took that back and prompted Tina into a guitar solo and then apparently he prompted Anita to pick up a guitar even though she normally didn't for the song. When Tony picked up the rhythm again it wasn't Tony's guitar at all. He had put down his guitar completely and moved to the piano. When he picked up again he was back in the pattern, obviously prompting a keyboard solo from Rebecca, then with a toss of his head sent Tina, still with a guitar strapped over her shoulder, to her keyboards and the four-way guitar jam session turned into a three-way session on keyboards. Eventually, on a prompt from Tony, Anita took back over the rhythm, or in the case of Invisible Lover the lead rhythm guitar piece and Tony began the vocals for the third verse. Everyone had huge smiles on their faces thinking it was great fun. The final chorus was always done a cappella and started normally until Tony then began singing it in tune with one of the theme variations Rebecca has used on piano. Tina caught it in two notes, Rebecca in three then the entire vocal harmony dissolved in to a single, chaotic pin-point as the other four adjusted and exploded back outward in Tina's diabolical seven-part vocal harmony that was the band's trademark. That turned into a purely vocal seven-way jam session with nothing but Jerry keeping time with a light bass-and-snare beat before they finally ended the song, and the concert.
"Where is he anyway?" Tina asked. "That was just insane. He saw it, he had to."
"Who?" Riley asked.
"My brother! I wasn't doing that, it was all Tony's doing. I'm not even sure how we did it," she said, but in an instant she did. Playing the pattern of the music back in her head she examined it up to the point where the vocals twisted and pinched down to a single point before exploding out again in some hippy-scientist's vision of the Big-Bang that created the universe with rock-n-roll. It was… glorious.
Tina was as high as a kite, on music.
"There he is," Riley said, pointing back to the stage where Tony was lifting Anita down in a bit more controlled manner than Tina's leap. They had promised to leave by the front of the stage. Tina broke away from Riley and raced to Tony leaping into his arms and wrapping her own arms and legs around him until he crashed into the ground and ended up flat on his back with Tina sitting on his stomach.
"You saw it! You saw it, you had to," she said excitedly, looking down at her brother.
Tony rested his head back in the sand and gave his sister a wan smile. He shook his head slightly, "No, I heard it. I bet it looked fantastic though."
'Amazing," she said, leaning forward and allowing his arms to wrap her in a hug. "It looked beautiful."
Yeah, that paragraph was ponderous I guess. It never seemed appropriate to break it up though.
Ezzy