Chapter 12: Alone

Medway High School

12:43pm, Friday, February 16, 1979

As Samantha walked through the music room doors, she turned slightly back towards me and Lynette and said, “It’s called, Alone.”

I just raised my eyebrows at the name of the song as I recalled a popular song from the late 1980s with that title. I wondered if it was an original Samantha song or some incredible offshoot of the song I remembered.

(Note: Please understand I’m not as creative in song writing as Don Lockwood was in his Rewind story here on SOL, so I’m going to make this and future claims about the characters in my story writing awesome songs knowing full well that I’m pilfering them when they fit into my story line. I will definitely continue to credit the real writers and musicians for their work. This chapter title song was written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, and was a #1 hit by Heart from their Bad Animals album in 1987).

“She did a great job with the music and the message in her lyrics is real powerful,” Lynette blurted out as all three of us went to get our instruments from the storage area.

“I’m sure you did a great job with it and that I’ll love it,” I replied as I handed Samantha her Fender guitar case. As I pulled my guitar and amplifier out into the music room, I added, “Sure hope I can get the feel of it as you’re playing it, so I can jump in with you two ladies.”

“With what you did yesterday in class, and how Lynette said you sounded with your electric guitar last night on your own song, I’ve no doubt you’ll be more than able to join in with us,” Samantha replied as she pulled out her blacktop Stratocaster guitar and stood it up on one of her guitar stands.

She then grabbed another guitar case, and when she saw me looking at her funny, she said, “I’m playing my Gibson Dove acoustic on my song and my Strat with yours and Lynette’s song, remember?”

I just rolled my eyes at her simple explanation and softly said, “Duh,” as I plugged both of our amps into the power bar. Just then I remembered we had put our receiver and wireless mics in Mr. Feelt’s office this morning, so I quickly got Paul’s attention after he had his bass amp plugged in. I mouthed, ‘Our receiver and mics,’ to him and moved my right hand around my head in case he didn’t understand what I tried to convey to him.

Just as both of us were about to raise our hand to get Mr. Ballows’ attention and permission to get those electronic parts of our sound system, the gentle giant himself walked into the room carrying our receiver under one arm and a leather bag with our mics in his other hand.

“I’m guessing you rock stars might need these to actually make a joyful noise in a few minutes?” he said with a slight laugh in his voice at the joyful noise part of his statement.

“We were just going to ask about getting them from your office. Thanks for bringing them in here, Mr. Feelt,” I said to my assistant basketball coach as I reached and took the bag of mics from his hand.

“Yes, thanks,” Paul replied as he took the receiver from choir director.

“You are welcome. I’m really looking forward to hearing all of you play and sing, today. There’ll also be a few of my grade 13 vocal students coming in here shortly as well, so it’s not like you have any pressure or anything,” he chuckled out at us.

“Your vocal students are coming in to hear us, too?” Cathy said as she took the six wireless mics for her drum kit from the leather bag. The look on her face was exactly what Mr. Feelt was going for, I’m sure, when he informed us again of his afternoon plans. “Just gr ... eat!” Cathy added sarcastically by stretching out ‘great’ for several seconds.

Mr. Feelt smiled at her and then when he saw us attaching our mics to our instruments, he said with a touch of surprise, “Wireless mics and a receiver! Wow, I’m impressed with that.” Cathy, Paul and I grinned at the big guy’s acknowledgement. Lynette and Sam however, were shocked to see and hear about our electronic gear.

Mr. Feelt’s words there even caught Mr. Ballows attention up at the front of the room, and he said, “You guys must be real serious, if you have that type of sound equipment already. I’ve only seen wireless mics and receivers a couple of times. How did you get a hold of something like that?”

Both Paul and Cathy looked flummoxed at the Little-Man’s question, and they immediately turned to me to supply him with an answer. While I wasn’t expecting that question, I took a deep breath and said, “I was checking on new sound systems a couple of weeks ago, and read about this NADY Systems Company’s wireless system. When we talked about starting our little band, I saw how much freedom it gave to the musicians on stage, so we decided to go all out and splurge on one of their systems.”

I took a quick peek at both Paul and Cathy after I said that to Mr. Ballows and Feelt, and both of them were a tad more relaxed after my explanation. As I looked back down at Mr. Ballows, I then simply thought, ‘Please, no more questions on this wireless system‘ as I hated telling a story like that to my teachers.

Mr. Ballows looked for a second like he wanted to say something else about our sound system, but he seemed to have a moment of indecision, and then he simply said, “When everyone gets set and settled, we’ll start our final day of student created musical performances. We have several students from different classes with us as you can see, who may or may not assist your classmates with their performances. In addition, Mr. Feelt will be involved with grading your assignments and providing feedback to you, along with my judgments and comments.” The tall, slender vocal teacher moved up to the front of the room and took a seat on his stool beside the Little-Man. Even sitting down, Mr. Feelt was just as tall as Mr. Ballows, who was standing beside him.

“It may get a little crazy sounding in here for a few minutes,” the Little-Man said to everyone, “but use the next five minutes to warm up on your instruments and/or your voices. Just try not to get too loud and crazy, please!”

I inwardly thanked Mr. Ballows for this warm up period as I connected the last of the wireless mics to our instruments. When I looked back at him, he smiled at me and barely nodded his head in my direction. Just then the air space in front of me crackled slightly and my cloaked computer materialized right in front of me. On the screen it simply said, “Subtle control of others’ minds,” and I smiled at the Energist reminder message about one of my new mental enhancements.

With my cloaked computer now resting on top of the wireless receiver, I carried a couple of the wireless units to both Samantha and Lynette. I told Sam to slide a transmitter into each of her guitar’s connectors and into her amp, and informed Lynette that she should place her wireless unit in the output connector of her Multi-Moog Analog Synthesizer.

Both girls were astonished at these small wireless units and I told them, “Our sound receiver will integrate all of our instruments’ sound and send it to the amplifiers with the appropriate sound levels and qualities. And with these head-mics, we won’t be restricted to singing from one spot on the stage.”

“God, Mike, these are so cool,” Samantha replied as she examined and fiddled with her wireless head mic. “Are these monitor ear pieces?” she asked as she began to put her set around her head.

“They sure are,” I replied to her and saw her grinning from ear to ear as she placed the small bud into her ear canal. Lynette was attempting to put her wireless head system on, and Cathy quickly moved over to her to help her adjust the tension on it so it would stay in place around her ears and along her chin.

“Thanks, Cathy,” she said to our drummer girl. “Do these things really work?” she softly asked as Cathy fidgeted with the thin microphone piece.

“They sure do. We used them last night when you heard us playing over the phone.”

Lynette just shook her head and walked over behind her synthesizer stand and turned it on.

As Cathy was helping Lynette, I stood up beside Samantha and I looked at the music and lyrics to the song she’d written and recognized it as Heart’s kick-ass rock ballet. After I turned on the amplifiers and receiver, I looked at the display on my cloaked computer screen, and the message there read, “All set for you. During this practice time, the amplified sound will be set to low but you will hear it as intended through your ear pieces.” I couldn’t help but grin and shake my head at the way the Energists were helping me and my friends out here.

When I walked back beside Sam, I softly asked her and Lynette, “Start playing and singing your song, so I can get a feel for what it sounds like. We’ll be able to hear it loud and clear in our earpieces but it won’t overpower the room, right now.” Both ladies nodded at me and I heard Samantha count in the beat for Lynette.

While I recognized the lyrics on Sam’s music stand, I wasn’t sure if the music Sam and Lynette put together was similar to what I remembered about Heart’s version of the song. When both Lynette’s piano and Sam’s acoustic guitar merged beautifully to begin the song, my head felt like it was going to explode for a second. When my mind cleared, I immediately recalled that Lynette’s intro was spot on for Nancy Wilson’s piano sound. Sam’s soft guitar also harmonized that well known introduction to Alone.

Right then, I realized two things about the integration of my ‘future-past’ with my present rebooted teenage life. First, I learned that the Energists were going to allow my musician friends access to future musical materials without them knowing they were capable of doing such things. I thought this was pretty damn amazing and cool for the Energists to allow. Second, I knew I could easily jump into this song, and waited for the appropriate moment to bring in my Silverburst beauty.

I closed my eyes as Samantha started to sing the lyrics, and could definitely hear a raspy version of Ann Wilson’s wonderful rock voice. When Sam got to the end of the first verse:

“... And the night goes by so very slow.

Oh I hope that it won’t end though, Alone.“

I was ready with my guitar for the start of the muscular chorus.

Both Samantha and Lynette looked at me as I gently struck the guitar strings and I could see Lynette grinning at me as this was the first time she saw me actually playing on this beautiful Gibson guitar. Samantha smiled, too, as she gently matched the main piano sound on her acoustic guitar, and sang that powerful chorus as I added my electric sound to her song.

As we played this song, other students were also warming up with their instruments or their voices. I looked over at Paul, who was standing beside Cathy and her drum kit. Both twins were staring towards Sam and me as she sang, and I suddenly thought, ‘Why don’t you two join in – you’ll pick up on it easily?‘ towards them. I noticed a little twitch in Paul’s shoulders and that a sparkle came to Cathy’s eyes.

Paul then moved a few feet away from the drums and he nodded his head to the soft beat of the song as he waited to join in with Lynette and Sam’s playing. Similarly, Cathy got set on her drum throne and waited for the second verse to end.

Both twins joined me with a powerful lead into the chorus, which sounded pretty close to Heart’s rocking version. With our ear monitors working, both Sam and Lynette heard all our instruments and they grinned like mad-women as they heard this song being played as it truly would be in about eight years’ time.

Before we got to my guitar solo in that song, Mr. Ballows called a stop to the class wide warm up session. When everyone had settled down, he asked for volunteers to go first. We saw several of the eleventh graders hands go up, and we heard Mr. Ballows call out, “Jennifer, Christy, thanks for volunteering. You’re up.” Sam and I both smiled at seeing Jennifer Rathje with her tenor sax and Christy Falcon, an alto saxophonist stand up at their seats and start in on a snappy jazz oriented creation.

When I looked back at Samantha, she softly whispered to me, “That was amazing. You, Cathy and Paul picked up on my song like you helped with the writing of it.” I nodded at Sam and then turned to the other three members of our little four person band, and gave them all a thumbs-up before I waved them over to our back row location.

As they all huddled around Sam and me, I softly suggested, “If you don’t mind, we’ll wait until our class time to play Sammy’s song and Right Now. Hopefully during the class transition period, we can have another run through of both Sam’s song and the one we practiced last night.” I nodded to Paul and Cathy as I said those last few words.

Everyone nodded their heads at my words and then Lynette, Cathy and Paul sat down around us to listen to the end of Jennifer and Christy’s jazz performance. When they were done, I said to Sam and Lynette, who had turned around to face us, “That was a lively little tune. Jennifer didn’t miss a beat or note, as far as I could tell, but Christy messed up a few times. What did you think?”

“Jennifer was spot on, even with a couple of her fingers bandaged up,” Sam softly replied and then Lynette added, “It was hard to tell who messed up the beat there, but Jennifer ripped out a mean tenor sound at the end. Christy did flub a few notes, and she just didn’t get that ‘nasty sax sound‘, which I think that tune required. Jennifer definitely did during her short solo.”

I just chuckled when Mr. Ballows basically paraphrased Lynette’s evaluation of Jennifer and Christy’s saxophone playing. The Little-Man complimented them on their writing ability, before he demonstrated how to create that raspy, jazz sound needed for this song from Christy’s alto saxophone. He then had the entire saxophone and clarinet sections practice a few of those jazzy sounding music stanzas.

The five of us enjoyed our time sitting together as four other groups of eleventh grade students performed their musical creations in this class period. Mr. Feelt commented on the two vocal performances, and added a small comment or two to the other instrumental performances when appropriate.

Both Paul and Cathy were amazed that Lynette nearly nailed her critique of each of those performances, similar to what Mr. Feelt and/or Mr. Ballows said to the young musicians. After she did this for the second group, I turned and mouthed to both twins, ‘I told you she was a good at picking up on the musicality of songs.‘

Paul just smiled and shook his head, while Cathy mouthed back, ‘Damn, straight.’

When I turned to see what Sam was up to, she appeared lost in thought so I gently elbowed her arm and whispered, “Penny for your thoughts.”

She snapped out of her trance, softly smiled behind her auburn trusses and whispered just loud enough for me to hear over the three person vocal performance, “I’m uh ... still amazed at how your friends and you, how you picked up on that song so quickly. My band, you know, we uh, we struggle to develop a feel for music, and that is with songs we already know. God, Mike, this ... what is happening here is incredible, and I’m kinda jealous of what I see with the four of you.”

I could see both confusion and some adoration in her eyes as she struggled to put her thoughts into words. I smiled and reached around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug and replied, “After we do our little dog and pony show next period, I’ll share a little musical secret with you, if you like.” Sam scrunched up her eyebrows and then smiled back at me after I said that to her. She simply did one head bob and said, “Okay,” to my future explanation.

At the end of the seventh period, Mr. Ballows and Mr. Feelt were up at the front talking as most of the eleventh grade music students were putting their instruments in their assigned storage areas. The five of us were just lounging around in the back two rows of the music room when Mr. Ballows called out to us, “So, what exactly are you kids going to do in the next class?”

I quickly looked at both Lynette and Samantha, who both apparently wanted me to be our spokesperson, so I said, “Samantha has written a song called, Alone, which we,” I waved my arms at Lynette and Paul in front of me, and then to Cathy beside me, “are going to play, too. And then, we’re going to play the song that Lynette and I wrote. Paul and Cathy have both created the bass and drum lines for these songs, so I think they should also get whatever credit you feel their performance deserves.”

“I see,” replied Mr. Ballows. “You have a copy of the music and lyrics for us, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sir,” I quickly answered and got up out of my seat to carry up the music and lyrics for both of these songs. When I handed the music to Mr. Ballows, he gestured for me to wait there a second with his hand. I semi-nervously fidgeted alongside both him and Mr. Feelt as the Little-Man scanned the sheet music for Right Now. Mr. Ballows handed that music to Mr. Feelt and did a quick once over of Samantha’s Alone sheet music.

“This looks good, Mike and Lynette,” Mr. Feelt said to both of us. “I hope you guys do a bang up job with it, too.” When Mr. Ballows gave Sam’s music to Mr. Feelt, he smiled behind his long black beard and simply looked up at Samantha and said, “Very nice.”

As I turned to walk back up the stairs to my spot with my classmates, I heard Mr. Ballows ask us, “If you’re ready to play your songs, you can start anytime. Your classmates will have a mini-concert as they come in.”

I saw the suddenly astonished looks on Sam’s and Cathy’s faces as our music teacher’s request carried up the room. I turned back to him and raised my eyebrows at him and said, “We hoped to practice these songs one more time as a whole group before we play them for a grade.”

All four of my friends quickly agreed with my words, but Mr. Ballows simply poo-pooed my words by saying, “You’ll do fine. If you mess any of them up, there may be time at the end for you to try, again.”

We then heard Mr. Feelt add, “Nothing like the pressure of performing to get your juices flowing. Just think of this as a championship game or musical competition. You’ll do fine.”

I did a quick scan of the others, and was about to say something, when Cathy chimed up and said, “Come on guys, let’s rock this place. We’ll do Sam’s Alone first, and then bring the music room down with Right Now.”

As I was already standing up in the outside aisle, I extended my hands to both Lynette and Samantha, and helped them to their feet. I smiled at Sammy as she squeezed past me and then gave Lynette a quick peck on her cheek as we stepped up onto the wide top row. Paul bounded over the last two rows of seats to the top and Cathy easily stepped over the last row and headed on behind her drum kit.

I moved over to the wireless receiver and hit the ‘On’ button. I inwardly smiled as I noticed that my cloaked computer device was suspended just above the receiver. When I turned around, Lynette was sitting at her synthesizer and Sam had her six-string acoustic guitar slung around her shoulder. I simply said, “We’re good to go,” to the two main ladies.

Sam smiled back over to all of us and counted Lynette into the song. Once again, both ladies played the beautiful intro to Alone, and Samantha’s vocals were soft and sultry as she sang out the first verse of this song. Paul, Cathy and I waited patiently to join in just prior to Sam and Lynette’s more powerful, rocking chorus vocals.

As we were rocking that chorus, a good number of our classmates were entering the music room. Most had a dumbfounded look on their faces as they realized that powerful sound was coming from five of their classmates.

I could tell that each of us were enjoying this experience as Lynette, Sam and Paul had huge smiles on their faces, while Cathy’s long black hair was whipping around her head as she got into the groove playing her drums. When we got near the end of the second chorus, I was a little hesitant about ripping off the guitar solo as we never got to that part of the song in our prior mini-practice time. However, I saw Samantha mouth, ‘Kill it‘ to me, so she must have determined or figured out that a guitar riff was required after the chorus.

After her second cry of, ‘Alone!‘ I closed my eyes and let my fingers do the talking on my Silverburst’s strings for thirty-five seconds. During that short guitar solo, I felt complete peace and pure unadulterated joy. I vaguely recalled hearing Cathy’s drums and Paul’s bass guitar, but simply feeling those incredible sensations from my fingertips was intoxicating to me at that moment in time. I only came down off that high when I let my guitar sound fade away until the only sound was the gentle piano and acoustic guitar notes, which signified the end of Sam’s song.

Most of our classmates were staring up at us with their mouths opened as I looked around the music room. When my gaze fell upon our two music teachers, my real world hearing returned and I heard Mr. Feelt say, “That was powerfully sung there Ms. Labatt. I only heard one or two pitchy notes when you were competing with Michael’s guitar for the dominant sound at the end. Your harmonies, Lynette were spot on, too.”

“Thanks, Mr. Feelt,” Sam replied to our gentle giant, vocal teacher. “I think I remember those few places, so, we’ll work on cleaning up the mix of our sounds before we play this song, again.”

I also heard Lynette thank the big-guy for his comments before Mr. Ballows began his critique of Sam’s song and our playing. “I’m, uh, quite impressed with your lyrics and the music you’ve written. There were a few times when both of you ladies improvised from what you have here ... but as I sit here and try to imagine the music as you had it written, and then compared it to how you played it ... well, I’d be hard pressed to find fault with those minor changes. Both of you did a superb job with this.”

Mr. Ballows flashed one of his rare beady-eyed smiles as he finished up his comments to Sam and Lynette. Both of the sixteen-year-old girls were smiling big time, and Sammy also was bouncing on her feet as she recognized the true meaning behind our teacher’s words of praise.

“Now onto the rock and rollers in that song,” Mr. Ballows said with a little more fire in his words. “All three of you really set a wonderful contrasting tone within the song’s chorus. You allowed the heart felt nature of the verses to come out by either staying out of those parts, or by adding just the right amount of ... of involvement to highlight Samantha’s vocals. That is a great skill ... a difficult but a very important musical skill to have with powerfully amplified instruments. Well done, there Paul, Cathy and Michael.”

I had stepped over beside Paul as Mr. Ballows was commenting on our performance and gave him a slap on the back after hearing the Little-Man’s evaluation. I winked at Cathy as she beamed her hundred-watt level smile from behind her drum kit.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Mr. Ballows added and turned to his fellow teacher for confirmation, “the only slight misstep with your playing occurred when the twins joined in a half beat or so early for the second chorus. It wasn’t a major mistake, but your timing with Mike’s guitar was just off a hair, there.”

I turned to see how Paul and Cathy reacted to his words, and they didn’t seem to either completely agree with his assessment or possibly weren’t sure of his words. I then saw Cathy nod her head slowly after she thought through his words. Before we could reply to his comments, Mr. Ballows asked everyone, “How many of you sitting and listening to them play, picked up on that small timing error?”

None of our classmates initially raised their hands in response to Mr. Ballows question. Even though I knew this song, and how it actually sounded in ‘real-life‘ better than anyone in the class, I didn’t pick up on that slight early entry.

Just as I thought we were finished with the comments for this song, I saw Jennifer Rathje’s hand go up. She then confidently said, “I noticed that as well from Cathy and Paul’s bass. But uh, the way the song’s chorus was progressing, I really didn’t think it was an error. In fact, I really think it helped build up to the final chorus aspect with Mike’s solid guitar riff.”

I saw both our music teachers’ react with a slight bewildered facial movement at Jennifer’s words.

Lynette jumped in with, “Yeah. That is what I’m thinking, now that I’ve had a chance to replay that moment in my head. Paul and Cathy’s ‘earliness‘ created a more distinctive contrast between the gentle verse and the power-laden chorus. It kinda kicked it up a notch, and added a mid-level transition chorus before Mike’s guitar solo fired it to another level prior to the final chorus...”

Everyone was looking at Lynette as she skillfully used her arms and hands to add visual effects to her musical explanation of that crescendo of sound and voices. “Does that, uh, make sense to you?” Lynette added as she looked at the four of us at the back of the room and then down to the two music teachers.

“Well-well, Ms. Rathje and Robertson,” Mr. Feelt said with a smile on his face, “you, two, once again have surprised me with your musicality and your feel for how songs can be developed. Now, that I put what you’ve just said with the actual performance, I can see how that ‘earliness’ on the second chorus actually did play into the building up the chorus. Nice pickup on that, a nice pickup indeed.”

Lynette’s and Jennifer’s faces both turned a few shades redder at hearing that compliment from our vocal teacher. When Lynette turned back to me, I gave her an emphatic thumb up sign to show how proud of her I was right then.

Before we left that song, we not so surprisingly heard, “Did either of you PLAN on doing that in the song, or was that a wonderful coincidence, which Jennifer and your keyboardist pointed out to everyone there?” from Mr. Feelt.

I burst out laughing at his question and saw that Paul was now fidgeting and Cathy just lowered her head and barely gave a negative head shake to the Big-guy’s inquiry.

Mr. Feelt, being Mr. Feelt, then added these final pearls of wisdom for us, “Sometimes it is better to be lucky in our actions, especially if they result in a better end product. And this is for everyone here, don’t be afraid to experiment with your singing or playing because as your ability improves, it is often these little imperfections to the original creation which take it to a higher level. These ‘imperfections’ often are the things that add the soul to a performance or piece. Hopefully you’ll have someone as sharp as Ms. Lynette or Jennifer around, who can more easily recognize the value of these imperfect-perfections to your work.”

The Big-guy paused to let those words sink in with my classmates. Then he finished his little nugget of wisdom with, “In addition, this isn’t just a music thing, either. Elite performances with their subtle imperfections or adaptations to the norm can be found in various artworks, sports, and well, just about any highly skilled endeavors.”

I soaked up Mr. Feelt’s little speech and easily recognized the value in his words as I integrated them with my previous forty-years of memories. I also noticed that only about a third of the students in the music room appeared to grasp the significance of his words. Based on my prior experience as a professor, I was fairly confident in my ability to read students’ faces and accurately gauge their level of understanding. I was happy to see that Sam, Cathy and Paul all appeared to comprehend the meaning behind the Big-guy’s short, but spot-on teaching moment.

“Are you ready to do your second song?” we heard Mr. Ballows ask as things had quieted down some after Mr. Feelt’s words. I turned and looked at the Lynette, Cathy and Paul before swinging around to Sam. Not seeing any trepidation in their faces, I simply replied, “Yes, Sir, I think we are.”

“Oh, I need to swap out guitars,” I heard Sam softly say. She quickly unplugged the wireless transmitter from her acoustic guitar and swapped it for her Stratocaster. Sam plugged the wireless into its sleek black body and positioned her blacktop guitar comfortably across her mid-section. “All set,” she replied with a smile and moved over a little closer to me.

I returned Samantha’s smile, and then looked over to my new band mates and said through our microphone system, “When you’re ready Lynette, lead us into Right Now.” Just as I said that, I caught Mr. Williamson’s head poking in through the music room door. When Lynette played the keyboard intro, I waved for our vice-principal to come on it, which he quietly did.

I wasn’t sure how we would sound with Sam playing an electric rhythm guitar part, but her easy fills added a new twist to this hard rocking song. Both Paul and Cathy laid down a kick ass beat, which made my guitar playing a whole lot easier and more fun. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Lynette spiced up the keyboard parts before I laid down my guitar solo about three-and-a-half minutes into the song.