This shall be the last
song for the night.
Ryan’s voice did little to bring me back from the world I
had lost myself in the moment I walked into the crowd. This was our last gig on
this tour, and my last gig with the band. Yeah, I know what the people present
would think if they knew, is this going
to be the end of Scatterbrain, or will they recruit another guitarist and move
on? Well, to be honest, I didn’t
really know. And I didn’t particularly care either. I just knew that this is
the last night, the last time.
It started a couple of weeks ago, somewhere within the first
few days of our touring. I remembered the last tour, our first set of gigs. I
couldn’t wait to get on stage every night. This time, it was different. It was
not as if I hated to get on stage or I hated to play music. Just that one fine
day, I realized I was growing apathetic to this life. The theatrics, the
screaming fans, the women, the highs, the whole deal. It took a bit of time to
sink in, but once it did, it was a thought which took root inside my head and
just wouldn’t let go. Night after night, on stage, in bed, through strange
highs, I tried to convince myself this was not so, but the mirror which had
always been my harshest critic now gleefully turned my biggest detractor. And
now it had come to this. I still loved my mates, so I thought it fair that I go
through this whole tour before I leave. And tonight I had told them, right
before coming on stage.
You’re kidding, right?
Duuuude, you sure you
know what you’re talking about?
Hey, you can have as
much time off as you want. But don’t go.
They were surprisingly supportive. Maybe they had noticed it
too? But I made it clear that this was it. That I would be leaving by the
night’s train. That I needed a lot of time to figure this out, and they were
welcome to move on without me. No hard feelings.
And so on and so forth.
So, this was our last show together.
The implications of my actions hit me only when I walked on
for this show. I could see the tensed expressions on Ryan’s face. He always
worried too much. Gus looked sad. He had always been the softy. Only Bryan had
it right. He was energetic as ever behind the drums. We all wanted to make it
our best gig ever. But my mind had started to wander by then. To the past. To
the future. To every moment possible except now. Every place in the world but
here. My fingers moved across the frets with practiced ease. I even
occasionally heard my own voice sing out, backing Ryan’s whiskey vocals. But it
couldn’t possibly have been me. I was there in the crowd, watching the band drift
through the night’s playlist. One can’t possibly be at two places at once,
right? The performance was tight, flawless. And all of them, knowing that this
was it, were giving it that extra bit which probably made this a seminal
performance, but I wasn’t sure it was me there with the band. Just a stranger
who knew the right notes and the right moments to sing along.
The last song was our current trademark, a cover of one of
Solace’s best known tracks, just if. It was somewhat prophetic, since this was
part of the last record Solace had out before they split. And this had been the
song which had, in a very roundabout and obscure fashion, if I might say so,
had brought us together.
If I could have just
one more dream/ a last poem put to song/ I don’t care if I dunno what it means/
but I don’t mind singing along.
This was how my favourite part of the song went. The guitars
went silent. The bass just played the skeleton notes first time around, and
then during the repeat pass, all the instruments would come in one by one till
at last the lead guitars would come and lead to a short but devastating solo.
We regularly covered this song, and had even played an acoustic version of it
one time when a lot of our gear got misplaced right before a show and all that
we had left were a pair of acoustic guitars. This was one of those songs that
start out humble. Like, while being written, nobody really expects it to do
very well. But somehow it ends up becoming one of those songs which defines
careers. In this case, this ended up being Solace’s swansong. But as with
swansongs, it ended there for Solace. And would end for us, too.
