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All Yesterday's Parties (Chapter 45)
🕑 Added 2023-03-12 16:00:02 +0000 UTC“I'd like to introduce you to Samuel, my assistant,” Vincent began, motioning to a young man sitting behind the mixing desk. Samuel was fresh-faced and eager, and looked to be about the same age as the band members. This instantly established a silent rapport between the two groups, though Samuel was keen on displaying deference to his boss, and was anxious to attend to his every task.
“Although he hasn't been in charge of many sessions himself yet, he is still an admirable engineer. Consider yourselves in great hands,” Vincent said of Samuel, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Samuel lit up at this, and adjusted himself with a dignified air before the mixing desk.
“Again, you have one hour. Samuel will be timing accordingly,” Vincent said, donning his hat and coat.
“Excuse me, don't mess with those,” Samuel said nervously to Sylvia, who was toying with the hundreds of knobs on the desk. Aster was beside her surveying them with a ferocious curiosity, albeit from a more scholarly perspective than Sylvia's childish hyperactivity.
Emboldened by her new-found zeal, she entrapped Cecil in a lengthy explanation of the significance of every single button while Vincent leaned into Samuel's ear as he passed him towards the door.
“If they start to get out of control, call the police immediately. Do not trust them,” he whispered seriously.
Samuel, donning a grim look of great apprehension, nodded.
“Alright, please head into the studio and I'll direct you,” Samuel began with a mildly jumpy voice that was not heard by the rambunctious group.
“It looks like a spaceship control console!” Sylvia exclaimed.
“Sylvia, you can't be flipping the buttons!” Cecil reprimanded, grabbing Sylvia's stubby hand as she flipped faders and knobs to and fro.
“Cherryaire, we have come to conquer you!” Sylvia's voice echoed through the intercom into the studio.
Vincent stood near the door, hat in hand, and looked upon this sight as one would look upon a lunatic in the street. He could scarcely look directly at them, uncouth and embarrassing as they were. Above all, though he tried to motion himself towards it, he could not bring himself out the doorway, for every thought in his brain screamed that this would be the last time he'd see the studio if he did.
“Into the studio!” he belted.
This instantly silenced the chatter and caught the group's attention.
Floyd looked incredibly embarrassed at the reprimand, and seizing the newfound opportunity for control asserted his position as chaperone and funneled the group into the studio, where their conversation resumed as they came face to face with all that was inside it.
Immediately upon entering Aster's attention was taken by a small, stout keyboard tucked away between various other instruments. She ran to it excitedly, while Cecil followed in curiosity.
“A Chamberlin?!” she whispered excitedly, examining it. The instrument was covered in a chestnut faux-wood, much like what covered most of the furnishings in the room. She knelt down beside it, where its cabinet was open, allowing a view of the intricate spools of tape and wiring that allowed the organ to function.
“How do you even know about these?” Cecil asked in wonderment, stepping up to it. “These are super rare— like only two-hundred models in existence. I've never even seen one in person before.”
Aster could not tell him that it was the progenitor of the mellotron, one of the most famous instruments to come out of all of the sixties, nor how influential its sound would become.
Telling him some lie about seeing it in a magazine, she eagerly powered it on and began to play the flute intro to “Strawberry Fields Forever”, the most iconic of all mellotron riffs.
“My God,” Cecil said, leaning over.
Aster sometimes willfully enjoyed the act of teasing the others with her knowledge of other worldly hits and delighted in telling him that it was just a “warm-up”.
Each instance of this however only ever served to deepen Cecil's suspicion of the girl in which he already had vested such a curiosity.
It seemed to him as though she were a veritable fountain of ideas, which never seemed to run dry or come across a less than stellar idea.
He had been naturally jealous of this at first, but as these little occurrences began to amount, especially in the wake of their performance at the Old Sailor where Aster had demonstrated such talent far beyond what he had assumed, his curiosity had become violently intense.
After several minutes of the band rallying around the large room like students on a field trip, flying in the face of Floyd and Samuel's desperate calls to start, they finally assumed their positions and began to warm-up.
Vincent had been hovering over Samuel in the control room, watching with terror as the band surveyed his equipment and instruments, and was only just now beginning to find it within himself to exit the studio.
He was in the doorway of the studio's reception room, fitting his hat. His eyes fluttered nervously in his skull as he watched the calm street outside.
“Trust Samuel. Trust Samuel,” he recited under his breath. “The studio will still be here when you get back.”
Taking a deep breath he began to leave, but halted and turned around upon hearing heavy footsteps.
As he looked back he saw Samuel, out of breath, approaching him. He instantly assumed the worst and began to panic.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but— how do you mic the Chamberlin?”
“The Chamberlin?” Vincent repeated incredulously. “Why do you want to mic the Chamberlin?”
“The girl— the one with the eyebrows is asking for it.”
Vincent followed Samuel as the two hurried back to the studio to attend to Aster's request.
Upon entering the control room Vincent's heart raced, terrified of discovering his studio totally decimated. However, instead of destruction, he and Samuel were greeted by the sight of the band playing beyond the window, locked in a hypnotic groove.
It sounded sinister, angular, and moved as if it were one column of sound that was infinitely more than the sum of its parts.
Samuel said something indistinct and Vincent realized he had been gawking at the band.
The band slowly came to a halt, as Marion's technical groove slowly wound down.
“Don't mind us, we're just warming up!” beamed Sylvia, noticing Vincent through the window. “Aster calls it krautrock! You know, like sauerkraut!”
Vincent did not laugh.
“You want to use the Chamberlin?” he asked through the intercom.
“Yes,” Aster replied curtly.
Marion however, groaned.
“You can't use something like that in a rock song,” he complained, putting particular stress on the word 'rock'.
Aster instantly looked back and flashed him a scowl. “Why not?”
“It's not rock 'n' roll at all! Were you even listening to it? It's just weird flute sounds, man.”
“I mean, he might have a point. If we get too weird people might not listen to it,” Cecil added, joining in on the dissension.
Aster was now glaring at the both of them.
“I think it's a good idea! It sounds spooky,” hummed Sylvia.
The band then turned to Floyd, who had made a place for himself on a sofa at the far front corner of the room.
Seeing the band's eyes now upon him, he started in surprise.
“Good heavens, uh—”
He looked with particular fear upon Aster, who was staring daggers into him.
However, he could not decide which was worse— facing Aster's wrath, or the equal headaches that came with upsetting both Cecil and Marion.
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the room at reaching this impasse, which Vincent noticed.
He was overcome with a sudden, terrible fear— like that of terrible storm just beyond the horizon.
He was transported back to the recollection of the show at the Savoy Ballroom and how similar the air of discord which preceded the disaster resembled the argument brewing before him.
His heart was near beating out of his chest.
“You will never become a successful band if you can't prevent yourselves from devolving into bickering at the slightest inconvenience,” he suddenly reprimanded from through the intercom.
The band turned around in surprise.
“Are you going to use it, or are you not?”
The band looked with trepidation upon one another, before Cecil spoke up.
“I mean, it's at least worth trying. We'll only be wasting our hour arguing otherwise.”
Marion groaned once again, sinking back on his stool.
“I can't rock out to flutes!” he yelled.
Aster looked with surprise at Cecil, who quickly averted his gaze.
“Let's get started then, we have two songs to record, right?” he said, getting up to sit at the Chamberlin.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, as Samuel entered the studio with Vincent to begin miking the instrument.
With setup complete, they began their attempts at recording the instrumental backing track, but no sooner did they embark on the first take then Vincent broke through the intercom.
"I'm sorry, drummer, could you stop rushing?"
Marion, in his excitement, had emphasized hard and bombastic playing so much that he had lost the thread of a steady tempo and was gradually speeding past the rest of the band.
Marion, embarrassed, frowned deeply.
“What do you mean, man?! It doesn't sound out of time to me!”
“You're slewing slightly.”
Aster glanced over her shoulder at Marion. He was in fact a bit behind in tempo— always was in fact, but as severe as her perfectionism was, she could never bring herself to bring up the criticism.
“Fine,” Marion grimaced, picking up his sticks again.
Relenting, they started another take, before his heavy-handed playing had to be yet again reprimanded.
Marion was aghast and nearly left the room in a fury before Floyd successfully mulled him over with compliments of his playing.
With Marion slightly more in time, they embarked on yet another take, when Vincent Theodora again interrupted through the speakers.
"Turn down the guitar, can you?" he commanded Sylvia.
This time, Aster snarled.
"The guitar needs to be loud. It has to emphasize the jangly rhythm,” she interjected.
"It's quite distracting. The focus should be on the lead vocals."
Aster's vision almost went red. For some reason, in all her fantasizing, she had not considered the fact that a producer meant someone invariably critiquing her music.
Nobody in Peppermint Plains had dared try before.
“Why don't you pan the guitar off to the side, so that they don't get in the way of the vocals?” Aster put forth.
Vincent Theodora looked at her in confusion.
“We don't have stereophonic technology here, miss,” he replied.
Aster started.
“Just EQ it then! Lower the 2kHZ region to make room for the vocals!” she argued.
Cecil screwed up his eyes from across their little setup.
How does she know so much about this? he thought, deep in wonder.
A further minute of this dialog ensued, before Aster was victorious in the end. These hiccups resolved, the process of recording proceeded smoothly and the band raced through the instrumental backing tracks to the A and B-side of their debut single, finishing in just under ten minutes.
Vincent had been staring through the control room window, when he again realized that the band was staring back at him.
They were looking upon him inquiringly, waiting for him to say something.
Vincent realized he couldn't really think of anything to say.
“Great job,” he stammered out through the intercom, to which the band rejoiced amongst themselves.
“That was incredible,” Samuel whispered under his breath. “Are you sure this is the same band?”
Vincent looked just as surprised.
“Yes, I will remember every detail of that event for the rest of my life. That is the same band.”
He could not however place what change had metamorphosed them into the class act he had just seen before him.
They simply outshone and outperformed anyone in memory who had ever come to record at his studio.
The quality of their performance was so overwhelming, that he found himself straying from thought. He realized he was in shock.
“Okay, last is to overdub the vocals,” he commanded down to the studio, as Samuel changed the reels on the tape machine.
A boom mic was erected in the center of the studio, upon which the group gathered to record their backup harmonies.
Floyd had noticed the thawing of Vincent's stern expression, and was radiating in sly glee.
“They are quite a wonder, aren't they?” he gave, as Vincent drew back to watch the group practice.
Vincent was taken off-guard by this and again lost his tongue.
“They're at least a functioning band this time,” he gave smartly, adopting his serious countenance.
“They will be a marvelous success, I feel,” Floyd rebutted dreamily, as the sweet sounds of Aster and Cecil's two-part harmony echoed throughout the room.
By the end of the hour the vocals had all been recorded, proceeding as smoothly as had the instrumental recording.
The band was elated and bantered joyfully between each other as they bathed in the glow of a particularly successful session. Aster herself was especially ecstatic.
Any and all anxiety she had harbored going into the recording had melted away as they quickly and expertly began to lay the tracks down.
By the time they had finished she could only revel in the sumptuous thought that her gun was now loaded, and the bullet that was their single was now aimed at Johnny Vallerie's heart.
It was perfect. It outstripped anything she had ever made in the past, and it even seemed to stand against the classics she loved in equal quality.
The day was not over and yet Aster was now so assured of their success that even the night before their new year's concert seemed to her only a bad dream.
“Can you get us a test acetate?” Floyd suddenly inquired of Vincent.
“Yes, we can do that. It should take another half hour,” he replied, surprised.
“Wait, now? That's no time to even mix the songs,” Cecil interjected.
“Nonsense, no one pays attention to that.”
Aster grimaced.
“What's more important is we get to Willie Cooper's right away with this!”
The entire group looked at him confused.
“We're just gonna waltz in there?” asked Marion.
“He'd love nothing more,” chuckled Floyd.
