Page 28 of All Right No
Ginny was convinced the guys knew Dani was there—Hello Black Halo super fan!—but as they’d have to tie her to a tree on the other side of the island to stop her eavesdropping, they pretended otherwise.
“How are they getting on?” Good, hopefully. Ginny had her fingers crossed. The last few days had been more than usually fractious. Ash spent hours every evening griping about how rotten everything was, musically and with the band’s internal relationships. She heartily wished that consultant—Doctor Noren—hadn’t completely put him off the idea of counselling, because he’d likely benefit from it.
Dani scooted around to face her and settled her feet primly on the step below. “It’s hard to say exactly.” She waggled her head from side to side. “There’s been a lot of starting and stopping this morning. Way above the normal levels. I think earlier that’s because they were trying different things out, but then they seemed to settle on a particular version. Only…” She blew out a long sigh.
“Not good, eh?” Ginny settled herself a couple of steps down from Dani’s feet.
“What? Oh no, it’s good. The song’s great, but they’re arguing about it. I mean proper arguing, not just niggling.”
A heavy weight settled in Ginny’s stomach. “When you say they, who do you mean?” She didn’t really require an answer. Everyone knew who the disruptive element was.
“Well, Ash keeps complaining that the link between the verse and the chorus isn’t hanging together right. They use a bunch of technical jargon, so I don’t follow the exact gist of his problem, but he won’t let it go. Every time Xane plays it, he stops him, and they shout some more.” She winced as if Ash and Xane were bellowing at one another now.
“I’m guessing it sounds—”
Dani shook her head. “I can’t hear whatever fault Ash says there is. And while I’m not musically trained…”
“You think he’s making an issue out of nothing.”
“Maybe,” Dani admitted glumly.
To Ash, whatever it was would be a major fault, but everything was a mountain these days. There were no molehills in his life.
“What if we brought them some drinks and enforced a break?” Maybe she could even find a way to remove Ash from the studio for a while so that Xane and Spook could carry on without him.
Dani sucked her cheeks into a lemon sucking face. “You can if you want, but I’m not going up there. This is their fifth album. I’m sure they know what they’re doing. Maybe this is part of the process, and we haven’t realised that because we weren’t around to observe it.”
“It’s not usual,” Ginny asserted. Even she knew most of the writing and demo creating was done by Xane and Spook. Anyone who’d ever looked at the track listings on one of their songs knew where the credit was due. Things were only different this time around down to Ash’s insistence in getting involved. The friction they were experiencing was clearly the result.
“Luthor keeps telling me that some discord is good for creativity.” Dani dug a couple of sticks of gum from her pocket and shared them. “He says the music wouldn’t be half so brilliant if it was all smooth sailing.”
“And you believe that?”
She shrugged. “What I’ve heard so far is damn good.”
Yeah, well, she wasn’t convinced discord and fighting were good for any relationship.
Playing resumed above. Ginny clamped her hands over her ears. Did it really need to be that loud? “Shouldn’t we be wearing ear protectors, or something?” she yelled at Dani.
Dani plucked a set of ear plugs from her pocket and handed them over, having brushed back her hair to show she was already wearing some. “I started off with a big pair of noise mufflers, but they’re harder to explain away.”
“Babe, they know you’re here.”
Dani gave her a tight smile. “Not always.” She pointed downwards as the sound of an electric guitar being played at furious speed made the iron staircase vibrate. Ginny led the way into the shadowy stone sanctuary at the base. The music remained just as loud, but at least the vibrations were no longer making her bones rattle.
“Is that Xane or Spook playing?”
“Both, I think. There, those twinkly bits are Spook. Here’s the chorus coming up.”
A couple more bars and sure enough, the wailing guitar was cut off abruptly, and replaced with a lot of argumentative yelling.
Ginny waggled her fingers in her ears to right her hearing, but she still couldn’t make out what was being said. “I don’t get it, which bit was the problem?”
Dani lifted her hands, palms up. “The last three or four bars I think.”
“Your goddamned boyfriend is the problem.” Xane bellowed from the top of the metal staircase. “He’s a fucking, goddamned fuckwit, and he needs to get over his fucking self and pick up a fucking guitar if he thinks he can fucking well do better.” He pounded down the twisted metal spiral and out of the main door leaving both Ginny and Dani gaping like two goldfish.
“That was a lot of F-bombs, Saint. You sure downplayed that one. That’s not an argument, it’s a full-on crisis, band on the edge, KABOOM! situation.”
