Only The Piano Player

Copyright 2004, Mike Whitaker. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

It's kind of hard to pin down where exactly it all started. You could make a case for it being the day Matthew Gray died, but in a way it all began a few weeks before that, after my exam results came out. There I was, with a gap year stretching ahead of me before University, still wondering what to do with it. All I knew is that I wanted a year out, and I'd been earning money at weekends in the music store my brother Dave worked in, saving up for...

Well, that was kind of the problem. Saving up for what? Part of me wanted a trip to the 'States, although the whole 9/11 thing was starting to put me off that. I'd have loved to visit the Middle East, but that was turning into a non-starter, too. And part of me, having spent a lot of time drooling over the really nice, really expensive keyboards in Star Music, was so tempted to replace my somewhat long in the tooth Casio home piano with something a whole lot better.

I ought to explain, I guess: my name's Alison Bryan. I'm a little over 5'8" tall, about a stone heavier than I should be, with shoulder length, kind of drab blonde hair. And my friends call me Ali. I wanted to be a journalist, or maybe... I dunno. I figured a degree in journalism was a good start anyway. But my real love was playing piano. Still is, despite everything that's happened since. I can still sit myself at the keyboard and lose myself in the music. And the memories.

So, anyway. The gap year was stretching away ahead of me, and I figured while I was making my mind up, it couldn't hurt to earn a bit more money at Star Music. Dave's boss Shawn was keen for me to help out, so... there I was, Monday morning, 10am, unpacking the week's deliveries in the back of the shop with Dave. Mondays tended to be pretty quiet, apparently, so, when the shop bell rang just after 11 to herald the arrival of a group of four people, he left me to finish setting up a display of newly-arrived microphone cables.

"Darren, hey. Hey guys, how's it going?" Dave slid in behind the counter with a grin.

"Hi. S' going ok." Darren was a bit over average height, dark, somewhat lean in the face, almost but not quite to the point of gauntness, with a nice but, as I learned later, rare smile. "Need a set of new preamp valves for the Boogie: I think one's on the way out."

While Dave and Darren talked 1960's electronics, I took a moment to check the others out. Matthew Gray I knew, fair-haired and handsome, mostly because I'd sold him a new synthesiser at Easter. The slightly fed-up looking redhead on his arm sighed, and scowled at him. "I'm gonna go shopping. See you in here in an hour?"

"Mmm? Uh - ok, Trish. Have fun." I watched her turn and head for the door, before the fourth member of their group walked across my eye line towards the display of microphones. Short in height, slim, black gypsy top, tight black jeans, rich brown hair that fell in tumbling waves most of the way down her back, and dark eyes set in a slightly Hispanic-looking face.

She must have caught me staring, because she glanced up, caught my eye and smiled. "Hi. You're Dave's sister, right?"

"I... yeah." If I were the catty type I could have hated her there and then for being gorgeous, as well as effortlessly charming, but instead I offered a hand, slightly dusty from shifting boxes out back "I'm Ali. Hi."

"Melissa." Her handshake was light but firm. "Melissa Garcia." Quite a low voice, and about then it clicked.

"Oh... you must be the singer in Matthew's band." Way to go for stating the obvious. And for all I knew, it might be her band. Or the guitarist's.

That earned me another warm smile. "Yeah, that's us. Secret Muse."

I nodded. "Dave's mentioned you guys." In fact, I'd got the impression he'd wished he was playing guitar with them. Dave was leading Darren over to a couple of instruments we'd unpacked earlier that morning, and both Melissa and I turned to watch. Matthew did likewise, leaning his lanky frame on a Marshall stack, as Dave pulled down one of the new arrivals from its wall hangar.

"Try this. Custom shop job - it was made for the guitarist in Desert Sun, but he decided he didn't like it. Only been played once." It was, I had to admit, gorgeous: a rich cherry red, lacquered to a deep gloss that still showed every detail of the grain in the maple front. Darren settled himself on the drum stool we kept for people to sit and try out guitars, and strummed a couple of unplugged chords with an appreciative nod. while Dave found him a lead and a amp.

Melissa moved across in front of me, removed a display card from the top of a keyboard amp, and perched on the amp itself, head slightly titled to one side. Dave turned the power on on the stack he'd plugged Darren into, waiting for the valves to warm up, while the latter worked a few scale exercises up and down the guitar's fingerboard. "Plays nice..." he murmured, absently. I watched his long fingers almost lazily caress the frets, before Dave flicked the standby switch and the tinny sound of unamplified strings was transformed into a warm, mellow, tone. Darren glanced up at Melissa, quirking an eyebrow, and paused, before playing a little dancing run down the neck, and starting into a lush, chordal piece full of odd inversions and tensions.

Most people seem to think that playing a guitar in a music shop is about showing off just how fast and loud and flashy you can be. Darren was different, as if he didn't feel he needed to prove anything, and I leaned forward a little to watch, a murmured 'sorry' as my thigh brushed Melissa's arm where she sat. I glanced down to see she was doing the same, lips slightly parted, rapt, intent on his playing. She probably hadn't even noticed. Not that I could blame her: his playing was almost magical, by turns dark, threatening and then again yearning, wistful. I wasn't sure if he was improvising or playing something he knew, but, either way, it was amazing. And I knew I didn't have the heart to tell my brother, but he could never fill Darren's shoes in this band. Although, truth to tell, I suspected that deep down he probably knew that as well as I did.

I glanced down at Melissa as Darren started into something else, a slightly more structured set of chords. She glanced up, caught Matthew's eye and smiled. He smiled back, nodding at something, and she started to sing, quite softly, hardly enough for anyone else bar me to hear over the guitar. "Sun and shadow, fall on me. / Help me listen, help me see..." The words carried on, slightly surreal imagery, but I didn't care. Her voice was... Actually, what her voice was was the perfect complement to his guitar, dark, slightly husky, with a sense, as the song built, of passion and power just barely held in check. I must have sighed, or something, as Matthew caught my eye, a little nod of his head towards her, and smiled at my reaction.

Darren let the last chord ring, a soft, chiming set of harmonics, and handed the guitar back to Dave with evident regret. "One day. If we get a contract."

I let out a breath I wasn't exactly sure I'd been holding till that moment. "God..." All eyes turned to me. "You guys are awesome... I mean, um... that was... God. I'm babbling."

Melisa reached up, patted my arm, lightly. "Thanks. And it's ok. He has that effect on me sometimes. You oughta hear what we're like as a band. Dave's got a copy of the demo, I think."

Just then the shop doorbell went, and I was saved from further embarrassment by what Shawn liked to call one of our bread-and-butter customers: a parent looking for a starter guitar for their kid. I used to leave those to someone else, since my guitar playing is nothing to write home about, but it turned out, after one mad Saturday when I was the only person free to deal with one, that I was much better at putting them at their ease. Most parents don't know the first thing about guitars or the kind of music their kid wants to play, and my light-hearted and slightly self-mocking yet knowledgeable approach seemed to generate more sales than Dave or Shawn's guitar hero sales pitch. Those kind of customers take time, but they do represent a fair chunk of takings. This one took the best part of three-quarters of an hour, before she was sure about her choice.

After I'd helped this doting and grateful mother to the car with a hundred and ninety-nine quid's worth of starter kit (guitar, amp and lead) and a spare set of strings, a couple of picks and a basic tuition book thrown in for a tenner, I came back in through the glass front door of the store to find Melissa waiting for me. "You're good."

I blinked. "Huh?"

She smiled. "You're good. I was watching you deal with her. You're good with people."

Ok. Blushing now. "I... uh. Thanks," I stammered. "It's nothing, really. I... I'm not a very good guitarist."

"What do you play?"

I couldn't help but glance at Matt for a moment, who was engrossed in a long, technical and occasionally heated discussion with the two D's about the relative merits of modelling amps and valves. "Uh. Keyboards."

She nodded, smiled at me, then looked past me through the door with a slight frown, before turning to Matt and Darren. "Trish is here, guys." I noticed she moved aside, idly scanning our rack of songbooks, catalogues and magazines, as Matt came over to meet his girlfriend, and Dave rang up the pair of preamp tubes that had been sitting on the counter for Darren for most of the past hour.

"Can we hurry guys? I'm parked where I shouldn't be." Trish looked a touch hassled, and I figured now was a good time to finish putting out those mic cables.

"Sure..." Matt made a hurry-it-up gesture to Darren, and the guitarist collected his purchases and followed him to the door, before turning back for a last word with Dave.

"Almost forgot to ask - we've got that gig at the City Lounge on Saturday, and Rich is over in the States. You free to do sound?"

Dave closed the till with a decisive thunk. "Sure. When?"

"Load in's at 6.30, we're on at 10. See you then." And with that the four of them were gone.

That evening, when we'd closed, cashed up and Dave had driven us home, I pestered him till he found their demo. and took it up to my room. Three tracks on a CD-R. the neatly laser-printed cover a black-and-white, heavily Photoshop-ed picture of Melissa in partial sllhouette, and inside it read:

Secret Muse are: Paul Clarke - drums, Darren Kirk - guitar, vocals, Melissa Garcia - vocals, Matthew Gray - keyboards, Kev Lawson - bass, vocals.

Recorded at Quickfix Studios

Produced by Paul Clarke and Darren Kirk

Design by Patricia Yates

Management by LF Management.

I slid it into my trusty and battered iMac's CD drive, turned the speakers on, hit play and settled back on the bed.

Darren and Melissa were good. But oh, my God... the band as a whole was better. I must have played that CD ten times or more that night. The first track, "Touch", driven by Kev's bass line over Paul's deceptively simple drums, finished with a guitar solo from Darren that was... Lets just say 'hot' and leave it at that, mm? The CD ended with "Be Yourself", an absolute stormer with a chorus in three part harmony that I woke up singing the following morning, but the brightest jewel by far to me was the middle track, "Winter Rose". It started with a wash of synthesiser and delicate piano from Matthew, with Darren's guitar and Melissa's voice weaving in and out of each other as it slowly built to an intense climax, before drums and bass faded away again to a olitary keyboards phrase repeated over and over, and Melissa's achingly beautiful, almost forlorn, "...waiting for the spring to dawn / waiting for the ice to thaw."

I think that was when I realised that there were things I wanted to do far more than waste a year wandering round some part of the world. And that I was going to pester Dave until he let me come and help at that Saturday's gig.