Friday night was free music night round Pete’s, I’d been looking forward to it all week. On this occasion we were going to be joined by our friend Garuda, who’d come over from Kilburn on the train.
The evening started well with Peter serving up some of his legendary vegetarian lasagne - it was rich and creamy with a béchamel sauce, one of the few things he’d learnt to make during a brief stint at catering college in the early 80s. He then made some coffee and passed round a joint, nothing heavy (we were all of an age that skunk gave us palpitations) – some nice Moroccan he’d got off Andy the drummer.
Then proceedings began. Garuda got out his guitar, linking it up to a daunting set of effects, six pedals in total. I linked my Korg beat box to the mixer and fiddled about with some loops I’d made earlier. Pete set up the recording microphone and started to noodle on his synth, and then started grumbling that he didn’t want to play his electric bass ‘because it wasn’t right’. He often took a dislike to one of his various instruments so we ignored him; he’d probably change his mind later.
‘Are we ready’, I asked. Pete gave a thumbs up while G asked if we minded if he took his shirt off…a strange request as we were in South Tottenham on a winters night, but it seemed in the spirit of things, so we not only agreed but decided to take our shirts off too.
We started. Some open tuned droning form the guitar, a restrained wash from the synthesizer. I made an unobtrusive beat, gently slipping it in during a lull in the ambient noodling; trying to keep with the organic groove they seemed to be exploring. It was nice to make…pleasing.
After about 10 minutes the guitar playing became more frantic, larger and more dominant. I tried to respond by making my rhythm more aggressive, harder and with more attack. Pete had changed to electric bass, anchoring everything down with a monotonous drone.
It was then that I noticed a shadow growing over me; something was cutting out the light…I glanced up wondering if Pete was standing close in an attempt to create some rhythm section unity.
But it wasn’t Pete, because there, hovering in the middle of the room, powered by an enormous set of wings was Garuda – playing his Les Paul like nothing else mattered in the world. A sight both monstrous and beautiful. Pete was gawping too, though still managing to play steadily beneath the guitarist’s baroque offerings.
I guess we could of put down our instruments there and then, calling a halt and demanding an explanation; but somehow it seemed to make more sense to continue playing – what exactly were we going to say? ‘Sorry G, we just thought it was a nick name – we didn’t realise that you could actually turn into a winged beast’, no, it made much more sense to continue creating.
And how we played! I reigned in my sound for a moment, and then launched into a furious break beat concoction, laying down layer after layer of shuddering rhythm. Pete was looping his bass now, leaving it to run and producing mountains of squelch and groan from his keyboard.
And Garuda? Now hovering low over his equipment he was playing as if his half human/half bird life depended on it, twisting strings, e-bowing like a mutha, pressing buttons and turning knobs, it sounded like the soundtrack to the creation of the universe!
It was then that I started to feel an acute pain from the area of my shoulder blades, a sort of tearing and ripping sensation, as if the flesh itself was transforming. In agony I turned to Peter to see a look of anguish on his face…as he turned towards his keyboard I looked at his back, and there, growing out of his shoulder blades was a small set of leathery wings. I could only presume that the same grotesque transformation was taking place in my own body.
And these wings were not the magnificent flight making wings of our guitarist, they were weak and weedy, token flaps of leathery flesh, barely 4 inches across. Painful to grow, but useless for flight.
It was all becoming too much, the pain of the growths, the frantic noise, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could continue. I stripped back the beats, slowed the tempo, hoping somehow we could reverse our ghastly metamorphosis. Pete stopped the bass loops and started to make the synth sounds become more harmonic and gentle, subtly hinting to the guitarist that a more sensitive and dub like ambience may be best for all concerned.
At first he seemed not to be listening, sometimes hovering, sometime crouching over his pedals, he continued to make a grand and monstrous racket, shredding his guitar strings with abandon.
But then he slowly began to respond to our more spacious landscape, playing with a gentle lyricism, embellishing the groove rather then dominating it. And as he did so, his wings began to droop and fall, to the point where they no longer filled the room, and seemed to be sinking back inside him.
I watched what I could feel happening to me happen on Pete’s back. The leathery wings seemed to crack and fade, wilting as if they were petals on a flower. This time the sensation was less painful, though strange – slowly our fleshy extensions withdrew back to wherever they had come from.
The music calmed, everyone gently winding down the operation…till I was left with a faint beat I twisted and turned into gentle oblivion.
Pete and I looked at each other, still unnerved by the whole experience. Garuda lent forward and smiled, ‘Should we listen back to it?’
