The Deep Pocket Groove

© 2012 An excerpt from “The Jake Collins Band: The Fading Silence,”   by Rob Krabbe, to be released August 2012, from NoonAtNight Publications, LLC.

. . . The drum groove; the laser light show finale exploded into light waves dancing around the drums and drum cage.  Soon the bass guitar, played by Stone himself, rif’d in and joined the drums.  This next bit was where Jake’s band shined.  They were great showmen, but they were better at just being “kick-ass rockers,” as the last issue of Rock Magazine had said, “They share one heart beat.”

This kind of groove; a “kick ass deep pocket groove” of course a truly technical definition, was like loose big pockets in comfortable jeans.  Their music had been called “Zen Rock,” a term coined by a music critic named David Shimmer, who smoked way too much reef, but re-invented the band in the write up from the release party of the album that the JCB was touring now.

“The Murph” was then unleashed to lay down the guitar back-groove “crunch”, of the century. As he did, his cigarettes, one hanging smoldering from his lips, and the next-one-up tucked between his strings at the head of his guitar, the already massive rhythms became even fatter and deeper, drawing musical blood like a arterial gash.  It was a ball peen hammer to the chest.  A heartbeat had no choice but to adjust to the tempo of this groove.

It couldn’t have been a better hand off.  The band built the perfect foundation to the lyric.  Jake’s job, now, especially in the last encore, was to make love to the audience with the microphone as if each audience member was the only one in the room, and screaming for it.

He felt the need building . . . a sexual hunger, the need to let escape, the first words of this, his favorite song in the set.  It was no wonder that performing, when it was right, Jake described in sexual terms. He smiled, and allowed the rhythms being laid down to bring him to the place he wanted to be—and to bring the audience to the place he knew they needed to be.  The crowd held its breath, waiting for the first words.  Jake’s ability to transport an audience was already legendary. He helped them escape to a new world, if only for a moment.

Jake stepped up to the microphone, and looked at the faces in the first few rows. Then he closed his eyes and swayed a bit with the groove.

     For this moment, I know

     I can see it, in you

     That’s the place, we will go

     Until I

                 Scream in you

                 Cry in you

                 Die in you

                 FOREVER.

The audience was breathing in unison, short of breath, a few hundred close to the stage proscenium hyperventilating; Jake continued,

     From this moment, no will

You and I, then until

     Now’s the time we will go

     Until I

                 Lay you down

                 Hold my breath

            Live in you

            FOREVER.

 

Completely hypnotized; male, female; in unity.  No tragedy and no pain.  Free from life, fear, everything.  A moment away, from struggles and stresses, jobs and problems—every man, woman, child, brought falling into the soul of the song, the singer, and the chorus.

A thousand years

            Take my soul

     All my tears

            Make me whole

     All of me

            All my life

From this moment

From this moment

I know.

FOREVER.

An instrumental break came next, and a drum rif followed by a razor cutting guitar solo, ripping open the wounds and tearing away what was left of the defenses.  The guitar raked over the crowd, leaving them gasping.

Then came a crazy eternal tom run. Down from the high can,  traveling as if through a rack of a thousand toms, through the cross toms to the floor, leading to the moment unexpected to the audience: a planned explosion timed by a tech-sideman triggered by the cross-snare hit, this set off several massive pyro-techniques and lighting effects explosions.  At that very second, when the blast charges fired, blinding, deafening explosions, Drummer Dave’s cross snare against the rim of the giant brass snare-drum, a “rim shot” like a freaking cannon stopped all the hearts in the room.  It was ear splitting loud and amplified through the sound system, almost broke eardrums.  The explosives timed to the exact same moment, the lasers flashed, the “light cannons” aimed right at the audience fired, blinding the already deaf.  It took seven computers, on a trigger time code, working twenty banks of dozens of relays, all on split-second time, triggered by Dave’s rim shot, and a couple of 12 dollar an hour side techs hit the final cue – a complete sound and lighting black out at the very second of the explosions.

The lights . . . out.

The band . . . silent.

The Techs holding their breath for fear their breathing could be heard, in the middle of the pristine silence.  The full back engineer even shut off his board light, thinking he was being lit up like a Christmas Tree, and it might spoil the effect.   The kind of total effect and detail oriented planning that had given the band that extra something. Their crew was one of the best! Jake thought,  it all seemed to go perfectly.

That final drum crack . . . reverberating for what seemed an eternity, echoed through the amphitheater, out of the park and into the streets, bouncing off buildings, street signs, bill boards and echoing and ebbing for miles. The crowd’s collective gasp was audible throughout the amphitheater. The sheer drama of it was incredible.

Stunned, everyone held his or her breath, waiting for what was next.

Then something even more stunning happened, unexpected to everyone. Something so incredible, no one would have believed it was possible. While hearts thumped waiting, as if the world stopped turning; the deafening silence and wonderful darkness from that beautiful dramatic musical break, in that glorious song . . .

 

Stayed . . .

 

forever.