Tag: music

All Stories, Fantasy

Wailing Guitar by Steve Sibra 

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I was barely thirteen when my big brother Jimmy came home from school with a wailing guitar.  We were two kids caught up in an ongoing dispute between our parents over things we could not really understand, and we feared they were going to split up and we would become casualties of a broken home.   As a byproduct of this trauma the two of us had bonded over a budding and mutual love of rock music.  Somehow our mutual interest in rock guitar music had given us something to hang onto as our parents became more and more involved in petty bickering and outright bursts of anger.

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All Stories, General Fiction

McKenzie and Sons by Ed Davis

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The kid sneaks in here every day, which is crazy because I’ve done my best to keep him out of my store. It wouldn’t be the first time a guitar, fiddle or banjo walked off. Kid likes to slide in while I’m with a customer talking trade or repair, head straight for the vintage instruments in the back room, get down the 1924 Gibson A-4 and start messing around.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rage by Paul E Goldberg

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The guitar player began. The two younger women, the singers, looked to the dancer, then to one another and laughed. Everyone knew the dancer was crazy. What would happen tonight? What madness revealed when, after standing stock still, face intense, concentrating, ugly, man-like, she would explode in sudden but precise movement. Arms and legs lashing out, a burning, erotic anger masked behind the frozen expression on her face. After moving across the stage, she would come to a sudden, freezing halt, slamming her foot down on the floor—loud. The women startled even when they knew it was coming. The dancer looked at the man—her partner. She always chose a younger man. He looked back, smiled but at a distance. She glared at him then suddenly moved again, whirling, white skirt flaring out to reveal a flash of the carmine lining.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Old Guitarist by Dale W Barrigar

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I saw a little man riding a child’s bicycle in Berwyn, Illinois, outside Chicago, on the sidewalk, along Roosevelt Road. He was carrying a guitar; this was the first thing that caught my attention. The guitar was strapped over his back. But it was also slung down partly across the side of his body so he could cuddle it with one arm while he steered the bike with the other and pedaled the small pedals with his small legs.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ta Da Dum Bing – a story by Michael Henson

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The L train had stopped at the Lorimer Street Station on its way from Manhattan back to Brooklyn when the young man sensed a sudden excitement in the car. He raised his eye from the book he was reading as a full-size stand-up bass sailed past. In moments, a trio of Mexican musicians had set up in the middle of the car.

He nudged his girlfriend “Look,” he said.

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All Stories, General Fiction

How I Made the Greatest Concert Movie of All Time by Adam Kaz

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Things really pick up at the fifteen-minute mark. Lionel Bottom, lead singer, is belting the chorus of “Baby Without Bottle.” He’s suffused in steamy shades of red and purple, highlighting the angularity of his spiky hair and turning his pasty skin pink. He holds the microphone like he’s choking it when he sings, “We are men we need no coddle / We’re like baby without bottle.” It’s a glorious crescendo, really marvelous, powerful stuff, exactly what The Scrum is all about. A crowd of five thousand worships the trio with bacchanalian ardor, yelling, dancing. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rosa Rugosa by Thomas J Daly

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The spring sea lapped upon the shore of Yokohama. In the city a familiar New Year tune played over a radio. It had been ten years since I heard that song. I mouthed along the words half-remembered from nights when, in drunken stupor, my friend, the poet Sunokaze Heki, would recite tanka alongside the music.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Loving You by Simon Ashton

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They hadn’t touched her daughter, the crowd outside. They had wept at her in holy resignation and punched fists of beads at the air, hostile with certainty, but Bec had drawn herself wider and taller, a linen sailcloth harnessing the crackle of hostile air, propelling them forwards to the safety of the car.

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Short Fiction

The Kid Who Thinks He’s Grown by Todd Mercer

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Cognitive Dissonance, my jazz combo, show signs of being on an upward swing, even though we left the audience at the altar last Fall when we almost but not quite played “A Love Supreme.” The show was a victim of unexpected interference from my day job, when my boss Ronnie was thrashed by the competition’s guys. I had to run to see him at the hospital minutes before we were planning to hit the stage. It was mandatory.

Some band members blame the inexplicably awol drummer, who prioritizes a half-week relationship over Cognitive Dissonance’s long-term reputation. Months of practice down the drain. However you frame the situation, our musical reach exceeded our grasp.

After I refund the ticket sales out of my own pocket, it’s ketchup soup and toaster leavings until Spring.

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