"It sounds like a freshly fucked pussy smells," Matt told him, turning on his own power switch and belting out a quick power chord that reverberated throughout the room. He squeezed his fingers down on the neck, stopping the vibration and, subsequently the music. "Now lets get our sound adjusted. You ready, Nerdly?"
"I'm ready," said Bill, who had long since accepted the unflattering nickname Matt had bestowed upon him and had even learned to like it.
"Then let's do it."
It took them the better part of forty minutes to get everything just right. Bill was the closest thing they had to a sound expert and he always made sure that when they played they sounded the best they possibly could with the equipment they had available to them. Each instrument and each microphone was hooked up to its own individual amplifier, which would be carefully positioned and then adjusted so everything would blend together harmoniously. The goal was to keep their music from simply coming out of the amps like most club bands' music-which was to say to keep it from sounding like a bunch of indecipherable noise dominated by overloud guitar riffs and bass that would distort the singing. He wanted those who watched them to hear and understand every word Jake sang, to be able to differentiate between the rhythm and lead guitar, to hear each piano key being struck, to hear the harmony they worked so hard at in their back-up vocals. All of this had to be matched carefully to Coop's drumming, which was strictly acoustic only. Everything was checked and adjusted one by one in a particular order. Darren's bass went first, with the sound being turned up and down to match the output of the bass drums. Next came Matt's guitar. Distortion levels were adjusted first, both with and without the effects, then the actual volume itself. The same process was repeated for Jake's guitar, only this took longer because he had to continually switch from the acoustic sound to the electric distortion, adjusting both individually. Then came Bill's piano, which was where perhaps the finest line existed between too loud and not loud enough. Once the instruments were properly adjusted the microphones could be set. The back-up microphones were the most difficult since they needed to be adjusted first individually and then as a group. Last was Jake's mic, which would transmit his resonant voice through the most expensive of their amps, a $400, top-of-the-line Marshall designed specifically to reproduce clear vocals in venues with poor acoustic conditions. For more than ten minutes Jake used standard singing exercises intermixed with snatches of their lyrics while Bill turned the knobs up and down, down and up, while he had each instrument strum a few bars, while he had the rest of the band sing into their own microphones. This, of course, led to other minute adjustments of the instruments and other mics themselves and even more adjustments of the main microphone.
"Gimmee some more, Jake," Bill would say as he kneeled next to the master soundboard, his ear tuned to the output. "Do the chorus from Descent."
And Jake would sing out the chorus from Descent into Nothing, their most recent composition and the song they planned to open with. "Falling without purpose," he would croon, carefully keeping his voice even, emitting from his diaphragm, as he'd been taught long before. "Sliding without cause."
"A little too high still," Bill would say and then make an adjustment. "More."
"No hands held out before me, no more hope for pause."
A nod from Bill, another minute adjustment. "Okay, now everyone."
And all five of them would sing the main part of the chorus, just as they did it in the actual song. "Descent into nothing, life forever changed. Descent into nothing. Can never be the same."
They did this again and again, sometimes using the chorus of one of the other sixteen songs in their repertoire, sometimes having one instrument or another chime in, sometimes having all five instruments chime in at once. Nobody joked. Nobody even talked if it wasn't necessary. They took their sound check as seriously as a cardiac surgeon took his pre-operation preparations.
"I think we got it, Nerdly," Jake finally said when he could no longer detect any differences from one of Bill's adjustments to the next.
"Damn straight," Matt agreed. "We're dialed in tighter than a nun's cunt."
It was necessary for one or both of them to tell Bill this at some point. If they didn't, he would go on making adjustments to every single setting for another hour, maybe more.
"I guess it'll have to do," Bill replied with a sigh, knowing deep in his heart that if he could just play around a little longer he would achieve true audio perfection, but also knowing that Jake and Matt were tired of screwing around and were taking control back from him.
"What now?" asked Coop, who was nervously twirling a drumstick in his hand. "It's only ten after six. Should we run through a song or two, just to make sure?"
"That don't sound like a bad idea," agreed Jake. "Let's do Descent one more time since it's our newest piece. Just to make sure we got it right."
Darren and Coop both nodded in agreement. But Matt-the founding member of the band-utilized his unofficial veto power. "Fuck that," he said. "We've rehearsed Descent at least a hundred fucking times over the last two weeks. We've rehearsed the whole goddamn set at least twenty times. We're dialed in, people. We rock! And if we fuck up tonight then we fuck up tonight, but pounding out a few more tunes in the last twenty minutes ain't gonna prevent it and just might encourage it. You dig?"
Jake wasn't so sure he dug. If nothing else it would've kept their mind off their apprehension for a little longer. But he kept his peace and agreed with Matt, as Matt expected him to do. "We dig," he said. "Why don't we go grab a smoke before they open?"
They shut off the guitars, the mics, the amps, and the soundboard, making sure not to accidentally move a single volume or tone knob on anything. Matt, Jake, and Darren put their instruments carefully down, necks facing up. They then headed backstage as a group. There they met Chuck O'Donnell who was in the company of two men in their late twenties. Every member of Intemperance-being the veterans of the Heritage club scene that they were-instantly recognized the two men as Seth Michaels and Brad Hathaway, who were, respectively, the lead singer and the lead guitarist of The Boozehounds.
"Hey, guys," Chuck greeted, smiling in a way that only good cocaine could produce. "I heard you doing your sound check."
"Yeah," snorted Hathaway, not even bothering to hide his contempt. He was a greasy looking man flirting with morbid obesity. His large belly spilled out the bottom of his extra-large black T-shirt. His hair was tangled and matted and looked as if it hadn't been washed or combed in at least a month. "Over and fucking over again. Are we a little unsure of ourselves?"
"Hey, give 'em a break, Hath," Chuck said diplomatically. "It's their first gig. They were just trying to make sure everything's perfect."
"Perfect, huh?" said Michaels, who was a sharp contrast to his guitar player. Almost painfully skinny, his long, curly black hair appeared to have been painstakingly styled. He wore a tight, white, rhinestone studded shirt and leather pants. He looked at Darren, who was closest to him and who had the most intimidating physique. "It's like they think people actually give a shit what they sound like."
"C'mon, Mikey," Chuck said, shooting an apologetic look at Jake and Matt. "Don't come down on people for being over-careful with their sound check. Don't you remember your first gig?"