WELCOME ONE & ALL. We’re back with one of our two monthly stories during this rather unique offseason. I’m taking this quarter off from our weekly RED LIGHT BYTES newsletters and stories to focus on other pursuits and to keep 365 INFANTRY from slipping off the backburner and into a real hiatus.
That said, we’ve seen a rise in paid subscribers recently (which I appreciate) and as such, I’ve previously promised two paid-exclusive short stories during this period. This is the first, with the second due at the start of September. I’m calling it “NEW BREED” to both separate it from the newsletter, and because I’m something of a different animal myself when it comes to this series nowadays. This rebrand of RED LIGHT BYTES stories will also stick around when I return to weekly offseason publication in October.
That said, don’t be surprised if I come back with some free QUICK BYTE micro-fiction throughout August. These little exploratory flash stories have proven more important to my process than even I gave them credit for, and I think need the exercise to keep the old writing muscles from atrophying. For now though, enjoy this latest from the world of 365 INFANTRY, and keep your eyes peeled for whatever comes next. Godspeed.
It’s a delicate thing to sell out. Any hound worth their salt knows it’s all a matter of balance. Phasing out the old sound, fazing in the new sound, throwing a few bones to the oldheads who were there for the first album.
Yeah, not many hounds are worth their salt, are they?
Fuck all them though, ‘cuz lucky for your ol’ pals in Metröpolis, “softening the sound” didn’t mean softening at all. When yours truly brought in our Injun wunderkind Brett into the fold, he gave me and the boys a first-class lesson in getting some of the cheddar floating around during that AOR revival in the 2460s.
Now everyone stay calm, alright? It was gonna be a one-time experiment. We even had a rock-your-ass-off album tucked in the ol’ vault to drop if the shit we came up with sounded off. Your friendly neighborhood Nic Ridgefield here ain’t an idiot, even when I’m three sheets to the wind.
Brett called the whole operation “making a play to the gallery,” a little turn of phrase he twisted from an interview with an old-time rocker, David-something-or-other he told me. Basically, he saw this as trying out the popular sound and seeing how it gelled.
Now for me, I’m pragmatic. People want their reverb-drenched desert dream fluff, let ‘em have it. Ours would be heavier by default, but I remember it was our favorite brown-furred bastard Harry who came in with the demands.
Lots of ‘em at that.
“Rule 1,” the indignant guitar god began, “We don’t change our soloing styles. Rule 2: We don’t change our lyric style. We sing about cool shit, not about how we’re sad ‘cuz our bitch dumped our ass. They would if we sang sourpuss crap like that. Rule 3: If I see the phrase ‘let your feelings show’ on the lyric sheet, I’ll blow this studio to kingdom-come.”
Brett nodded congenially while I and our white drummer Rory broke up in hysterics. We’d never seen our Harry as livid as he was at this very moment. And again, I got it. The mutt was a true-bluer. He grew up on bitchin’ little 45s his old man Rod and Missus Bette played around the house, real rockabilly shit. Doing anything this commercial was a bit of a piss-take to him. To our pleasant surprise though, Brett held his own fine with our leather-bedecked prima donna.
“The best cuts don’t got any of that.” the tan hound smiled. “We don’t wanna be fake about it, we just want to spice the style up.” The Navajo axe-slinger bellied up to his pedal board and tapped a few before playing a little arpeggio. One little phrase he kept looping, over and over. Sounded like desert winds as dusk, the light catching the specks as the breeze blew them around.
“How we liking it?” he quizzed.
My answer came in a nice, fluid bass line. Or at least it was gonna be before I realized I’d have to set the ol’ Rick done and go for a fretless. When I played the lick again, whole room went dead silent. Evidently I hadn’t been seen with a fretless since the late Cretaceous, but this momentous occasion was ruining the flow of Brett’s noodling.
“DON’T Y’ALL STOP FOR SHIT!” I bellowed.
Reflexively, Rory counted off on his hi-hat and gave us a steady midtempo beat, a good four-on-the-floor track with plenty of ride cymbal on top. Dude broke out some killer little fills too.
So there the three of us were, looping and looping, caught in our own trance, before we realized Harry hadn’t jumped in yet. Once Harry saw the three of us staring back at him, he knew it was nut-up time. He stared us all down like a bull, ready to gore all three matadors in the ring.
And then from outta nowhere, the kid rips a fucking banger. A big, heavy ol’ riff that just wrapped the whole track up for us in one neat little package. We found our groove, got the demo down, and before we knew it, Harry had us cooking up gang vocals and all sorts of other shit. I don’t know which muse sucked him off that day, but he was on the ball and had the song done by the end of the session. Like done-done, mix and all.
He called it “Get Out” after the big shouty chorus thing he came up with on the spot. He got deep in his bag on the lyric front too. You’d think it’d be about some love affair gone wrong, but the way he came on writing about spiders and twin moons in the sky, you’d think he was having an ayahuasca flashback. I asked him about it before we all hightailed it for home, but all he said was “sounded right for the time” before speeding off in his rat rod.
“Not a bad change of pace for him then.” I smiled before turning to Brett. “How’d you feel about it Mister A&R?”
“He’s the first wolf I ever saw shit a gold record.” he grinned.
I thought that woulda jinxed us, but lo and behold, here I sit with this stupid ol’ song still making the rounds on the radio and still going over gangbusters at shows. Not bad for a gallery play, now is it?