Kruppo

Chapter 21
“How you holding up about the job?” I woke up at around nine in the morning that next day, and found Jake was the only other guy awake. We both sat around the table in the kitchen, eating a quiet breakfast that Megan had cooked for us before exiting the room.
Jake’s eyes were steady, as was his demeanor as he spoke. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not gonna lose sleep or cry over it. I’ll just have to find another place to work.”
I was relieved to hear this from his own lips. Most of the guys last night had been worried that Jake would stress over the loss and therefore would be difficult to work with for the next few days, but it was fairly obvious that we all had forgotten that Jake was a trooper. He let very little get to him, and even when something did shatter his peace, Jake didn’t let it stop him from maintaining his grit and iron will.
I patted him on the shoulder then. “Okay man,” I told him. “Just let me know if you wanna talk.”
“Talk? Talk about what?” Jake’s face took on a humorously dubious look. “I lost a job, dude. It’s not like I lost a family member or something.”
Of course. How sad of me to think that Jake was agonizing over this blockbuster job; a job, according to Jake, that was far more boring and unsatisfying than anything he’d ever done. I laughed at his words, and agreed with him. “Yeah, I guess it’s not a big deal.”
“I’ll tell you what the big deal is,” Jake said then as he reached for his cup of coffee. “Today we’re playing the first live show that Juggernaut’s ever done.”
“Well, not quite,” I reminded him. “We played two before you joined the band. But that was a long while ago.”
“Well, the first live show in a long time.” Jake concluded. “Not much of a difference.”
Indeed. I was already starting to feel the nerves. There was something about facing a crowd that set off my internal systems and got me worked up, and not in a pleasant, excited way. I had never liked performing live, if only because these nerves ruined all of the fun for me. I usually took a song or two to really relax in front of crowd; at least, that had been the case in the times before, when Juggernaut had played live on a rare occasion.
It wasn’t so much nerves of screwing upon stage that bothered me. What it was really about was the worry that, even if we were playing the show of our lives, the crowd would detest the music and boo us off stage. That had always been the pinnacle of my fears; that kind of rejection was one that I had fervently hoped I would never have to face.
And here I was again, trying to toughen myself up for yet another show. But this time, it had been years since I’d tried to do thing kind of thing; I hadn’t played for more than a crowd of fifteen in my entire life. And according to Marty, his coffee shop somehow managed to draw a large gathering in the summer almost every night for the bands that performed there. All sorts of bands had come and gone through the shop; sometimes he had a jazz band come in, sometimes a grunge-esque band. Marty usually avoided the metal groups, if only because there were too rowdy for his liking, and the last thing he needed was a moshpit in his store, even if it was a decently-sized store.
Lucky for him, Juggernaut was in transition from psychedelic-influenced sound to a jazzier type. It was a change that none of us, save for Brian, was enjoying. Therefore, I was determined to enjoy this show tonight as much as I could, and remember our original sound before it went the way of the dodo.
Still, as much as I wanted to keep the peace in the band and maintain all of its members, I was also discontent with the jazz sound that Brian was imposing on the sound. It wasn’t that it wasn’t hard enough for us; we all were ready to slow the pace down a bit as it were. But the jazz just didn’t fit what Juggernaut had been, and what it was now. Brian was the only calm guy of the group. The rest of us were crazy bastards and generally drunkards, save for David and me. Our sound was one inspired by the chaos we forced on ourselves through the lifestyles we lived.
And even though my own lifestyle had been cleaner in the past years, I could feel the walls caving in, slowly. A part of me wanted to stop over-analyzing everything and cut loose. That part was tired of having to hold back while everyone else was having fun in their own fashion. There was nothing worse than watching as everyone else was indulging in things you had once partaken in. Especially when those things had been the only kind of escape you had in your power; the only kind of escape that sufficed in times that had seemed almost impossible to survive otherwise.
The music had, and always would, be influenced by the events of the creators of that music. My past had been something I’d always hidden behind Juggernaut’s hectic-yet-fun sound, a way of declaring that while I’d seen some bad things in my time, not all was horrible. If only I’d had the strength to overthrow those cravings for the escape Heroin gave me back then, perhaps now, in this modern time, I could’ve enjoyed the jazzy sound that Juggernaut was evolving into. I would be having a ball with life, instead of dragging a book of bad memories around with me, desperate to forget them.
But ruminations were for those who had too much time on their hands, and that was something Juggernaut had very little of, at the moment. I finished up my own coffee, waiting for Jake to finish his before we went to wake the others.

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I'm so post-rock I shit sad birds