These guys are talking again. You just don't know. You just don't know my history as a band wife in this group. A history that goes back 20 years. George's history in the band pre-dates mine by years. One day we'll do a book. Because band dynamics, like family dynamics (actually just like family dynamics), are complex, firey, intense, joyous, torturous, and infinite. They are special. There is nothing just like it, because of the music.
Beyond the life of a band, the band dynamics persist. The wounds persist. The energy persists.
It's kind of frightening.
A Cabo Frio reunion may be in the works, something I'm sure George will talk about when and if it's time.
What I'm talking about is what their talking again--the phone ringing and hearing those familiar voices that wind back half my lifetime--means to me.
What exactly?
It takes me back. I'm 20 and dancing like a fiend in a smokey Rochester club, I'm 22 driving to Geneseo with George, wondering what kind of night they'll have. The inside jokes, the falling off my chair laughing, the dreams, hopes, dashed every single time.
I'm watching the man I love get angrier and angrier, watching the business end eat him up inside, looking on as the dynamics eventually wreck the music, or at least the music men.
How this era tortured my husband for two decades, his in-the-group, out-of-the-group dance. The fights, the bad business, the dirt, the record company rip offs. The endless work, the endless battles, the successes, the losses, and the music.
The music.
That's the part that puts a twinkle in my eye, makes me feel 20 again. They were something else live.
So the phone rings today, and I hear their voices, and all at once I'm cute and 20 and dancing again. I know the bass lines by heart. I know the drum fills. I'm childless, single, in my own apartment. I'm going out tonight with my best friend. Gotta see that bass player again. He makes my heart stop. The future isn't written yet. Everything is possible.
Ding Ding, Round 9 begins.
