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Part 1

1.
I don't know what I expected, but this certainly wasn't it.
Standing on the front lawn I didn't feel a thing.
I stared at the basement windows straining to hear the noise, the music.
Silence.
I tried to remember a moment we might have shared, something we may have done together, something that would have meant something to him, something that would have prompted him to mention my name in his final song.
At first, nothing.
Then my muddy memory started to roll.

2.
I played the song again that night. It was so beautiful. It shone above anything else I had ever heard on the radio. I was driving home from work the first time I heard it. I almost crashed twice. The first time as a result of hearing the DJ say that Robbie Morgan was dead. The second time came right after -- when they played his song. I got so lost in it that I completely forgot I was driving. Fortunately I was able to gather my wits long enough to pull over to the side of the road. I turned up the volume and was taken away to a place I never knew existed -- a state of pure, aural bliss. When I slowly opened my eyes and came out of my daze 6 minutes and 47 seconds later I saw that I was not the only car on the side of the road. There were one car in front of me and a couple more in my rear-view mirror. Only as I came completely out of my daze did the full realization of Robbie's death come to me. I tried to remember what the DJ had said. Something about receiving the tape only a few hours before being notified of the apparent suicide of local musician Robbie Morgan.

3.
So I stood on his lawn trying hard to summon up some sort of feelings.
I had just come back from his funeral. It was a mob scene -- crying teenagers with candles, vicious media hounds with cameras and, in thick of it all, his sparse family and friends struggling to get through the chaos. I felt guilty for being there. I hadn't been a good friend of Robbie's for years. Long ago we had been reduced to old school acquaintances. And now here I was; at his funeral. But, damnit, he mentioned me in his final song, his opus. Me. No one else but me.
Surveying the crowd I couldn't help comparing it to the largest crowds he had played for in one of those smoky, run-down clubs. This crowd was easily ten times bigger.

4.
He started out playing gigs at the local coffee house: "Tuesday and Thursday evenings the Coffee Bean is proud to present Robbie Morgan."
It was just him and his acoustic guitar. He was a good player but nothing fantastic, nothing that set him apart from the scores of other students armed with 6-strings and cliched lyrics. He'd just get up there and do a few Dylan or Neil Young covers in that scratchy voice of his. He always had a bit of trouble fitting the words into the music, you could tell he was struggling a bit to keep the rhythm going. He was much better when he threw in some of his own material. But the deal with the owner would only allow him to do two or three of his own tunes amongst all the familiar stuff. The familiar was much more comfortable for the majority of people, myself included - I won't try to seem holier than though in the aftermath.
It was a strain for him, a necessary evil. It gave him a forum to try his new stuff and to gain a bit of name recognition.

5.
Walking past his lawn a few years ago I heard some strange noise coming from the basement windows. I don't like the looks of the words "strange noise", but I really can't think of a better way to describe it. There was a heavy drum beat but I couldn't quite get the rhythm of it. I thought I could pick out a bass line but it seemed to be in a completely different time. And a guitar was fading in and out. And other sounds. I couldn't isolate them, I stood there trying but got nothing. They all seemed to be playing separately, unaware of each other.
And then the more I listened to it, the more it seemed like I could almost grasp an underlying "feeling." I could almost make sense of it.
Almost.

6.
He was my neighbour. He lived six houses up from me.
So growing up we were friends by default.
I think we about twelve when he discovered my Moms classical guitar up in the attic. It was out of tune of course, but just plucking a few strings was enough to get him interested. "Did you know this was here?" he asked me, as if I'd been keeping some great secret from him.
"Yeah, my Mom brings it down and plays a few songs every Christmas."
"Why didn't you ever mention it?". He actually managed to sound offended.
"What's to mention?" I asked, not understanding his interest.
He, in turn, clearly couldn't comprehend my incomprehension.
"But you have a guitar."
"Well, my Mom does." I corrected him as only a smart-ass kid can.
"But there's a guitar in your house; you have access to a guitar."
"Yeah, so?" I admit that at this point I was just enjoying his looks of incredulity.
"So, don't you play? Haven't you ever tried?" He was genuinely surprised at my indifference, as if he held the Holy Grail in his hands and I was taking a sip at the public water fountain.
"Well, no, I've never really thought of it," I stammered as I felt myself getting defensive.
He was staring at the guitar again, experimenting, plucking a few strings, pushing on the fret board here and there. And damned if I couldn't almost pick out a melody.
He stopped playing suddenly, before I could confirm the presence of music or dumb luck. He turned slowly to look at me. I was probably too young to notice anything, but with the benefit of hindsight I can imagine that I did see something there in his eyes. Something like discovery.

7.
So maybe that's what it was.
The wind blew through my hair. I could dimly hear the beeping of my car informing me that my keys were in the ignition and the door was open.
Staring into the basement windows I thought that maybe that's why he had included me in his song - in an off-handed, accidental way I guess I had introduced him to the guitar.
But it had seemed so trivial at the time and it was so long ago. It didn't seem like enough. And it didn't explain the words he used.

8.
A week or two later I was at his house playing on his Atari in the living room, blasting Space Invaders like I really was saving the world. I didn't notice it right away but, there, leaning against the sofa in the corner was an acoustic guitar.
"What the fuck?" I was rather surprised. How long had he had a guitar? Why had he made such a big deal about my mothers if he had one in is house? It never even occurred to me that it was his. "You've got a guitar here!"
"Oh, yeah. I just got it last week." He said, real casual like. I couldn't tell if he was just playing it cool or if he really was cool. I never could pick out the disguises from the real things
. "What?" I was stunned. I don't really know why but there it was: I was stunned.
He turned to look at me, perplexed.
"I got it last week. I've already had a lesson. Here listen." He went over and picked it up. He played a dew awkward chords and fumbled his way through a scale. "My teacher says it will take awhile to develop the finger strength and the coordination."
And, of course, now I had to start taking lessons on my mom's guitar. I didn't want to be left behind. We were just twelve years old and good friends - what one person did, the other had to do as well. At least that was the norm, the way I felt. Robbie was a bit different, he was never afraid to do his own thing.
I took a few lessons and we tried to play together every now and then. There was never any talk of who was better (or if there was it was always in the vein of "I suck, you're so much better than me") but it seems that I could learn new songs a bit faster and get them to sound closer to the originals. Robbie didn't have the patience to copy others. He was a much better improviser, he liked to make up his own things. I tried to teach him some new stuff, to get some tandem play going, but we'd always just end up with him giving me some funky chord pattern to play and him playing some lead fills over it. He'd stop after a while, always claiming that he had simply "lost it". But I knew that he was just dissatisfied with my rhythm.. I was strictly 4/4.

9.
And we drifted from there.
We went to high school together but fell into different groups. Actually I fell in to a group and Robbie was somewhat left behind (only, of course, it turned out to be the other way around). I got into skiing. But that wasn't Robbie's thing. I took him to the local hill once. He spent most of the morning trying to master the T-bar and most of the afternoon sliding down the bunny slope on his rear. Now granted, skiing isn't an easy sport to learn, I had started the year before and was still very much a beginner, but Robbie, well, it was almost ridiculous.
But he didn't complain. At the end of the day, with a total of approximately fifty feet successfully skied, he simply said "You know, I don't think skiing is for me."
And that was that.
But I couldn't give up skiing. I was in love. I saw the potential for reckless speed and big jumps, for freedom and for danger - all rolled into one exhilarating sport. And so I was drawn into a group of guys who shared my intoxication with snow covered slopes. A group of guys that Robbie could never be part of. We still lived six houses apart but in our first year of High School that distance seemed to increase dramatically.

10.
I got back into my car, closing the door in mid-beep. I couldn't get my head together, too many quick thoughts -- I couldn't seem to grasp anything.
I hadn't even cried for my former best friend yet.

11.
I went to visit him that day when I heard the noises coming from the basement.
I hadn't been to his place in years.
I timed my ringing of the doorbell with a pause in the music. I knew that his father wouldn't be home.
A minute or so later Robbie answered the door looking like he always did when I saw him in the school halls. Hair long and unkept, eyes constantly moving, wearing a T-shirt of some band that I'd never heard of - "Millhouse" I think this one was calleed.
Like I said, I hadn't been there for years but I saw that it hadn't changed much. It still lacked a definite woman's touch.
Our relationship had pretty much degraded to a few words as we passed each other in the school hallways. I still caught his acoustic sets at the coffee house every now and then but only because I hung out there anyway.
And yet he didn't seem surprised to see me.
"Hey man, how ya doin'?" I never knew if he was ever taking drugs, smoking up, but he always sounded like it. He always sounded so far off.
"Not bad, not bad." I felt awkward. I didn't really know why I was there. "How've you been doing?"
Anything to keep the conversation going.
"Can't complain I guess." He never did.
A pause.
"I was just walking by and heard the..." I almost choked on the word "...music".
And now his eyes straightened out and if I didn't know him better I'd swear he was excited.
"Yeah, shit, that's right. You've never seen my set-up. Come on in, check it out." And, yes, it was true - he was excited. I don't think that I'd ever seen him like this. It was like the time he had shown me his fathers Playboy magazines so many years ago.
"I've been steadily buying equipment the last few years, you know, whenever I can afford it. I've got a pretty good set-up. I don't buy anything until I can afford quality."
I don't know anymore about music equipment now than I did then; which is pretty much nil. But even I could tell he had a very impressive set-up down there in his little cramped corner of the basement. An entire wall was filled with three large speakers, rows of silver knobs running along the top. He had a huge mixing board on another wall and one of the fanciest keyboards I'd ever seen across from it. A battered chair, an array of guitar petals and three guitar stands took up what little floor space remained. He had a Les Paul, a Telecaster and a Rickenbaker bass in those three stands and on the wall, hanging from various hooks, were a Martin acoustic, an Epiphone semi-hollow and a saxophone.
"Jesus..." I could only trail off. I was guessing (conservatively) that there was at least $5000 worth of equipment.
"Yeah, beautiful eh?" Like a proud poppa.
"How the hell did you afford all this?" I have to admit that it was hard talking with my chin scraping the floor.
"Oh, you know, working, saving. I don't spend much money on anything else."
"But, come on, the coffee shop can't be paying you that much! And, Jesus, I didn't even know you played anything but acoustic!"
"Oh, shit, no. I've got a few other real jobs. There's no real money in the coffee house gigs - that's strictly for exposure. You know, acoustics nice and all - pure, ya know? -- but I need more...sounds. I want to create a bit more." His mouth turned into an embarrassing grin. "This is my lab".
He spent the next hour or so showing me various instruments and demonstrating various settings. The phrase "kid in a candy store" kept appearing in my mind as he scurried about tweaking knobs and sliding switches. He took his bass and improvised a funky bass line on the spot. He looped that and took his Les Paul with which he over dubbed a rhythm guitar track. Next he layered in his acoustic guitar and finally he grabbed his saxophone and soloed over the whole thing. The end result sounded like an excellent piece of jazz-blues to me but he just shrugged it off as a typical ditty, just something conventional so he could demonstrate his equipment.
And his fingers could fly all over the fretboards of the guitars and the keys of the sax. Just when I thought it sounded so perfect he would stop, make some minor adjustment to some obscure dial and it would sound even better. I was truly in awe.
As I left his place that afternoon he casually mentioned a show he was doing that weekend.
"It's my first gig other than the coffee house deal. It'll be electric and all. He thought carefully about his next words. "It'll be a bit more experimental."
"Sure, I'll be there." I was actually anxious to see it. "I'll bring some friends. Where's it at?"
"The Back Grill," He said, looking at his feet.
"Really?" I tried to sound indifferent. The Back Grill was a pretty seedy place. The owner had a nasty reputation of ripping off bands and the crowd that that place attracted, well, they were not the types that you'd take home to meet your parents. If they were indifferent to you, you could consider yourself lucky - they were known to get nasty.
"Yeah, I'll be there." I vowed. "Definitely with some friends." I added softly.
I was suddenly a little less anxious to see this show.

12.
My memory is sometimes a bit muddy. And my attention span sometimes wanes, I tend to jump around in my thoughts, my recollections. Dates and years tend to get confused in my mind - and I'm only 25 years old.
Let's see if I can get a time line going. We were 12 when we started playing guitar together, 14 when we went to high school, at age 15 we had pretty much been reduced to acquaintances, I think we were 18 when he started his acoustic sets and his first electric, experimental gig was just 4 years ago; we were 21.
And now, here I am - 25 and alive. And Robbie? Well, after four years of going from club to club in relative obscurity, Robbie finally has name recognition.
And it only cost him his life.


Installment 2



Photo by Avery Crounse
Appears in liner notes of the album "Trouble at the Henhouse" by the Tragically Hip

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