I'd set my axe against the wall and it was like I could feel the damn disc just sitting in there, still warm. We collapsed onto dirty couches under blackout curtains. Everyone butColeman, of course, Coleman who was staying with his lady. I made my quiet way along the alleys, dreading the sound of footsteps, till we met up again at the flat. Curfew was on and Paris was grim, all clotted shadows and stale air. We lined up the empty bottles along the wall, locked up real quiet, gone our separate routes back to Delilah's flat. 'What you sayin, kid?' said Chip, slurring his words. He peered at the trash bin, at the damaged discs all in there. 'Where's that last record at?' said Hiero, frowning. I glanced around, nervous, then tucked it into my bass case. But somehow when the kid turned his back I was sliding off my vest, taking the last disc-still delicate, the grooves still new-and folding the fabric round it. He kept snatching up the discs, scratching the lacquer with a pocket knife, wrecking them.

For weeks the kid been going on and on about how dreadful we sound. Even at our worst we genius.'ĭid that ever stun me, him saying this. 'We sound like royalty- after the mob got done with em,' said Chip.Ĭoleman and I ain't said nothing, our heads hanging tiredly.īut Hiero, wiping his horn with a blacked-up handkerchief, he turn and give Chip a look of pure spite. 'Just a damn braid of mistakes,' Hiero kept muttering. Take after take, I'd play sweating to the end of it only to have Hiero scratch the damn disc, tossing it in the trash. Too nervous, too crazed, too busy watching the door. Could be we wasn't so rotten, but I at least felt off. Everyone pacing about, listening between takes to the scrabble of rats in the wall. The cig just sitting there in his mouth like he couldn't hear his way clear. Our cigarettes glowed like small holes in the dark, and that's how I known we wasn't buzzing, Hiero's smoke not moving or nothing. A grim little room, more like a closet of ghosts than any joint for music, the cracked heaters lisping steam, empty bottles rolling all over the warped floor. Couple hours before, we was playing in some back-alley studio, trying to cut a record. The sunrise so fierce it seeped through the gaps, dropped like cloth on our skin. See, we lay exhausted in the flat, sheets nailed over the windows. Didn't even look right, all mossy and black in the bottle. But it been one brawl of a night, I tell you, all of us still reeling from the rot-rot was cheap, see, the drink of French peasants, but it stayed like nails in you gut.

Author of half blood blues