Drummer Girl

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/3/09

"Drummer Girl"
by snowdog

The stage lights dimmed by three quarters into a deep blue and the spotlight painted a white disk around her as she shifted from the song "It's Never Goodbye" into her last drum solo. The dark sea of people erupted into applause at the first clickety-click notes on the ride cymbal. Slowly, she built on the foundation. A heartbeat thumping from the kick drum, a gradual rumble from the floor tom, then all the lights flared into a catherine wheel of whirling reds and greens as she suddenly spiked the intensity and speed of the performance. Into the verse-chorus breach a final time, she thought.

It wasn't as easy for Karen as it had been during her younger days. Although few fans noticed the minute flaws, she could feel the slight ache in her limbs that was throwing her timing just a little. Richard had noticed, though. And it was his idea to bring the 2002 tour to a close with a farewell show in Paris. Later tonight, the Richard Carpenter Trio would go their separate ways after a career that spanned five decades.

CRASH-CRASH! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! CRASH! BOOM BOOM CRASH!

From their earliest beginnings as a jazz ensemble, through the seventies' soft rock hits and finally, the edgier arena-filling hard rock, the Trio had driven a long and sometimes bumpy road. Karen was certain that they never would have survived past the first few failed singles had producer George Martin not taken an interest in them early on.

It was the classic case of the right sound at the right place at the right time. The year was 1965. Martin had been producing a struggling young British band called the Beatles who simply could not stand to be in the same room with each other for more than ten minutes at a go. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best simply were not a good fit. There was talk about removing Lennon as a remedy since his voice was the weakest and his ego the largest, but Martin had reckoned that it would make no difference. Were it not for a string of minor hits, such as "We Won't Work It Out", "Hard Day's Work", and "Please Me Now, Woman", the band would have split long ago.

Richard had met George Martin before a bar gig in New York City. They had struck up a casual conversation over bourbon, neither knowing who the other was. At sixteen, Karen had been too young to be in the bar legally, but no one asked any questions when Richard excused himself and joined her and Wes Jacobs onstage for a rousing set of jazzy covers of popular rock n' roll tunes. Martin had been won over after he heard the first of three original songs in the set list.

Karen had to snap out of her reverie for a moment to concentrate on some tricky hi-speed triplets on the snare and hi-hat. Not bad for an old lady, she smiled to herself.

The eighties had brought a new sound and a new set of problems. A switchover from Soft Rock to New Wave had alienated more than a few of their long time fans, but her well-publicized feud with Chrissy Hynde, contrived though it was, had won them a level of publicity that she had never dared to imagine. Sales of their 1982 album, You Again, doubled that of its predecessor.

Then came the anorexia. What had started as a strong New Year's resolution to control her weight had blossomed into a full-blown eating disorder. It was Martin who noticed her frail appearance and, along with Richard, coerced her into the newly opened Betty Ford Clinic. There was no doubt in Karen's mind that this act of tough love had saved her life.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-A-THUMP-THUMP-SPLASH-SPLASH! CRASH!

In the early nineties, Nirvana had exploded onto the scene and it seemed for a moment that grunge would wipe out everything that had come before it. Indeed, countless New Wave and Hair Metal bands were swept away in a deluge of reheated Punk. It was a hard time for the Trio, but Richard and George reinvented their sound, giving it just enough of an edge to interest a new generation of rockers, but still poppy enough climb the mainstream charts.

It was at New Year's Rockin' Eve 1999 in Times Square that Karen had first begun to feel the stiffness in her joints, although at the time, she had written it off to playing in the freezing night air of NYC. To be safe, she saw her family physician while the band rested in Connecticut. There, she was diagnosed with a mild case of arthritis and told that the condition would worsen over time.

After several days of soul searching and more than a few tears, she decided that Richard was right. To paraphrase Def Leppard, it was better to retire gracefully than to slowly fade away in front of an audience.

BOOM! THUMP-A-BOOM! BOOM! Slowly building snare roll... and... CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

The cheers were deafening. Once again, accompanied by the Trio, she launched into the final chorus "It's Never Goodbye". The lyrics leapt to mind effortlessly and she sang into her headset mike.

You can say farewell if you must
You can use any word you like
You can say it's forever, I promise it's never
It's never goodbye, never goodbye,
Never goodbye