Greg didn’t quite understand the band that his daughter wanted to go see. Jessica had asked him if she could go to the gig, but because she was only thirteen she needed an adult with her. There was once a time when Greg went to see a lot of bands play, but that was way before Jessica was born. He agreed to take her, partially because he could rarely say no to his children, but also just to see if he still enjoyed music.
The band was called When We Find The Answer Hidden In The Tundra We Won’t Tell A Soul. He only found this out when he saw their name on a poster outside the Ampnigrande Theatre. Jessica had called them WWFTAHITTWWTAS when she asked to go, which Greg thought was just an odd made up word that people were saying nowadays. That stuff seemed to slip by him now.
Jessica was the youngest person there. She might have been the only person who needed a parent to bring them, but Greg wasn’t sure. Everyone else in the crowd had extraordinarily odd haircuts. Some were slicked back like a ‘50s greaser, others were shaved at the sides with long, dirty strings of matted hair hanging over the edge but some very styled, without one piece out of place. Most of the women had the exact same haircut; a bob with a curly fringe. They all wore clothing that looked like they stole it from their grandparents’ closets. Lots of cardigans and flowery dresses and sensible shoes. No one would look up from their phones for anything. This wasn’t how Greg remembered gigs.
WWFTAHITTWWTAS walked on stage quite a bit later than had been written on the A4 sheets of paper pinned to the doors of the theatre. There were nine band members, all dressed smartly and serious looks on their faces. They barely acknowledged the audience, who in turn barely acknowledged the band. The houselights came up, displaying the array of odd instruments lined up on the stage. Two very different drum kits, three guitars, one with more strings than the others, a double bass, a xylophone, a selection of flutes and panpipes on a small table, a set of wind chimes, a church organ, a keyboard, a scarily complicated looking brass instrument and at the centre of it all, one microphone. Despite there being a lot of band members, they were outnumbered by the instruments. The band members walked around and picked up an instrument, seemingly at random and stared down at the ground. The tallest band member shuffled up to the microphone.
‘Hey. If at some point any of you want to come up and play something, just kind of go for it I guess,’ he said in a strong American accent. He tapped the microphone a couple times and looked at his fellow band members, nodded, and turned back to the microphone. ‘We are a band. This is a song.’
Greg had trouble hearing sometimes and he wasn’t too sure if he was getting the music. It was difficult to understand what was making what sound. The members of WWFTAHITTWWTAS stood stoic but their instruments flailed wildly on their bodies, making a horrible drone. He was a bit mesmerised by the whole thing. The first song last eight minutes and the only lyric he could decipher was ‘We are all liars.’ When the droning stopped, he kind of clapped, but really he just placed his hands together a bit harder than he needed to.
The second song started and it was very similar to the first, a low rumbling with sporadic twinkles. He glanced to see if his daughter was having fun, but she wasn’t standing by his side like she was before, she was squeezing through the crowd of people to the stage. Jessica tiptoed up the steps and stood beside the wind chimes, which were hanging on a stainless steel frame. None of the band members even seemed to notice a little girl up there with them. She grabbed the frame and started to shake the wind chimes. Greg couldn’t hear them very well. A couple of the small metal cylinders dropped off. Jessica had an intense look on her face, starring deep into the wind chimes. She stayed up there for the rest of the gig, never ceasing to shake the frame. Even between songs when the band were fiddling with their own instruments, she was making a sound that reminded Greg of being right years old and sitting on his grandmother’s porch during a wicked storm and watching the wind chimes get knocked around by the heavy breeze and the hail stones pinging off them and stepping back as the fell to the painted wooden floor.
The gig finished and everyone left. Jessica scooted up to her father and smiled. Greg patted her head.
‘Did you have fun, Jessy?’ he asked.
‘It was okay,’ she said, clutching one of the broken wind chime cylinders in her hand.
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