We ended our regular Friday nightclub gig at near 2am, the usual time with the usual bored, drunken crowd in attendance. All they wanted to hear were the oldies from the sixties and seventies and eighties, maybe a few early nineties songs. They would even get a bit surly if we tried to play something original or anything newer than those eight-year-old nineties songs. Oh well, maybe tomorrow's crowd at the other place would be more open-minded. I had a few new tunes that I wanted to try out, including a jazz piece that I'd written over a year ago for my Dad. I only played it twice before, once for him to try and cheer him up while he was sick and then again at his funeral. Too bad it didn't cheer him up very much, he had wanted to play along on his sax, but he was far too weak. He'd just leaned back in his hospital bed and tried to move his gnarled fingers along with the notes I was playing. I was hoping that Mike, our lead singer and manager, would let me try it out. I'm Ted, the flute player for a two-bit oldies band. This is only my weekend job, I work most days in a supermarket just to pay the bills, but music is my first love.
I tried not to think of Dad as I packed my flute in its case and helped the band pack the rest of the gear. We only had the chance to play in local clubs and we didn't even have roadies to help setup or tear down. We played different clubs on Friday and Saturday so everything had to be moved each time.
I had Saturday off from the supermarket, so I slept late the next day like club musicians often do. But I still had a lot of Dad's old stuff to sort through. I had moved in with him a few months before he passed away to help do what I could. I really didn't need my old apartment after my divorce. Twenty years together and some of those were actually happy. The marriage went completely to hell after our 21-year-old son moved out and quit talking to us. Sometimes I found myself wishing that we had been more careful about protection back in those college days, but you get drunk and horny and things happen. Then you wind up married with a kid and dropping out of school to get a supermarket job.
I wanted to use the afternoon to continue sorting through all Dad's junk that had collected over the years. It was amazing the amount of trash that accumulates in a house over the course of fifty years and I had to look over everything to sort out any treasures from all the trash. It was taking me months. Early on, I found a few of my old things that had been packed away and forgotten.
There was all my old college stuff in a couple of boxes, carefully packed as if I were going to go back any minute now to finish my degree. Fat chance of that after so many years. I threw away most of it, except for a few special things, sheets of music I had written, tapes of recitals when I was still young and eager, that sort of thing.
One special item had caught my attention. It was a song lyric that I had scribed on fake parchment for a calligraphy class. I had taken the class on a whim and turned out to be rather good at it. Too bad I couldn't make any money at it, especially now that computer word processors did fancy printing that replaced real calligraphy. The sheet was covered with fancy lettering, a border of leaves drawn down the side and little stick figures danced in or around some of the capital letters. One of the best things I had ever done for that class. The song was from one of my favorite groups at the time, but it wasn't one of their most popular tunes. I liked it anyway, enough to use it as the final project of the class.
The group was called Heart, and it was the song "The Dream of the Archer" off of their "Little Queen" album. Their music was really great, but I think part of my attraction was the raven-haired lead singer and sometimes flute and guitar player, Ann Wilson. Her voice was powerful and seductive all at once and with it she could tear a man's soul in two. Her photo on the album cover, her holding a crystal ball, didn't hurt, either. Especially her sultry look and the way she filled out that black velvet gypsy dress. For some reason that particular song just appealed to me, probably because I took target archery for my PE requirement in college and liked the sport. I could even overlook Heart's little errors in archery terms. Target archers shoot at the gold not the goal, for most targets the bull's-eye is a yellow color. And archers release the string or the shot, not the aim. But then, with a voice like Ann Wilson's singing, who cares about an odd word or two?
However the band Heart had been dormant for several years. I heard they were trying to make a comeback and wished them the best of luck. The music scene had always been a jungle and it was even worse now. Maybe things would work out for them, I always loved Ann's powerful voice and amazing control.
Just for grins, I had packed the calligraphy in a mailing tube with a little note of explanation and sent it to the band's label, directed to Ann but hoping it would get to any one of them. Preferably Ann Wilson herself. Probably not, but I was hopeful. It had been several weeks since I sent it with no word back from the publisher. Maybe by now it was hanging on the wall of some minor music executive's office or else got tossed in the dumpster.
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That night we were at our usual Saturday-night club, but instead of being the main act we were opening for a cover band called Heartthrob. Not a very clever name, but it still let everyone know that they were a Heart lookalike band. With luck, they would even sound like Heart. I'd never heard of them before, but that's not surprising, I was hardly at the center of the local music scene.
The crowd seemed to have a good energy to them, much better than last night. So we opened with some newer stuff, but still covered the 70's and 80's. I managed to slip in one of my own songs near the end of the set. Nobody noticed. We cleared off of the stage and let the next act set up. I figured they must have a pretty good show, they even had a few roadies to set up for them. The house was well packed by then, so I was really surprised when Tony the manager pointed me at a table right down front. I barely had enough time to sit down, set my flute case on the table and hoist my beer when Heartthrob took the stage. It was amazing, but they really did look like the original group Heart. Especially the two front gals, the lead singer and the guitarist. A bit older than what I remembered the band from the last concert I was at, but then that was over a decade ago.
They started with an instrumental warm-up of "Dreamboat Annie," one of Heart's older tunes, then the singer introduced the band by the first names of Heart's original members. I thought it was kind of silly to use the stage names of the band being covered, instead of everyone's real names, but that's just me. I guess they were trying to reinforce the illusion that they were actually the original Heart instead of a cover band. I have to admit, they were very convincing. Their voices, movement and especially their musical style were exactly the same as the original Heart. Even their outfits matched the original band with the guitarist in her beaded shirt and tight jeans, and the curvy lead singer in a clingy black dress. After the next song, they nearly had me convinced that they were the original band, except for the fact that the originals would never play in a cheap club like this. I just sat back, enjoyed the music and especially the lead singer. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She had Ann Wilson's moves down perfectly, her voice was exactly the same. Even the little vocal tricks that Anne liked to put into songs were there, like that wonderful wailing noise in the song "Alone." She was pleasantly plump, but just as beautiful and sexy as Ann, so that added to the pleasure of watching her.
They were amazing, every Heart song they covered was done perfectly, just the same as the originals. If I didn't look around at the rest of the club, I would have sworn that this was Heart up on that dinky stage. At the end of their set, I stood and applauded loudly, but the lead singer motioned for everyone to sit down.
"We've got one more song we want to do, but with a special guest." She announced. "Ted, are you in here? Come on up and bring your flute."
I wasn't sure how I got my flute out of its case or how I got to the stage, I was in such a daze at having my name announced. I was even more confused by her next statement.
"Ted, I know there's a song that we do that's special to you and we'd like you to join us for it. It's called The Dream of the Archer."
They started playing right away, jumping into the mandolin intro without even waiting for the brief applause to die down. Even though the song didn't have a flute part, I quickly got my flute into position and followed along as best I could without any rehearsing, taking one of the mandolin parts.
