Maxine Harrison's Blog (18)

John saw the resemblance straight away. The small girl before him was a spitting image of Maxine only smaller and dressed more fashionably.

“Hi, my name is April. You must be John. I’m Maxine’s sister. She’s your drummer. Now listen to this....”

John listened in amazement as April outlined a weird and wonderful plan of how they would be playing at The Powerhaus at midnight on Friday so they must come quietly to her place at around ten pm to collect Maxine. They just…

“He was easy. I just told him what was going to happen and he just accepted it,” boasted April to Maxine.

“He was probably in shock,” laughed Maxine as she tried to imagine how April would have looked as she ordered John around, and how John would have reacted.

“Yeah he was easy. I could easily boss him round. I’m not scared of those big people.”

“You’d be scared of Dooby. He’s plain scary. He’s just weird. He’s creepy. He’s—”

“Sounds like you’re in love…

Maxine had a strong desire to still play with Munga! and she was not sure why she had almost allowed herself to see reason and be talked out of playing with them at the Powerhaus. Unfortunately she wasn’t much of a planner of devious solutions to the tricky little situations that life tends to throw up.

“Lucky you have got me as a sister,” was April’s reply as Max set out the dilemma to her.

“Look, can’t you see this is going to be the easiest thing in the world. Mum…

John was not what you would call religious by any stretch of the imagination but he did always have an internal dialogue going that, to some, may have sounded like a prayer. If any one of the Gods had been listening they would have heard something like this:

“It’s just not fair. We come this far and we are just about to almost sort of make the semi big time by playing a paying gig and now we can’t do it. We find an awesome drummer who just happens to be a small girl. I ask…

Maxine was in her room. She made no effort to go out. She heard everything.

“Ah yeah gidday, er, Mr Harrison, er… Bill. We were wondering…”

“Hi, John. Look I’m sorry but the answer is still no. I mean it’s not the fire thing. It’s just not really appropriate for a twelve-year-old girl to be playing with boys who are almost twice her age. I mean, really… you’re a whole lifetime older than she is. But thank you for the opportunity you gave her.”

“But she’s really…

“Okay, short straw goes down there and asks…pleads …grovels!” Dooby was grinning fiendishly. So was Noise. John wasn’t. He was deadly serious even though he allowed himself to participate in Dooby’s childish games. He looked over at Chaz. She was in a foul mood, staring out of the window angrily.

John knew he shouldn’t even be doing this. It was against everything he felt. And he knew that when he pulled the short straw he wouldn’t be able to do it anyway.  Dooby and Noise already…

Maxine sat down in front of the computer to do her homework. Boring! If it had been a week ago she would have been up at Munga!’s place rehearsing for the high school gig. Now, because of the so called “fire threat” and police inquiry, Mum and Dad had made a solid front and said:

“No more playing with Munga!  It’s inappropriate for a 12-year-old girl to be playing with boys almost twice her age. Go to your room and do your drum practice like normal girls would.”

Ha! Normal…

“So, tell me what happened next?”

“Well,” started off John, “We’d played most of the songs. We were onto the last one and everything was going great.” John truly had been amazed at how well the concert had gone. There had been some rough playing and missed cues. There had been a lot of hostility from the audience at the beginning. No one clapping, pretending the band didn’t exist. They had also pointed and laughed at the drummer. He could hear the comments about it being past her…

It had started earlier in the week; the sudden dropping sensation in the bottom of her stomach.

Now Maxine felt very uncomfortable. It was the night of the High School concert. Actually, she was scared and had been for several days now. Practices with the band had gone well but….

She’d never done this sort of thing before. She now felt way out of her depth. Very few people knew it was her in the band but “the kid who was playing in the rock’n’roll band” had become a little bit…

They sat there, hunched over a copy of the poster that was going to advertise Munga!’s up and coming gig at the High School. They were going to be the feature event of the school disco and they had to decide on what sort of picture they would need.

John was feeling more confident about things than he had felt for a long time. Maxine was proving to be a solid drummer with the strength to play for a whole hour. The band sounded tight. Noise was playing well. And Dooby…? He was his usual…

“How was the practice, Max?” It was Dad calling out from somewhere in the house. Kitchen,

most probably.

“Cool! Learnt four new songs.” Maxine heard Dad leave from wherever he was and come to

her room. He was interested. “Yeah? What were the songs like?”

“Oh, one was called ‘Thrash it!’; another was called ‘Crushed!’; another was called ‘Hungry

and Loving it!’ and the last one was called ‘The Dungeon!’ and they all have to

have exclamation marks after them.…

“What did you guys do to the poor kid?” Chaz was laughing as she said this.

“Chaz, Chaz. Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours about such things. She caught

us at a bad time,” said Dooby.

“Every time is a bad time for us,” added John. “If we are asking her to help us we have to

be a bit more awake at 3 in the afternoon. We gotta try and see things from her

point of view. She looked terrified. What’ll she say to her Dad? We need her if

we…

Well, they liked her drumming enough to ask her back for a real practice. At the audition

Maxine thought she had played really well. She had started playing when

everyone else had started, and finished at the same time as well and kept good

time. She had even put in a few well-timed accents as she picked up on the feel

of the songs. She was really happy. Dad had been impressed as well.

“Now look, Maxine.” Dad always began his serious speeches in such a way and so, to…

John felt bad for four reasons. The first being he was the sort of guy who, generally

speaking, always worried about stuff no matter what it was.

The second reason was he sort of felt guilty that they were going to use this little girl

as a stunt. Wow. Cool Thrash Proto Punk Metal Band has Twelve-year-old Drummer.

That in its self was fairly original. But he had never wanted that. He

genuinely thought the girl was an all right drummer. Sure, it had been a bit…

Maxine had always been a bit odd. She enjoyed moving a lot and hitting things—hard. So when it came time to “choose an instrument”, as parents invariably made you do, she chose the drums. Her own grandma had told her she should have done ballet. It was such a graceful thing for girls to do and didn’t they look so cute in those tutus and with their hair pulled back and their tiny feet going pitter-patter on the hard wooden floor. Then her grandma’s eyes would glaze over and she…

John had always had a thing about knocking on strangers’ doors. He just didn’t like it. He had promised his mates that he would go and check out who lived in the house where they had heard the drumming. He hoped it would be someone reasonable looking who played the drums. Not some dorky straight type. He hated “straights”. And this looked like a real straight house. The cars were average looking late model white station wagons. The house was freshly painted. The garden was tidy. But he did…

“Yeah, um, like can I speak to the joker who plays drums in this house?” he…

I started drumming when I was 6 years old. I live in New Zealand and a few years have past since then.

But what happened was these guys heard me practicing and wanted me to fill in for their band. I was 12 and they were about 20 so it was a bit scary. But this story became quite famous round here and another guy came and interviewed me heaps and then turn the whole theing into a book. And the whole story is true. If you want to find out more about what happened I will tell you....…