The Gremlins Consortium - Episode 3

Three buildings down from Maria's apartment, around a corner and down a short flight of slightly sticky stairs is a very old doorway over which hangs a very old but very sturdy sign bearing the image of a pig with a quirky and strangely compelling grin and the words

THE TICKLED PIG

in curly pink letters.

Through the door, past the tables full of intent cheery listeners, and next to the long wooden bar was a raised platform on which three young men were making strange and beautiful music. In the back, the percussionist was grooving to the eerie tribal beat his hands pattered out on a pair of bongos, reaching out now and then to ever-so-lightly brush a set of tiny chimes that sounded like starlight. Beside him, just as oblivious to the outside world, a young man with spiky brown hair tipped in forest green was lost in the rumbling thrum of his huge didjeridu. The two were in an ectasy of tumbling rhythm when suddenly, incongruously, the frontman's electric guitar sliced in with a single reverberant chord. The groove continued, and slowly the guitarist edged in, somehow blending in increasingly complex riffs, with bursts of fingerpicking meshing unexpectedly and perfectly with the strange irregular bumble buzz of the didj. Soon all three were lost in a sort of outlandish living poetry, and the audience had long since left off trying to keep track of how they did it and simply released themselves to the flow. After a time they drew to a close, dwindling again to nothing but the complex beat of the bongos, which itself drifted away in a final tinkle of the ethereal chimes. The audience surged into a rousing round of applause that lasted past the three musicians' shy bows until the frontman began to blush very slightly and raised a hand for quiet.