It was just in one ear really, because one ear was all that still worked, when he heard the guy on the talk show babble about how hard he had worked to get where he was at.
Dixon couldn’t think of a time when he considered music work, except maybe avoiding getting electrocuted by the puddles in front of his amp in the old west side basements where they would rehearse at 1 am because that’s when Squirrel got off work at Butler Shot Peen.
Dixon flipped another cigarette in the air and caught it in his mouth, lighting it with a transparent plastic lighter rubber-banded to his pinkie finger. The crowd loved that. He kicked into another Angry Samoans tune, mostly because the crowd hated it.
He was lucky he hadn’t gotten electrocuted, lucky he hadn’t gotten shot like Moss did, the Moss tribute tattoo sweating now as he played a mile a minute.
He wondered if kids still rehearsed in basements, and he wondered how much bourbon had evaporated under stage lights while he played over the last thirty-five years, but he never wondered why he didn’t think of music as work.
***
Photo by Alonso Navarro on Unsplash
Write on!
I know it's not the point but getting electrocuted, playing guitar and singing has always been a big pet peeve/fear of mine. So not fun