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The fact that the audition didn't
go well wasn't the point. The fact of the audition itself wasn't
the point, not at all.
It didn't go well, there could be
no disputing that. For one thing Mal didn't know what type of music
he'd be expected to play until he got in there, and then when they
told him the thing that they told him was "funk" and that
was pretty much the worst word he could've heard, because although
he'd been a musician for longer than he could remember he'd never
played anything that anyone would even suggest was anywhere approaching
"funky". So he funked along as best he could but he realised
pretty much immediately that the fact that he didn't even know if
"funk" was a verb or a noun or whatever was probably a
bad sign.
They were fairly polite, the people
he was playing for - about as polite as you could expect anyone
to be under the circumstances, anyway, and when he'd finished struggling
his way through some snarled-sounding slap-bass (he spent the whole
time worrying about what it might be doing to his strings) they
said "Thanks" and let him pack up his gear and be on his
way. He stepped out into something that was almost sunshine, and
where the autumn leaves had fallen into the puddles left by the
week's on-again-off-again rain they were starting to go brown and
slushy. He hunched his shoulders (Just like Dylan! he thought;
though he realised to his regret that he didn't have a girl on his
arm, so not quite like Dylan) and he walked off down the street,
carrying all his gear, to the nearest tram stop. He'd have to get
the tram all the way into the city and then change and get another
tram all the way out again. There were probably buses that would
halve the travel time but it was Melbourne, nobody caught buses.
He was hungry; he hadn't had time
for lunch. He wondered if he might've played better if he'd had
something to eat beforehand. He decided that there probably wasn't
a strong correlation between appetite and funkiness. It'd be pretty
lame to use that as an excuse, anyway - he was a grown-up now, well
and truly, so it was time to stop making excuses. Though he probably
could've played better if the people he'd played for had made it
clearer on their flyer what kind of music they expected him to play
- if they'd done that he could've practiced, and researched. So
it was their fault, really.
Still, the fact that the audition
hadn't gone well wasn't the point. He'd given it a go. He'd tried
something new. That was the point.
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