I'm bending the rules a bit here but I've just found some text from a novel I began writing a few years ago that started off as TV drama based on a 90s Britpop era band.
The lead character is based on someone I know and his music. It was this that inspired the story - I arranged the songs in a sequence in order to devise a plot. I can explain that in more detail if you like but at the moment I'm more interested in knowing what you think of the writing style and whether I should take another look at it.
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UNREALITY
Across the common you could hear it. You could always hear it because the volume was up so very loud. Richie Crooks had the habit of inflicting his guitar riffs to anyone and everyone through the gaping holes which were his lounge window. It was never clear why he did that. Perhaps it was in some vague hope that a record company exec would happen to be passing with a million pound record contract in his back pocket. Bit of a long shot considering the rundown nature of his apartment block down on the riverside down on Norwich's east side. Sixties, grey and grim which pretty much summed him up.
He was a baby boomer born weeks before the moon landing and was rarely seen without his charcoal knee-length jacket. Grim was his mood if it meant he had to any work which is precisely why hadn't had a job in four years. As a result he was usually rather happy. Bit eccentric perhaps but still good fun.
On this particular day you could hear him playing long before you entered his street as he'd opened every window in the flat to 'give his music room to breathe'. This was all very well but the sound was suffocating to his neighbours. Heaven knows how Richie had avoided a mutiny from the Tenants Association this long.
As if typical of the work-shy attitude he wasn't even playing the guitar on this occasion but just listening to a playback of the demo tape recorded by his band earlier that month. He hated it. No class, no emotion, too functional. This didn't stop him wanting others to hear it because to him his voice and guitar was still poetry.
It was all a contradiction because while his band, The Melon Trees, were proficient they lacked something and it was the most terrifying of components namely belief. They'd been playing the pubs for so long they were beginning to consider mortgages and pensionsmore important than clinching the record deal. Local groupies had suddenly become bound to them by marriage certificates and so their priorities had changed.
Whatever it was they certainly didn't have the spark that Richie still had. He was still sure they could make it but it had to be on his terms which as someone who wanted the success without the fame was always going to cause conflict. It didn't help that even those closest to him didn't really know him that well but that was mainly because he had a past which he didn't like talking about. To him, anything about his life prior to 1987 and his 18th birthday was off limits.
A privileged few got to hear about it but as the rest of the group didn't fall into that category and were ignorant to his personal darkness, it was perhaps no surprise that they tended to call him an arrogant bastard most of the time.
One thing about Richie's flat was that there was huge choice of places to sit. Beanbags, couches, kitchen chairs, dining chairs, deck chairs but for some reason he rarely used them preferring instead to sit in the frame of the lounge doorway which meant that he was accident waiting to happen for anyone who visited.
As he sat and listened to the sounds from the hi-fi he'd endlessly rewind the tape and replay sections which didn't please him and play the chords on an air guitar rather than walk the five yards to his prized Fender Stratocaster that was laying in state in its case on the coffee table. It was also in reverence to this mighty piece of musical machinery that had somehow come into his possession. Another secret that remained unexplained.
Finally, following a spell of prolonged banging on the wall, Richie stopped the tape and there was suddenly a heavy silence that was an unfamiliar visitor to this place. It couldn't last.
By Richie's feet was a mug of coffee that he'd been nursing all morning. He looked at it blankly and then up the door frame and spotted a spider sauntering around the apex. For a moment Richie studied it at a distance, watching it inch its way along the paintwork in a gravity defying cling. His brow furrowed as if a thought had entered his consciousness and, as was common in such situations, a ramble of softly spoken lyrics broke the quietness.
"I'm that spider climbing up that wall...."
He paused.
"Oh, I'm that spider climbing up that wall. With you on my mind, I'm never gonna fall..." at which point it did. Right into the coffee. Rather than rescue the stricken arachnid Richie turned onto his front and studied the spider at close quarters to see if they could swim better in coffee than in bath water.
Just then there was a rattle of letterbox and an unusually bulky selection of paperwork was bundled through onto the mat below. This was of more interest than a drowning bug so he got up and went to see what he'd been sent.
He gathered the manila and white window envelopes without the attention they almost certainly deserved and placed them on a nearby bookshelf. Here they joined the many others, acting as a pulp dust trap. Richie instead preferred to sift through the mountains of junk mail and fast food menus for entertainment. When he chanced upon a sachet of fabric softener it was even the encouragement he needed to put some washing on. He wasn't going to let the fact that he had no washing powder go with it deter him.
Back in the lounge he returned to his doorway spot idly turning the tape on again to drown out the hum of the washing machine. He sighed a tired sigh and reached for coffee but an upward glance to where his eight-legged friend had been residing instantly reminded him he was about to get a mouthful of waterlogged spider.
Clambering to his feet he headed to the window and launched the tepid liquid into the street, right in the face of Julia, his friend and part-time band manager.
"Oh Christ Ju, I'm so sorry! Come in I'll get you a towel."
With that Richie turned and rolled against the wall in fits of uncontrolled giggles and was there for several minutes in a childlike heap and was only brought round by the frantic banging on the door of a more than a little irritated Julia.
"Let me in you bastard!"
Regaining his composure Richie undid the latch and headed back into the lounge desperate to conceal his tears of laughter that were now dripping onto his T-shirt.
Julia was red with rage, "What the hell did you do that for? I've got a meeting - I'll have to change now."
"It was an accident, Ju - honest." said Richie, still barely able to conceal his amusement.
With that he handed her a distinctly unwashed tea towel before subtly flicking off the forgotten spider which had been resting prostrate in her hair.
"OK, never mind that, that's the least of your worries. You were supposed to be down at the Crown half an hour ago."
"Was I?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake! You have a rehearsal and then you have an audience with Cube in the afternoon."
Cube were Cube Records, an independent label that had been sniffing around for a while. They weren't first choice by any means having had their prime in the 80s, but they were still a name that people would recognise.