Rooster Guitar [FICTOID]

The band needed a new guitar player, one who could play rooster guitar.

Their old rooster guitar player, a bandy legged eighty-year-old from Saskatchewan, did them the supreme disservice of dropping dead on-stage in mid-performance.

“Bad enough he didn’t finish the gig,” said front man Kwato Sneely, “but now fans expect someone else to die at each performance.”

“Long as it ain’t me,” said Bebop Bohunk, the band’s porcupine percussionist. 

“Why replace him at all?” Gretchen Dugelmeister a.k.a. Gretch the Kvetch asked.  “A three way split is better than a four way split, right?  Right?”

Gretch played bullfrog bass harmonica and supplied backup vocals, which is to say she’d guide the roadies’ equipment van as it backed up to the loading ramp of whatever venue they played.  She also was currently Kwato’s main squeeze after he out-lived the band’s original founder, Snoozy McDonnel.

McDonnel possessed the good sense to get run over by a major label’s party limo and to avoid a lawsuit, the label signed McDonnel’s bandmates.

“Nix,” said Kwato.  “We need a roster guitarist.  The band sounds thin without one.”

“Hey, I know a hamster hummer…” Bebop started to say but Kwato cut him off.

“Not an adequate replacement for a rooster guitar.”

“Howzabout you play roster guitar?” Gretch asked.

“Can’t,” said Kwato.  “I’m already covering on oyster triangles.”

“So I guess we’re gonna hafta audition some new talent,” Bebop said.

And so they did.

They called an audition but they didn’t like the first one, or the next two, or the next four, and they really hated the eight after that.  Pretty soon the alley behind the rehearsal hall was crowded with rooster guitarists of varying low quality plus a few kitten philosophers who hoped to fake it.

The band waded through all the dreadful wannabes before sinking their heads in their hands and wondering if maybe they should just abandon the idea and become a trio.

There came a knock at the door.  The band excitedly looked up, hoping against hope for some miraculous savior but saw only the hall landlord pointing angrily at his watch. 

“Five minutes!” he yelled.  “Five minutes then kaput!”  He slammed the door as if to punctuate his order.

The band looked at one another.  “So…give up music or play as a trio without a rooster guitarist?” Kwato asked.

“I’ve heard you,” the landlord yelled from the other side of the door.  “I wouldn’t call it music!”

© Buzz Dixon