With just a little tape...

I am sitting outside Score24 practice...yes another one, and at the very thought of it I can't help but smile. I press my lips together in effort not to, because at this point bleeding is more of a release than pretending, but I can't fight it. I know who's behind this door. My hand reaches out, pressing firmly against the thin barrier, and I can feel the songs. The bass. This blog has set to uncovering a good many of the Long Island scene boys, but it has been neglecting somebody.

Through a variety of scene surnames, he has officially become to me- Just Joey, and finally in this setting that's all he is. Thank god. I would have bought and thrown away a thousand EPs just to get him back to this. When he asked me once why I didn't write about him, I told this fun-sized rocker that I did, but chose not to post the truth about what I saw. My job in this scene is not to report the facts, it is to control the honesty. So someday when a brotherly backstab has become mere dramatic entertainment, you will all hear of shotgun glares and side swipe remarks and of how Joey In Color was the pull pin on a self-reconstructing Score24 grenade. But not now. Now it's summer, and they'll all be gone in a matter of days. Right now you need to be told of the previously illicit smiles that were exchanged between the Fox brothers over one taped up microphone.

Today his clothes they look fitting, adding to his personality rather than defining it. I haven't seen him smile this much in months. I haven't seen him sweat this honestly in a dozen set lists. Which reminds me; Score24 has established a song order a whole 24 hours before a show. Watch out All Time Low. His hair is messy in the summer humidity, not panderingly poised to perfection. I lean against Lefty Campbell with my Book, watching the 2 brothers. Rob stands slightly in front of Joey; both in black t-shirts standing the exact same way, 2 black hats bent over Blackberrys. I laugh right out loud at how relieving quirky sibling similarities seem today. “Girl’s giggling at herself” Joey picks on me. “No, she’s giggling about whoever she’s writing about.” I just smile.

Rob holds a wad of merch money in the fly of his shorts imagining, “What if this is what dicks looked liked?” He fans it around, fascinated, then hauls off and smacks his brother with it. Mike Wore Black shouldn’t be offended; Rob24 is way more of a moron than he. The brothers say if the music thing doesn’t work they’d like to become Lost Boys. I wonder if they realize being a Lost Boy is being a musician. The van is your fairy dust, these songs your happy thoughts. To California and back is your Neverland.

There are moments, scenes, that will burn into the backs of your eyes. The way Nate looked at me the first time the audience overpowered him singing Red Letter. Or the way Kevin appeared walking towards us after Melana creeped him out of sleeping in the van at Parkway. This is how I will remember the moment Joey Fox re-joined the Party: Rob is bouncing and singing and showing off to me in Ryan Linzer’s tiny basement. It’s never just practice with Rob. Suddenly he punches a fist out, holding his white taped microphone to Joey so that his little brother may sing the parts he had once called his. He can’t even dream.

I wonder what they’ll think of this; these meager words I have to offer them. I question what I’ll write about where they are gone. I worry what the silence will do to me. I reach out and touch the door. The sound is in my memory.




...Ricky.
"Rob Fox's Freestyle Rapping Excellence" by: Rob Fox, egged on by Joe Fox