After the next song, they really started cooking, and a small audience gathered
around clapping whenever appropriate, and urging passers-by to drop some cash on
the performers. On 'Locomotive Breath / Wind Up' they really stretched
out with Aqualung alternating between Jorma style rhythm/leads and Richie
Havens' percussives, while Paul was doing his best Vai / Zappa lead blends. Most
of the crowd joined in when they got to 'The bloody Church of England' so
it seemed that everybody was having quite a bloody good time.
By the time they were done, there were quite a few bills in the old guitar case
in addition to a whole lot of change, so Paul was hard pressed to refuse his
share. He didn't think he needed as much as his musical partner, because he was
still living with his parents, so he had a hard time convincing Aqualung that 10
dollars would be just fine. In addition, some sophisticated listener had left
them something fairly rare; a cold six pack of an American beer that was
actually very good. Besides the two musicians there were three other people left
by now, so Aqualung took a church key out of his pocket and cracked one open for
each of them. One for the cute little teenager, one for the guy with the nose
ring, one for the nicely rounded lady with the raven hair, one for Paul and one
for himself.
"How
come you never sing anything else?' asked nose ring.
'I always play a little game about that," answered Aqualung. "It goes like this:
you come up with a guess and if it is correct, not only will I tell you my
story, but I also promise to expand my repertoire."
Seeing
that nose ring was at a loss, Paul offered his guess since he already knew the
game:
"It
might be in order to achieve some kind of obscure Zen enlightenment." |