Kim and Jack's Band — Chapter 5 — Smells Like Teen Spirit
Months later, Kim finally shows Jack what he’s been learning.
We don't have a band. Kim insists on making that clear.
Months later, when I could already get through a song without stopping every second, I decided to show Jack.
It wasn't an easy decision. I'd kept it to myself for almost a year. But you can't keep something like that from Jack forever — sooner or later he was going to walk into my room and see the guitar leaning against the wall, and then I'd have to explain why I hadn't told him before.
He came over on a Saturday. I told him to come up. We went into my room and I took the guitar out from behind the door.
He was impressed just seeing the guitar. Already asking where it came from, if it was really mine, how much it cost, all before I played a note.
The first song I played for him was Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana. The four chords at the start, which is what almost everyone learns first on guitar.
Jack lost it.
Got up off the bed. Paced back and forth across the room clapping to the beat, off. Kept repeating "again, do it again" about ten times. Talked nonstop — that we were going to play shows, that we'd record, that I had to learn more songs, that he'd find a way to get an instrument too.
And keep in mind I played all of it wrong. Off the beat, fingers freezing on the chord changes, stopping in the middle to find the position. It was bad. To this day I'm not good at playing a song start to finish.
But there's one thing I was already getting good at.
Recognizing.
I could already hear a song and see its parts from the inside. The timing. The arrangement. The bass that holds it up and the guitar that cuts. The backing vocal that only comes in on the chorus. The exact spot where it builds and the spot where it slows down on purpose to build again after.
It's the same thing I do with a fight.