The One That Got Away

Buck turned the dial to 1997 and activated the remote control for his time travel device.

*****

E-Taco and a younger, marginally fitter Buck were in E-Taco’s garage jamming together for the first time. Buck was playing an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray 4-banger. Natural wood finish, black oval pick guard. The birds-eye maple neck was amazing. The bass was obtained in the days before Ernie Ball stopped using quality materials. Buck wouldn’t play a new Stingray even if they paid him. Well, maybe if they paid him, but it would have to be for a hefty sum, and people would have to know he’d been paid, because he wouldn’t want people to think he’d chosen such an instrument as his preference, but Buck digests. The one he was playing on that fateful day in 1997 was a classic.

Unfortunately, he was playing it through a disaster of an amp: the remnants of a Peavey Combo 300. It had been a decent amp when brand new. Serviceable, effective, but without much character. In his youthful exuberance, however, Buck has made it worse. He had taken it apart and tried to turn the combo into a separate head and speaker cabinet. Having no knowledge whatsoever about what makes for a quality cabinet, the sound was awful. The reason he had attempted this abortion of engineering in the first place was because he desired to play the amp through a 4x10 cabinet without the 15” speaker that was built into the original combo. Ironically, on that day, he was not using the 4x10 cab at all, and was stuck with the 15” speaker, which was blown, in its homemade cabinet.

E-Taco had just finished walking Buck through the chords to the Cars’ “Just What I Needed” when they were interrupted by a bright flash and a puff of smoke. Out of the smoke stepped an older, fatter, lumbering version of Buck 99, circa 2009. He stepped over some guitar cords toward young Buck, reached out his hands, nodded toward the Stingray, and said, “May I?”

Young Buck recognized who he was looking at and, thinking he was about to experience a revelation about where his own music skills would one day be, he gladly handed over the bass guitar to his future self’s hands.

“Thank you,” said the elder Buck, grinning. “You can keep the amp.”

Before young Buck could respond, future Buck hit a button on his remote and disappeared in another bright flash and a puff, leaving a heavy stench of ozone to assault their nostrils, and no means by which they could produce notes in the lower registers.

*****

“Back,” said Buck, plugging the Stingray into his Ampeg SVT.

“Did you pick up my silver Dan Electro while you were there?” asked today’s E-Taco.

“You mean the one with the lipstick pick-ups that M used to play?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”