It was Thursday and the Georgia Waters display had been up for almost a week. I’d thought it would get easier to see it, but every time I walked past the poster of Georgia, my insides twisted. There she was in bold colour, laughing, oblivious to the people she’d left behind. Or was she? What had gone on in the last ten years? Did she think about us? Was she going to visit us when she came to town? Questions that, on a normal day, I could push aside kept bubbling to the surface. It wasn’t lack of money that kept her away from us. She probably had a private plane; she could have flown to visit anytime she liked. But she never had.
“I can’t wait to take that down,” Lou muttered, his eyes flickering to the display as he did the daily totals at the cash register.
“I thought you didn’t care about her.” I rested my chin on the top of the mop. It was just the two of us. Dad had gone to jam with the guys at the bar where Barney did security.
“I don’t. But I don’t need to look at her a thousand times a day either.”
“Do you think she ever wonders about us?”
His face got sullen. “Probably not.” The concert was getting closer and we hadn’t heard anything from her; no offer to meet, not even tickets to see her show. Maybe she was afraid of opening the door, even a crack. Worried we’d want something from her she wasn’t able to give.
A copy of each album we had in stock was displayed on the table. But not the ones that were in Dad’s office. The private recordings she’d done stayed safe on his shelves; well, most of them. I’d found a few others and the collection had grown to ten records. A couple had GW written on them, but others had no label until I’d made one, printing Georgia Waters in big block letters on the waxy, white sleeves.
I’d brought a couple of them upstairs and put them in my dresser drawer so I could listen to them in the privacy of my room. The way she sang, it was like she was singing just for me. I could lose myself in her voice and I knew this was the most real part of Georgia. The ache and intensity that came through her music couldn’t be hidden; she laid herself bare.
As I mopped the floor, an idea started to spin in my head. I moved the mop around the floor in circles, letting my thoughts unravel. What if I made a mix using those old recordings? The ones no one had heard before? Erika had said to tell a story with my music and this was my story. I wanted to hear Georgia in my music. But would people wonder about them? I lived above a record store, I reasoned, and had access to all kinds of rare records. Anyone who’d seen Dad’s private collection wouldn’t be surprised he had unreleased recordings by Georgia Waters. I could try to disguise her voice, but part of me wanted people to hear it. I was tired of hiding.
“That spot’s clean, Dizz. You’ve been there for five minutes,” Lou said to me as he tidied up the front desk. The cash-out was done. “Make sure to turn off the lights and set the alarm when you’re done, okay?”
“I’m going to spin for a while,” I told him. I hadn’t realized how slow I was mopping. I still had half the store to do.
He had a load of books under his arm as he loped across the store to the stairs. “I’m going upstairs to read.”
As usual, I wanted to reply. More than ever, he was locking himself away with books. When I’d got home from school today, he’d been staring into space trying to come up with deep, meaningful observations about the book he’d been reading. It was good he was using his brain, but Lou was way too smart to be stuck behind a record store cash desk all day. Dad knew it, too. I wished Lou had something he loved.
I tossed the mop into the closet as soon as I heard the door to the kitchen shut behind him. Who cared about cleaning when there was mixing to be done? The floor didn’t look that dirty anyway.
I went to Dad’s office. Besides Georgia’s secret recordings, his shelves were full of rare albums that had never made it to record stores and one-offs that Dad had recorded with friends. There was a whole collection of bootlegged copies that he couldn’t sell but couldn’t destroy either. I grabbed a few of Georgia’s I’d found and took them to the turntables. I put on the first record, slipped on the headphones, and dropped the needle.
Her voice came out, low and whispery at first. She was singing one of Dad’s favourite songs, late Bob Dylan called “Make You Feel My Love.” I’d heard it a hundred times, but usually with Dylan’s gravelly voice that sounded like scraping burnt toast. My mom’s voice had power. Even quiet, the strength of it came through, bare and raw. Goosebumps rose on my arms as I listened. I closed my eyes and let the song wash over me.
DJ Erika had said to use music that had meaning. No family had music that mattered more than mine. Music had shaped all of us: me, Dad, Lou, and Georgia. I could use one of Georgia’s unknown songs but what about the rest of us? What songs mattered?
I went to the Blues section. I wanted to pull a record that screamed Dad. I found a band I knew he liked and sifted through their records until I found a live recording he played sometimes. With percussive foot stomping and one bass guitar, it would be the backbeat. I yanked it out. I spun around the store, my eyes dancing from section to section. What would represent Lou? His favourite music was reggae. With a dash of the right song mixed against my mom’s voice, it could work. It would be a crazy mash-up of styles, but if I beatmatch everything the way Jeremy had shown me … I let the thought trail off. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, putting body parts together to make my music monster.
With the flick of some switches, the gear on the table breathed to life. I picked up the headphones and slipped them back over my hair. A buzz of electricity hummed in my ear, speaking to me. Georgia’s voice would start, strong and pure. I also had a song Dad had recorded with a band when he toured. His sax stretched across her melody. Lou’s reggae music was a bridge between everything, and then finally my song choice: a dance song stripped down to just its wicked beat.
It took hours to get the mix the way I wanted it. A mix was never finished. There was always another tweak, one more area to smooth over or a place to add something, but if I kept playing around with it, I’d ruin what was good. Pulling my hands away from the turntable, I stepped back. I’d recorded the final mix on my computer. It had taken a whole night to create, but it would take only seconds to upload to my Mixcloud account.
I hesitated, holding my finger over the Upload button. Once I pressed it, the mix would be out there. People could listen to it, comment on it, and share it. Would anyone recognize the voice? Too tired to talk myself out of it, I watched the bar fill to the end as the song loaded. The confirmation ding was like a starting pistol. The mix was out there.