Live Music

Coming home late one night from Fremont I caught the last 17 bus that would take me downtown. There were two young musicians sitting near the front of the bus. One was a tomboy with a round face, wearing a white button-up shirt and a tie. Her friend was a thin kid with long, greasy hair that seemed to tug on his features, making him look skinnier than he actually was. He had a ratty guitar case propped against the window with stickers that said, "Fragile." She had what looked to be a violin case. They were both around 17 years old.

She asked the bus driver if they could play a song on-board. "Metro policy says we can't play the radio. But they don't say anything about live music," the bus driver said jovially, and they immediately unlatched their instrument cases.

For the next several minutes the condos on Dexter Avenue and the industrial warehouses on Denny were set to an uptempo waltz. The violinist played confidently as her less virtuosic friend fumbled across the fret board to find chords that complimented her melody. There were maybe a dozen people on the bus, and had been all along, but suddenly I could feel everyone's presence. All moods had lifted, and we listened with half-smiles, welcoming the absurdity of the situation

The musicians didn't overstay their welcome - one song and it was over. We applauded and the violinist thanked the bus driver politely. "It's always been my dream to rock out on the bus," she confessed. "This was the cherry on top of an already great day."

She spent the rest of the trip downtown chatting with people on-board. There was a genuine sense of exhilaration about her that wasn't showy or self-serving. At one point, her friend the guitarist pointed a thumb behind his back, drawing the girl's attention to a couple cop cars flashing their lights on the side of the road. There was a cuffed man draped over the hood of one of the cars. Another one was propped up against the brick building, and he was screaming in anger.

The intensity of the flashing lights brought the mood of the bus down a little. Finally the violinist said something to her friend that I loved. "You know, for the few minutes that the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show, there was no reported crime in America."