Dome of Souls (Book 2 of 2, after Story Less Told)

Ch10: Tarnished past

Greg sat in his oversized chair, holding one of his signature basses and looking humbly smug. Izzy strolled through the threshold reviewing some bills and noticing he was with company.

"Is this a bad time?" she asked him.

"Of course it's a bad time. Cant you see I'm doing an interview?"

"Why?" she scoffed. Greg looked shocked and insulted.

"Well maybe if you stick around you'll know. Some people...I swear. Invite them into your mansion, share your food, they interrupt important interviews." he sighed. "Anyway back to what I was saying, Yes, I do consider myself one of the most influential musicians of the 22nd century. I was frozen for the majority of the early age of rock, so I took a bit to really get into the concept of an electric bass, they all seemed a bit small, wasn't thrilled with the tone of them at first but I got into it and in a few short decades I had consumed and understood most of the recorded music of history and decided what was important."

"And why did you decide on bass, instead of guitar or drums?" asked the stunning young human reporter.

"Well, guitars are like ukuleles to me, too small to get my massive fingers on properly, drums break easily. The bass is obviously just the superior option. It's larger, manlier; richer, fuller tone. I had most of my stuff custom built to be even better suited. Obviously money isn't much of a issue for me. I've been playing the upright for centuries, made some modifications to it already so converting to modern bass was quite easy, that's why it only took me a few years to form a band and hit top charts, turn out a few dozen records."

"Yea, your music seemed to take a bit of a relevance dive for some time. What would you consider the boost that you received fairly recently, that made it suddenly relevant again and put you back on the map?" she asked.

"Well the humans got used to being under Alien supervision and the flood of new bands of both Fae and imitation Fae just swamped the market. My main selling spotlight points have always been due to my looks and stage antics and the music kept the fans hooked...much like crack, only more addictive. With the huge wave of progress and new Osirian government on the human habitats, resulting in all the humans now having enough money to buy equipment and not work much, they had more free time to start bands and record music, so everything just became a blur of ridiculous bands that sounded the same. Oversaturation killed the music industry so that the market was all home-recording bands, and the overall quality tanked. As a man of history, I know the patterns of repetition in the world of human trends. With metal making a comeback recently, I saw an opportunity, infused some classical and tribal elements and successfully predicted what the market would be into next."

"So you're really just playing the stocks with music?" she asked.

"That, and I'm an incredible musician, obviously. Sometimes your greatness isn't understood at the time, so you must wait for the human mind to catch up to it."

"Fascinating stuff. So what do you have to say about the negative reviews?" she asked. He paused and blinked a few times.

"I assume all negative reviews are just jealousy, assumptions of idiots, and people misunderstanding the point." he nodded.

"Well let's explore some of those opinions for the interview." she pushed.

"...Fine." he agreed with an annoyed calmness."

"Cod-king445, says that your music is just a big flex for a washed up old man in a box." she read.

"Show's what that jackass knows, Man in the box was a great song."