We weren’t supposed to play music. We were just supposed to crash. But Craig came back from a drop-off with a weird smile and said, "The guy from the label had no cash, so… Fender it is." We didn’t ask questions. We just asked where the power cables were. Jono picked up the bass like he recognised it. Dave sat behind the drums like the world was a rhythm he’d finally remembered. Marina lit a joint, cleared her throat, and sang like an earthquake two towns away. I found a sampler in the pile dusty, blinking like it knew too much. Started hitting buttons. Wrong ones. Then right ones. Then something in between. We looped static over snare rolls, buried guitar lines in echo, sang nonsense that made more sense than anything I learned in six years of legal theory. “We are the ghosts in the garage / We are the prophets with no past / We are the ghosts in the garage / We are the prophets with no past" For six hours we were Radiohead meets trip hop meets Swazi smoke meets the edge of something real. If someone had hit record, we’d be millionaires. Or dead. But no one did. And maybe that’s why it mattered. It was ours. Ours. Sweat, distortion, and truth under flickering fluorescent tubes. I slept for twenty minutes in the Kombi with the sound still buzzing in my blood. Then I got up, stuffed my notebook and a few tapes into the duffel, and drove off while they all snored like saints. Will I forget it one day? Probably. But part of me is still there tangled in that perfect, broken song we only played once, for no one. “We are the ghosts in the garage / We are the prophets with no past / We are the ghosts in the garage / We are the prophets with no past"
