[Afternoon. Gilda and Nicole are at the Grime/Griswold household at the Redfeather commune, in the living room. Gilda sits at the piano as Nicole stands]
Gilda: “So, you like Bare Trees, do you, Nicole?”
Nicole: “Yeah. What of it?”
Gilda: “I wouldn’t have expected someone like you to know a deep cut Fleetwood Mac album. Well, deep cut as in before Buckingham and Nicks joined. The album went platinum, so it’s not really that deep a cut. But let’s be honest, ines are more likely to point to Rumours or Mirage, or even Tango in the Night as an example of a Fleetwood Mac album. Than Bare Trees.”
Nicole: “Well, here I am. A girl who points to Bare Trees. Murray and I even danced to ‘Sentimental Lady’ at my bat mitzvah. Both the one on Bare Trees and the Bob Welch solo version, back-to-back. And then we danced to ‘Lady’ by the Little River Band, and then started dancing to ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ by INXS, before Holt got clumsy and threw strawberry lemonade into my eyes.”
Gilda: [wincing] “Ouch! That must’ve hurt.”
Nicole: “Yeah, but he turned out to be a kind and gentle boar. As well as a gentleboar! Heheh. Like on Between the Lions, you know? Gawain’s Word? Blend on, dudes!” [holds up fists and draws them slowly closer to one another] “Gentle. Boar. Gentle. Boar. Gentle! Boar! Gentle! Boar!” [smashes hands together] “Gentleboar!”
[Gilda and Nicole laugh]
Gilda: “That was a good show. You know, that’s similar to a bit on an older show, called The Electric Company. Heard of it? Morgan Freeman was on it?”
Nicole: “Heard of it, not familiar with it.” [beat] “Anyways, that kind nature of Holt’s made me fall in love with him. And I’ve had him as a boyfriend since. Him and Murray.” [holds up fingers in a V] “V-shaped polycule, baby!”
Gilda: “V-shaped?”
Nicole: “Well, consider the shape of a V. Better yet, the shape of a valley like our town. Holt and Murray are like Hatcher and Yonderpine. And I’m the valley between them, the heart of Grunvale!”
Gilda: “Huh.” <Two boyfriends? Good luck having the wedding anywhere but Utah!> [sets metronome to 98BPM] “So, the song’s in G. You remember what that sounds like?”
Nicole: “Yeah, ‘Free Bird’.”
[Nicole vocalizes the note as Gilda plays the major version of the chord on the piano]
Gilda: “Very good. Now, let’s hear you sing. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve heard you sing before. Let’s see if you’ve got a hidden talent or if you should stick to baseball.” [beat] “Just kidding, I’m sure you’re good.” [sounds metronome and plays major G] “Uno, due, tre, quattro!”
[Nicole stands up straight as Gilda begins playing. She taps her foot to the beat waiting for the point where the vocals come in. Gilda snaps her fingers and points to Nicole once they reach it]
Nicole: 🎵 Why not lie here in my arms / And listen to the night? / You must know you have certain charm / And I feel the time is right 🎵 [Gilda looks at Nicole, amazed]🎵 So spare me a little / Spare me a little / Spare me a little of your love / Spare me a little / Spare me a little / Spare me a little of your love 🎵 [Nicole smiles at Gilda as she turns her eyes back to the keys. Gilda is also smiling] 🎵 Now I know that I feel much more / Oh, in every single way / And it’s not the same as before / It gets stronger every day / So spare me a little / Spare me a little / Spare me a little of your love / Spare me a little / Spare me a little / Spare me a little of your love 🎵
[Gilda stops playing, turns off the metronome, and turns to Nicole]
Gilda: “Wow, Nicole. I mean… wow. Your voice is… it’s beautiful. I don’t know what other way to put it.” [Nicole blushes] “It’s stable across a wide range, you never go off-key, and you enunciate every word clearly. Of course, you being a mezzo is also a plus in my book.”
Nicole: “A mezzo? Cool!” [beat] “What’s a mezzo?”
Gilda: “The middle range of a female singing voice. Higher than contralto but lower than soprano. If you want to know what those sound like… well, Wendy’s a contralto, and Margo’s a soprano. And I’m a mezzo like you. Does that help?”
Nicole: “Yep, yeah it does.” [beat] “Hey, question, Gilda. Since you’re musically knowledgeable.”
Gilda: “Sure.”
Nicole: “Do you know what Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were doing before Fleetwood Mac? I mean, how’d they come out of nowhere and just join the band?”
Gilda: “They didn’t ‘come out of nowhere’, since you ask. They actually made an album as a duo two years before they joined Fleetwood Mac. It’s called Buckingham Nicks.”
Nicole: “Buckingham Nicks? You just making stuff up?”
Gilda: [stands up and walks over to the record shelves] “No, I wouldn’t be talking about it if I was.” [runs hands over the spines of the jackets to locate the record, before eventually pulling it out and showing the not-iconic black-and-white cover to Nicole] “Here it is.”
Nicole: “Huh.” [stares at the cover for a while, before turning her attention to the record shelves] “How do you have so many records?”
Gilda: “Grandparents with great taste in music. And sophisticated, too.” [Sharon comes into the room, having heard Gilda’s and Nicole’s conversation] “Fitting a winemaker would have sophisticated taste, eh? I mean, not that I drink, of course. I’ve just heard wine is sophisticated.” [notices Sharon] “Oh! Hi, Grandma. I was just telling Nicole about Buckingham Nicks.”
Sharon: “Bucking –” [sees the cover] “Oh, yes! That little-known album Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham made before joining Fleetwood Mac. I remember when your grandpa bought that LP, he bought it at a second-hand store along with Genesis’ ‘Supper’s Ready’ back in… ’76, I believe.”
Gilda: [visibly confused] “You mean Foxtrot?”
Sharon: “Oh, right, yes. Foxtrot. I keep thinking the album was called ‘Supper’s Ready’.” [beat] “Anyways, I remember that album, Buckingham Nicks, I mean. I remember Buckingham Nicks being a good one.”
Nicole: “Well, let’s play it then.”
Gilda: [pulls record out of sleeve] “You’re in for a good one.”
[Gilda turns on a record player, puts the record on the turntable, and sets the needle down for “Crying in the Night” to play. Nicole noticeably enjoys it; she bops her head and taps her foot to the beat as the song plays]
[When the song finishes, Gilda lifts the needle off the record]
Gilda: “Well, what do you think?”
Nicole: “I like it! I think I want to get into record collecting myself!”
Sharon: “Well, your best bet would be at yard sales and such.”
Gilda: “Yeah, trust me, Nicky, you’ll want to collect older records, you can usually find those for like five, ten bucks a pop at the right yard sales. Newer ones go for like, upwards of twenty-five. Which doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, it adds up.”
Nicole: “Older records, got it. So go for stuff like Buckingham Nicks. Sounds easy enough.”
Gilda: “Well. I said usually five or ten bucks a pop. Unfortunately, Buckingham Nicks hasn’t had the luxury of being reissued outside of its original LP release.”
Nicole: [pause] “…which means nobody wants it?”
Gilda: [pulls out phone and searches for Buckingham Nicks on LP] “Oh, Nicole. If only it worked like that. Unfortunately, I know better from also being a video game collector.”
Nicole: “So, you said newer ones cost upwards of twenty-five. So what are we talking, thirty? Forty? Maybe fifty tops?”
Gilda: [holds up phone, showing listings of the LP] “Try a hundred.”
Nicole: [goes bug-eyed] “A hundred?!”
Sharon: “Again, your best bet would be a yard sale. But considering how rare that particular record is, this’ll probably be the only time you get to see a copy in the flesh and fur. Unless, you know. You have a hundred dollars lying about.”
Nicole: “…is there another way? I mean, YouTube, of course. But a way to own Buckingham Nicks physically?”
Gilda: “Not unless you want my teacher Chandler Spectrous to make a repro. It’d be as a CD, though.”
Nicole: “A repro? Is that… legal?”
Gilda: [grabs blanket off the couch and speaks in a raspy voice] “I will make it legal.” [laughs as she throws the blanket off] “Heheheh, Emperor.” [Nicole laughs as well] “But seriously, the only way you’re gonna own it physically if you don’t want to pay the money for the LP, is by making a repro. It’s not as satisfying as owning the real thing, and technically, yes, it is illegal.”
[Nicole looks nervous]
Sharon: “But, it’s a crime without victims. If you ask me, the real crime being committed, is by the record companies, not reissuing the album to make it accessible. Also, if Garry were still he — Garry’s my late husband, by the way, Gilda’s grandpa.”
Nicole: “Sorry for your loss.”
Sharon: “He’d be saying the same thing. You’ve heard of VHS, right?”
Nicole: “Of course I have, I’m not that young.”
Sharon: “Well, back in the day, TVs displayed a more square image than the ones of today. And for the movies that’d air on TV or release on VHS, they’d crop the movies’ picture so that it’d fit the screen. So you’d only be seeing as little as half the picture you were supposed to.”
Gilda: “They called it pan-and-scan.”
Nicole: “Well, that sounds like a scam!”
Sharon: “My husband noticed this as far back as when we first watched Fantastic Voyage back in the 70s, when VHS first released. So he’d often go to the movie theater to discretely record whatever big movie was out, from the middle seats of the back row. Just to get the picture that was supposed to be there. And then he’d sell the VHS copies of his recordings in his store for a premium. Sure, the sound was often muffled and the audience would laugh or gasp and drown out the movie sometimes, but it was the best we had back then, and for about 20 years, before DVD became commonplace.”
Nicole: “So it was a choice between cropped picture and bad audio?” [pause] “I think I’d have taken the audio. If it wasn’t too screechy.”
Sharon: “Thatta girl. Remember, it doesn’t matter that piracy is illegal. It’s the distributors committing the bigger crime by not releasing it. When it comes to otherwise inaccessible media, it’s always morally correct.”
Gilda: [imitates André Cymone’s pose] “It’s always morally correct.”
Nicole: [whispers to herself] “Always morally correct.” [beat] “Hey, how much does Mr. Spectrous charge for repros, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Gilda: “Twenty for the disc itself, an extra twenty for a custom jewel case with the front and back cover.”
Nicole: “So forty bucks?”
Gilda: “Well, that’s before taxes, but yeah.”
Nicole: [pause, as she thinks] “Worth it.”
Yar har fiddle dee dee, being a pirate is alright to be. Especially considering today marks my ninth fulfillment of my New Year’s Resolution. This month, I decided to do an artwork honoring International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Nobody said what kind of pirate I had to talk like. I’m the kind of pirate who tells you it’s always morally correct to pirate media that’s difficult to access. And so is Gilda Grime, in this meme referencing the cover to André Symone’s Living in the New Wave, that also happens to be a meme honoring piracy!
Nothing to add this time around. I just wanted to pay tribute to an awesome meme. And write a ficlet to go along with it. Which ended up expanding the characters of Sharon and Garry Griswold. Even if I did, though, I’ve got work in like an hour as I type this. So I’d have to fly off anyway. So until next time, take care, stay safe, reject crypto, support an Asimovian amendment for AI, and have a good one.
Twitter (Main): https://twitter.com/StormyAdlerPoG
Twitter (Art): https://twitter.com/TheOfficialOTOG
Webtoon: https://www.webtoons.com/en/creator/_8bqhk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_g…
Newgrounds: https://phoenixofgrunvale.newgrounds.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXj2NzDa8kzZ5mcliw4vT_w
Discord: Contact me by my tag (phoenixofgrunvale) to add me as a friend.
Grunvale/OTOG is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart or write fanfics of it, as long as you credit me as the creator of the series.
“Spare Me a Little of Your Love” was written by Christine McVie for Fleetwood Mac’s album Bare Trees, owned by Warner Music Group through Reprise Records.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 2160×2160 (aspect ratio 1:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 