From the wayback of the Metro Rapid 761 bus, I broke out of a phone daze, looked out the 40-foot long row of windows and saw C

L

O U D

S

whirly, puffy, foreboding, massive, wispy — all the clouds, all together; the sky a grandma with every grandchild visiting.

All of this en route to way-far-away Granada Hills to play tennis with the father of a friend of my daughter’s. Yeah it was a dad playdate. This guy used to be a glam rocker before a whole follow-up lifetime where he was free to play tennis after dropping his 7-year-old son off at school. We hit a little bit and that was great, although I noticed he was wearing running shoes so I tried to hit the ball directly to him so as not to make him have to pivot and potentially twist an ankle.

He returned this consideration by driving me all the way to the North Hollywood metro station. Along the way he recounted the various hair lengths he sported over the course of his rock career. During this saga, he incidentally solved a huge lifetime mystery for me, which is, how do drummers and bassists know what to play when they lay down the drum and bass tracks in the studio before the rest of the song is recorded?

Answer: the other guys in the band play along with them, but the sound engineers only record the drum and bass.

This made everything snap into place.