Mufti Rocks

Hoofcross felt he was on fire, the jagged clanging of his bass guitar discharging into the overheated atmosphere of the room like some manic electrified carillon. He must look like he was on fire, too, the handmade cigarette hanging out his mouth like a sputtering fuse, smoke blowing into his nose as he focused his callused fingers in their grip on the frets. Behind him, Mapplethwaite was busting a gut on the drums, the sweat standing out on his pasty forehead, clinging to his greasy hair as he hammered the kit in fervid concentration. At the bar before their set, Mapplethwaite’d been boasting loudly about the blackness of his shit that morning, fallout from a night out on the Guinness. Now he seemed to have lost all his bravado, and was hanging on for dear life, working away with a deathly determination as his face became steadily more pale and his suffering stood out more blatantly by the second. At the front of the band, Prig was having a whale of a time, howling like a monkey down the wonkily-adjusted mike-stand, his hands moving in only the most impressionistic approximation of the chords he should be playing. Off to his right, Pilkington completed the lineup, frowning over his guitar in dastardly absorption as he tried to remember a song they’d taught him at practice barely more than three hours before.

                The gig was a stormer. Drunken whoops greeted the chaotic disintegration at the end of every song, and at the termination of their set a trio of their mates set up a ragged chanting of the band's name as the members set about unplugging their various pedals and instruments, with Mapplethwaite removing his cymbals from the drum kit.

‘Muf-ti! Muf-ti! Muf-ti!’

Hoofcross was stoked. They’d played tonight perhaps the best out of any gig they’d ever done together, and he was on a high as he walked outside, sweat cooling on his glowing face, to smoke his post-gig cigarette…