The Haters

A Band. A Road Trip. A Gig That Maybe Doesn't Suck.

Jesse Andrews

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781760291907
• eBook ISBN:
  9781925575545
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A wry and witty new coming-of-age story from the New York Times bestselling author of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, now an award-winning film.

A band. A road trip. A gig that maybe doesn't suck.

Corey and Wes are convinced nothing cool can come of their lame summer at jazz camp, when along comes Ash - all blonde hair and brash words - who cracks their world wide open. Finally, something they can't seem to hate. Convinced that a great musician is made on the road, the three friends flee camp and begin the epic, hilarious road trip: The Haters Summer of Hate Tour.

Amidst sneaking into seedy bars, evading their parents and the police, and spending every minute together in a makeshift tour bus, romance blossoms and bursts and hygiene takes a back seat. Wes begins to realize the limitations of hating everything: it keeps you at a convenient distance from something, or someone, you just might love.

1.

WE DIDN’T KNOW JAZZ CAMP WOULD BE THIS MANY DUDES

Jazz camp was mostly dudes. It was just a scene of way too many dudes.

Corey and I were in Shippensburg University Memorial Auditorium for orientation, and it was dudes as far as the eye could see. Dudes were trying with all their might to be mellow and cool. Everywhere you looked, a dude was making a way too exaggerated face of agreement or friendliness. And every ten seconds it was clear that some dude had made a joke in some region of the auditorium, because all the other dudes in that region were laughing at that joke in loud, emphatic ways.

They were trying to laugh lightheartedly but it was unmistakably the crazed, anxious barking of competitive maniacs.

Corey and I found some seating way off to the side, and our hope was that we would not absorb or be absorbed by other dudes. Inevitably, however, a dude approached us. He was white. Jazz camp was mostly white dudes. This dude was clutching a gold-embossed tenor sax case, and on his head was a fedora with two different eagle feathers in it.

Corey was drumming on some practice pads and had spaced out completely, so I was the one addressed by this dude.

“You cats mind if I make it a trio?” he asked me, and it was not a huge surprise that a dude of his appearance was speaking in Jazz Voice.

This dude was attempting a big relaxed smile, but his eyes were needy and desperate and I knew we had to accept him at least for a little while.

“Sure thing, man,” I said. “I’m Wes.”

“Adam,” said this dude named Adam, trying to lead me through the stages of a way too long handshake. “Sorry—could you lay your name on me again?”

It was even less of a huge surprise that this dude was not prepared for my name to be Wes, based on his careful appraisal of my face and skin.

“Wes,” I said. “Wes, like uh, Wes Montgomery.”

“Wess,” he repeated, pronouncing it sort of Mexican. “Very cool, very cool. And where in the wide world are you from, Wes?” “Me and Corey are both from Pittsburgh,” I said, hoping Corey would help out.

Corey stared at the dude but did not stop drumming. Corey basically has no sense of social cues, and you would think that would make his life harder, but it’s the opposite.

“Pittsburgh,” repeated Adam finally. “Great little jazz town. Well, I’m a reedman from Jersey. My axe of choice is the tenor horn.”

“Cool,” I said. “I play bass. And Corey here is obviously world-class at jazz bassoon.”

For a couple of seconds, we were an auditorium laugh bomb. Adam threw his head back and went, “OH HA HA HA HA HA. ‘JAZZ BASSOON’?! OH MAN. WESS, YOU ARE ONE FUNNY CAT.” A number of dudes looked over at us. I attempted to come up with a decent I Guess I Just Made a Good Joke Face that wouldn’t make anyone want to punch it, but it turns out that’s an unmakeable face.

“For real, though, we should all jam sometime,” said Adam, but fortunately at that moment Bill Garabedian walked onstage with his band, and everyone started cheering and trying to freak out the most.

Bill Garabedian was the famous jazz guitarist whose jazz camp it was. He was an emaciated white dude with a shaved head and a complicated soul patch/goatee arrangement, and it was kind of clear that he had not written his Opening Address out in advance. He spoke a mellow adult variant of Jazz Voice, and his points were these:

—I’m Bill

—Thank you, thank you

—Ha ha

—Okay, settle down, for real

—Thank you, all right

—Welcome to my fifth annual jazz camp

—Ha ha, yeah! I think fifth, anyway

—What do I even say? Someone else want to get up here and talk?

—I’m serious

—Ha ha, though, all right

—You know, I’m getting too old for this, man

—Every year you kids just keep getting younger and younger

—Ha ha, though, but for real

—I’m up here looking out at all these young faces

—You know, I remember when I was your age and all I wanted to know was, where’s jazz headed?

—What’s the future of jazz, you dig? The future . . . of jazz

—Then when I was seventeen I got my first Grammy nomination

—And that’s when I realized: the future of jazz is now

—Because before you know it, the future is the present

—Think about that. Future sneaks up on you

—And before you know it, you’re old

—Old and wrinkly and the girls don’t like you as much! Ha ha

—Okay, you don’t have to laugh so much, Don

—They don’t like you that much, either

—Anyway, what was I saying

—For real, though

—Russ, you remember what I was gonna say? No?

—We weren’t just talking about it?

—Maybe that wasn’t you

—Well, uh, look

—Oh, I remember now. Okay. Dig this. These next two weeks are about exploring your musical personalities

—We really want you guys to form combos, you know, mess around on the side and really stretch out, all right

—And here’s what we did to make that possible

—This year we admitted double the rhythm section players

—Double the drummers, double the bassists, double the pianists, double the guitarists

—So you horn players got double the opportunities to jam

—Ha ha, don’t mention it

—You’re welcome, horn players

—And rhythm section players, don’t you worry, you’ll get plenty of opportunities to play, all right

—We’re gonna have tryouts in a minute, divide you up by skill level

—But first, the other teachers and I need to stretch out a little bit

—Let’s see Miley Smiley do this

And with that, Bill and the teachers launched into this super angular, up-tempo, hard-bop thing.

The goal was to demonstrate that they were all jazz geniuses with insane chops, and they completely achieved this goal. The entire song was sort of a way of making sequences of musical notes that refused to form melodies of any kind. That’s incredibly hard to do, and accomplishing it is one of the final stages of becoming a hard-core jazz dude.

Our new friend Adam was almost orgasmically psyched. Literally every fifteen seconds he said something along the lines of, “Shit! Those cats can blow!” or “Bill is a real motherfucker of an axeman!!” He could not decide whether he was supposed to pronounce the r’s in “motherfucker.” But this was the only thing limiting how amped he was.

Corey and I were not as amped. I mean, on some level, we were also admiring the ridiculous chops of these jazz assassins. But on a deeper level, we had become apprehensive about our roles at this camp. You see, we were solid at our instruments, but not exceptional. And Bill Garabedian’s Jazz Giants of Tomorrow Intensive Summer Workshops had the reputation of only being for the highest-level jazz kids. Back in the winter, we had figured we had no chance of getting in. We really just applied because our music teacher made us. And when we learned we got accepted, it sort of made us more confused than amped.

Now, however, it was starting to make sense. Corey and I were two of the lower-quality drummers and bassists that the camp needed in order to inflate its rhythm section numbers. We were jazz-nerd chaff. The worst of the best. And I was familiar enough with the tactics of music educators to know that Bill Garabedian’s promise of “You’ll get plenty of opportunities to play” was also the promise of “You’ll get even more opportunities to irritably sit around listening to other kids who are roughly as mediocre as you.”

We were coming to terms with the enormity of our situation. We were stranded for two weeks in a little town three hours east of Pittsburgh, awash in a veritable sea of anxious strivey dudes, not even going to get to play half the time, and it was making us not amped at all.

Another thing that made us not amped was Bill Garabedian’s band’s encore, a smoothed-out fusion song entitled “The Moment.” Basically, it was the soundtrack of any time a high school principal decides to have sex.

2.

TRYOUTS DIDN’T GO GREAT

There were nine other bassists at tryouts. The bass instructor was a big tired-looking Asian American dude named Russell, and he laid it out for us:

1. You’re trying out for five big bands: the Duke Ellington band, the Count Basie band, the Thad Jones–Mel Lewis band, the Woody Herman band, and the Gene Krupa band.

2. Each band will have two bassists alternating song by song.

3. They’re all great bands to get into, okay?

4. So don’t get all hung up about what band you’re in.

5. Unless it is Gene Krupa.

6. If you get put in Gene Krupa, you may want to consider spending the next two weeks not being at this camp and instead living under a bridge.

Maybe he didn’t make the last two points out loud. But I felt like I could hear him thinking them.

Obviously, I got Gene Krupa, the lowest-skill-level band. My tryout didn’t even go too badly. But I think it hurt me that I was the only bassist playing bass guitar and not string bass. It probably made me seem less committed to jazz. Another thing that hurt me was that pretty much every other bassist was an unspeakable beast.

Corey got Gene Krupa, too. He was as despondent as I was. We commiserated about it over lunch.

COREY: does this mean i have to drum like gene krupa?

WES: if you even get to play which may never happen

COREY: gene krupa drums like a herb

WES: no he doesn’t

COREY: he drums like the king of all herbs

WES: he doesn’t drum like anything because he is super dead

COREY: that’s a good point but he did drum like the biggest herb in america

“Herb” is just a...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• 1. WE DIDN’T KNOW JAZZ CAMP WOULD BE THIS MANY DUDES
• 2. TRYOUTS DIDN’T GO GREAT
• 3. FINALLY A GIRL IS SIGHTED
• 4. NOPE, STILL AS COMPLICATED
• 5. YES CAN WE PLEASE GET BACK TO THE GIRL NOW
• 6. THE MEDIOCRE GENE KRUPA BAND PLAYS A BLUES IN F
• 7. THE THREE OF US BOND OVER DICK HARM AND THEN PLAY ACTUAL MUSIC
• 8. COREY LITERALLY EATS HIS TONGUE AND ASH LEARNS THE TRUE MEANING OF GARFUNKEL
• 9. RETURN TO THE JAZZ GULAG
• 10. AIR HORSE
• 11. MY PARENTS VERSUS COREY’ S PARENTS
• 12. ASH BRIBES A RECEPTIONIST
• 13. THE ASH RAMOS THREE BOOKS THE PERFECT TASTE
• 14. A TURBULENT MORNING AT THE KNOXVILLE CLINTON
• 15. HOW TO TRADE YOUR REALLY NICE BUT POLICE-SUSPICION-AROUSING CAR FOR AN INFINITELY LESS NICE AND COME TO THINK OF IT PROBABLY ALSO POLICE-SUSPICION-AROUSING CAR IN THREE EASY STEPS
• 16. WE DRIVE INTO ALABAMA AND ALMOST GET MURDERED IMMEDIATELY
• 17. YEAH THERE WERE SHARDS OF GLASS IN THERE STILL
• 18. WE WERE THIS CLOSE TO DOING A MAROON FIVE COVER THAT WE HADN’T EVEN PRACTICED
• 19. SOMETHING REAL
• 20. HOW TO ESCAPE FROM A FAMILY THAT YOU THOUGHT WAS COOL WITH YOUR FREE- SPIRITED ADVENTUROUS LACK OF PARENTAL CONSENT BUT IS ACTUALLY CONTACTING THE POLICE IN FIVE EASY- TO-FOLLOW STEPS
• 21. WE MAKE A RUN FOR THE BORDER
• 22. THE BAND CHANGES ITS NAME TO “CAMPIG” AND THEN LOCATES THE MOST HURTING BAR IN A HUNDRED- MILE RADIUS
• 23. COREY ELEVATES HIS BEING-AN-UNSTABLE-MESS GAME TO A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL
• 24. YEAH BECAUSE MEANWHILE BACK AT ELLIE’S COOKIE HAS SOMEHOW JOINED OUR BAND
• 25. ALTHOUGH I WAS ABLE TO GET SOME SLEEP AFTER MASTURBATING INTO THE SINK AGAIN
• 26. MEET THE PRITCHARDS
• 27. I GUESS YOU WOULD CALL IT A DRUG EXPERIENCE GONE WRONG, EXCEPT WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR A DRUG EXPERIENCE TO GO RIGHT, LIKE WOULD THAT JUST MEAN SITTING AROUND KIND OF INERTLY BLISSING OUT TO THINGS, LIKE A HAPPY VEGETABLE, BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW, THAT SOUNDS EVEN WORSE, LIKE IT’S SORT OF LIKE PREPARING TO DIE AS HAPPILY AS POSSIBLE
• 28. THEN I HOISTED MYSELF OUT OF THE HOT TUB AND WALKED INTO THE HOUSE DRIPPING WET IN MY UNDERWEAR AND NO ONE EVEN BATTED AN EYE
• 29. MAYBE IT WASN’T A HUNDRED PERCENT BUT THERE WAS A GOODLY NUMBER OF GIRLS IN THERE
• 30. OBLIVION
• 31. DEEBO
• 32. AND I HEARD HIM MAKE A NOISE LIKE HAAARRRM
• 33. DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS
• 34. SOMEHOW WE NO LONGER EVEN WORRIED ABOUT GETTING PULLED OVER EVEN THOUGH WE HAD VISIBLY BEEN IN AN ACCIDENT AND HAD NO RIGHT SIDE MIRROR
• 35. WE AWOKE TO A MONKLIKE, SHAVEN-HEADED MAN TAPPING THE DRIVER’S-SIDE WINDOW
• 36. THE HATERS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR