The Non-Sequiturus Rex
by Lenny Levine
part 1
“I can’t believe it! What an amazing drummer!”
I had to shout into my friend Mitch’s ear because we were jammed together against the bar in a club called the Rock Quarry. The band we’d come to see — actually, just the drummer, Bobby Milton — had finished the first set, and now the club’s sound system was blasting Springsteen.
“See, didn’t I tell you?” Mitch yelled back at me. “He’s incredible! They’re having some kind of group meeting, and then he’s gonna come by and talk to us.”
I took another sip from my nearly flat beer and leaned in toward Mitch. “Maybe they’re breaking up; that’s what the meeting’s about.” My lips were practically touching his earlobe. “And they should break up. They don’t even belong on the same bandstand with that drummer.”
Mitch nodded. “And I think Bobby agrees with you. At least, that was the impression I got. It was hard to tell because he’s got this funny way of talking.”
“What do you mean?” The guy on my other side was unknowingly, I assumed, digging his elbow into my ribs.
“You’ll see,” Mitch said.
We’d come there to check out Bobby Milton’s skills because he was the missing piece in our project. We were putting together a Cream tribute band.
And let me tell you, it was going to be mind-blowing! I’ve worked most of my life on this, and now I can reproduce every great bass line Jack Bruce ever played. I also worked on his voice, and I’ve got it down now to a T.
And Mitch... well, Mitch. Without exaggeration, he is the quintessential Eric Clapton. His voice isn’t an exact match, but it’s pretty damn close, and his guitar work is impeccable. He can make a Stratocaster stratospheric.
All we needed was a Ginger Baker, and Bobby Milton seemed to be a godsend. Not only did he have the chops, but he also had red hair! The scraggly beard was missing, but he could easily grow one. He’d be perfect!
And in fact, there he was, emerging from a door behind the bandstand. He squinted past the crowd toward the bar area. Mitch waved his hands in the air.
“Bobby!” he shouted as they both made eye contact.
Bobby nodded and then moved his eyes in the direction of the main entrance, signaling that’s where we should meet up. We pushed through the throng and made our way over there, following him out the door and into the parking lot.
“Hey, man,” he said to Mitch as we stepped out into the crisp autumn air.
“Hey, Bobby.” Mitch gave him a power-to-the-people handshake. “I’d like you to meet Brian Willis, otherwise known as Jack Bruce.”
Bobby gave me the same handshake and then scanned the parking lot. “Don’t see a Ferrari,” he observed.
Ferrari? I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Then it hit me: Jack Bruce’s second album Things We Like had a Ferrari 365 on its cover.
“Yeah, well, it’s at the shop,” I said. “That’s why I brought the Volkswagen.”
“Ah. So you’re into folk music.”
Now I was really at a loss. My mouth opened but nothing came out. Fortunately, Mitch stepped in.
“So, I told you about our project, Bobby,” he said as I realized out of nowhere that Volkswagen means “the people’s car” or “the folks’ car.” “That’s why I wanted Brian to see you. We both really dig your playing, and we think you’ll dig ours, too. So if you’ve got eyes for it, let’s get together and play some Cream, huh? When can we do it?”
“Whenever,” said Bobby. It wasn’t exactly dismissive. It was just toneless.
“Okay,” said Mitch carefully, “when is whenever?”
Bobby began to smile. He looked over at me. “That’s a pretty heavy philosophical question there, Brian, wouldn’t you say?”
I would, but I suddenly saw what he meant; at least I thought I did. “By ‘whenever,’ you really mean ‘any time.’ Is that it?”
The smile continued. “As you said.”
Two things occurred to me simultaneously. One was that “As You Said” was a song on Cream’s Wheels of Fire album. The other was that working with this guy might turn out to be the most bizarre experience of my life.
* * *
We had to wait three days for Bobby’s gig at the Rock Quarry to end before we could all meet up. Then, after he’d moved his drum kit from the club to his garage, Mitch and I drove over there in my “folk’s car” with our mics and speakers in the trunk and our practice amps and instruments in the back seat. If this thing ever really happened, we’d have to buy huge Marshall amps to duplicate Cream’s sound. We thought we could get a manager who’d lay out the money.
“I still can’t understand how you figured out what he meant,” Mitch said as we turned into Bobby’s street.
“You and me both. I guess I got lucky.”
“Everything he says has nothing to do with what you just said. He’s like a walking whaddya call it... a walking non sequitur.”
“Yeah, that’s what he is, all right. Except, the non sequitur seems to eventually make sense. At least, most of the time.”
“At most, some of the time,” Mitch corrected.
We pulled into the driveway. Bobby lived with his parents in a large Cape Cod-style house. We all lived with our parents. Mitch and I fervently hoped that this project would set us up enough so we could finally move out.
The garage was a three-car affair with only one car in it, so we had a fairly large area in which to set up. Bobby’s drum kit was already in place at the rear of the garage, with its double bass drums like Ginger Baker’s.
He sat on his stool doing light riffs on the cymbals as we brought all our stuff into the garage in shifts. He didn’t offer to help, but I figured that was all right. Some drummers help you, others don’t. They’ve got their own equipment issues.
We set up our amps and mics to face Bobby’s drums so we could all see each other.
“How about, we start off with ‘White Room’?” Mitch suggested.
Sounded good to me. “You want to count it off?” I asked Bobby.
He seemed to be staring at something invisible in the space between us.
“Bobby?” I said. “Do you want to count it off?”
“Who are we?” he said to the space, because he sure wasn’t looking at either of us.
I couldn’t resist. “That’s a pretty heavy philosophical question there, Bobby, wouldn’t you say?” I assumed he’d recognize his own wit and maybe smile.
Nope. He looked dead serious.
“Before we start,” he said, looking from one of us to the other, “we need to decide what the name of this band is.”
Mitch and I had, of course, thought about it from time to time, but it was way down on our list. We were much more concerned with the music.
“We can’t be Heavy Cream,” I said, “because that’s taken.”
“And we can’t be Sons of Cream, either,” said Mitch.
“Bobby, do we really need to do this now?”
He didn’t even dignify it with an answer. He just kept staring at that space.
“All right,” I said, “how about we call ourselves ‘Creamery’?” It had just popped into my head.
There was a weighty silence. Then Mitch spoke. “I guess it’s better than the one I came up with: ‘Crematorium.’ So, yeah, let’s call ourselves ‘Creamery.’ Is that good for you, Bobby?”
Bobby gave the briefest of nods. Then he counted off and we proceeded to play the absolute hell out of “White Room.”
When it was over, after we’d instinctively played our way into a spectacular ending where the original record fades out, I was standing at my mic in shock. “Wow,” I said, unable to think of anything better. “That was freakin’ incredible!”
Mitch was shaking his head in wonder, smiling like I’d never seen him smile. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said.
We glanced at Bobby, who was looking down at his snare drum. He rapped on it a couple of times. “I need a new drum head,” he said. “This one sounds like crap.”
My heart sank. We’d just pulled off a flat-out miracle, and he hadn’t even noticed. It hadn’t affected him at all. We waited for him to say more but that seemed to be it.
Oh, well, I thought, I guess I knew this thing was only a dream, and it’ll always be a dream. I turned toward my amp, ready to shut it off and start packing up.
Mitch didn’t take it nearly as well as I did. “Holy crap, Bobby, your drum head? Your friggin’ drum head?” He was practically yelling. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”
Bobby shrugged. “Maybe you don’t mind how it sounds. But if we’re gonna keep playing this incredible, amazingly awesome stuff, I’m gonna need a new drum head.”
* * *
We did five more songs, all of which were astounding. Bobby had studied Cream as intently as we had. Not a word needed to be spoken. We all knew the material.
We planned to rehearse again the next day, and as Mitch and I drove back home we were still under the spell of it all.
“What are the odds?” I said. “Finding a guy who can play like that and who’s so into Cream? I still can’t believe it.”
“Me too,” said Mitch. “I just wish he’d stop with the weird non sequiturs.”
He’d made several more as the rehearsal went on. Some of them I could figure out, others were a mystery.
Like when we asked him if it was okay to leave our equipment there in the garage. He said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder. At least, it’s supposed to.”
We took that as a “yes,” but I’ll be damned if I know why.
“Phil Sherman,” Mitch was now saying, “the keyboard player who turned me onto him, told me he’s in a bad situation with his parents. They’re going through a real nasty divorce. That’s why there’s only one car in that garage.”
“It must be tough,” I said, grateful that my parents still seemed to get along reasonably well.
“Supposedly, his dad has a history of violence and is a gun nut and a mean drunk besides. And he’s really fighting the divorce. Phil told me they had to take out a restraining order against him.”
“Oh, man.”
“So I guess Bobby has a right to be a little weird. But it’s still unnerving.”
I thought about it. “It’s definitely unnerving. But I guess it’s a small price to pay for magic.”
Mitch thought about it. “I just hope it’s a small price,” he said.
* * *
Copyright © 2026 by Lenny Levine
