At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde

Host: The Los Angeles night pulsed like an amplifier on the verge of feedback — neon buzzing, cars growling, and dreams humming under the weight of heat and ambition. The streets were slick from a quick summer rain, the kind that never cooled anything, just made the air smell like asphalt and adrenaline.

Down on Sunset Boulevard, through a haze of smoke and cheap fluorescent light, Jack and Jeeny sat outside an old record store, legs stretched out onto the sidewalk. Behind them, a mural of rock legends watched silently — Lennon’s calm gaze, Cobain’s haunted one, Lou Reed’s eternal indifference.

The hum of distant guitars bled from the open door, where a turntable spun a Pixies record, raw and grainy, the sound carrying like a secret.

Jeeny: “Rivers Cuomo once said, ‘At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.’”

Jack: (grinning faintly) “The sound of evolution — from distortion to discovery.”

Host: The streetlight flickered above them, casting long shadows across the cracked concrete, like the ghosts of every kid who ever thought a guitar could change the world.

Jeeny: “It’s the story of transformation, isn’t it? A kid chasing noise finds meaning in melody. L.A. has always been the place where chaos meets identity.”

Jack: “Or where identity gets drowned in chaos. Depends which song you’re playing.”

Jeeny: “That’s what makes it beautiful. We come here to break, to rebuild, to find a new sound in ourselves.”

Host: The music inside shifted — Nirvana’s “About a Girl” floated into the night, Kurt’s voice half-melancholy, half-miracle.

Jack: “Funny thing about that quote — it’s not really about fame. It’s about growth. You can hear the humility in it. Like he realized noise alone wasn’t enough. You need melody — structure — emotion that lasts longer than the scream.”

Jeeny: “Yeah. It’s the artist’s paradox — trying to balance the primal and the poetic. Metallica gave him the fire, but the Beatles taught him the air.”

Jack: “You sound like a music critic with a soul.”

Jeeny: “I’m just saying art mirrors life. At eighteen, it’s all volume. At nineteen, you start hearing the silence between the chords.”

Host: The wind blew a flyer off the telephone pole beside them — “OPEN MIC NIGHT – Searching for New Voices.” It tumbled across the street, caught in a puddle, dissolving into ink and paper — ambition and rainwater.

Jack: “You ever think we’re all just rewriting the same song — changing the chords, the tempo, pretending it’s new?”

Jeeny: “Of course. But every artist brings a different ache. That’s what makes it worth listening to.”

Jack: “So what changed for Rivers, really? He traded aggression for introspection. The noise didn’t go away; it just got smarter.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. That’s what growth looks like. You don’t abandon your sound — you refine it. The heavy metal riffs turn into reflections. That’s evolution in any art, any life.”

Host: A passing car blasted Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”, and the bassline rattled the sidewalk beneath their feet. Jack smiled — a flicker of nostalgia in his eyes.

Jack: “I remember when music felt like rebellion. Now it’s just background noise for commercials. Maybe that’s what we’ve lost — that raw defiance.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. It’s still there — it just changed its clothes. Every generation finds a new way to scream.”

Jack: “You think noise still matters?”

Jeeny: “Always. Noise is how the soul says it’s alive.”

Host: Jeeny’s words hung in the humid air. The rain started again, soft at first — drops tapping the guitar cases stacked beside the record store.

Jack: “When I was twenty, I thought the only way to be heard was to be loud. Now, I just want to be understood.”

Jeeny: “That’s the shift Rivers was talking about. L.A. teaches you that loud doesn’t mean lasting. You can scream all night and still not be remembered.”

Jack: “So you start writing instead of shouting.”

Jeeny: “Or listening instead of proving.”

Host: The streetlight above them dimmed, as though the world were taking a breath. Inside the record shop, the Pixies track ended, and the gentle strum of “Here Comes the Sun” began to play — fragile, warm, impossible to ignore.

Jack: “You ever notice how the Beatles could make simplicity sound like revelation?”

Jeeny: “That’s what makes it eternal. Truth doesn’t need distortion to echo.”

Jack: “But distortion’s what we know first. It’s the language of youth — the only way to shout into the void and hear something come back.”

Jeeny: “And melody is what you find when you realize the void’s been listening all along.”

Host: The rain eased again. Jack took a slow breath, looking up at the sky, its dark expanse split by the faint orange glow of city light.

Jack: “So that’s it, then. We all start as noise and end up as music.”

Jeeny: “If we’re lucky.”

Host: The camera would pull back now — the street, the record store, the two figures half-silhouetted in the dim light of nostalgia and neon. A city that has made and broken a thousand dreams watched silently, still humming its electric lullaby.

The mural behind them seemed to glow faintly in the rain — Lennon’s smile, Cobain’s sadness, Reed’s indifference — all of them saying, in their own way, that evolution isn’t betrayal.

It’s just a change in key.

The final notes of the Beatles song lingered in the air as the screen faded to black, leaving only the echo of Jeeny’s final whisper:

“Every artist starts by trying to be loud enough to be heard…
and ends by trying to be quiet enough to be felt.”