We are Black Diamond Bay. There are six of us. We play music, a slo-mo motorik funk charge that's older than death and newer than a shining mustang. We met in a dirty road-side diner on the outskirts of a town somewhere near Vegas. This is our story. I had spoken to Apple James only once and only briefly. He said 'Come out to the desert, bring some songs.' Well we had some songs, me and Tom, so we took them to the desert, just like he said. We figured we could make them hot or bury them in the dunes trying. The dust is all I remember about that time. The dust and the carrion. We didn't find Apple James. Just footprints and echoes and empty packets of Lucky Strike, crushed by his fists. We came upon the diner just as our water was running out. We'd shot our horses way back. Tom said they slowed us down. He said we'd be better off on our feet and I agreed. We heard the sign first, whining as it swung on its hinges. Then in the sun's glare and all that dust we made out the shape of a diner by a road. Our tired steps quickened. Inside, Agne was serving coffee. She wore her pink waitress uniform and sang some shanty under her breath as she filled our cups. Her voice was the sweet honey dew we'd travelled so far to find. We asked her to join us. We told her we had songs. She moved to another table. Colin Sutton, a drifter, drunk on cheap moonshine and past glories, looked up from his ham and eggs and said with that ashtray voice of his that he was the fastest bass player in anywhere. He flashed a gypsy smile, betraying teeth of gilded steel. He wondered if we wouldn't happen to be needing a bass player. Seeing the ivory handled knives clipped to his belt, we guessed we might. 'Well then...' He said. Ben Ziapour, the local sheriff, young and dangerous, came through the door like a hot blast. Seeing Colin he flicked his holster open, ready for trouble. Colin laughed a jackal laugh and told us he couldn't shoot for shit, but Ziapour could handle a guitar. 'I'm the heaviest guitar between here and anywhere.' The sheriff weighed in, spitting tobacco on the tiled floor. We guessed we'd need a guitarist too and told him so there and then. 'There ain't no band without me'. We turned. Sitting in a booth at the far end was Benjamin Wilson, a trucker from somewhere, with a soul measured in celcius and a past measured in dead bodies. He said he didn't like the look of any of us people but he was sick of burning up the highways in these parts. He wanted to see Europe. Maybe even the world. He told us he would be doing the drumming. He told us he wanted to keep an eye on everyone. Colin laughed his jackal laugh and said: 'Well then...' The desert was no place to play. We had to get back to England, away from the sand and the spectre of Apple James. They weren't so sure but we told them that's how it had to be and one by one they took up their belongings and stepped out onto the 66 with us. It wasn't easy, getting back. How we did, well there's plenty more story in that. We got home years later I guess. We had the scars and the cruel memories to count for it. And we could play some too. Somewhere back there a sound came upon us that scared the blood from our veins and the wind from the trees and it called itself Black Diamond Bay…