We’re all here for different reasons. Not to mention different times. You may not find yourself at the Finch at one in the afternoon all that often, but we occasionally imbibe—or, rather, do weighty journalistic interviews with local artists— there at lunchtime.

You remember that guy Joey? Fifties, glasses, always at the back booth near the door on New Band Nites? Well, Joey was at the Finch every weekday afternoon, too, same booth. Worked there, you could say.

“Who’s playing tonight?,” you’d hear him ask. “How d’you spell that? Medieval what? Who?” Took an interest. More concerned about how the bands spell their names than the bands were themselves. (Mess’o Pot-amia, we need to talk.)

We knew a guy once who went to all the theater shows in our town, collecting autographs. The actors would be thrilled. Then they’d see him getting an autograph from the box office manager, the custodian, everyone in the audience. Filled an autograph book every night, for no apparent reason.

We feared Joey was one of those random-info hoarders. We mean, did you ever see him take a real interest in a band other than asking who they were? So we followed him one day—less suspensefully put, we just asked if we could walk a ways with him when we saw him on one of the rare times we saw him outside the Finch.

Not unusually for barcrawlers on that end of town, he was making tracks for BetTrack. Why don’t more gamblers don’t drink there, we wondered aloud? Instead, they fan out to all the little joints a few blocks away.

We forget his exact term for it—something colorful and unprintable, even here—but Joey’s basic response was “bad vibes.” He explained to us how he soaked up the atmosphere at the Finch, how it helped him marshall his strength, made him feel lucky.

We jotted some of this romantic spiel down, old-man slurs and all:

“When I sittataFinch, I feel grand! I feel luck’! Ver’ luck! I tell you, ‘s a great place. S’a great place. Who’sat band? Who’sat band? Tuck Lock? They’sh very good to me. Vergoodame.”

Next time I saw Tuck Lock, I gave him (them) the other Joey’s regards? Who?, TL wondered. That guy in the corner?, I coaxed. Never noticed him? No.

Took us a few more reconnaissance missions to figure out what our friend Joey Corner was up to. We peeked while he was scribbling charts and numbers in his little notebooks. We saw him heading to that betting parlor a few more times. When, one another day, we met him at the corner store buying like a dozen lottery tickets, something clicked.

Then we spent a few of the more boring band sets on a Thursday with a pen and pencil ourself, testing our assumptions.

Band Name: MontyMart. The numerological possibilities are massive. Or you can simply assign each letter a numerical value. Turn the two capital Ms into sideways 3s. The lack of a space in the name has untold significance.

We sidled up to Joey at his booth, and told him we knew what he was up to. He seemed shocked—not that we’d found him out, that he’d been exploiting rock monikers for his gambling habit—but that we’d bothered to think about him at all. He could’ve told us all along. Then he proceeded to do just that, filling us in on the filling-in he’d become accustomed to doing.

Mary Attaché = 27 (the accent doubles the value of the “e”). Wet Pack = 15. TPR = 3. The Pullmans = 42; go figure. YKK Zippers? Off the charts. If you’re in a band Joey saw and are feeling used—just a bunch of numbers to him—well, don’t. He’d be back there figuring in how many fans you drew to your gig, how many blondes there were (a major signifier) and even how many times you repeated a word in a chorus, if he could keep up. We let him know authoritatively how many times Hand Leather screamed “Rollaboard” in their song of the same name once, and you know what? Joey slipped us five bucks for the info.

Don’t think we were back there conspiring. Actually, once we figured out his game, Joey and I didn’t have much to talk about. Or too much—it quickly got arcane, and we learned to just nod and smile from across the room.

A friend down the tracks told us Joey blew town last month. Packed his bag and bolted. Won’t be coming back. This is our memorial. If you see us scrawling an idle math theorem when Skid Plate, D-Ring, Ballistic Cloth and Number Ten Zippers—excuse us, that’s #10 Zippers—play the Finch tonight, you’ll know why.