[Richard Feynman]

“Ignition.”

“CAS.”

“And-a-one-two-three.”

The band picks up the rhythm simultaneously. The definitive authority is the crankshaft, and he reads the room adeptly, pick-ing-it-up or sloo-owing it down in response to load and gearing.

A pernicious student of the crankshaft, the timing chain passes the BPM up to the Cam Sisters – Intake, Exhaust, and Eccentric the youngest – who flush out a full beat structure, adding the “2-3-4” to the downbeat. The Intake and Exhaust Cams favor a tight four-on-the-floor percussion, but Eccentric has fallen in with the Valvetronic crowd. She lingers on her notes and, on spirited drives, insists that Intake do the same.

Now the VANOS Solenoids are jazzy components, even scandalous to some of the old-timers, and they force the whole ensemble into a swung syncopation which has at times, I am told, bordered on Breaks or even UK Garage.

Exhaust valves hit the half-beat. Injector Ginger Rogers matches Intake Fred Estaire. The combustion chamber bellows a throaty vocal, with a “tsssahhh,” from the coils, “whoosh” from the fluids, and a “hahhh” from the fans.

Meanwhile…

“Uhh… the lifters’ mic???… Are they really not going to fix the lifters’ mic?” says one audience member to his neighbor.

“Erm? Its supposed to be like that?”

“No!... No it’s like, way to loud. Way…”

Yes the band is jamming with gusto, mic’ed up with a thousand sensors. And at the head of it all is the DME – conducting of course – tweaking Eccentric’s dwell here, nodding approving at VANOS’s rhythm there, and maybe even cuing DISA for a key change.