The whole house shivers; composites tremble against the aging white walls of the chapter room, buzzing to the loud din from below. Friday evening dress rehearsal: from a small locked room in the basement, Roro and the Rothrockin’ Band works out the kinks one day before their Saturday night frat party.

Six guys – they could be anybody, but lodged in that compartment space they get to itch and sweat, as if they were getting at something, like their impressions of the best rock songs from the previous few decades were going to make them famous. And it’s always one note off, a little too fast or too slow a tempo, something like that. Fortunately, there’s always a sense of assurance that something’s improving, something’s sounding something like something.

So Josh Rosenbaum doesn’t have to worry. He can casually lift his guitar strap over his head and jog upstairs for another quick break. When he comes back down, his eyes are a bit red behind his thinly rimmed glasses.

He’s a regular complacent guy in a band. Mask and Wig’s hegemony on the student music scene at the University of Pennsylvania leaves cover groups like his mired in the living room of a frat house to play at registered events.

But Josh’s completely at ease with it. He’s the bass guitarist and has been for the past year, which is exactly how long Roro’s been around. With one day before their first gig of the spring semester, the band’s got five new songs to perfect and debut, including “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. And as a senior, Josh knows he’s only got a few more chances to play live before music becomes a mere “hobby.”

Every Sunday, Josh makes his standard appearance for dinner and chapter meetings. Outside of that, he sneaks in a few visits upstairs before, during, and after practice on whatever day of the week it’s scheduled. He hesitates before finally asserting that Roro’s been pretty successful, since “practice makes – not perfect, but closer to perfect.”

So, a couple days and thirty songs later, Josh is sprawled out on a mattress, satisfied by a good performance the night before. And he thinks everybody seemed to enjoy it. Josh thinks back to the end of his junior year, when his fraternity faced losing everyone in the old band formerly known as the Four Leaf Clovers. Josh, a chill, low-maintenance Floridian who started playing the guitar when he was twelve, used to jam with the former bassist and keyboardist. “I wanted a chance to have that live music experience,” and now he does it along side his childhood best friend, Robby Rothrock, lead singer and poster boy of the group that came together last spring.

At dinner, the majority of the frat congregates in the chapter room to eat low-quality brisket and crab cakes, but everyone’s busy laughing and retelling entertaining stories about another ridiculous night. Robby Rothrock’s voice dominates a full table the way it does when he sings, and he talks about how the party went from their side of the floor, behind the mic’s.

Josh comes in late and sits at another table, searching for a clean plate, slowly digesting his meal, contemplating his bigger priorities, like one final blitz of midterms and papers and then, the formidable plunge out of college. For Josh Rosenbaum, there’s a chemistry laboratory waiting for him in downtown Philly when he gets out of school. For now, he could dive into all the funny anecdotes like the rest of them do, but Josh actually knows what he wants out of things. He always has.

“I didn’t fuck up very much at all,” he recalls, adding that Steve, another guitarist, made a few mistakes. Josh doesn’t need to play at Fling the way Robby might. He doesn’t need Roro to outdo the Four Leaf Clovers’ legacy and play at Smokes on Sunday evenings. He doesn’t need to be perfect, and he’ll be the first to say that he doesn’t practice enough. He just finds it enjoyable to play in front of a crowd, so much so that he has trouble working on his chords anytime else.

“Music is a good release – uh, for everyone.” That keeps him content to play simple and solid root notes, no complex scales, no riffs, and no licks. If it weren’t for the social scene at Penn, for the transient thrill enough undergrads undergo of getting their music live in front of them, Josh is sure that Roro “wouldn’t be able to pull it off.”

And he gets that; he, too, appreciates the circumstances of having a college crowd listen and sing along for free while he nonchalantly plucks out each track of pop culture’s most beloved play list.

“I never developed a good ear,” he says, conceding that he’s better at reading notes than hearing them. He’s not like his friend Robby, who’s also leaving in a few months and in the meantime it’s all about having that good ear. For Josh, it’s enough to just have a good time.