by Greg M. Hall
any of their people, or probably even their reputation, to make it.
“Still, I’m thinking a place willing to pay us a grand oughta make decent money for the night so they want us back. If we pulled in a hundred head or so, they’d be thinking they need to have us for regulars.”
“Yeah, if we can keep Mister Foofy back there from grabbing my ass.” Frank grinned as he said it; he liked odd characters more than he cared to admit.
“Oh, come on, a guy can’t care about his appearance a little?” But Mike smirked too.
Nick, who’d had his face buried in a burger, paused his meal long enough to sing the Sexual Harassment Panda ditty from South Park. It got them laughing so hard that Frank almost got a hamburger chunk up his nose.
Several local girls had been eating and gabbing in a nearby booth, and, probably on a dare, the leader of the pack approached them. “You guys on a road trip or something?” She was blond, and cute, but unfortunately it was little-girl cute and not hot-woman cute; Mike doubted she was even out of high school.
She looked right at Mike; with his faded gray eyes, good looks, and don’t-care-if-I-get-laid demeanor, he could have all the women he could handle if he bothered. Early in their friendship, before the band had been together very long, Frank once asked his drummer if he liked girls, not that there was anything wrong with that if he didn’t, but he just wanted to know. Mike had told him he had several problems, none of which were the dreaded G-word. Despite being able to convey an outgoing appearance, he was actually very shy. On top of that, he visualized how much a steady girlfriend would complicate his already complex life—all self inflicted, he understood—and to top it all off, he had reverse beer goggles. The more he drank, the uglier women got. If true, Frank replied, they could make a fortune if they isolated that gene.
So it was Frank that responded, outgoing Frank, who thought he was uglier than he really was but didn’t care because he understood most women got past looks after about five minutes of conversation. “No, we’re actually in town to play a little music at a place down the road. You girls looking for something to do tonight?
She laughed, talking to the bassist now but still stealing glances over at Mike. “Oh, we’ve got stuff going on, but we might go out and take a look if it gets boring. Where you at? The Iron Horse or Dub’s?”
Frank shook his head dismissively. “No, we’re out at the Black Rock Club.”
Mike expected any of a number of reactions; surprise, awe, maybe even curiosity at why a posh place like that would want an actual jeans-and-tee-shirt band, but what he didn’t expect was the blank look. She deflated, and in turn the entire room got taken down a notch.
“Huh. Must be new. I’ve never heard of it. Is that over in Johnson County?”
“No…” Frank couldn’t hide the confusion. “It’s just about four or five miles out of town on that paved county road. Uh … anyways, if you girls get a chance, come on by. We’re playing ‘til one.”
Her blank look had gotten even more blank when Frank said paved road. She lamely said they just might, if whatever party they were already going to turned out to be a dog, but Mike knew she didn’t mean it.
“Well,” Nick interjected, not seeming to care if the girls heard or not, “that was a little weird.”
Mike half expected the paved road they had taken into town to be gone when they finished eating, but it was still there, smooth and neatly painted, still new enough that the blacktop hadn’t faded into gray. Frank stuck to technical talk: ‘So we switch to Too Hard to Handle after the second chorus of Walk This Way, or is it the third one?’ and things of that nature.
When they arrived at the Black Rock Club, it was eight thirty; just enough time to scope the place and its patrons out, figure out if they needed to drop some of the more recent songs and switch in some easy old twelve-bar stuff, do a quick sound check to make sure nobody had messed with the settings they had left behind before dinner, and start playing.
A few cars occupied the stalls out front; most of them large land-yachts like Crown Victorias and such. That didn’t bode well for the evening, all these old-people cars, but you never knew; all it took was for one cool guy in a small town to start driving a certain type of car and pretty soon all the other guys followed suit. There weren’t any little Hondas or Minis, and Frank gravely judged that there wouldn’t be any ladies to romance with his singing.
The back door was still open, so Mike parked the van tail-in by it so they could easily pack all their gear back up when they were done.
The place continued to exude an air of entitlement, but thankfully the patrons weren’t all wearing dinner jackets and evening dresses. In fact, it looked like any Friday night crowd in a good neighborhood: twenty- and thirty-somethings dressed nicely but casually, and no beaten-down-by-life or biker types at the bars like they saw in some of the older neighborhoods. They clustered in groups, very few couples sitting by themselves, and although there was something odd about the entire picture that they couldn’t quite place, each individual looked like a functioning member of society.
So they got to work, huddling up over a small grease board that contained their song lineup, deciding to leave the new stuff in and not mess with the order, and agreeing that they’d have to kick the first set up a notch because it was already a full house.
They waved at Stephenson before starting up, but the little guy didn’t seem to be interested in coming over to talk. He gave one of those silly bow-flourish salutes Mike associated with Three Musketeer movies, left foot forward of the right. They took that as his signal to get on with it.
During the nine-o-clock set, you usually see a combination of people ignoring the band and continuing conversations, a few people politely looking up as they continued to drink and talk, and one or two folks that got things started a little earlier than the rest ‘rocking out’ in typical embarrassing Caucasian fashion.
Not this crowd.
Mike liked to eye the crowd and get a temperature on the room early. The whole thing unfolded right in front of him in vivid Technicolor. At the first chord of Mama Kin, everybody stopped their conversations cold and turned their heads in unison, noiselessly, without shifting body position.
Frank must have seen it too: he missed the second note on his bass, just played a whole note for the third measure instead of the little run he always did, and barely recovered in time to start singing, the words It ain’t easy taking on a whole new meaning.
Frank loved large crowds, loved to feed off their energy; it was the whole reason he’d gotten into music in the first place. He was an okay bass player, but nothing special, and relied on a decent singing voice to make his impression on people, but what he really brought to the group was stage presence. He had a certain cockiness that made people enjoy watching, and he seemed to engage every member of the audience—especially the female ones—one-on-one when he performed.
But for that entire first set, Mike observed him looking anywhere, up, down, at his bandmates, at the back wall, at his mike, anywhere but into that crowd. They all continued to stare, pleasant looks on their faces, as if someone just told them they’d won a free TV, but not a million bucks or something life-changing, and they didn’t move. He didn’t look long enough to tell for sure, but Mike wasn’t even certain they were breathing as they listened.
Overall, it made the set one of the worst he could remember. Frank was flat the whole time—in mood, not pitch; Frank Patten never sang off key—flubbing lyrics left and right, completely forgetting the second verse of Let There Be Rock and substituting the first one. Not that it mattered. Their audience still sat there frozen in not-quite bliss.
By nine-thirty or so, Frank announced: “Okay, we’ve got one more song before we take a break, so you’ll have a chance to buy lots of drinks!” He used the line before, delivering it in lame lounge-act fashion, ha-ha, you need to buy drinks so we can get paid more, har-har, but it wasn’t very funny now. Mike didn�
��t even give him an odd look for calling a break so early, while Nick, ever oblivious, just started playing the opening riff to You Really Got Me, effortlessly rocking back and forth from the G to the Open-A, just like you do for Cold Hearted Bitch and Sweet Emotion and who knew how many other songs, sounding just as good as he did every night.
”Girl,” sang Frank, probably doing his best paranoid side-to-side Ray Davies look, probably never feeling it so honestly before.
When it was Nick’s turn to solo, Frank let him go. Not only could he wail, but every night he came up with new stuff, out of nowhere, and sometimes it was such a wonder to watch him play that Mike would lose the beat. They normally let him go double-long, twenty-four measures instead of twelve, but as they approached the spot where they’d go back into the verse, Frank caught his eye and signaled for him to continue flailing. Mike, able to key off of Nick in these situations, just went with the flow. They were able to jam out like this for another four or five minutes until it started to sound a little repetitive, and at the end of the next group of twelve measures, Nick actually looked at Frank with a this is it, right? expression.
All good things must come to an end, and they put a little extra flourish or two into the finish, Mike
