The Next Seattle: Memoir of a Music Scene

by Neal A. Yeager

“it’s a club.”

  “Yes, it’s a nightclub and nightclubs have booze. If you don’t have booze you’re a coffeehouse.”

  “It can still be a nightclub.”

  “No. It can’t.”

  “What is that word?” she began as she finally looked up at me, “That word for when you argue about the exact meaning of a word instead of just taking it as it was meant?”

  “Do you mean ‘semantics?’”

  “‘Semantics,’ yeah that’s the word I was looking for. Gina would have known that right off the bat by the way.”

  “I don’t care what Gina would have known,” I said, “and I don’t care about semantics either. My question is ‘how in the world do you expect to keep a nightclub going without selling alcohol? You can’t do it.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said. She looked up at me and smiled. “Are you really mad or are you just pretending to be mad? ‘Cause I don’t know you well enough to know.”

  “Well, I’m. . . annoyed,” I said. And then I began to smile as well, “Since we’re talking semantically, I’m probably not literally ‘mad,’ but still, I don’t understand how you expect to keep this going without selling alcohol. It’s a combination that goes back to the beginning of time: people listen to music; they drink.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true.”

  “No,” she said, “What about in your car? You listen to music in your car. Are you slamming down a sixer at the same time?”

  “But that’s in a car.”

  “But you’re listening to music.”

  “Okay fine. But it’s not live music. When you go to hear live music, when you actually see musicians standing before you, making music with their own hands and voiceboxes, you want to be drinking. You want to listen to the band and cradle a nice bottle in your hand.”

  “What about the symphony?”

  “Live rock music.”

  “What about in an arena?” she countered.

  “Well,” I stammered, “that’s. . . that’s different.”

  “Why?”

  “‘Why?’ Because you’ve got a large percentage of minors in the audience.”

  “Exactly!” she shouted, “Exactly!”

  “‘Exactly!’ what?” I asked.

  “People get into music when they’re teenagers, then stop being into it when they grow up. I’ve got an uncle who has this huge record collection. Unbelievable. It takes up an entire wall of one room. And he bought most of it while he was a teenager. The newest record he’s got is from 1982. He told me that was the last one he ever bought and he bought it when he was 26 years old.”

  “There you go. 26.”

  “But that was the last one. Here this guy was an absolute fanatic, he bought more records than anybody else he ever knew, but he stopped completely at 26,” she said. “Look, I’ve gotta get ready for the next band here. So, real quick: remember how I told you that we were geared toward the college kids? Well, college kids are between the ages of 18 and 22. The drinking age is 21. If I sold alcohol, then I’d be turning away three fourths of my audience. So I don’t do that. I want to reach people with music. I want kids to be able to go someplace and see a band doing original music, to see a band that just might someday end up being famous. That’s the whole point here. That’s what we’re about. Didn’t you see the sign?” she asked.

  Following her finger to the far wall, I noticed a large hand lettered sign. I wondered how in the world I had missed it before. It took up a huge portion of the wall, and screamed out in big, bold orange letters:

  “OUR MISSION IS TO BRING GREAT ORIGINAL MUSIC TO THIS CITY. HAVE FUN. ENJOY THE MUSIC, BUT PLEASE DON’T SNEAK DRINKS IN HERE. IF YOU SUCCEED, YOU WILL ONLY SUCCEED IN GETTING US PUT OUT OF BUSINESS. AND THEN, THE MUSIC WILL DIE — THE MANAGEMENT.”

  I looked at the sign. I shook my head. Two words came out of my mouth: "Oh, Jesus..."

  Purple Hair (or Six-Foot Munchkins)...

 

  I’m not sure why it happened or how exactly it happened. But it happened.

  I had sat there, alcohol-less, watching the first few bands play — one was a female acoustic duo with an Indigo Girls sort of vibe, the second was a fabulous disaster of something disco-esque — and was now on the third act of the evening when I noticed a strange undercurrent generating around my end of the room. Due to the fact that I’ve basically lived in bars since I was a teenager, I’ve learned to be on the alert for this particular undercurrent. I’ve felt it many times before, so it was with a cautious alertness that I swiveled around my non-barstool to see if I could casually ascertain just where the fight was about to take place. I noticed that it was coming from near the stage area where stood the group of the punk-dressed kids. But they weren’t the problem. I later learned that they were actually some pretty nice kids. They weren’t the problem, but the problem was being directed at them. For coming at them was a group of guys who were, I don’t know, what should we call them? I suppose that the nicest, profanity-free thing to call them would be "thugs."

  Above the noise of a band named Six-Foot Munchkins, I could barely hear the lead thug as he shouted to a particular purple-haired young man, “you’re a freak! A good-for-nothing freak!”

  So, here we go I suppose. Let me say for the record that I have never understood why men, young men especially, feel the need to solve their differences using testosterone. From the small-scale conflicts such as this, to large-scale, full-blown wars we as a gender seem never to learn that the expression “might makes right” is a complete load of shit.

  The purple-haired young man seemed at a loss as to what to do. Obviously, he had been singled out because he was small and skinny. The troublemaker on the other hand was a “big strappin’ lad” as they say. And like a typical bully, he had decided to pick on the weakest-looking kid in the joint. Not only did the purple-haired kid have to face this thug, but behind the thug was a group of his thuggy friends.

  “You’re a fag aren’t you?” I heard the young thug yell. I couldn’t hear the purple-haired kid’s response but he was shaking his head in an obvious denial. “You are! You’re a fag! And you’re here with all your little fag friends. Look at you all dressed up like a bunch of freaks. You make me sick!”

  This must have been the purple-haired kid’s first such confrontation (though if he continued to dress like that, it would surely not be his last) and he was obviously frightened and unsure as to what to do. I could tell that he seemed merely to be weakly protesting the homosexual label in what I would bet was a frightened tone of voice that gives bullies a thrill to hear.

  As I said, I had felt the trouble before I had seen it, and now I was seeing the form that the trouble was taking. And the purple-haired kid was unfortunately playing into their hands. I wish that I could have told him the secret of such situations—although maybe he would learn it tonight—is that if you are going to be different, then be proud to be different. Be damned proud of your uniqueness. You have every right to dye your hair purple if you want to and if some thick-headed guy has a problem with it then you simply don’t care. Most of the time bullies are not actually looking to start a physical fight. They merely want for you to cower under so that they win by default. But if you act like they aren’t worth your time, the whole thing will often end right there. And if the person really is itching for a fistfight, then it will happen whether you cower under or not. So why cower under? As Mahatma Gandhi had learned, standing up for what you believe is right quite often means getting the shit kicked out of you. But no matter how badly you are beaten physically—even to the point of death—the bully never wins if you do not cower.

  I really wish more people would read Gandhi. He actually was much more badass than most people realize.

  Perhaps I should have said something to that effect to the purple-haired kid but there really wasn’t the time. And besides, I was hoping that it was a lesson that he would figure out on his own here in the next few minutes. But he didn�
��t.

  The big guy was definitely coursing with testosterone and I couldn’t really tell if he was going to turn violent, or if he just wanted to rant. “Why don’t you people go get jobs?” the troublemaker screamed, obviously operating under a strange form of logic that assumed that anyone who looked different would never stoop to earning a living, “instead of hanging out here in your fruity clothes? You’re all a bunch of freaks!”

  As he yelled the word “freaks” his fiery gaze happened to meet mine. I laughed and exhaled a puff of smoke.

  He looked away.

  “A bunch of freaks!” he shouted.

  Just then a young woman with a shaved head chose to speak up in her friend’s defense. I managed to hear her shrill voice proclaim, “We can dress however we want to. This is America.”

  Nice line I thought, but the delivery was lacking. Her voice sounded too fearful and challenging. It was a matter of fact that this was America. And yes it was clear that choice of apparel is protected under the Constitution of the United States. If she had said so confidently and calmly, then she would have, I believe, gained the upper hand. But alas, she was whining and that simply does not work with bullies.

  The bully just laughed and mimicked her whine, “We can dress however we waaaaant. Every time I drive down this street anymore, I have to see you faggots parading around outside this place like a bunch of...” he stalled, seemed unable to come up with another