Rules to Rock By

by Josh Farrar

  “That’s very touching,” I said. Don just ignored me and kept going.

  “But don’t confuse them. Not for a second. Jackson is just a bad kid. Jonny, however, is not. He’s scared maybe, and he’s made some bad decisions because of it.”

  “So that’s supposed to make it all okay? Jonny’s life’s not a bowl of cherries, so he gets forgiven? For everything?”

  “Have you ever been bullied, Belle? Repeatedly, consistently, over several years?”

  I didn’t nod. I didn’t shake my head. I just sat there.

  “Right. I didn’t think so. Listen, I know your life hasn’t exactly been perfect lately, either, but bullying’s no joke. I think you should cut Jonny some slack.”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez.”

  Don scratched his head and chuckled under his breath. “Sorry, Belle. I’m coming on a little strong, huh? Listen, I’m not asking you to forgive Jonny, at least not right away. I’m just asking you to understand him. And I’m hoping you’ll play tonight. The Bungles are still on the set list. Jonny’s coming, and so’s the rest of your band. I’ve made sure of that. As to whether you perform or not, well, that’ll be your choice, of course. Yours and your bandmates’. Just keep me posted on what you decide.”

  “Don, I didn’t even bring Satomi. I don’t even have a bass.”

  “Oh, I guess you can’t play, then. Not when there are forty basses ten feet away, any of which you’d be welcome to use tonight. The Beatle bass, for example.”

  The Hofner! The man knew me well.

  If this had been a movie, Jonny would have entered the store in slo-mo. He and I would have met dead center in the middle of the store and exchanged meaningful looks without speaking a single word. Tears would have sat in our eyelids, waiting to stream down as we hugged and jabbered on about forgiveness and gratitude and life lessons and how much we cared about each other. Cue the cheesy music, the violins.

  But of course it didn’t happen that way. Jonny, Crackers, and Darren arrived at Don’s together, which really annoyed me; they had obviously been talking behind my back. And then they walked by me without even seeing me. Granted, Don’s was buzzing with people, and I wasn’t exactly keeping a high profile; I had my hood up and was skulking around like a juvenile delinquent.

  My bandmates, or former bandmates, or whatever they were, stopped by the counter to strategize. I knelt behind a Marshall stack and listened.

  “Just how mad was she the last time you talked to her?” Darren asked Crackers.

  “I don’t know if she’s really even mad anymore,” Crackers said. Yes, I was! “She seems more—I don’t know—sad.”

  “What do you think’ll make her sadder?” Darren asked. “Realizing that Jonny’s not Mr. Perfect or missing out on this battle, which she’s been working on for over two months?”

  “Excuse me, Darren,” Crackers said. “It’s more than just Jonny not being Mr. Perfect. He’s been a total jerk. And you have, too. Do I need to remind you?” Gooooo Crackers! I had never seen her get this riled up before.

  “Okay, okay,” Jonny said, finally breaking his silence. “Darren and I have both screwed things up pretty badly. He knows it; I know it. But we agreed that, for now at least, we are going to try to patch things up, right?” He looked at Christine, raising his eyebrows. “That we’ve worked too hard to quit now? That we’ll play the battle, and then sort things out afterward?”

  “Yeah,” Crackers said grudgingly. “That’s what we said.”

  I stepped out from behind the amp.

  “Do I get a say in this?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Darren said. “Obviously.”

  I turned and faced Jonny. “I just want to know,” I said. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep screwing with those kids even after you said you were breaking all ties with Jackson?”

  “I … I tried,” Jonny said. “But the first time I didn’t bring my weekly totals, he jumped me on Waterman Street, after all. He said he’d kill me if I stopped or if I told anybody. He looked crazy—crazier than I’d ever seen him before. So I didn’t know what to do. I just kept doing what I’d been doing all year.”

  “But it’s over now?”

  “Well, I mean now that Jackson knows that Don knows the whole story, I think I’m cool. I think Jackson’s going to back off. At least for a while.”

  Darren reached out and put his good hand on Jonny’s shoulder, just for a split second, before pulling it back.

  “Will you play with us, Belle?” Darren asked. “I think we owe it to ourselves to play tonight.”

  “Darren, you’ve got a broken elbow,” I said. “Can you even play?”

  “The guy in Def Leppard has like one limb, and he sounds great,” Jonny said. “I think Darren can manage.”

  “Enough about Def Leppard!” I said. “Let’s do it. But once we get off that stage, we’re all going to talk about a way for you two to make it up to those kids.”

  “Okay,” Jonny said.

  “And it’s got to be something good,” I said. “Not just some lame apology. You’ve got to make it up to them for real.”

  “You guys can be their personal slaves for the next three years,” Crackers said.

  Jonny chuckled awkwardly.

  “No joke,” I said, but I could tell he was taking it very, very seriously.

  So that was that. For the day at least, we were still a band. All the bandmates (with the possible exception of Darren) were mad and unbelievably tense, but we were still a band.

  At four fifteen, when we got called up for a sound check, we were still communicating in nods and grunts. We climbed the stage by some stairs on the side and started setting up our instruments. The rainbow of lights came on. “Whoa!” said Crackers, and I realized she had never been on a real stage before. As I was fiddling with the house amp—that night everybody was using the same amps and the same drum set—I saw Jackson arrive. He was wearing shades and a knit cap. Either he didn’t want to be seen just yet or he was trying out a completely unsuccessful new look. I don’t think he realized I had spotted him, but he looked as cocky as ever. He approached the Mohawk sound guy and gave him a big cool-dude handshake, like they had known each other for years. Then he whispered something in the guy’s ear.

  “Annabelle, you ready?” said Crackers. “We only have five minutes. Let’s try a song.”

  “Check, check,” I said into the mic. Crackers did the same. “You ready for us?”

  “Um, yeah. Go for it,” said the sound guy, who couldn’t stop smirking for some reason. “Play something.”

  Darren did a quick count-off and we started “Is This It,” the Strokes song—we hadn’t had time to decide what our set list was going to be yet, but we could figure that out before the actual performance. Jonny and I still weren’t making eye contact, but there was still a nice bounce to our playing. The Bungles didn’t sound like anybody else, and the fact that we weren’t all best-friend cuddly at the moment didn’t change that. Maybe we’d be like Oasis or the Pixies, I thought, one of those bands where everybody wants to kill each other half the time, but they sound amazing anyway. By the end of “Is This It,” we still weren’t exactly having a love fest onstage. I was angry; maybe all of us were a little angry, but the anger was helping us play better, stronger, tighter. As we played the last chord, we didn’t want to let the next band do their sound check. We wanted to keep playing.

  “When do you think Don’ll kick us off?” Darren asked.

  “Whatever,” Jonny joked. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “That’s it!”

  I almost threw my guitar down, rushing to get the pad and paper from my backpack.

  “Whoa, Cabrera, what’s the rush?” Jonny asked.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got to get some lyrics down. I think I might have finally figured out how to finish my song!”

  “You go, girl,” Jonny said as I scribbled words down so fast that to anyone else but me it would have l
ooked like some strange Martian language.

  Rock stars don’t get mad. They write songs.

  THE BUNGLES’ CHILDREN’S CHOIR

  By seven o’clock, the chairs were starting to fill up, and not just with Federal Hill people, either. A lot of hipster-type college kids and art students came, all mopey-looking bangs and eyeliner. And most of the guitar geeks I saw every time I showed up at Don’s were there, some of them practicing licks on invisible guitars while they waited in their seats. The revamped formation of Raising Cain sprawled on a few chairs to the side of the stage. Cory, the new drummer, might not have been as old as Darren had described him, but he was definitely massive. He was dressed head to toe in denim and leather, with mutton chops that met at his chin. Jackson looked as relaxed and above it all as usual, lounging about as if he expected a lowly servant to sidle up at any moment to pop a couple of grapes into his mouth.

  Don Daddio took the stage.

  “All right, rockers, who’s ready to get down to business?” Mild cheers from the audience. “Who’s ready to tear the roof off and kick out the jams?” The cheers were getting louder, but they were still pretty weak. “People, this isn’t some indie rock show where you show your appreciation by sitting on your hands and crying into your beer. This is a battle of the bands! Who’s ready to WAGE SOME WAR?” A real cheer this time, some screams. “This is the Sixth Annual Minor Threat Battle of the Bands! Remember, you’re the voters, and you’re going to vote with DECIBELS. The trophy goes to the band that gets the rowdiest ruckus, so lemme hear you make some noise!”

  This time, the audience stood up and really screamed. Don Daddio turned back on one heel and smiled as he watched the crowd go absolutely nuts. A bunch of boys from the back started chanting “Raising Cain, Raising Cain” at the top of their lungs.

  “Good segue, people, because as last year’s champs, Raising Cain is going to kick things off for us tonight with a three-song set of their pulverizing brand of take-no-prisoners rawwwwk ’n’ rollllll. Let’s give a hand to Jackson and the boys!”

  The crowd roared in approval as Raising Cain sauntered onto the stage with a lazy confidence. At least half of their magic came from the fact that they looked like they just didn’t care. The bassist plugged in a black Music Man bass with an MDC sticker on it. Jake had told me about them. The initials stood for Millions of Dead Cops, or possibly Multi-Death Corporation depending on who you asked, but either way it was creepy and weird. Cory looked half asleep and droopy eyed, but warmed up with lightning-fast fills on his snare drum and tom-toms. And Jackson strutted around on the stage, twisting the mic cord in his hand like a whip he was about to uncoil on the audience. The crowd murmured expectantly.

  Finally, Jackson put his guitar strap over his shoulder, plugged into a vintage Marshall combo amp, and kicked off the vicious first number of their set, “Raw Power,” another Stooges song. The band sounded absolutely awesome. The bassist and the drummer were totally locked in as Jackson’s sneering vocals and crunchy guitar leads pierced the air. It was an aggressive, rude sound played with clarity and precision. Raising Cain took petty cruelty and turned it into art. Everyone in the audience was on their feet throughout the song, and when it ended, they erupted.

  Jackson put his hand out to quiet the crowd, tuned his guitar for a moment, and approached the microphone. “Thanks so much, everyone, for giving us the chance to shine on.” His voice sounded as greasy and slick as the goop he used to plaster down his hair. “It feels good to kick it out a little … So, for the next two songs, I’ve got some dedications. This first one goes out to all the … well, all the little people at Federal Hill. They have been supporting me, literally, all year, and it’s been a pleasure to make so many new friends. It’s truly a humbling thing to be part of a community.”

  Man, I thought, the guy is really pushing it to the limit.

  “Okay, sorry to get all mushy. This is a Slayer tune. They are the godfathers of speed metal. We now pay homage with our modest and lowly version of ‘Mind Control.’ ”

  How many synonyms for “humble” does Jackson Royer know? I thought. How like Jackson to play the politician—he really did sound like a candidate for something, with all the fake claims to modesty—and then toast his scrawny victims with a twisted anthem about bullying and torture.

  Still, I couldn’t deny Raising Cain’s power. You’d have to be deaf to say they were anything but terrifyingly great. Jackson’s guitar rose above the tight interplay of bass and drums, cutting into the crowd like a knife. And his deep, rumbling speaking voice transformed onstage into the bark and growl of a true metal screamer. The audience was in a kind of trance. They banged their heads in time like ancient worshipers. When the music stopped, they howled yet again.

  “Okay, folks, it’s been fun,” Jackson said. “We’ve got just one more for you, and this one I’d like to dedicate to a girl who’s a fledgling rocker herself.” His voice was as sweet as syrup, and he faked an innocent smile that stretched tightly across his face. “She’s a major Beatles fan, so I thought we’d do a little Paul McCartney tune for her.” His tone of voice wasn’t fooling anybody. He made it clear he hated my guts. “Her band’s playing later, so all the luck in the world to little Annabelle Cabrera!”

  Jackson turned his back to the crowd and tuned up, tossing his head back and arching his spine like a panther. The Raising Cain guys were at the ready—they looked like chained dogs, frothing at the mouth and set to spring on the next passerby. Then they lit into an unbelievably heavy version of “Helter Skelter,” probably the hardest-rocking thing Paul had ever written. I had always liked the song, but I was almost afraid of it, too. It wasn’t the Paul of “Blackbird” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” In “Helter Skelter,” The Beatles sound like absolute maniacs. I had never really understood the lyrics before, but today, listening to the words, listening to Jackson’s dominating voice, I got the idea.

  Superiority, destruction, control. Who knows what Paul McCartney meant when he wrote the song, but Raising Cain made it sound like a declaration of war. Leave it to Jackson Royer to take the thing I loved most in the world and turn it against me.

  Raising Cain wasn’t just a very good band. They were an impossibly great band, especially for three kids who were just eighth graders. They sounded as good as the bands they covered, and the crowd let them know it. It was all Don could do to get the audience to calm down long enough for him to thank Raising Cain and invite the next band to start setting up.

  Darren put his hand—the one connected to his one fully working arm—on my shoulder. “They suck, huh?” he said. It was the first time Darren ever touched me. Yikes.

  “Totally,” I said with a weak smile.

  Crackers looked awestruck by Raising Cain’s awesomeness, and Jonny was looking at his toes. The Bungles, I thought to myself. What a perfect name for this band. We are going to get laughed off the stage.

  After two quick months of practice, there was no way our band could even come close to being as tight, as fierce, as overpowering as the band we’d just seen. I was four foot ten, Crackers was a snack addict, our drummer had one arm, and our guitar player was an emotional wreck. After just one performance, Minor Threat may as well have been over. Raising Cain would win, hands down. They’d come to Federal Hill tomorrow and be treated like heroes. And Jackson Royer would keep on exploiting all the kids who couldn’t fight back.

  The next three bands were a joke: underrehearsed, unpolished, and lacking in any talent whatsoever. Even worse, they were attempting to turn Top 40 music into rock ’n’ roll. Try as hard as they could, they couldn’t turn Beyoncé and Usher songs into bass-drum-guitar workouts. And the dance moves they copied from the videos? Beyond lame.

  Even Mad Unicorn, the supposed riot-girl band of Federal Hill, was disappointing. They played a hit by one of those Simpson sisters—I can’t remember which one—even though those Simpson chicks wouldn’t know a riot if an entire city was burning at their feet. Mad Unicorn sounded mo
re like four gossip girls on a joy ride to the mall, cranking the radio and singing along.

  Don Daddio took the mic. He told the audience there was only one more act but that he himself had heard this new band practicing and they were amazing.

  “What’s he talking about?” I said. “Has he even heard us once?”

  “Just some words of encouragement, I guess,” said Jonny.

  “This is going to be a disaster.”

  I took a deep breath, and the four of us squeezed through the crowd toward the stage. Just as I was about to climb the steps, someone grabbed me by the arm.

  “Good luck, Annabelle,” said my mom, catching her breath. Shaky Jake and X stood just behind her, both smiling.

  “Mom! What are you doing here? What about the gig? What about PJ Harvey?”

  “Your dad’s— Well, we decided he’s going to do this one as a solo show. As soon as we got to the theater, I started to think, Who needs me more, my kids or Benny and Joon? So Jake and I took a cab to the train station, and here we are.”

  “I didn’t want to miss it, either,” Jake said.

  “Is Dad mad?” I said.

  “Yup,” said Jake.

  “Sweetie, don’t worry. I’ll handle that,” my mom said. “We’ll work it out. Just go up there and play.”

  “Okay, Mom.” I went in for a hug, swiveling into my mom’s left side while X grabbed on to the right. I couldn’t believe my mom had shown up, and I really did want to make her proud, but I squirmed away and let X take the bulk of the sugary smooching.

  Rock stars’ moms do not hug and kiss them before a show.

  “Go on now, get up there,” Mom said.

  “Give ’em hell, guys!” Jake called out.

  “Mom,” I said, “I don’t want to move back to Brooklyn. I want to stay in Providence now. Don’t make me leave, okay?”

  “Of course, Annabelle,” she said, hugging me again, tighter than before. “And I want you right here with me. We’re going to make this work.”