Wonderkid

by Wesley Stace

  And Mum was sacrificed: an offering that appeased all the gods.

  Blake and Jack briefly pondered yesterday’s model, the return of a twin, but it was agreed that only a woman could occupy the bass berth. I had expected a little more solidarity from Curtis, but he had Mei-Xing now, which trumped Becca. In fact, Curtis had a suggestion—a friend of his, Camille, whom he escorted to the house to say hi. It happened that I was the only one there.

  The three of us sat by the pool.

  She was a rangy, elegant black woman, self-contained and confident (not the full Grace Jones, but on the scale), her slinky panther body, emphasized by a shimmery dress, rippling to infinity. If she was as good as Curtis said, there was absolutely no way Blake and Jack wouldn’t want her in the band, but I couldn’t see that dress jammed and feathered out on the road: she was too elegant. Bizarrely, she seemed not only to know what was required, but happy to take it on the chin or wherever else it splashed.

  “And Blake’s your father?” A dazzling smile accompanied everything. I explained. “Ah,” she continued, “I have a child of my own: Aslan.”

  “Oh, the more the merrier,” I said. It’s what Blake would have said. Aslan: unexpected. “And where’s Mister . . . er . . . Aslan’s father.” She’d said her last name but I didn’t catch it.

  “Aslan is a miracle,” said Camille with rapturous joy. Okay: friend of Curtis’s. Aslan has two mummies. I was getting good at this stuff. “I don’t eat meat,” she announced. She wanted all her cards on the table.

  “Oh, that won’t be a problem; catering is always very helpful. Mitchell sorts all that out.”

  “And you don’t travel with any animals, do you?”

  “Only Jack.”

  “I don’t like animals.” She’d named her son after one though.

  “Oh, he’s not that bad.”

  “I honor them, but I don’t like them. I don’t like to pet them and I don’t want them inside my body. That’s why I’m a vegetarian. The human being is a natural vegetarian, based on her anatomy and physiology.”

  “Well, we all eat meat like crazy, I’m afraid.”

  “I respect everyone’s right to choose their own vitals. God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat . . .’”

  “Did He?”

  “Genesis 1:29. Rastafarians use this as a justification for smoking marijuana.”

  “Oh well . . .”

  “Of which I don’t approve.”

  This was a possible obstacle. At no point did I have any idea which way the conversation was headed. She kept entertaining me for the next half-hour or so. Curtis hardly said a word.

  Blake and Jack’s car bumped into the driveway, and I headed them off at the front door: “Your new bass player is sitting outside with Curtis.”

  “And?” asked Blake.

  “Shoo-in,” I said. “Black, very beautiful, quite serious, slightly eccentric, possibly gay, definitely vegetarian, and Christian.”

  “Don’t knock it,” said Jack.

  They played together the next day back on Gower, where they’d first met Mum. Blake returned with a big smile: “And now we are four!”

  Curtis had found us a new bass player with the minimum of fuss; perhaps he felt he was owed a favor. He wondered if we could split into two buses. Maybe he, Mei-Xing, and Camille could travel in one, nothing fancy; and Jack, Blake, Mitchell, and I—the family, he called us—in the other. Blake nodded. “Like, we’ll have the Animal House party bus and you can have rainbow meditation and prayer meetings in yours?”

  “Well, it’s just that the smoking . . .” said Curtis. “And the staying up late . . .” He looked over at Mei-Xing who, very deliberately, finished his thought.

  “We have been talking to Camille,” she said, enunciating very clearly, “and she wants to bring Aslan with her. And we think of having school lessons on the bus too.” It was the longest sentence we’d ever heard from her.

  “The family expands!” said Blake. He loved it.

  “Wow,” said Jack. “Good work with the English.” He meant the talking, rather than the English.

  “All down to her new surroundings. You guys are to thank, too,” said Curtis. That was generous.

  “Thank you,” said Mei-Xing with a bow. “And now, teatime.”

  “It’s also Camille,” said Curtis, keen to keep the buses on the agenda. “She’s used to . . .” He paused. “You know she was on tour with Sting.”

  “Say no more,” said Blake.

  “Well, she’s got to muck in,” said Jack. “She’s in a band.”

  “Onstage, of course,” said Curtis. “But offstage . . .”

  “I don’t mind it,” said Blake. “Jack?”

  “Can we afford it?” Jack asked.

  “Course we can,” said Blake. “And even if we can’t, we have a record label who’ll charge it back to us later. Who’s paying rent on this house?”

  “Most bands break up when they start traveling separately,” said Jack. “You know, singer goes first class, band in steerage.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t that, is it, Curtis? You’ve come to us. It’s an upgrade. We’re not relegating you.”

  “Besides,” said Curtis as Mei-Xing returned with a tray, “it’s your band, guys. We’re just the in-laws. No need to make a big deal of it. I think it makes sense.”

  “Well, you’ll have Mei-Xing; Camille has Aslan—that’s one bus,” said Blake, doing the math. “I’ll have Sweet, and Jack has Randy. And Mitchell can play with himself.”

  “Narsty,” said Jack.

  “Mei-Xing’s been drumming too,” said Curtis.

  “And Sweet has been playing the guitar,” said Blake. “If Camille teaches her boy the bass, we can start a kind of replacement band. Genius.”

  As we ramped up to the release, events previously penciled were inked, and the calendar filled with o’clocks. The record company were appeased by Becca’s exit, and the cartoonists considered the new latitudes Camille afforded them; Andy took Blake off to meet this radio programmer, that music supervisor; Jack and I went for drives up and down the coast, never very far.

  There was one problem trying to get our attention from the sidelines. We shouldn’t have ignored it.

  The Parent Music Resource Center, aka the PMRC, was still causing trouble. It had been a few years since Tipper Gore first heard the lyrics to Prince’s “Darling Nikki.” 1985, the PMRC’s Annus Mirabilis, had seen Tipper release her Filthy Fifteen, a list of the foulest songs ever written, including some really naughty ones by famously anti-establishment rabble-rousers like Cyndi Lauper and Sheena Easton. The list came with a dinky rating system (V for violence, O for occult, D/A for drugs and alcohol and X for sex), along with an accompanying series of “demands”—Warning: Parental Advisory stickers and so on—that the record companies, fearing a drop in sales, willingly caved to. The next year came the hearings, seen around the world on MTV, for which musicians like Jello Biafra, Frank Zappa, and John Denver came out against censorship (even though the PMRC thought Denver was going to speak in its favor; turned out he was actually more interested in becoming a spaceman). You’d have thought the whole thing would have died a death, but apparently the good state of Pennsylvania had only recently passed a bill requiring a warning label on any album with explicit lyrics. The argument rumbled on.

  So much for rock music; how about music aimed directly at children? How extra-vigilant would the organization have to be with this new genre: rock music for kids? How much more pernicious was music without any adult constituency at all, which aimed to corrupt children directly? The truth is that no one, until now, had said anything remotely dodgy in a piece of music for children—oh, sure, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” but I mean not really. Now the Wonderkids—causing riots, baring breasts, and singing songs that said . . . well, what exactly? Clearly, the Wonderkids were
a special case.

  Why did these society matrons start picking on us? Three things: one of them saw Altamont on TV, another heard Blake say “balls” at a live show (in the context of the pirate joke), and they all got an eyeful of the Disneyland photo. Perhaps initial fears were confirmed by the discovery that these Wonderkids had once been Wünderkinds, occasionally flaunting their evil with an umlaut, suspiciously reminiscent of the two floating about in Mötley Crüe.

  The Wonderkids earned itself a case file larger than any other group. And, in a way, the PMRC was right, but for the wrong reasons. What the Wonderkids were doing was much more subversive than anything W.A.S.P. or Twisted Sister would ever manage. Those jokers were about as threatening as a Benny Hill sketch; they were merely being saucy. The Wonderkids were changing children forever. You still see it in their grown-up eyes. They look at you slightly Midwich Cuckoo or Children of the Corn when they talk about their early experiences of the band; you know they were taken young. One quick story: a guy came up to me recently—a music supervisor who later did the band an incredible service—and told me that he and his father got lost in the crowd once at a Wonderkids gig: “It was the first and last time that ever happened. I was five or so, and we went with my best friend and his dad. I was on my dad’s shoulders and my friend was on his dad’s shoulders, and our dads couldn’t find each other, but we, the kids, thought it was so funny because we could see each other clearly above the crowd. And our dads were looking for each other for ages, but we never told them we could see each other; we were laughing so hard. It was my first experience of rock ’n’ roll and my earliest memory of disobedience—at that show.” You can only imagine what went down in the mosh pit.

  Scrape the surface of any lyric; you can pretty much find whatever you want. When it came to the Wonderkids, there was certainly subterranean activity: the subconscious is an ugly thing, and Blake mined his without remorse. They were playing “Rock Around the Bed” when one Jacquelyn Belmer, our nemesis-to-be, had first seen them. Forget the girl who pushes Blake back on the kitchen table, what about the innocent little boy in verse one who’s “got a rocket and knows how to fire it”? She didn’t like the sound of that very much. And then, within minutes, blood and teeth flying on live television: what clearer sign of the cause and effect of the group’s moral corruption?

  And so the PMRC suggested a “break the ice” meeting with the Wonderkids, an invitation the Wonderkids respectfully declined. Then the PMRC asked for a sneak preview of the lyrics to the new album (surely even they couldn’t object to an album called Number Two?) to predetermine the nature of its “concerns,” a request the Wonderkids did not dignify with a response. And then, much to WBA’s disquiet, the PMRC, feeling rebuffed, sent out a press release stating that they had “earmarked” the Wonderkids. They had nothing on the band for the time being, but the lyrics had to be submitted (“voluntarily”) and a judgment would be made. A sticker would cause problems. Blake refused: “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. They can listen to the lyrics when the record comes out. Like everyone else.”

  When Norm Bloch himself turned up at Lookout, we knew it was trouble. It was the only time I saw him in the fleshy flesh. I observed proceedings from the kitchen.

  “You need some art on the walls,” he said, trailing Andy behind him. “We put you in here?”

  “Yes,” said Blake. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Enjoy. Now about these Washington Wives,” he said. “What they’re doing is a disgrace. It’s un-American. It’s an affront to free speech. Chuck Berry wouldn’t have got one song past them.”

  “Absolutely,” said Blake. Norm didn’t like interruption.

  “But the fact is, they’re real, they’re here, they’re now and we need you to give them your lyrics. We can’t have a sticker on a kids’ record.”

  “They can’t sticker a record they haven’t seen the lyrics to.”

  “I think what Norm is trying to say . . .” said Andy the diplomat.

  “What Norm is trying to say,” said Norm, “is you should give them the lyrics so we don’t get a sticker.”

  “They’ll be no sticker,” said Blake. “There’s nothing remotely offensive on the record—no swearing; no reference to drugs or alcohol; no sex, well, not that anyone but I would know about, and certainly no reference to the occult.”

  “Then hand the lyrics over,” said Norm with an amused shrug. “Who cares?”

  “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  Norm went from benign to beetroot red fury in a second: “THERE ARE NO FUCKING PRINCIPLES IN ROCK ’N’ ROLL! DO YOU WANNA SELL RECORDS OR NOT? GIVE THEM THE FUCKING LYRICS!”

  Andy, in desperation, started managing. “We’ll get you the lyrics, Norm.” He gestured Blake to be quiet. “Maybe the label could transcribe the lyrics and hand them over and Blake wouldn’t feel like he . . .”

  “I might feel that way,” said Blake.

  Norm looked at him and shook his head. “I thought you were smart,” he said and as he walked, “I thought you wanted to teach the world to sing.” His car revved in the driveway while Andy attempted unsuccessful peace talks through the window.

  “Jeez, Blake,” Andy said on his return. “That’s Norm. Norm Bloch.”

  “Is that who that was? He should watch out for his heart.”

  “He’s not used to people saying no.”

  “Then he shouldn’t put people in a situation where they have no choice.”

  “Why am I always having to clear up after you guys? I haven’t even got a car now to drive me back to the office. You know, Blake, you just said no; you may never have the chance to say yes again.”

  “Well, you can’t say Norm without saying ‘No.’” Blake was just trying that one out, but even he wasn’t convinced by his timing.

  “Guys,” said Andy. “Don’t come over here behaving like the Sex Pistols. It wasn’t the Pistols who broke; it was the Police and Duran Duran. You don’t stand for anything. You’re a kids’ band.”

  The label handed over the lyrics. Andy told Norm that Blake had seen sense, but it was too little, too late. Number Two went unstickered. But Blake had won the wrong battle.

  The PMRC’s problem was that they couldn’t quantify the corruptive potential of music itself. They could only run the rule over naughty words, saucy record covers, and what-the-butler-saw videos, and as the Wonderkids had none of these, they slipped through the net. But PMRC couldn’t accept that there was a realm over which they had no claim—no good fascist ever does—so they invented a “Mini Me” version of themselves, to keep an eye on the new genre of music known as Kiddie Rock. This new pressure group called themselves MOMs—Morality Over Music—and they were even more vindictive than their progenitors.

  The innocence of America’s children was at stake.

  And the Wonderkids were Public Enemy Number One.

  We first saw Jacquelyn, the MOM-in-chief, on television, in her pearls and her red business suit—a proto-Palin without the ammo. Jack remarked without irony: “Now, her; her, I could go for. Look at the rack on that.”

  “Go on, Jackie Boy,” said Blake. “Give her a ring. Sort her out.”

  12

  “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

  THE MOMENT WE HIT THE ROAD AGAIN, THINGS GOT WORSE. On the very first day, Blake and I found ourselves in a cab to a radio show. He was tetchy. He’d just had twelve sorts of trouble wrangling his new guitar case into the vastly empty trunk. Mitchell, who’d been off with some band supporting Pearl Jam in his “spare time” (his verdict: “The kids at our shows are way more unruly”) wouldn’t join the tour until the opening night. I was filling in.

  Blake hated even carrying a guitar. Hard cases were designed to be unwieldy. They didn’t fit where they should; they hit the person standing behind you; they fell where you leaned them; they bruised the side of your knee; their buckles buckled; their handles broke.

  Next problem: the driver. All cab dr
ivers want to be able to say they had that [insert name here] in the back of their cab once, so they see the guitar, and they get nosey. Blake had always been good at this stuff. The guy behind the wheel would say: “So, who do you play with?” and Blake would tell him and then he’d say “Oh, yeah?”—which conversation leads nowhere—or “Oh, never heard of you.” Rude. Inevitably the cabbies hadn’t heard of the band, because they only listened to the classic rock station, the rabble-rousing right-wing talk show, or the news. Even then, Blake would take it all in good turn.

  But here we were in Boston, and the cab driver says: “So we’re going over to WFNX; you a musician, huh?” And Blake just said: “No.” Killed it. And the driver said: “Oh, I thought maybe the guitar . . .” And Blake said: “No.” And the guy said: “Oh, maybe it’s a favor for a friend, huh?” And Blake said: “Do you know where we can get any prostitutes round here?” The cab driver laughed awkwardly.

  Something was weighing Blake down. The absence of Mum? The spat with MOMs? Norm? Misgivings about Camille? Perhaps just the long tour ahead. When we finally got to the station, after an aggressive silence that ended only when the cabbie turned on the radio which continually announced the imminent presence of Blake Lear of the Wonderkids, the cabbie said: “So you’re Blake Lear, huh?” And Blake, without confirming it, asked the cabbie for a receipt, and the guy said, which they always say: “Is a blank one okay?” and Blake said: “No, write me one out please.” He didn’t even want the receipt. He was just wasting the man’s time.

  “Everything okay?” I asked as we stood in the radio station foyer, call letters above us like the Hollywood sign.

  “Yeah. A whole tour of explaining myself suddenly doesn’t seem so appealing.”

  And I said, all child-is-the-father-to-the-man: “Well, it’s not maybe so good for you to go around being rude, so how about you let me do the talking from now on? And you can just sit back and relax, and I’ll be friendly. Chicken DAT!”