“All right,” Jake said once they climbed past ten thousand feet and the autopilot had the plane. “Sterile cockpit no longer in effect. Speak freely.”
“It’s beautiful up here,” Meghan said, looking down at the spine of the coastal mountains below them, the ocean on the right, the valleys and canyons on the left, the city of Santa Barbara coming up before them.
“Isn’t it?” Jake asked. “Laura and I get to make this flight twice a day, five days a week. I never get tired of it.”
“It’s so quiet in here,” Loraine said in wonder. “It’s no louder than in my car on the freeway. This plane is so noisy when it passes over though!”
“The engines are behind and above us, so the sound doesn’t tend to make it through the fuselage insulation very well,” he explained. “Oh, and the plane is not really any louder than any other twin-engine plane. It’s just a different frequency that is not as pleasing to the ear.”
“I see,” she said slowly, looking out her window at the land/ocean border below.
Jake brought them neatly in for a landing twenty-three minutes later. He taxied over to the GA parking and shut down. After securing the aircraft, he told them to stay with the plane and he would go get his truck for the drive to the warehouse.
“Truck?” Loraine asked her daughter once he was out of earshot. “He drives a truck?”
“In Los Angeles he does,” she replied.
“I can’t believe how fast we got here,” she said in wonder. San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles was usually a three to three-and-a-half-hour drive. They had flown the distance in less than thirty minutes. “We’re really in LA?”
“In the valley, but yes,” she said. “He and Laura do this every day they’re working. Here in the morning and back in the afternoon.”
“That must be terribly expensive,” she said.
“They can afford it,” Meghan assured her. “They have more money than they know what to do with. Jake has said that himself a few times.”
“It must be nice,” Loraine said huffily.
“Yeah,” Meghan agreed. “It certainly seems like it is.”
The audience for the final dress rehearsal numbered less than the crew who was running the show. There were the inevitable record company suits and promoters who wanted to see what they were investing in. There were a few reps from Gibson guitars, Marshall, Steinway, and other musical instrument makers who had been invited because they were paying out endorsement money and this was a perk of that deal. There were a few family members and friends of the band members. Little Stevie’s dad was there. Charlie’s latest lover was there (Charlie was currently gay again and dating a bartender from a Los Angeles club). Some chick named Debbie that Coop had been banging of late was there. And there was Jake sitting with Meghan on his right and Loraine on his left in the middle seats in the best spot in the house: just in front of the soundboard, where they could see the actual band in good detail and the video screen. Jake did not have his in-ear monitor in place. He wanted to experience the performance as an actual attendee experienced it.
There was, naturally, an open bar at the event. Meghan and her mother both partook. Meghan was drinking vodka and tonic (a drink that Laura had introduced her to one night not long before) and Loraine was drinking a Napa Valley merlot that was better than any wine she had ever tasted in her life. Jake drank iced tea. Loraine seemed surprised at this until Jake explained that it was not a good idea to have alcohol when he was supposed to fly everyone back to San Luis Obispo after the show.
“I guess that makes sense,” she said softly.
At 3:00 PM, the lights went down and the stage went dark. A murmur of anticipation filtered through the small crowd that was gathered. The video screens came to life, showing still pictures of Celia from her childhood. There were shots of her as an infant, shots of her in Easter dresses going to church when she was five, shots of her sitting with her father at eight, a guitar in her hands while he sat next to her, instructing her on how to play it. Her mother’s voice, speaking softly in Spanish, began to play from the speakers while subtitles in English told the audience that she was talking about how her little girl had taken to music and singing from an early age, how she had picked up the basics of the guitar in the third grade, how she had sung in the church choir by the age of ten. Photos of these memories flashed continuously on the screens: Celia in the choir, Celia in the school band, Celia at home playing for her family. In each shot, Celia got a little older, until soon she was a young adolescent, her future adult beauty plainly apparent. At this point, Celia’s voice took over the narration, speaking with her Hispanic accent deliberately thickened. She told of being in a band with her family and friends, of playing clubs in Venezuela, and finally of the band being discovered and being invited to America to make records.
Though there were many pictures of Celia as part of La Diferencia in the slideshow, at no point was the name La Diferencia mentioned, nor were the names of any songs they had done. Nor would there be any La Dif material performed in this show. Aristocrat Records owned the rights to everything La Dif and they were understandably miffed about being left out of this touring contract. As such, KVA and National could show pictures from those days, but they could mention no band name, could cite no lyric, could sing no song without incurring the wrath of Aristocrat’s legal team.
The La Dif days came to an end, and then Celia told of hooking up with her friends Jake Kingsley (of Intemperance fame—they could say that) and the Archers, and Pauline Kingsley. Pictures of the five of them together—always with Celia in the shots—began to flash now. She told of the merger of talent that became KVA Records and how they scrimped and saved and begged and borrowed and finally put together Celia’s first solo CD.
Then the pictures went away. On the left screen, suddenly appeared the words: AND THE REST. On the right screen, were the words: IS HISTORY!
The stage lights suddenly came on. The band was on the stage, Celia at the front, in front of her microphone. She was holding her twelve-string acoustic—the one she had bought one fateful day in a Portland music store—in her hands. She was dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting shirt, her hair flowing around her shoulders. Miles was behind her and to the right. He began to play the opening melody for The Struggle, Celia’s first solo hit. The rest of the band chimed in behind him and Celia began to sing.
The small crowd cheered and quickly got into the spirit of the show. On the video screens, the views became an ever-changing stream of live shots of the bandmembers. Celia was featured the most, but they also showed Miles when he was playing the melody or the solo, Little Stevie when he was hitting the riffs, Coop when he was pounding out the beat. The producers knew their stuff, were experienced at this sort of production, and they changed the view back and forth with skill.
Jake looked over at Loraine during the guitar solo and saw her bobbing her head and tapping her feet to the beat. She was smiling happily. Soon, she started singing along. So did many of the others, including Jake himself.