"C'mon," Jake said. "We'd better get our stuff inside. We need to get our sound tuned in. You know how long that takes."
"Fuckin' forever," Darren grumbled. Then something occurred to him and he brightened. "Do you think they'll give us some free drinks after our set?"
The backstage door was locked but pushing the button next to the jam soon produced the sound of footsteps and the clicking of numerous locks and security bars from the other side. The door swung open at last and there stood Chuck O'Donnell, the owner and manager of D Street West. He was a small, unassuming man with a bald scalp atop his head and a long ponytail in the back. A failed rock musician himself, he had purchased D Street West ten years before and had turned it into Heritage's premier rock and roll club. He wasn't a millionaire by any means but he wasn't hurting either. He had quite an ear for music. Though the inclusion of Intemperance on his audition schedule two weeks before had been a mistake-he had failed to check the bogus previous performance dates that Matt Tisdale had fabricated on their portfolio until just before the band arrived-he had allowed them to play for him anyway, partly because their deceit had left a twenty minute hole in his schedule, but mostly out of cruel amusement. His plan had been to let them start playing and then to cut the power to their amps shortly into their first song where he would then debase them as rudely and crudely as he could and humiliate them into never trying such a stunt again. That had been his plan anyway. But then they had started to play and he discovered something astounding. They were good, very good in fact, perhaps the best new band he had ever heard. The lead guitarist was a magician with his instrument, able to play riffs of amazing complexity, to wail a solo that was right up there with Hendrix or Page and that fit in perfectly with the rhythm of the song. The lead singer-who played a pretty mean backing guitar himself-had a voice that was both rich and wide-ranging, a voice that would send a chill down the spine with a little more development. The kid could sing. And then there was the piano. There were many who believed a piano had no place in a hard rock group, that it was an instrument best left for the bubblegum pop bands. O'Donnell himself had always believed this with all his heart. But goddamn if that nerdy kid on the keyboard didn't pull it off. This band knew how to play, had an instinct for music that could only get stronger as they matured, and perhaps most importantly, they had a distinct sound unlike anything that had been done before. They made The Boozehounds-his most valuable and popular band-sound like what they were: a bunch of hackers. He had a good feeling about these five young men.
"Hey, guys," he said, his salesman grin firmly upon his face. "How are you all doing today?"
They all mumbled that they were doing fine.
"Good, glad to hear it," Chuck told them. "You're right on time. I like that in a band. Why don't you go ahead and start bringing your equipment inside and setting up. You know where the power supply points are. Remember, have everything tuned and sound checked before we open."
Matt, acting as band spokesman, agreed that they would be dialed in long before the first customer pulled into the parking lot.
"Good," he said, patting Matt companionably on the back. "I'll just be doing some paperwork in my office. I'll drop in on you from time to time to see how you're doing."
With that, he disappeared, leaving the door wide open for them to find their own path to the stage. Once in his office he snorted two lines of cocaine and dreamed a little more about what he might have once been.
It took the better part of twenty minutes just to get everything inside. The band had nine amplifiers, a fifteen piece double bass drum set, a sound board, five microphones with stands, an electric piano, two electric guitars, an electric bass guitar, six effects pedals, and nearly four hundred feet of electrical cord to connect everything together. The stage was a twenty by fifteen foot platform against the rear of the bar, raised four feet off the ground and covered in black boards. Lighting sets hung from scaffolding above. They stacked four amplifiers on one side and five on the other. They then set up the microphone stands and connected them to the master soundboard. While Coop assembled his drum set and Bill set up his piano, Jake, Matt, and Darren ran power lines to the amps and connected the effects pedals that helped twist and distort the sound of the guitars into music. They then opened up their guitar cases and removed their instruments.
Jake's guitar was a 1975 Les Paul in the classic sunburst pattern. It had cost him $250 dollars when he'd purchased it three years before and it was his most prized possession. It was a versatile guitar for the multiple roles he asked of it. It could produce a smooth acoustic sound that was about as close as one could get without actually having an acoustic guitar, or it could pump out a grinding electric distortion for backing Matt on the heavier tunes. He removed it gently from the case, lifting it as a father would lift his newborn infant from the crib, and then wiped it with a soft cloth until it shined. Only then did he sling it over his shoulder by the strap and carry it over to the length of cord leading to the string of effects pedals.
"Be sure you have enough picks," Matt told him. "Stick two in the guitar and a bunch in your right pocket in case you drop one or break one."
"What if I drop one in the middle of a song?" Jake asked, silently cursing Matt for giving him one more thing to be nervous about. When such a thing happened during rehearsal they would simply stop the song until the dropper could pick it back up or find another one. They wouldn't really be able to do that in front of an audience, would they?
"You'll have to use your fingers until the next song. Or at least until you get a break in the rhythm."
"Bitchin'," Jake said, frowning.
"The fuckin' show must go on, my man. The fuckin' show must go on. Remember that."
"Right," Jake told him, wishing for a beer or maybe a bonghit, just to calm his nerves a little.
Matt opened up his own guitar case and removed his favorite of the five electric guitars he owned, an instrument that he had vowed upon purchasing two years before, would be the only one he would ever play onstage. Though he certainly didn't know or even suspect it at the time, it was an instrument that would one day, twenty-five years in the future, be placed in a display case in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. It was a 1977 Fender Stratocaster, the make and model that Matt considered the finest guitar in the history of music. It was deep black on the top, shiny white beneath the three pick-ups and the tuning knobs. It produced a rich, heavy sound and it was as familiar in Matt's hands as anything he had ever held before, including his penis. The "Strat", as he called it, was his baby, perhaps the most important thing in his life, the instrument he had dedicated his life to, and he treated it with all the reverence such an icon deserved. He would have been more upset at its loss or destruction than he would've been at the loss of his parents or his siblings. He even talked to it, usually when he was stoned or drunk, but also when he felt it had been played particularly well, beyond what he believed his own considerable talent could be responsible for alone. He talked to it now as he slung it over his shoulder, as his fingers ran lovingly over the frets, the strings, the whammy bar. "We're gonna kick some ass tonight," he whispered to it. "We're gonna kick some fuckin' ass."
Jake plugged his guitar in first. He turned the power switch on and adjusted the tuning knobs upward. Next he turned on the amplifier it was connected to, keeping the master volume relatively low, the pre-amp about three quarters up, and bypassing the effects for the time being. He strummed a few times, listening to the tuning first and foremost. Though he had carefully tuned the instrument earlier in the day, before packing it up for the trip over here, he had a morbid fear that it had somehow come out of tune. It hadn't. The sound emitting from the amplifier was as rich as always, richer even since he'd put new strings on only two days before.