Twenty minutes before showtime, as the school jazz band, led by Mick Stillson, played its boozy warm-up music, Gregg Adams was backstage getting ready, rushing here, rushing there. Are you okay? Great! Are we ready, Leach? You look incredible! Okay, let’s really put on a show for ’em. Let’s go.
The red velour Ridgemont auditorium curtains parted and out bounded Gregg Adams and David Leach. The school band switched to a jazzier, showtime tempo.
Adams and Leach grabbed microphones and hopped onto a pair of stools. Adams had written the whole bit.
“Hi, everybody! Welcome to the Twentieth Annual Ridgemont High School Talent Show.” A few sophomore girls screamed. “I’m Gregg Adams!”
“And I’m David Leach!”
“And have we got a show for you!”
Gregg Adams then began singing his own show-opening tune, “Wild Feeling.” He sang in a semicroon, semiyodel, switching verses with David. Then—and this was Adams’s favorite part—he got to speak to the audience over the instrumental passage.
“. . . And I’ve got a crazy feeling, David, that these people are in store for an incredible evening of entertainment!”
“Some great singing,” said David.
“Some hot dancing!”
“And a monster surprise later on!”
They swung back into the last verse of the song, which revealed the wild feeling to be, of course, looooo-ooooove, and Adams finished up with a Tom Jones-style pump.
Gregg Adams was no fool. After the applause died down, he let David Leach tell the first joke.
Leach was different from Adams. A nice guy, but not quite as good looking as Adams and not quite as funny. His first joke was one he’d told before in Mechanical Arts.
“Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?”
“WHY, LEACH???” There were some rowdies sitting near the front.
“He was dead.”
The rowdies unloaded on him. Threw programs at him. Cackled at him. Leach grinned. He loved the attention.
Adams introduced the first act. “First off,” said Gregg, “is a good example of good entertainment.” Poor Adams. He hadn’t been in English class much this year. There was always a rehearsal or something. “We have a good singer who’s not recognized ’cause she’s not in a lot of the groups or anything. But it’s . . . it’s Brenda Harrison, and she’s singing a song called ‘I Never Meant to Leave You.’ Let’s bring her out!”
Brenda Harrison, a pretty brown-haired girl with large Irish eyes, curtsied and launched right into the song. She was accompanied by a single piano, and after two normal notes she quickly headed for the point of no return, that Bermuda Triangle for amateur singers . . . the next register. Would she make it?
Too bad.
It was easy to forgive if you were up on the behind-the-scenes info, as most of the students in the audience were. The song “I Never Meant to Leave You” was clearly for Brenda Harrison’s adoring ex-boyfriend, Tim Copeland. Tim was a young-looking sophomore, known for always being seen with squeaky-clean hair, white-and-green-striped Nike tennis shoes, and Brenda Harrison. But Brenda had recently broken up with him, after two years, for a policeman she’d met one night at her job at Yum-Yum Donuts. Sorry, Tim! I never meant to leave you!
Brenda Harrison even grabbed herself for the final line—“I never meant to leave you/But one day you’ll understand/That I love you forever/And I’ll always be your friiiiiiieeeeeennnnnnd.”
She leaned forward into the spotlight and whispered, “I love you, Tim.”
In the audience Tim Copeland’s friends slapped him on the back.
“She loves me,” Tim said ruefully, “but she’s jumping on some cop.”
“Our next guests combine talent and beauty into a musical feast! Virginia Finch!”
Whooooooa.
“And Marla Buchanan.”
Yeahhhh.
“And Janine Contreras on vocals and flute.”
O-kaaaaay.
“And Mick Stillson on guitar!”
What a fox!
“And they’re gonna play ‘Landslide,’ by Fleetwood Mac!”
The red spotlight hit Mick Stillson, school fox, as he sat on a stool with his guitar. He was wearing a red shirt and new Levi’s. He began fingerpicking the introduction to the song, and there were gasps from the seniors.
“Landslide,” still the most requested lyric for reprinting in school annuals and graduation presentations, is the stuff of which many elderclassmen’s high school lives were lived by. When you got together, “Landslide” was on the radio. When you broke up, it still reminded you of him or her. They would probably graduate with “Landslide.”
Janine sang the song in a quavering voice, barely audible out from behind the Ridgemont superstar backing.
A strange beeping noise began at the back of the gymnasium.
Next up was the Girls’ Dance Chorus, featuring Linda Barrett and new soloist Laurie Beckman. They fanned out across the stage, a row of young girls in red, white, and blue tights, singing “Boogie Wonderland.” It went on a little too long.
“Okay,” said Gregg Adams, “are you guys ready for something radical? David, are the special effects ready? They are! OKAY! We are almost ready for the fascinating Puuu-eee Balls Dance!”
“THE WHAT?”
“For you guys who don’t know what that is,” Leach announced with authority, “this is a Maui dance that originated in New Zealand and will be performed for you by the drill team!”
The stage was lit in dark fluorescent blue, the kind you see in Tahitian restaurants where umbrellas come in the drinks. Then Day-Glo colored balls began to pitch about the stage. Faster and faster. It was the members of the drill team, hidden in the lighting, whirling these fluorescent balls around on twine. Incredible! A Puuu-eeeee Balls Dance! All right!
It was a big hit with the audience, and when the ovation finished Gregg Adams made like he was exhausted, even by watching.
“There’s going to be a twenty-minute intermission.”
“Don’t you dare go away!”
“And there’s PTA punch in the lobby!”
The school combo started blasting the jazz-rock Muzak again.
In the lobby, once nervous performers were now stars. They stood around with parents and relatives, luxuriously sipping PTA punch and considering futures in show business. Even Adams and Leach were in the lobby.
Adams was cross-examining Cindy Carr. “Did you come late? You came late, didn’t you? You missed the best part. David and I came running out and sang part of this song and then talked over it like a couple of Broadway Joes. It was totally classy! And you missed it, didn’t you?”
Back on stage for the second half, Gregg Adams was all pro. He led with a joke.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’ve been noticing Lieutenant Flowers. He’s actually a nice person! I went to him the other day and said, ‘Some sophomore looted my locker,’ and he went and took care of it in the calmest way he knew how. He SHOT THE KID AT SUNRISE!”
Big laughs.