Behind it, the bartender looked just as old and just as badly treated.
All four walls and even the tin ceiling were covered by layer after layer of old posters advertising bands like Country Joe and the Fish, Captain Beefheart, Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Mothers of Invention. The posters were nicotine stained and curling at the edges, and the most recent of them was dated five years earlier.
There was something sad about the place, as if it had been shoved aside by its gaudy, more popular neighbor. The disco music from next door thumped through the walls, rubbing it in.
There was a small but devoted crowd waiting for Violet Sedan Chair to go on stage. Primarily single men, but a few couples and one large group of boisterous women who seemed to have come together. The men all had beards and granny glasses and colorful headbands. The women all had ironed hair, handmade patchwork dresses, and blissed-out expressions. This crowd was clearly immune to disco fever.
Walter fit right in.
Nina spotted Abby sitting on the corner of the stage at the far end of the room, smoking a joint and talking to another pregnant woman, a plump and pretty brunette with pale freckled skin and very pale blue eyes. She wore a white macramé halter-top under a weird, shaggy blue coat that made her look like she had skinned one of the monsters on Sesame Street. There was a peace sign painted on her exposed and swollen belly.
“Oh, hey,” Abby said when she saw them. “So great that you were able to make it. Roscoe will be thrilled.” She leaned in. “You know how he gets if there aren’t enough people at a show.”
She held out the joint. Nina waved it away, but Walter accepted it.
“Thanks,” he said.
“This is my friend Sandy,” Abby said. “We’re both due at the same time, around the end of next month. We were just wondering if we would have Libra babies or Scorpios. I’m hoping little Bobby will be a Libra. Scorpios can be so resentful.”
“Yeah,” Sandy said. “But Scorpios are so brooding and sexy! Charles Bronson is a Scorpio.”
“That just proves my point,” Abby replied. “Look how he went and killed all those criminals after his wife was murdered. That’s such a total Scorpio thing to do.”
“So,” Nina interrupted, looking vaguely annoyed. “Is the band set to go on soon?”
“They should be,” Abby said. “Chick is late again.”
All this talk about astrology was making Walter think of the Zodiac Killer, and how desperately they needed their crazy plan to work. It seemed like the marijuana was making him feel more edgy, and not less. He passed the joint to Bell.
Bell took a hit off of it and passed it back to Abby.
“You ladies want anything from the bar?” Bell asked.
“No, thanks,” Abby said.
“You should have a beer,” Sandy said. “The hops are supposed to help you produce more nutritious breast milk.”
“Really?” Abby said. She turned back to Bell. “Well, then, we’ll take two beers.”
“Nina?” Bell asked.
“Whisky sour,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Want a beer, Walt?”
Walter shook his head.
“No thanks, Belly,” he said. “I’m fine.”
Bell headed over to the bar to get the drinks while Abby wet her fingers, put out what was left of the joint and dropped the roach into her tiny beaded purse.
“Oh, look,” she said, pointing to a doorway at the back of the stage. “Here they come.”
The band took the stage to enthusiastic cheers from the small but vocal crowd. Roscoe was dressed in a dragon-print Oriental jacket with no shirt underneath and white bell-bottom pants. He winked at Abby as he sat down at the keyboard and adjusted the mike to the level of his smirking lips. Behind him, Chick Spivy was wearing a dark green suede suit and snakeskin boots, slinging his famous hand-painted Les Paul over his shoulder and waving, a big stoned grin on his beaming face.
Next up were Oregon Dave and Alex, dressed twinlike in jeans and matching shirts. Dave’s shirt was blue with red stars and Alex’s was red with blue stars. Last up was Iggy, resplendent in royal purple bell-bottoms and a ruffled white shirt, open to his navel to unleash his thick, brambly chest hair.
He sat behind his drum kit and looked over at Roscoe, who in turn looked over at each of the other members, then nodded. Iggy clicked his sticks together and then they broke into a slower, dirtier, funked-up version of “She’s Doing Fine.”
Walter cheered freely, so happy in that moment in such a pure and uncomplicated way. It was a miracle to him that something as simple as music had the power to take away all his worries and anxiety, and transport him back to a better place. He’d been a college freshman when he first heard Violet Sedan Chair’s seminal album Seven Suns, and it had opened his mind as surely as the acid he’d dropped for the first time that same year.
Life had seemed so different back then, so full of magic and potential. He’d been convinced that things were really going to change for the better, that love and music really could defeat fear and war. But then, somehow, it had all turned dark and ugly. Acid, mushrooms, and marijuana had been replaced with speed, cocaine, and heroin. Hippies were replaced by Hell’s Angels. The gentle, open-minded spirituality and self-exploration of the late sixties had degenerated into the hard-partying glitter and hedonism of the seventies.
Their musical idols were dying, and being steadily replaced by plastic corporate pop stars and super groups.
Yet here Walter was, basking in the musical genius of one of his personal heroes, on a par with Tesla and Einstein. The incomparable Roscoe Joyce was in rare form on stage, coaxing new resonance and meaning from old hits and exploring uncharted territory in selections from a complex and profoundly spiritual rock opera that Walter had never heard before.
He glanced over at Bell, unable to stop smiling, and noticed that his friend seemed a little bored by the concert, checking his watch and looking impatient as Iggy thundered off into yet another ten-minute drum solo. Didn’t Bell appreciate the layered complexity and meaning in this music? He’d seemed to like the band well enough when Walter had first played “Seven Suns” for him back in 1966. And he’d been intrigued by the rumor of the lost track “Greenmana” and its supposed hallucinogenic effect.
Now, he just looked annoyed.
Walter felt a sudden hot rush of embarrassment, and even guilt. Of course Bell was impatient. Walter should be, too. They weren’t in the club to enjoy music. They were there to convince Roscoe and the band to help them defeat a dangerous killer.
* * *
“Thank you!” Roscoe howled into the mike, fist in the air as he got up from his keyboard bench.
“Thank God,” Bell muttered under his breath as the band put down their instruments and left the stage. But Walter knew they would never end the set without doing “Seven Suns.” That was their one commercial hit, the one song that they were best known for. Besides, if they were really done, they would have taken their instruments with them.
Sure enough, less than a minute later the band came back up onto the stage, hands in the air. The small crowd made up for their lack of numbers with wild enthusiasm, cheering and chanting.
“Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns!”
“You have got to be kidding,” Bell said, rolling his eyes.
“You can’t get rid of us that easy,” Roscoe said, grinning into the mike. “This song is a little ditty I wrote a few years back. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”