Songs From Nowhere Near the Heart
1
THE MARLIAVE [PROVIDENCE, RI]; SUN JULY 21
ONE OF FEW INCIDENTS GOVERNED BY CHANCE
Dennis Friedman came reeling through a pair of saloon-style doors and into the Marliave's 'club room,' which in that year was retro-themed and known as the Marlie-a-Go-Go. Here he paused and executed a bow that might have been borrowed from some medieval court, steadying the doors behind him as his sunglasses and a pair of yellow spansules fell, unnoticed, from a breast pocket.
In his billfold there was a New York City cab receipt, and on the back of it a bit of lettering, in a rushed hand: mktz--skinhead fracas for aug. He'd written the note to himself last night and, brief as it was, it offered a fairly complete measure of the man.
mktz was Mal Kurtz, an artist recording and touring under the XOFF Records imprint that Deedee--who hadn't ever, so far as he knew, answered to the name Dennis Friedman--opened in 1995 as a nimbler and more daring adjunct to the better-established but slower-moving Mind Control Entertainment, of which Deedee was also a cofounder. Kurtz fronted the Del Rios,* an act whose transnational tour had derailed without warning two days ago in Pennsylvania. The facts had been handed to Deedee thus:
So named for brothers Jason (gtr) and Chris (bass gtr) del Rio
Kurtz's girlfriend Julie had planned to ride in the Del Rios' van as far as Pennsylvania, where she'd be left with relatives as the tour continued. On the morning of a citywide music showcase in Philadelphia, though, which was to have been her last date with the band, Julie'd talked Mal into a farewell romp on horseback across her family's country estate in Lancaster. Mal, dutiful boyfriend but no horseman, quickly lost the trail and broke through half a mile of untracked woodland at a full gallop before hitting a highway crossing, where the horse spooked andthrew him from the saddle. Except Mal hadn't let go his reins and was yanked headlong back onto the horse, breaking his jaw on the pommel and falling, for thirty jodhpur-fouling seconds, underfoot as the horse reared and stomped around like a bronco. How Mal was found and brought to care no one but Julie could say, and she was unreachable.
Deedee* received word of this in New York early the next morning, yesterday. By that afternoon he'd contacted the rest of the band and all their handlers and associates and put a heavy lid on the story, lest some sissified version of it reach the press before he'd prepared a statement. He'd even reached Mal himself in his hospital bed, or talked at him anyhow while Mal, his jaw wired, kept his end up with noises like ehh-heh. Deedee'd made it clear that the band would not perform in Mal's absence, that their dates would be rolled back and contracts reframed, that Mal was to relax and follow his doctors' orders. But that if anyone paid a visit--friends and relations included--he was to keep his mouth shut, which got a pained laugh out of Mal though it wasn't meant as a joke.
Not as in Deedee Ramone, like you'd think; 'Deedee' is some family nickname, dates back to his childhood. Although the last name he assumed, Vanian, is borrowed from Dave Vanian, fmr lead singer of the Damned.
The point was, XOFF tried to bill the Del Rios as an inner-city tough-guy act, and so to have had Mal Kurtz, a front man carefully modeled on punk maniac G.G. Allin, sidelined by an equestrian accident was unthinkable. Deedee set about calling every name on the tour contact list with his own account of disaster in Pennsylvania: Del Rios front man Mal Kurtz had been found belted to a tree trunk a mile or so outside of Philadelphia on 1-95, victim of some unimaginable violence that he was thought to have provoked with a group of local toughs--with a local set of skinheads, actually. And though Kurtz had arrived 'code blue' at Mount St. Catherine's--meaning they'd pronounced him dead inthe chopper--he was recovering nicely and had expressed his wish to resume touring in the fall, when he planned to bring down judgment--that was a direct quote--not only on the kids who'd attacked him but on the skinhead community in general.
The next step, and the reason for the note in Deedee's wallet, would be to break the story in Pipeline, the house fanzine and propaganda organ at Mind Control that had launched the Del Rios in the first place. August's Pipeline was with the printer now but Deedee could, if he got on this tomorrow, shoehorn in a piece on the Dels' tour-ending clash with Pennsylvanian skins. Mal, he felt, ought to have gotten the better of eight to ten of them before being overwhelmed and crewed. Crewed to within inches of his life, actually. He ought to have brained someone with his microphone stand, or his doctors ought to have found, maybe, the top half of someone's ear lodged in Mal's throat ... .
As Deedee's entrances went, this was an uncharacteristically late and low-toned one. In fact, reconstructing the scene hours from now for note-taking police officers, Deedee would describe little of his behavior here as typical, and when pressed for an explanation he'd mumble something about the cycle of the moon.
'Sir?' a doorman huffed at him, once and then again: 'Sir?' Ordinarily Deedee's attention wasn't hard to get, was indeed hard to avoid. Ordinarily this man would have been unscrewing a cigarillo from the corner of his mouth, would be fishing one of Deedee's business cards back out of his own breast pocket, with Deedee clouting him hilariously on the back. As it was, he had to repeat himself a third time: 'Sir,' this time arresting Deedee by the forearm. "Course, 'course,' Deedee said, and produced his wallet.
'Outside the plastic, please.'
"Course. There y'are.'
The man took Deedee's license and brought it, in both hands, just about to the bridge of his nose, held it at arm's length, referredback and forth to Deedee's face (half-averted now, eyes wandering the stage), scrutinized the back, and offered to return it, actually had to jab Deedee in the shoulder with it.
'Just a routine, sir, we apologize. You have a good show.'
'No, not at all. It's, I'm complimented,' said Deedee. 'This is what, eighteen plus tonight?'
'No sir, 21 plus tonight.'
'Still,' said Deedee.
Without stepping forward but with his right foot slightly advanced, he canvassed the room. First there came to him that brief and familiar sense of dislocation: this could have been any small-capacity hard rock room in the country, everything black and thickly grimed, the air close, while all around the club, in ashtrays and saucers and cocked between fingers, cigarettes were fuming steadily. Providence, he recalled, this was the Marliave; and so those kids quitting the stage there, with their equipment, that was Chief Hosa, a UK industrial outfit. He'd made it here just in time.
The crowd had begun to thin at the bar off to his right, pooling before the stage as the grips placed and tested microphones for the headliner. Deedee spied an open barstool and made for it, misjudged it, as it happened, and crash-landed both his elbows on the bartop, right beside a short bank of tap handles. In holding this crouching pose for a bit, he thought to give the little gaff an air of purpose. He looked coolly from side to side, as though he'd come bearing the bartender secret tidings. You been messin where you shouldn't a-been messin, said the PA.
A slender--starveling--woman to his left, closer to the stage, sat with one leg hinged over the other and her torso wound a full quarter turn off the points of her waist, so that Deedee could crouch alongside her and still contemplate the full array of her back, which is what he did. And he'd become so quickly engrossed in this, in the clockwork rolling of ridges and knobs and blades there, that hefailed to notice a little pair of eyes trained back on him. A ferret in a little pillbox hat had poked up over the woman's shoulder. Just for a quick look at Deedee, who scowled back at it, as the ferret went padding down the knuckles of the woman's spine and vanished around her hip.
When Deedee looked up again, he found the woman herself staring at him, and with such an exaggerated keenness too that he jumped back, upsetting a number of bottles onto the bar. Deedee suddenly offering apologies all around and hauling out his wallet, righting and retoppling bottles at about the same rate.
'My ferret: has he startled you?' the woman asked him. She'd closed in on him from behind, and spoke just inches from his neck. Deedee started again, and his hands went jingling back through the bottles. One of them rolled to the far edge of the bar, dropped from sight, and burst with incredible volume in a metal sink.
'Wha ... ? Lady, would you please? I'm dealing with something, over here.'
'I only thought ...,' she said, and trailed off. Her voice was slightly staccato and accented with either German or something Slavic.
A bartender took Deedee's money and cleared the bar in front of him, left and returned with his change and a pair of mixed drinks which, the drinks, were seized by a squat man in coveralls as soon as they were set down.
'Hey, those--'
The man, whose sleeves had been soaked to the elbows, turned a fierce look on Deedee. 'Oh, you enjoy those, those are daiquiris,' Deedee said, as the man trudged off in the direction of the rest rooms. The woman behind him spoke again:
'I had asked you about my ferret,' she said. 'I wished to know if he had startled you. He is Max. I will have him apologize, if you wish, but I will say this to you: do not be afraid of my ferret. Youhave much less to fear of him, than he of you.' Dunnut be effred of mah ferred. Deedee fishing unenthusiastically again in his wallet.
'No, it wasn't your--no you're the one that did that.'
'I have startled you ... ? It is something about my appearance? I saw you start, you hopped up. I assumed it was Maxie.'--with whom she contended, somehow, behind her back--'But this is something else ... ?'
Deedee stood eyeing her for some time. 'Mm-hmm,' he said.
Yes it was. It was those giant eyeglasses, for starters, and those eyes, jabbing at him through the lenses. It was a look of continual, heightened surprise, which her eyebrows could upgrade to something like alarm when they sprang up from behind the glasses. She'd pomaded her hair and pulled it back with some force, battening it down with a canvas strap; and then behind the strap, spiked fronds of hair went tending in every direction at once, in a way that suggested a kind of detonation on the back of her head. Not lesbian exactly, Deedee thought, but nor was this body accustomed to wearing ... sundresses, for example.
She asked him something about a 'man your age' and Deedee said: 'Checking up on my boys.'
'Your boys, what is this your boys business?'
'Seventeen, the head--them.' Indicating the stage. 'That's Ross standing, Neil's behind his cabinet there. The others aren't out yet, they probably--'
'Ha,' she said. 'So I will tell you who you are: you are Deedee.'
'Tha-at's ... I am, that's me. But explain to me how--'
'Deedee Vainee-- ... Vainandsomething ... .'
His features, which had sharpened quickly when she pronounced his first name, softened again. 'Vanian,' he said.
'Ah yes.'
'But tell me how you know that. I don't think, we haven't ... what, are you a friend of theirs?'
'Friends no, I don't say this, we are acquainted. The boys, all but Donald, I have hosted them once in my apartment, for overnight, not long ago. I was intimate with none of them, you understand. Donald slept in the van on that occasion ... but it is not interesting, I can see.'
'No, no I'm--'
'I should like to know what is preoccupying you, Deedee.' The ferret reemerged, this time from her underarm, the hat thrown jauntily back on its little head. 'Here is Maxie again,' she said, pursing her lips at the ferret. 'He wishes to know this also.'
'Number of things, number of answers to that. But--and I haven't heard your name yet, of course--'
'I am Annika.'
'Yes, I'm overseeing a certain type of event here, Annika, and now I've got this new idea too but it isn't fully formed yet. Ah--but do this for me: have a look at Neil, when they start in. I'm assuming you know which one--'
'Yes of course I know which one is Neil Ramsthaller. But now you tell me, Deedee, why I'm to watch him for you.'
'Because, well what do you think of him?'
Annika turned from him for the first time and studied Neil on the stage. When she turned back to Deedee she held a section of her lip in her front teeth, releasing it to say: 'I think Neil is handsome, and he is brilliant with his guitar. I believe him to be more accomplished with his guitar than Donald, he is perhaps the musician among them, and the most serious by disposition. He is also terribly and unapologetically handsome.'
'And do you get a sense of how those guys get along. I mean, up there, they'd seem to be simpatico, right?'
'Yes, this is my impression also, but--your mind, Deedee, I can see it is stirring now, and I wonder what it is thinking, exactly. And I notice one other thing, that you have not yet ordered a drink for yourself, though you are a widely known and flagrant drunk.'
'Wha? Well, I did have a snort before coming in, I should say. And I'd had a pair of drinks brought over for us, only that fellow with the moustache took them ... . '
'Yes but I was watching you even before you came over to this bar, lurking about over there, and even before I knew who you were I thought: here this man is scheming something. I wonder what is so special about tonight.'
'Tonight? Well you're about to see, and I think you'll find it extremely interesting. But something else has just occurred to me, and this regards you directly now.'
'It regards me ... ?'
'Ah--yes, I've been thinking about offering you a job.' Hearing the sound of this, he lifted an eyebrow.
'A ...' Annika jerking erect, and gripping an arm of her chair in both hands. 'Let me tell you this then, Deedee: I work in the market-research arm of a pharmaceutical company, and I will leave the job without giving it a moment's thought. It is a job I've come recently to loathe.'
'Is that right?' said Deedee. Don and Chavez had taken the stage and were laying out a small array of cables and foot switches.
Deedee drew a roll of antacids from a front pocket and bit the end off of it, pulling a strip of paper and foil from his mouth in a single, well-practiced motion. 'First thing we'll need to talk about,' he said absently, chewing the antacids and watching the band assemble, 'is you'll have to put that ferret down.' He wasn't sure if he'd said it aloud.
'Maxie? No-no I can't, he'll roam about on the floor and become lost, he is not allowed--'
'No, I mean put him to sleep, you may have to consider getting rid of it if you plan--'
'Oh Deedee!' She clutched it to her chest. 'Never!'
He shrugged. 'Here they go,' he said as he, and then Annika, turned to the front of the room and fell silent.
QUICK SURVEY OF SECURITY AT THE MARLIAVE; SUN JULY 21
JASON ST. CYR, DOOR/POINT: 26-YR. -OLD ENDOMORPHIC GIANT, SQUATS 585/BENCHES 365; HOVERING PRESENCE ALONE WILL ORDINARILY BROKER NONVIOLENT CRISIS RESOLUTION. SELF-SUMMED JOB DESCRIPTION TO 'MAKE ABSOLUTELY A HUNDRED PERCENT SURE NO SITUATION IN HERE LASTS MORE THAN A MINUTE AND A HALF' OR ROUGHLY THE TIME IT TAKES FOR HIM TO SPOT TROUBLE, DISMOUNT STOOL, LOCK DOWN AND SWAT THROUGH PATRONS TO SCENE OF IMPASSE. SEVERE MYOPIA BUT WEARS NO CORRECTIVE LENSES ON DUTY, WHICH FACT TYPICALLY SENDS UNINFORMED MINORS RUNNING OFF W/ID IN ST. CYR'S HANDS BEFORE HE'S EVEN SPOTTED FRAUDULENT BIRTHDATE. HAS HEADSET LINK WITH R. FAZIO, BUT LEAVES IT HOOKED OVER COAT PEG NEAR DOOR, JUL 21 BEING NO EXCEPTION.
DEAN ANDRYCHIUK, DOOR AND BARS ASST: 21-YR. -OLD BROWN UNIVERSITY ROTC FROSH IN SUMMER CLASSES, RED-SHIRTED TIGHT END FOR BEARS, ALSO JUNIOR OFFICER OF BROWN U. BOXING CLUB. WORKS WKND SHIFT ONLY, DOESN'T NEED WAGE PARTICULARLY NOR ENJOY LIVE MUSIC, BUT IS HERE PRINCIPALLY TO FIGHT; IS MANY TIMES SENT OUT TO OBLIGE PATRONS KEEN ON POST-EJECTION FISTICUFFS, WHICH FISTICUFFS ARE KEPT ONE-ON-ONE AND GENTLEMANLY AND WILL BY FIAT END IN GENTLEMANLY HANDSHAKE. IN 2 MONTHS' WKND DUTY AT THE MARLIAVE IS YET UNACQUAINTED WITH FISTICUFFS THAT DO NOT MATCH DESCRIBED MODEL.
DARREN VAN ADDER, SHALLOW FLOATER, STAFF COLORS: LOOKSWISE, MIGHT HAVE BEEN SEP'D AT BIRTH FROM NEIL RAMSTHALLER; BARELY 21 AND OF MEDIUM BUILD BUT PUBLICLY CLAIMS 'GANSETT SUEDES AFFILIATION, GS BEING ONLY LOCAL SKINHEAD SET OF REAL CONSEQUENCE, THOUGH ORGANIZED MORE TIGHTLY AROUND N.E. HIGH-SCHOOL METHAMPHETAMINE TRAFFICKING THAN E.G. ANY RACIAL CLEANSING AGENDA; A SUEDE-HEAD SKIN [HENCE SET NAME], IS ALLOWED TO SPORT HIS GS BOOTS AND IDENTIFYING FLOODED JEANS/BRACES ALONG W/STAFF TEE; HEADS-UP MOVE BY MARLIAVE MGMT TO A.) LIMIT GS DISRUPTION AT CLUB, PERENNIAL 1980's PROBLEM, AND TO B.) DISCOURAGE ATTACKS ON SECURITY STAFF, AS TROUBLE INSIDE W/VAN ADDER GENERALLY ENTAILS TROUBLE OUTSIDE W/HIS SET.
TERELL SHARPS, DEEP [PIT] FLOATER, STREET CLOTHES: KEPT INTENTIONALLY OUT OF UNIFORM AND USUALLY DISCHARGES DUTIES BARE-CHESTED. IS CRIMINALLY DANGEROUS, AS IN LITERALLY: TATTOO ON INSIDE-RT. FOREARM IS JAILHOUSE INK, 4 CANDLEPINS W/ A 5TH CROSSING THEM LIKE HASH MARKS, APPARENTLY REFERENCES FEAT OF SHARPS', I.E. THE BLUDGEONING OF 1 GANGLAND VICTIM TO DEATH AND 4 TO LIFE-ALTERING HOSPITAL STAYS W/ A BOWLING PIN DURING SPONTANEOUS VIOLENCE IN, WELL, A BOWLING ALLEY. SHARPS SERVED 6 YRS. OF INVOL MANSLAUGHTER/MULT. AGGR. ASSAULT TERM AT WALPOLE; ALL OF THIS SUPPOSEDLY, BUT NO GREY AREA AROUND TALENT SET IN DEPT. OF CLUB VIOLENCE; LESS HELPFUL IN CONTAINMENT/SUPPRESSION CAPACITY, BUT IS PURE MACHINERY IN PARTISAN-STYLE AFFRAY, MORE SO IN FACT THAN MUSIC-CLUB STATUTES ALLOW, AND IS THUS KEPT OUT OF STAFF COLORS AND PAID STRICTLY SUB-MENSA. HAS NOT BEEN CALLED IN FOR DUTY HERE SINCE LAST HARD ROCK BILL (JAN.).
ROLAND FAZIO, ALSO ROLAN' THUNDER SINCE 1986 ALTERCATION IN STAIRWELL LEFT HIM PARAPLEGIC AND WHEELCHAIR-BOUND; SERVES MOSTLY HONORARY POSITION OF COORDINATOR UP BY STAGE END OF LESSER SERVING STATION. WEARS SHORTWAVE HEADSET LINKED W/ THE DOOR, I.E. W/ J. ST. CYR ON THE 21ST; FAZIO SENDS CONTINUAL 1-WAY TRUCKER-TYPE ACCOUNT OF ONSTAGE ACTIVITY INTO HIS END, OUT OF HABIT, ST. CYR'S PHONES HANGING IN PLAIN VIEW ON THEIR COAT PEG. OBVIOUS LIMITATIONS OF WHEELCHAIR, BUT EXPLOSIVE TEMPER AND HANDS/ARMS OF FORMIDABLE DEXTERITY AND STRENGTH.
FRANCIS '-CIE' HEFFERNAN, STAGE: HARD-BITTEN, MULTIPLE-EARRINGED FLURRY OF ELBOWS AND KNEES AND KNUCKLES. GREAT GREY DOG-HAIR-LOOKING PONYTAIL AND CHOPS; AT 45+ HANDILY OUTDISTANCES CONTENDERS FOR OLDEST PROVIDENCE-AREA BOUNCER, AND HAS WORKED IN NO OTHER CAPACITY SINCE 1977 EMIGRATION FROM ULSTER, N. IRL; WEARS BLACK LEATHER VEST OVER STAFF SHIRT PROBABLY AS SIGN OF VETERAN STANDING; GIVEN TO DATED EXPRESSIONS LIKE 'RUMPUS' AND 'DONNYBROOK' FOR FIGHTING, WHICH TOPIC ACCOUNTS FOR NEARLY ALL LOW-ORDER CONVERSATION AND FRAMEWORK FOR HIGHER-ORDER TALK E.G. LOVE AND ART ANDPOLITICS. GENUINELY ENJOYS THE JOB BUT FAVORS SCALED-DOWN ACOUSTIC OR LIGHT-AMP ACTS THESE DAYS AND HAPPENS TO HAVE SEVERE SINUS HEADACHE ON NIGHT OF 21ST WHICH, ALONG WITH [SPORADICALLY OBSERVED] DOCTRINES OF SABBATH, HELPS TO SOLEMNIZE OCCASION FOR HIM; ALSO BELIEVES RT. INNER EAR NOT ONLY TO BE INFECTED BUT SPECIFICALLY INFECTED WITH THE URINE OF ONE SUPERHORMONAL HS DROPOUT W/WHOM FRANCIE IS FORCED TO SHARE WEST WARWICK YMCA LAP POOL AND WHOSE ACNE-STIPPLED IMAGE FLARES UP BEFORE FRANCIE EACH TIME HE SWALLOWS AND HIS EAR GOES MMMMWOWWW; FURTHER BELIEVES ANY IRRITATION TO HIS EARDRUM E.G. SPECIFICALLY LOUD MUSIC CAN ONLY BE SCREWING THE INFECTION IN TIGHTER TOWARD HIS BRAIN ...
... The bottom line being, Francie wasn't in the mood for loud music on the night of the 21st, except meanwhile Chief Hosa's 30- and 55-watt combo amps were being pushed back into the curtain and replaced with Seventeen's 100-watt guitar stacks and 800-watt bass head which, when they were run back through the house system, were going to send a 3kW signal out the club's PA blocks, located one apiece on extreme stages left and right. *It being no one's duty but Francie's to survey the stage from just behind the stage-right block, where a five-foot bass bin set the mids and treble horns at just exactly the height of a man's chest and head.
By way of comparison, 10kW had been enough to drive all the speakers at the original Woodstock festival, on a 600+-acre open-air farm.
So it'd be worth it, Francie felt, to step down off the stage and lay this out for Neil Ramsthaller. Not the diplomat of the bunch, Neil, and not someone Francie knew so well or recalled liking especially. But Neil was the only one of them on the floor so far, next to Chief Hosa's manager Gail Prindle there at the merchandise table, giving his thumbnail one proper hell of a gnawing. Francie pacing the stage, eyes on the back of Neil's head, while in his own head phrases,openers for Neil, went bouncing around, recombining aimlessly: excuse me but Neil son there's something, if you four know what's good for you as how I'm under strict orders from my doctor you know ... In his school days, Francie'd seen a bullfrog take a load of some chemical j directly in its still-beating heart. Whatever the stuff was, it plasticized in the bloodstream so that the frog's flesh could be boiled off and you were left with a rock-hard plastic version of its circulatory system. That's how Francie's temper moved through his body, except it started out in his traps and spread in toward the spine, rigidified the lats and delts until his upper back felt like a tree trunk, coursed up through his neck to the back of the head so that his ears were pulled back somewhat, then finally down his tri- and biceps and into his forearms and wrists until it sucked his fingers into his palms and he had to keep flexing and unflexing them to keep from making fists. So as for Francie, right now, turning an offhanded, diplomatic phrase: no chance. He might as easily have hopped down and explained to Neil some principle of quantum math.
But he found he'd stepped to the floor anyway, with a finger cocked at his bad ear, and he was just about to march over to Neil like that when he chanced a look behind him and what did you know, there was Ross, seated behind the drumkit. Francie turned and crossed one leg over the other, set a boot-point on the floor and propped an elbow, buckaroo-style, on one of the front-line monitors. Ross, oblivious, with a set of snares in the store plastic lying athwart his lap, sat rocking his knees side to side and working at the under-rim of his drum with a pocketknife. A streak of pale yellow slowly parting the general redness of Francie's brow. Even if he were out working the door, he considered, even with those speakers at half capacity, they could still beat the air out of your lungs. Onstage it was a matter of your eyes, and how they'd get jogged in and out of stereoscopic phase.
'Say hey, Ross,' he managed, casual as you please.
'Francie.'
'So you in charge tonight, here, Francie?'
'Hmm? In charge, ah no, just for what I'm looken at, just the stage tonight. My man Jason draws Sundays. We generally don't even have a staff body onstage for Sundays ... . 'Course, Gary calls me last minute this afternoon and says can I do it, we need bodies for Seventeen tonight. I'm thinken ahh Christ Seventeen, me there thinken I could just sleep off last night, so of all the fucken bands, you know, I'm thinken ahh Christ Seventeen.'
'Big night last night?'
'Real-real big. Just legless, me an Rick the owner last night, the two of us drinken here after close. I'm just much too old for that bit a'course, and me pullen a shift, now, on the very next day ... ?' He huffed and had a quick look over his shoulder.
'Yeah us too, down in New York last night. Disgraceful, is what we were. Every man jack of us, Francie.'
'Heh-heh. Ah but you're young though, aren't you. You're still young, though.'
'Mmm. So how's that? Jason's in charge, you said? I don't think I've met that guy.'
'Sure you know him, or though actually not, if haven't done a Sunday here yet. He's out front, real big kid right there.' St. Cyr perched up on his stool by the swinging doors, positively ripping into a calzone.
'Oh Jesus, no you're right, that's a good investment up there for Rick, for security. We'll make sure we don't bother that guy tonight.'
'Probably a wise policy, that one, Ross,' and he had a good laugh about that, did Francie.
'No way ... . So that guy's pretty new here? I just say this because Deedee wanted to know who was running the floor tonight.'
'Yah, ah well a couple months, yah, I worked with him some time ago over to the Civic Center, couple ah arena shows. Well 'course for me everyone's new here,' with another laugh, this one somewhat leaner, Francie grinding a fist into the opposite palm.
'That so.'
'Yes it is, yes it ... is. So ... so you heard I guess how one of my ears is infected now.'
Ross dropped his old snares behind him and tore open the new package with his teeth. Seventeen's road manager Dave Pittin staggered by with Chavez's amplifier, a 65+lb. piece of equipment, and heaved it up onto the bass cabinet, where it landed with what could have been a far-off bomb concussion or tectonic shift. Francie switching his gaze from one component to the other, with his jaw swinging to and fro in a way that sent flares of static through the infected ear. It had its own weight in his head, the infection did, it had definite coordinates and its own temperature, an added warmth, and when he stoppered his ears up with the cones it'd just pool there, like that sulfury black cave water that breeds the eyeless fish and whatnot.
'Say that again?' Ross had asked him.
'I say I guess you heard how I got an infected ear now. In this one:' pointing.
'Infected, hah?'
'Mm-hm, yeah it's infected all right ... . Yeah with ... well with some le'll fucker's ... pess, if you like to know the particulars.'
'Wow. That's from a fight?'
'Wha?'
'That happened in a fight here?'
'In a fight? No--'
'Because I was going to say, that must have been some horrendous--'
'Ah Christ no, Ross, it's from, some le'll sneak's been diddlen in a pool where I swum. But anyways it's dangerous now to expose the ear to loud noises, you follow? That's what the doctors are tellen me over and over, is keep the noise down, Francie, keep the noise down, Francie.'
'That so? Because you sure picked the wrong job for that, right? Did you tell them what you do?'
'No, Ross, the point is, what I have to ask the louder bands to do right now is keep it down, least while I'm on the stage with them. 'Til I'm healed up. You follow me?'
'Oh sure, I can see that.'
'You can. Well I'll be on the stage in ten minutes when you boys start, for example.'
'You'll--oh no way, Francie, if that's the case, with your ear, you don't want to be anywhere near the stage when we start, especially you'll want to stay away from those PA bins, we don't--'
'No, now clearly you're not listening to me, Ross. It's not like I get to choose my station here, I get paid to stand right over there and stay put and noo wanderen about. Do you see where I'm pointing to--no would you actually look here please: there. Okay? Right behind that PA where you just said I got no business bein--and you're right, but what do you know: there I'll be. We're clear? So when I say to you boys: keep it down tonight, I'm not asken a question of you. I'm not asken, okay? We're clear on thess?' The wooden speaker housing stressed audibly in Francie's fists.
'Francie, what can I tell you,' said Ross. 'That's a definite thing we'll take into account. Though I should say, I've never heard of just plain noise giving anyone an ear infection, or making one you already have worse, so I guess I don't know where you found those doctors of yours. But like I say, we'll take your ear infection into account as bestwe can, and maybe you can look for someone to switch posts with you in the meantime.'
'Oh you're good kids,' lip curled up over his teeth in a lupine-type smile. Francie shoved off the monitor and backed away toward the bar, wagging a forefinger. 'But like I say, this isn't something I got to ask for in here, in my own club. You fellas keep it down, right, and we've got no problem you and me.'
A grave thumbs-up from Ross.
ENTER WENDI, TRACY, TODD
Meanwhile the action of Jason St. Cyr's head over at the door suggested maybe suppression of hiccups, but this was actually his laugh. His head had lolled back on a great tirelike neck and it bobbed there just slightly, a few rolls in back bunching in and out of definition like gussets on a concertina. With eyes half-hooded and muscle-y rictus grin he was looking down not at the pair of licenses he held with his wrists propped on his quads but at Wendi and Tracy, who'd arranged themselves down there in a children-at-father's-knees tableau. Women like this were generally invited to try and wrest their own IDs from where St. Cyr had them clamped between his thumbs and hooked forefingers, which meant a great madcap struggle now for Wendi and Tracy down near his lap, St. Cyr looking on with the exaggerated disinterest of a man reordering a poker hand beneath a table.
A much more businesslike air in detaining Todd, who followed Wendi and Tracy to the door. St. Cyr eyeballed the new license two-handed and high on his chest, then single-handed out at arm's length, and in and out again, before a long and worried consultation of Todd'sface itself, not so much to compare for likeness as to give Todd a sense of how irresponsible behavior in the club might be dealt with. Except here was Todd, hotfooting in place with a hand cupped beneath his license, eyes darting up and down the saloon doors that Wendi and Tracy had left swinging. 'Yep that's me, Todd Brindenmoore,' he was saying quietly, almost singsong, 'I'm with those two you just let in, so ... 1974, mm-hmm, okay up next to my face, fine okay hi, che-ese' and so forth. St. Cyr dropped the license back into Todd's hands and forced his brows closer together, nearly into contact. 'I don't know where you've been tonight before this, sir, but remember when you're here we keep a very close eye--'
'Yeah I know I come here a lot,' said Todd, and slipped through the doors with his license.
From Neil's journal
'There once,'writes Neil, in his road journal, 'was a giant ambulatory phallus and pair of testicles which, though their size and ability to locomote were indeed striking, had some extraordinary talents besides. All three could make conversation, either with others or amongst themselves, They could pilot a car or, in a pinch, the Seventeen van, and they could not only work the Seventeen merch table but often insisted all doing this. In most other respects, though, their behavior was unmistakably penile and testicular. As a group they were avidly social, and seemed especially fond of hard rock shows, where it seemed you could no longer go without seeing them brandished. They were, of course, rarely seen individually, and though they tended to drift apart in more relaxed settings, the smaller and more vulnerable components would draw to the base of their taller spokesman when danger loomed ... .' Neil here referring specifically to Wendi and Tracy and Todd, and though it isn't the kindest metaphor, it does carry some weight. Todd does, after all,shave his head bald, and he's at least half again as tall as the girls, and the girl, are of a height and nearly a weight, too. Wendi and Tracy are ruddy and rotund and topped off with heads of tightly kinked hair. And whether or not the three of them have been told this--that their collective aspect is one of giant, roving male genitalia--they seem to make a point If travelling in formation, I as was the case when they entered the Marliave on the 21st. It was Wendi and Tracy who came bouncing through the club doors first, beneath and a little ahead of tile teetering and clean-shaven figure of Todd.
Ross had his drum up on his thigh, balanced sideways, and was giving the head a few test whacks while his fingers dampened the snares from behind, when the figure of Neil Ramsthaller smart-stepped past him toward the backstage. Which could only have meant Neil was being relieved at the merchandise table, by ... and in fact here came Wendi and Tracy, beelining at the stage with Todd Brindenmoore in tow and gaining briskly on them. Todd in his trademark rock-club black leather jacket, which he'd gone so far as to zip right to his throat, in unintentional fetishwear mode. The jacket was a Montreal import with two circular and off-color breast pockets, for which the image of pasties had, since Don's original comment to that effect, been unshakable. A pair of outsize zipper tongues wagged around on them exactly like tassles whenever Todd made a jerking motion, which was more or less continually.
Ross stepped from behind his kit and sank to his haunches, greeting Wendi and Tracy at the foot of the stage, and when Todd caught up, Ross extended him a hand, too. 'There he is,' said Ross. Todd seized the hand and gave it a shake that sent the zipper pulls swinging wildly. 'Ha-ha,' said Todd, pumping with great vigor, and then, rather than let go, he said, 'Come on down here' and gave Ross a yank that landed him on the floor, actually nearly on top of Todd himself.
'Todd, watch it,' said Tracy.
'Ross, brother: you're back.' Todd let go the hand and socked Ross's opposite shoulder with the side of his fist. 'How was it out West, brother?'
'Todd, we just asked him that,' said Tracy.
'Things worked out all right, I was telling them. We got some weather starting in Oklahoma City and it rained on us throughmost of Texas, but otherwise not bad at all, not too hot ever, the van's going to need some work but what do you expect.'
'But you're back.'
'We are. Don I think went to get some sleep, quickly,' indicating the backstage with a thumb, 'but he'll be right out if Neil's going back there. I know he wanted to check in with you-all, Don did. You think you'll be able to stick around, after?'
'No, Ross, we drove down from Boston to turn around and go back as soon as you're done,' said Tracy, rolling her eyes for Wendi, who laughed modestly into her hand.
'No, totally, totally, we're checking in just to let you know we're here. I think Neil wanted us to help out with the merch over there ... .' It had been Neil's explicit direction to Ross that Todd be kept from behind the merchandise table. ' ... He was just--oh, I guess we're supposed to take over for him right away--oh and I can see the new tee shirts: nice. But, so here's the thing though, do you think you'll be heading back tonight, or ... ?'
'Todd we just asked him that, too,' said Tracy. Her hand had found the crook of Ross's elbow and rested there, in a courtly fashion.
'He doesn't have time to explain everything twice, you know,' said Wendi.
'No, what I was telling them, was they let out Don and my place through the first of August--'
'Are you--?'
'No, no kidding, we're in a motel until then.'
'And guess where the motel is?' said Tracy: 'Attleboro.'
'Attleboro? They couldn't get you any closer to Boston?'
'That's what we said,' the girls chorused.
'I have to think it's some special arrangement of his, of Deedee's. And personally, we've been travelling for three and a half months now, so a few more days, at this point, it's ... who cares.'
Chavez trooped in from the stage-right stairs, near the monitor board, to some scattered noise from the back of the room. Up withthe devil's-horns fist, which brought out a dozen of the same, plus a mightier wave of shouts, from the back. Crossing the stage, he hoisted his bass guitar, in its case, up over his head and gave it a shake. An answering roar from the back, where a considerable group seemed to be massing just outside the broad convexity of the houselights. Francie Heffernan flicked a half-shelled pistachio nut from the bar and didn't respond to a comment of Roland Fazio's. Deedee Vanian had just entered the club and was canvassing the room, teetering slightly on his feet.
'Oh, man,' Todd's head swinging back from the direction of the noise. 'Outside there's a line back to in front of that trophy store, Ross, you should see.'
'Chavez c'mere, honey,' said Tracy, letting go Ross's arm. It occurred to Ross that she'd been holding him for balance.
'Guy did everything at the door except run our prints, heh,' said Todd.
'Ladies. Todd.' Chavez giggling and unable to focus.
'Chavez, come over here sweetie.'
'No, hey I--Let me catch up at the motel, okay? I'm staying with those two. Hey thanks for coming down.'
'Of course, of course.'
'Yeah we're going over to the table now, we just wanted to check in. Ross, brother, we want to hear some of the old stuff, too, okay,' Todd corralling the girls away from the stage.
'Todd, you're not the fucking camp counselor, you know,' said Wendi.
St. Cyr's practice, on the nights where this was permitted by the weather, was to prop the club door open with a tough-looking old tire rim and station himself down near the base of the entrance stairs, just inside or outside the saloon doors, where he'd wave people toward him in groups of 1-3. Reason being that even without any corrective eyewear, St. Cyr could spot prospective troublemakers out on thesidewalk and engage them in the public domain, i.e. before they crossed his threshold and became a liability of the club's.
When Don brought the butt end of his guitar down on John Bennet's* amplifier on the night of the 21st, for instance, and when John and Francie Heffernan and Jimmy-Jack Butler, Chief Hosa's equipment manager, all took their simultaneous runs at him, Jason St. Cyr was out in the Congress St. breakdown lane, flagging a cab with one hand and steadying a rubber-limbed university type with the other.* He'd secured the--notably soundproof--club door behind him, as was SOP.
A year or two before this, amidst all that JonBenét Ramsey flap, John Bennet had very tastefully elided his first and last names, and now he went by the stage name Johnbennet.
Deedee Vanian laughs off the suggestion that this kid might have been a plant ...
St. Cyr handed the kid's wallet to the driver, dispatched the cab, and turned to hitch his pants up in the manner of very large men, by one belt loop on his right hip and then one on the left. He had a stretch and brought himself back toward the club at a saunter, whistling a single stuttery note with every so often a mournful little decay. 'How many of you?' he said to no one in particular, as his hand fell to the doorknob.
'Me and him.'
'Follow me.'
Only, what he saw on reopening the club door turned St. Cyr right back to the outside. The skinny-armed punk he'd motioned after him was caught flat-footed as St. Cyr planted his hand across, as in completely across, the kid's chest and forced him halfway across the sidewalk, where the kid's backpedaling and eventual loss of balance triggered a chain-reaction collapse of the next half dozen bodies in line, many of these people still holding licenses aloft. St. Cyr told them all once, firmly, to shut up, before he hauled the door open again and vanished into the club.
ONE PERFORMANCE AND ANOTHER
I considered it unnecessary bravado, Deedee excusing himself when he did to phone the police. Bravado because nothing extraordinary had taken place, which is to say, nothing that called for a full-blown raid of the police. On the stage they'd neutrally announced two songs left and taken up Victor's song, 'El Destructo,' and that was all ... .
The boys in Seventeen were attempting, this year, all to have goatees, but none of them could! They were too young. Save for Victor, who'd had maybe too much success, his beard creeping shabbily in toward his mouth and out over the soft rim of his jaw. The rest each had a soft-looking bracket over the top lip and another ruff about the chin. As they took the stage the four of them were as slow-moving and sullen and rawboned as a chain gang, with the red-rimmed eyes and sprung hair of extended self-abuse, what many of these kids call road-rot. Deaf, it seemed, to the great shouting of the audience, where many of the boys were already boxing each other about like apes. I asked Deedee if they'd fallen ill on the road, Seventeen, and he said on the contrary they were in 'perfect fighting form.' It is precisely the kids, he opined, who look as though they cannot heft a guitar in the first place, who will end up blowing all the electric fuses in your club and bringing the police.
And it is true: what effort they expended now on the stage, as they took up their first song! The three of them in that front line crumpled and just as quickly regained their height, continually, like those little poppets with the many elasticized pieces, where you are pressing your thumb underneath and the fellow collapses, and you release and he rights himself again. They will drop from view as they do this, actually, unless you sit on the crowd's periphery and watch them end-on, and so this is what I did. Don stood rooted to the spot, the others casting themselves about the stage in attitudes of heavy drayage. I attended Neil more closely than the others, and not because I had been told todo this but because I prefer it. Neil handles his guitar in exactly the way of adolescent boys with their tennis rackets, before their stereo sets and mirrors, and I saw this identification on the faces of the boys who watched him. He bore himself as though he were a pontiff of this place, and he was the only one of the four who would look out into the audience. Deedee comments that Neil will make such a display of himself onstage and the word seems especially apt for him, with its connotations of animal behavior, baboons in the wild with rumps swollen and red, waving them helplessly in the air and backing into one another with them. For all Neil's fineness and proud Teutonic carriage, I must also laugh at times to myself, when he is performing.
And I should say that he is as faltering at the microphone as Don seems competent and at his ease. When Don steps to the fore he is at his most interesting, and I will watch him. Particularly I will watch the musculature of his throat, his neck becomes like architecture when he sings, like a fluted column. Ross sits obscured by his low arrangement of cymbals, at work like Vulcan behind the others and paying attention to none of us, although he is known generally as the focus of the female gaze.
Learning, a year ago, that there were a pair of brothers in the band I assumed they were Ross and Neil; it is a common mistake. Only in studying them closely do you see the resemblance, Ross to Don. Don is fairly described as a worn or corrupt-looking version of his brother Ross; if you were to send Ross through some harrowing experience, for all of the three years that separate them, and if he were to lose fifty pounds and several inches of height in the process, you might arriveat Don. And again it is Deedee's comment on Don that seems most apt: this is the look, says Deedee, of premature wisdom and not enough of it. They might actually make a convincing father and son, Deedee and Don, with their curving posture, their restive, hooded eyes, and that air of darkness and discomfort about them; they might, I say, if Deedee's condition weren't one of playfulness, as it fundamentally is.
Next to the closed and calculating and inscrutable Don, you have a pleasant opposite in Ross, who is by far the most straightforward and genial of the group. His is a healthy American face, open and confident, clean and uncomplicated with a broad jaw and transmissive eyes which point, collectively, less to a simplicity of wit than of character, this you learn quickly in conversation with him. When I hosted the four of them at my apartment in Newport a year ago, and after it became clear to Neil that I would not be made sexual prey, it was Ross who sat with me at the card table in my kitchen, well into the morning, and it is from Ross that I knew most of what I did about the band.
Which leaves Victor and I must say, Victor I will watch only incidentally, if at all. Like Don on the 21st, he had sweat his shirt through before they were quite under way, but unlike Don, fat Victor would not show to advantage in his clinging tee shirt. I feel that he is inelegant and that he lacks in self-regard, quite the opposite of Neil. It is Victor's habit to swing his bass guitar about by its strap and yell phrases of nonsense into his microphone and make profane, adolescent gestures and carry on like this, which is not something that interests me but which will, naturally, have its effect on the crowds.
As indeed it did on the night of the 21st. After several months of touring they were all, as Deedee had remarked, in splendid form, and the crowd worked its way quickly into frenzy. This is typical of audiences at these shows, and it is not uncommon, given the tremendous energy generated onstage and unleashed on the crowd, for a performance of this kind to end in a great participatory act of violence. Fights may erupt, bars and stages may be vandalized, crowds may stream into the street and overturn cars: except, returning to my original point, none of this had happened yet, when Deedee made his call to the police. And this is why I describe his act as one of bravado.
Deedee, in his inevitably high-flown way, was allowing the band to illustrate a point for him, one I would not understand myself until sometime later. I did make an effort to listen, but the volume of the room was considerable, and I was having also to contend with Max, who seemed to have taken a murderous dislike to Deedee and all this talk. Still, as my attention wandered and Max continued his struggle in my arms, still Deedee pressed on with his dreamy talk of the stars and constellations and such things, tipping a flask less and less surreptitiously into his Caribbean drink. He mentioned to me how there would be a riot in the club tonight, this much I could hear, and I told him glibly that yes, there might be one indeed.
'Then I had better call the police, hadn't I?' he said, and I told him yes of course, this was a citizen's duty. I thought he meant to use the rest room and when he left his stool with the American 'o-kay' sign for me I returned my attention to the stage.
At the end of Victor's song, of course, Don would begin swinging his guitar and the stage would be infiltrated from all points and a great calamity would be the result. This is all a matter of record now. But what is not widely known, and what would cause me to regard Deedee from this point on with some seriousness, is that the police were well on their way to the club, even before Don had unshouldered his instrument.
ON ROLAND AND NEIL
DON: Two noteworthy characters in the late stages of that excitement at the Marliave, during the denouement. One's Roland Fazio, who, the first thing the cops do when they get there is lift Chavez's bass head off his arm and raise him back up in the chair, Roland a little shocky but basically okay, saying 'Yeah, I'm all right, things just got real fucking hot real fast in here, that's all' which, not by way of defending what Chavez did, but Roland got to feel like he'd really officially been in the shit, and so he was riding a little tall in the saddle when the cops found him. So much so, that he starts directing the raid, like maybe the cops that helped him up are going to deputize him, too, on the spot. 'Over there, fellas, ask him where he got those cables. Yah, and right over there, see that kid's boots? Well check out that gash in the stage, boys, I think you're going to find a match.' Not that they're necessarily paying attention, except for the one officer behind him, holding the grips of his chair so Fazio'll stay put. 'Him there, that little guy right there, he's got a great deal to tell you--oh no? Well if he needs help explaining how two of our stage mikes hit that wall, I'll be glad to come over and jog his memory for him. Oh there you go, that's right, that's him, officer'--talking about me--'that's the little prick started the whole fucking party, you want to make that good and tight'--i.e. the plastic cord they were cinching around my wrists. 'Hey, Don, know where you're going now?'
'Where am I going, Roland.'
'To jail, ya smart fucker ya.'
V. CHAVEZ: Roland, because he's in his wheelchair, there was only so much for him to do when our stage got rushed. He was swatting at kids and holding on to pant cuffs as best he could but as soon as he had both hands full, the arch on his headset slipped down to the bridge of his nose so he couldn't even see, and so anyone heading for the stage could just as easily step around him. And then when I found myself on the lipof the stage holding my amplifier overhead--I was yelling white riot! white riot! which I admit wasn't terribly cool, but you don't always know what you're about to say--but who should I be looking right down on at that point but Roland Fazio, with his headset back in place, Roland there 'that's right c'mon ya-fucker-ya throw it' with his arms up like I'm about to inbound a basketball to him, this 70-lb. bass head I'm holding a good ten feet over him. Roland's motivations in this, I can't speak to his motivations but I will say one thing in all seriousness: when it hit him he made this guhh-sounding grunt--which of course he would, getting the wind knocked out of him--but there's different ways a man can grunt and this, even as he's taking all that weight in the chest and somersaulting back over his chair, this I swear to you was a grunt of pleasure.
DON: The principals, including Ross and Chavez and myself and some of the men from Chief Hosa, were being apprised of our Miranda rights, we were all going to leave with the police. Everyone cradling elbows or daubing at foreheads, once they'd been subdued. Two of the security staff, it looked like, were leaving in the ambulance. Francie Heffernan, the dour one in the vest, appeared to be conscious but was wheeled out on a gurney, his head ensconced in great blocks of foam.* Another, Dean Andrychiuk, weaving out on his own feet, to listless applause. The stage had been annihilated. Fazio was going at it again on his headset: 'Anybody got Jason's cans on? They want us to seal the exits, do you read?' and so on. Jason St. Cyr up on the stage shaking that cannonball head of his, 'I think I'd fucking know if it was me that called in the cops,' he kept saying to them. 'I think I'd fucking know.'
Early on in the action, Francie'd found himself pinned beneath Todd Brindenmoore and, for all his spittle-shooting fury, he'd been unable to get up or even land a punch. 'Hold still, hold still, dammit', Todd had repeated to him, under his breath and just inches from Francie's good ear, in the manner of a sexual assailant. This is how Francie spent the bulk of his time while kids were running amuck on stage, and so the physical injuries he came out with were of no real consequence to him, not compared with that squirming one-on-one imbroglio with Todd, Francie in his leather vest [worn for the last time that night] and Told in his tight leather jacket. This all would, in time, become the stuff of spine-twitching flashbacks for homophobe Francie.
Chavez wasn't helping his case at all by continuing to resist arrest, of course.
CHAVEZ: That civil rights business about 'oh sure go ahead and cuff the Puerto Rican kid' was primarily a joke. I mean, I kept saying it and I roughhoused some of the cops around just on that basis but I was primarily kidding. I felt like at least Don, if he heard it and Christ I said it loud enough and enough times, that at least he'd think it was funny.
DON: But there were a bunch of other kids doing the same, and not a few nightsticks and pepper-spray bottles seeing use, this as they're leading me off the stage and handing me over to a female officer who's already got Ross and John Bennet behind her. Deedee still hadn't left his seat but was at it hammer and tongs, conversationally, with Dave Pittin, blood sheeted down Dave Pittin's neck from his hairline into the collar of his shirt. A pair of EMTs waiting to clean him up, too, standing like dogs at point with their fists full of gauze, Dave Pittin warding them off so he can finish with Deedee.
I felt as though I should have had some words with Deedee myself, as in, hey, was there some kind of trap that just got sprung on us, Deedee? or what's with this feeling, that weird premonitory flash I'd had, as soon as my guitar landed on John Bennet's amplifier, like I'd just taken a very, very serious misstep? ... Not that I could have phrased the right questions just then, in the moment, and not, as I'd learn a week later in Ostend, not like I'd have voiced them even if I could. At any rate, there was no getting past the hulking figure of Dave Pittin, so it was a moot point. And the police weren't going to stand by while I waited for my manager to grant me an audience. I just let myself get tugged on past the both of them.
On Deedee's right there was Annika Guttkuhn, who I didn't remember having met yet, but who I felt like I ought to keep an eye on all the same. More extrasensory omens, that aura around Deedee of secret misdeeds, enveloping her, too? Who knows. Just gathering facts. She was perched kind of hungry-looking on her stool, chin propped on herknuckles, fixed on ... as I followed her eyes over ... on Neil Ramsthaller, who I'll list as the second notable in this.
A peculiar air of suspension around Neil, amidst the swirl of activity and basically everyone shouting something, but Neil's arms had gone limp by his sides and the word 'agog' came to mind, in terms of his face, and at first I figured this was about his equipment. Until I caught sight of what he'd spotted, and the situation turned out to be this doppelgangrous locking-of-eyes with Darren van Adder, sound of crickets obviously all that was in van Adder's head, too. Which at the time I didn't realize the significance of, I just remember thinking that kid looks an awful lot like Neil, and being struck by how in all the discord they'd both got their heads cocked to the same femme-y angle with a single eyebrow arched, Neil with all his fingertips pressed together, daintily, the two of them for all the world like young aristocrats regarding each other over a tea service.
THE NEIL SITUATION: AN INTRODUCTION
The houselights had gone up immediately, and the public address had been cut, a first wave of bodies and then a second had mounted the stage, and the front-line monitors lay overturned like enemy fortifications on a beachhead. Mouths gaped everywhere with all the noise they could make, air of increasing mass rose into the overhead lights, crisscrossed at first with stray flying bottles and then with a steady hail of debris. The faces flickering past were streaked and corded with blood, blood spidering out from nostrils and from weals on brows and lips, the floor a crowded darkness of stamping feet and upraised forearms.
And then, unmolested somehow, through the midst of all this, went the figure of Victor Chavez, creeping across the front of the stage. Neil just watching, unable to say anything, buffetted along in the stream of bodies, as Victor slid over to where Neil had stood to perform, and then toed Neil's microphone stand, furtively, gingerly, into the crowd. That was Neil's own microphone. He'd paid three thousand dollars for it andbrought it to the stage himself, which Victor would have known. But then before Neil had had a chance to grab him, Victor was off doing a Fosbury-type flop into Ross's kit, crashing to the stage beneath a pyramid of microphone stands and drum hardware, where he lay for some time, bracing a dislocated shoulder. There was nothing for Neil to do about it except to leap out into the crowd and retrieve the microphone himself.
And so the next image for Neil to take away from the scuffle was one of himself, in a lopsided tug-of-war over the microphone stand, a pair of bristle-headed punks opposite him, who were making a great sport of playing Neil from side to side like a gamefish. Neil's thought even at the time was of the old dramatists, how they'd call in the menials and buffoons to render some broad sweep of history, or an episode like a battle, for their audiences. This is where Neil had landed when he left the stage, was in the symbolic, ridiculous version of the incident proper, down with the buffoons. An impression by no means contradicted when he felt his microphone cracking underfoot. Neil let go his end of the stand-which ought to have sent the two punks sprawling but didn't, given the density of bodies behind them--and was about to reach down and salvage the microphone when two things happened, one right after the other: the first was a large-scale thud from the stage that he identified, with a kind of psychic pang, as the sound of his stack toppling in on itself; second was Neil getting crowned from behind with a dry mophead.
The mop had been a part of Chief Hosa's plunder from a utility closet they'd raided as soon as they'd come tearing in from backstage to see what the commotion was about. 'Filthy' Rich Dillard armed himself with a pair of spray bottles and shot up the place with what a Providence County small claims jury would eventually be satisfied was ammonia. Darrel and Malik came storming out helmeted in buckets of galvanized tin, distributing plungers and lightbulbs and what their countrymen would call loo-rolls. Percussionist Rachel made off with the mop, whose business end would cough out a pleasing cloud of dust, like the powdered wigs of the old English barristry, when she brought it down on Neil's head. Stage manager Howie Driscoll was standing by Neil when the mophead found its mark and couldn't help but give it another belt with the side of his fist, sending two more sprigs of dust out over Neil's ears.Things generally confusing at this point for Neil, who thought he was perhaps fainting from the blow, his vision clouding in from either side and nothing in front of him but Driscoll's great goofy display of teeth. He threw a reflex punch at Driscoll's neck and came up just short, but Driscoll got the idea and went burrowing out through the crowd.
Neil hadn't even had time to identify the object on his head when his cabinet screen came winging out over the crowd, which, in case he'd missed it, was followed by the faceplate of his tuner. And so it went. Neil spent the rest of his time mounting and dismounting the stage, always just a step behind some doomed piece of equipment, shouting at everyone in his way and catching fists and knees and elbows on all quarters.
Days later, at Darren's house, he was still icing a rolled ankle, the mouse over his right eye had spread and made something almost prehistoric of his brow, blood from the contused vessels had fallen to the pockets beneath his eyes and discolored there to a waxy yellow. The sight of himself in a mirror could simply not be borne. Darren had tried to reassure him: a masculine face ought to show some kind of violent history, that was Darren's opinion. Easily said for him, he'd come through without a scratch! Still, wasn't it interesting how Darren had been the only one to spare a thought for Neil, and how this all might have affected him. Not Don or Dave Pittin or anyone from the label, but a stranger basically, just one of the staffers at the club--well and that woman Annika, too, of course. She'd been very attentive.
Fat Lightning
Neil went to some private high, school in Connecticut, and he had his own radio show there, which was as much a forum for his performance art as for spinning records. One of the things he did on air was give himself a tattoo with a needle and some India ink, with some girls he'd brought into the studio mostly to gasp into the microphones and to plead with hint to stop. It's on the inside of his right thigh so if you've seen it you're either an old teammate of his or a sexual conquest. These people all report that its too wide, you really can't tell what it's supposed to be. He'll explain that it's a lightning bolt but he's usually pretty indignant about it if you've had to ask.
Copyright © 2001 by Jon Baird. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.