Featherless Bipeds (19 page)

I crawl on my hands and knees behind the shelter of my drums, behind the stack of PA speakers, then through the stage door into the parking lot. I look back just long enough to see a mixed group of Cowboys and Flexers mounting the stage and throwing our equipment into the fray.

The others are sitting on the back bumper of the rental van, shaking their heads.

“Shit,” says Akim.

“Shit,” adds Jimmy T.

“Shit,” says Lola.

“Yeah,” Tristan concurs, cradling his shattered video camera in his palm. “Shit.”

As I mop the sweaty blood from my face with my sleeve, I agree with them all.

Shit.

T
HE
B
IG
B
REAK

W
e're all at the Deaf Man's Garage, the band's rehearsal space behind Akim and Sung Li's apartment, trying to get our smashed-up equipment put back together in time for tomorrow night's gig downtown at Twelve Tribes. Hardly enough time has passed since our disastrous gig at Ray ‘n' Jay's to heal anybody's wounds. Nobody talks.

Akim is on the floor, performing surgery on his disabled Fender Twin with a soldering iron and a roll of electrical tape. He and Sung Li had been in the middle of a huge argument when the rest of us arrived. She wants him to quit playing in bars with the band and go back to university. She's tired of worrying that he's going to get killed one of these nights. From his hunched-over position on the floor, I can feel Akim radiating anger and frustration like a star collapsing in on itself; he could go supernova at any moment.

Tristan is sitting in a corner quietly retuning his basses that survived the onslaught intact. His beloved Washburn five-string, though, with the purple metalflake finish, was smashed to splinters, and his video camera, along with the tape inside with the footage from our last two months of gigs, was trampled into shards under the heels of cowboy boots. Valerie also wants Tristan to quit the band. It's all he can do to keep from crying.

Lola's swearing at the tangled mess of microphone cables and speaker wires she's trying to sort through. She's gone back to her military/vampiress mode of dress since that idiot tried to rip her shirt off onstage, and her knuckles are bandaged from slugging him. There have been murmurs around the offices of the Women's Issues Commission and the Minority Rights Alliance that it might be time to replace Lola as president with someone with “fewer outside commitments”.

The cut on my face hurts much more now than it did when that shard of glass first hit me. It will probably leave a permanent scar, as if I need another one. I've still got the remnants of the black eye that Jerry gave me at the Triple R, and the bruises on my chest from his boots have recently turned an evil shade of purple-black. I've been able to patch most of my drum set together with wood screws and duct tape, but my beloved old Ludwig snare drum somehow got thrown out into the parking lot during the fray, and was run over by an escaping car. I'll have to play my backup snare for now, which sucks along with everything else.

Maybe my father was right, that it was bound to come to this. Have I used up my nine rock ‘n' roll lives? On top of the physical injuries, I've missed out on two years of university, the balance in my bank account has dropped to single digits, and I've lost Zoe for good. Long live rock ‘n' roll.

The only person who escaped without a scratch on his equipment, body, or ego is Jimmy T. He probably hasn't been getting much loving from Lola for the past few days, but he's able to find substitutes for that when he wants it. He flits uselessly around the garage, trying to cheer everyone up.

“Let's not let one bad gig get us down, okay?” he says, “This is it! This is the turning point for the Featherless Bipeds. Billy VandenHammer from Big Plastic Records is coming to hear us play tonight. This is our shot at the big time, kids. Can you feel it coming? Can you feel it? Can you?”

Akim throws a roll of electrical tape at Jimmy T, which bounces off his forehead.

“Did you feel
that
, Jimmy T?” Akim says.

“Look, I know the last gig was rough, but tonight is a big, big night for this band, and we've got to get our spirits up. Whaddaya say, gang?”

Silence.

Sung Li pushes her face through a crack in the garage door. Her chin is wrinkled, her lips pressed tightly together, as if trying to prevent herself from screaming, or crying, or both.

“Akim,” she says sharply, “there's a call inside for you. It's that Billy VandenHammer guy's secretary.”

Akim follows Sung Li out of the garage.

“See?” Jimmy T says, “See? This is it! This is the turning point! We're on our way now. Straight to the top!”

The rest of us continue repairing our equipment in silence. Eventually Akim returns with his head down.

“VandenHammer's not coming tonight,” he says. “Something else came up. His secretary didn't say what.”

“Hey, come on!” Jimmy T says. “At least he called us! At least he's still interested! He'll come out to another gig — you'll see.”

Lola throws the knot of cables to the floor.

“Screw this,” she says. “I bowed out of an important panel discussion on inner city race relations to go to this gig.”

She turns and makes for the garage door.

“Lola!” Jimmy calls after her. “Wait! This gig will be great! It's at The Twelve Tribes, for crying out loud. The most legendary rock bar in the city!”

“It's been fun, boys,” she says from the doorway, “but I've got more important things to do than get my shirt ripped off in some redneck bar. I'm gonna make some calls and get myself back onto that panel. I'm the president of the Women's Issues Commission and the Minority Rights Alliance. I am not a rock star.”

She walks out.

“Fine,” Jimmy T says. “Screw her, then. It'll just be us boys tonight. Just a little cock rock, then. We're gonna blow the roof off the old Twelve Tribes tonight, just us guys. Just some good old fashioned . . . ”

“Shut up, Jimmy T,” Tristan says.

And now here we are at the famous Twelve Tribes, the place where the Rolling Stones used to play unadvertised gigs, where The Who once played under a different name, where Rush and the Tragically Hip and Neil Young and Blue Rodeo and practically every famous rock band in the country played before flying into superstardom. Here we are at the Twelve Tribes, a place where rock stars are born, and we're stinking up the joint like the sewer just backed up.

“You guys suck!” someone calls to us after a lackluster performance of
Smog and Wire.

“We'll try to do better on this next one,” Tristan tells the critic, then he plays off-time throughout our wobbly version of
Even the
Waitress.

“Get off the stage!” is the critic's loud suggestion. “I can play better than you clowns!”

“You think so?” Akim says.

“A six year old with a toy guitar could play better!” the critic shouts back. His buddy beside him snorts with laughter.

“Screw 'em,” Akim says to the rest of us. “Screw the set list. Who cares anymore. Turn everything up, and let's just jam like we used to.”

Yeah. Damn right. I start playing a throbbing beat on the drums, something the other guys can dig into.

“Louder! Faster!” Akim yells. “ Let's blow their damn heads off!”

Tristan locks into the furious beat with a throbbing motorcycle-engine bass line, and Jimmy T thickens the sound with some chunky power chords. We're roaring along like a full-throttle locomotive when Akim leaps from the stage and lands on the floor directly in front of the critic, staring him in the eyes. His fingers dig into the fretboard, the rage screaming from his amplifier with an intensity that makes Jimi Hendrix sound like Roy Clark. His fingers hammer and bend the strings, releasing the crazed notes out into the wild, notes that bite and claw as if they might make the air bleed.

Akim then takes a step back, lets a single, perfect note fade away into nothing. The formerly indifferent crowd now roars. Akim holds the guitar out to the critic. We're playing so loud that nobody can hear what Akim says to him, but it's probably something like, “Your turn, maestro.” The guy looks away.

Akim mounts the stage again, grinning like crazy, soloing like he's channeling the ghosts of Dwayne Allman, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and every other great guitarist who departed in their prime. Akim is playing like only Akim can, and he's raising the rest of us up with him.

Then, as the last chord of the jam dissolves, Akim calls out to the cheering crowd, “We'll be right back, after we take a break so I can kick somebody's ass.”

The cheering gets even louder. The critic and his buddy decide to depart immediately.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Featherless Bipeds are back.

If we nearly stank people out during most of our first set, we nearly smoked 'em out with our second. Our playing was so hot and angry during round two, it's amazing the Twelve Tribes wasn't reduced to smoldering embers. There aren't enough fire trucks in the city to extinguish us now. Songs we've played a hundred times before suddenly crackle with lightning energy. Even Jimmy T is playing with a new kind of intensity, despite the distraction of dozens of lithe young women dancing wildly at the foot of the stage. Sure, between songs he flirts with them, but during the songs, he's playing his guitar. We are in the groove.

Too bad Lola chose to miss this gig. Adding her vocals to our volatile playing might have made the Twelve Tribes explode. And too bad Billy VandenHammer decided he had more important things to do than come to listen to the Featherless Bipeds. If he'd heard the set we just finished playing, he'd have had us sign a recording deal right here on the spot.

Admirers mob us the moment we leave the stage. Guys bring us beers and shooters. Smiling and swaying girls present themselves. Jimmy T immediately disappears with a scantily clad rock bunny. As the rest of us retreat for a corner table, I think for a second I see Zoe's face in the mob. I'm so charged with adrenaline, I must be hallucinating.

But no. I see her again. It's her. She's approaching the table. Zoe is here. Lola, Veronica, and Sung Li are with her.

“Sung Li?” Akim says. “I thought you were never coming to another one of our gigs again.”

“I changed my mind,” she says.

“Me too,” Veronica says to Tristan.

“Zoe?” I say.

“Hi, Dak,” she says, smiling shyly. “Lola came over to see me. She explained what happened with you and Jerry. I wanted to surprise you by showing up tonight.”

“I'm surprised,” I say, my heart throbbing, my head feeling lighter than air.

“Lola?” Tristan says. “I thought you had a meeting with your anti-racism group.”

“I sent somebody else,” she says, breathless. “Listen, guys. Sung Li got a call after you guys left for the gig tonight. It was Billy VandenHammer. He's coming tonight after all. He should be here in the next half hour.”

“He called personally, from his limo,” Sung Li adds, bouncing on her toes.

“We would have been here sooner, but I got pulled over for speeding,” Veronica explains.

“There's a huge lineup outside,” Sung Li exclaims. “Word on the street is that you guys are blowing the roof off the place!”

Tristan summarizes all of the thoughts that are racing through our heads. “Holy crap!” he says.

“Where's Jimmy T?” Lola says, “I have to find him and tell him the news!”

She rushes away through the crowd.

I turn to Zoe.

“It's great to see you,” I tell her.

“I missed you, Dak,” she says. “I'm sorry about . . . you know.”

“It's okay,” I say. “These things happen. Especially to me.”

“Look, Dak,” she says, “maybe it's time we . . . ”

“Come on, Dak,” a hyper-energized Tristan interrupts, “let's get our asses up on stage and rock this joint!”

“And blow away Mr. Billy VandenHammer!” Akim adds from over Tristan's shoulder.

I look apologetically at Zoe.

“It's okay,” she says, “we can talk later. Get up there and impress this Billy VandenHammer.”

The only person I really care about impressing is her. I follow the others through the crowd toward the stage, the hairs on my skin all standing on end. Tristan and Akim tune their guitars, and I quickly tune up my drum skins. If ever we needed our sound to be perfect, tonight's the night.

Again I think I'm hallucinating when I see Jimmy T sprinting toward the stage from the men's washroom at the back of the barroom, his hands cupped over his crotch, since he's wearing no pants. Or underwear. Then the rock bunny that disappeared with him earlier also scrambles out of the men's room, pulling her skirt down over her hips as she flees. Then Lola bursts through the door, charging after Jimmy T.

“You
sonuvabitch!
” Lola screams. “I
trusted
you!”

“Help!” Jimmy T cries to us as he climbs onto the stage, mooning the crowd with his naked butt.

I keep a big towel onstage for wiping the sweat from my face between songs. I toss it to Jimmy T, who quickly wraps it around his waist.

Lola climbs the stage behind him. Her face is beyond red, almost purple. Lines of tears streak her face.

“You heartless
bastard!
” she screams, “You
know
how hard it is for me to trust anyone! You
know!
”

Jimmy T stumbles backward as she shoves him.

“Lola, honey,” he stammers, “I know how it must look to you, but . . . ”

“What?
what?
Doing some P.R. work for the band again? You
bastard!
”

She shoves him again. Jimmy T falls backward, knocking his guitar off its stand. Lola grabs the fallen guitar, grips its the neck with both hands, then raises it high in the air like an executioner's axe.