Moody Food (25 page)

WE'D ARRIVED SO far ahead of schedule Colin wasn't even in town. We showed up at Electric Records' small, storefront office and a guy with mutton-chop sideburns in a SEEDS T-shirt shuffled around some papers on his desk and told us Colin wasn't expecting us for two more days, was somewhere in San Francisco at the moment scouting new talent. Thomas was polite but couldn't have cared less; all he wanted to know was where the recording studio was located and if we were clear to start laying down tracks. The guy rustled through some more paper, said he couldn't give us the okay until he spoke with Colin since it was usually Electric Records policy that bands be accompanied by a member of Electric management when recording on company time, and asked if we had a phone number where he could reach us. Thomas gave him a number and thanked him for his time.

“Now what?” Christine said as we piled back into Christopher.

Thomas flipped down his sunglasses and turned the key in the ignition. “You heard the man. 1567 Sunset, right at the corner of Sunset and Highland. We're fifteen minutes away.”

“But he said we need someone from Electric with us,” she said.

Thomas eased us into traffic. We'd been in town less than twenty-four hours but it seemed like all you ever did in L.A. was ease into traffic.

“Fifteen minutes,” he repeated. “Twenty-five if we stop off at the supermarket and stock up on supplies.”

Realizing he needed to be in the right lane to make the turn he wanted, Thomas hit the gas and cut off a shiny red Jaguar, narrowly avoiding whacking its front end with our rear. Thomas didn't appear to notice the car's insistent honking or its owner's raised middle finger.

“And I just can't emphasize enough,” he said, “how fresh fruits and vegetables are the best get-up-and-go you can give yourself. Absolutely natural, too. I'm telling y'all, it's the only way to go.”

WELL, not the
only
way.

Once Thomas bluffed us through the door—hauling out our Electric Records contract and dropping Colin's name several times to the receptionist on duty at the front desk—we went back out to Christopher and unloaded all our equipment, two brown paper bags full of oranges and apples and carrots, and a gram of coke. The engineer, a guy our age named Paul with short hair who'd just gotten out of jail on a marijuana bust, said he didn't have anyone booked for several hours in Studio B and if we didn't mind sharing him with the other band who'd also be recording that afternoon he'd just chalk up our time to Electric's account and try to help us out as best he could. He said he knew Colin and was sure it would be cool. “He digs motivated people,” he said.

While Slippery and Christine and Heather got started setting up, Thomas and I split for the washroom. Normally we would have
headed off one at a time to quash any sniffing suspicion, but by now, especially after what Heather had told me at the picnic stop, neither of us was too concerned with keeping up appearances. Probably the only reason we didn't take our whiffs right then and there in the studio was because Paul was on probation and he'd asked us not to smoke any pot in the building because if he got caught even talking to somebody with dope on them he was looking at five years of hard time. Thomas and I climbed the single flight of stairs to the upstairs john.

“Maybe we should go outside to Christopher,” I said.

“I don't know about you, Buckskin, but that's one saint I could definitely use a holiday from.”

“But Paul. He asked us not to do any dope inside.”

“Inside, outside, outside, inside—we don't have time for that kind of running around.” Thomas pushed open the door to the washroom and stooped to look for any shoes underneath the stalls. The coast clear, he cut off two fat lines directly on the sink counter.

“Besides,” he said, bending over and snorting, “if you recall, I believe what he said was that he'd prefer if we didn't smoke any marijuana on the premises.”

He stood up straight, rubbed his nose, then did the other line.

“And this,” he said, “surely is not marijuana.”

I razored off my own line and snorted. I couldn't disagree.

“WHAT WE WANT HERE, y'all, is a little more yellow, I think. Wouldn't you say, Buckskin?”

“More like flaxen, actually, but sure, yeah, yellow, let's go with that.”

“All right, then, everybody, the tape's rolling, let's try one more time. One, two, three—”

“Hold on, hold on. Flaxen?”

“You know, that's the third time I've started counting off and you've interrupted me, Miss Christine.”

“And that's the tenth time in the last forty-five minutes no one but you two has known what you're talking about.”

“I don't believe I know what you mean.”

“Oh, I don't know, how about these lyrics you expect me to sing?”

“What's wrong with these lyrics?”

“Nothing, I'm sure. If I could understand them.”

“Exactly what part don't you understand? Maybe I can assist.”

“How about where I come in and sing ‘Under and under / Star-spangled tapioca fish eyes / Complete' with you four times until—let me check my sheet here—oh, yeah, until on the next break we sing the same thing all over again except this time we substitute ‘Over' for ‘Under' and in every other line change ‘Complete' to ‘Incomplete.'”

“Every new song sets its own rules, Miss Christine. Don't worry, you'll come around.”

“This thing isn't a song, Thomas, it's ...”

“It's what?”

“Look, I'm sorry, but no one has satisfactorily explained to me yet why we're not working on the songs Colin signed us to record. What about ‘Dundas West' or ‘Lilies by the Side of the Highway'? What about ‘Dream of Pines'?”

“If Colin liked what we were doing before, then he's going to love what Buckskin and Thomas have been working so hard on.”

“I think what you and Buckskin here have been working so hard on every night might just be the reason no one but you two understands these new songs.”

“I'm afraid I don't follow you, Miss Christine.”

“I'm going outside for a cigarette.”

Door opens, closes.

“Heather, darlin', maybe you should go and keep an eye on Miss Christine. I could be wrong, but I do believe it might be that time of month when she might be experiencing some woman problems, if you understand what I'm getting at.”

Door opens, closes.

“You know, fellas, too often we take for granted the great burdens God has given the fairer sex to endure. That's why it is so important to remember that it's not enough for men to simply love their women—they've got to learn to
understand
them, too.”

Someone clears his throat.

“Hey, Buckskin.”

“Yeah?”

“'Bout time for a washroom break, wouldn't you say?”

IT WAS A GOOD THING PAUL didn't have much time to spare. He might have turned himself into the cops just to get away from us.

He'd miked all the instruments and brought everybody into the control booth to let us help decide how much treble and bass and echo we wanted to add to our sound, and within half an hour Thomas was twirling knobs on the recording board and running the show. He'd known all along the noises in his head he wanted to end up hearing on record, so it was just a matter of figuring out how to work the technology well enough to get them. It didn't take long.

Not that we had any business being in a recording studio. Not recording
Moody Food
, anyway. Thomas and I were the only ones who'd even heard the songs before the tape started turning, and all we had were song titles, lyrics, and a skeleton to the music as worked out by Thomas on his guitar in a million motel rooms.
The rest of us might have been able to plead ignorant, but he and Slippery knew that you went into the studio after—and not before—you've pretty much perfected the songs you're attempting to lay down. But it wasn't his money we were wasting so Slippery didn't care. And Thomas insisted that it was important that we get absolutely everything down on tape because, unlike our old stuff, these new songs were in 3-D and needed to be built up note by note, layer by layer, and you never knew when you might need to go back and pull out something from the archives to fit in with where you're at now. It's the way everybody records today, with 64-track studios and computer-generated mixing, but we were working with only eight tracks and a very limited budget. Actually, we weren't working with any budget at all, at least not until Colin got back.

And until then the tunes got taught and fleshed out on Electric's nickel, the reel-to-reel rolled, and Christine took a lot of cigarette breaks.

THE WHISKY A GO GO. Whew. It made the Mynah Bird seem like the Etobicoke Legion Hall where my dad drank draft beer on Saturday afternoons. The first time I walked though the door, with Christine, the night before we were supposed to take over centre stage ourselves, and saw the gyrating go-go dancers in the elevated steel cages, I thought, These people don't
need
drugs—they're freaks enough as it is. Actually, that's what the Whisky's star patrons were called, Vito and his Freaks.

Headed up by Vito himself, a fifty-something seasoned scene-maker with a long, pointy black beard, every night about twenty of L.A.'s most beautiful young hippie girls got decked out in white face paint, boa feathers, and antique see-through nighties and danced in
wild, free-form fashion to whomever they deemed the most happening band in L.A. Management never charged them a cover. If Vito and his Freaks started coming to your shows, you and the club you were playing at had it made, the word immediately went out and you were undeniably
it
.

The guy at the door of the Whisky had no problem taking our money even though there weren't any tables left and we had to stand wherever we could find a few inches of free floor space. It was between sets, but by the buzz in the crowd and the way people kept watching the empty stage waiting for the band to come back, you just knew something special had been going on up there. The Doors hadn't even released their first record yet but were already local legends. They were recording their debut album at the same studio we were, and Paul was sure it was going to break big time. Christine had jumped at the idea of seeing L.A.'s newest hottest thing. She also said it'd be a good idea for us to get a sense of what kind of club it was we'd be playing. I suspected that her real motive was simply to get away from Thomas for a while. I was still a little overwhelmed that we'd be scuffing up the same stage less than twenty-four hours later.

Ordinarily, unknowns like us never would have even gotten an audition to play the Whisky. But the guy who owned the place had loved every other band Colin had sold him on so far, so we got a guaranteed week's worth of gigs at $495.50, plus a house option for one more. No one in town might have heard of us yet, but we were recording our first album by day and playing the Whisky A Go Go by night.

We didn't even try to get to the bar and have a drink, the place was so packed. Holding hands so we wouldn't lose each other in the crowd, we wormed our way as close as we could get to the front, thirty or so feet away from the stage along the left wall. Christine started talking to a couple of girls standing beside us and I watched
the three musicians who'd come out on stage tinker around with their instruments. When the blond one with rimless glasses in a suit jacket and tie lit several coloured candles on top of his Vox organ I prepared myself for the worse. Maybe it wasn't so hard to be the biggest deal in Los Angeles after all, I thought. As they inched their way into the blues number “Back Door Man” I was relieved but also surprised, having a hard time imagining how any one of these three dweebs was going to pull off a Willie Dixon tune about being, well, just what the song says.

In spite of the thumping, building rhythm, Christine tugged on my shirt and introduced me to Lee and Emily. By the time I shouted hello and turned around, a pale figure in tight black leather pants and a loose white Mexican shirt with a face out of a book of Greek mythology was slumped over the mike as if he'd been crucified. He looked up once long enough to open his eyes as if he was about to sing or say something, then shut them again and clutched the microphone stand to his body even tighter. The entire bar strained to get closer, even the girls in the front row with their faces already practically pushed into his leather crotch, everyone waiting for him to rise from the dead.

When he did, the entire Strip knew it. Strip, shit. The entire city. The entire country. The world.

At first, I thought he'd been shot, then that he'd blown his load right there on stage. A scream, a screech, a certified back-of-your-neck-and-down-your-arms, goosebump-raising wail of suffering or deliverance, I couldn't tell which. He ground his cock into the microphone stand and repeatedly slammed the heel of one of his black boots into the wooden stage to the pulse of the pounding beat.

The music itself was ancient and electric, wicked and sacred. The organist kept his face pressed low to the keys and nodded his head from side to side as he played, as if he couldn't quite believe
the noises he was raising from his instrument. The guitarist stared off into space and carved burning lines of fluid guitar into the air. And the sideburned drummer, so different from my pedestrian plodding, snapped and popped jazzy beats every time he struck stick to skin, making sure the band never once sounded rock-and-roll predictable. But Morrison was the one. He was the one everyone in the audience watched and listened to and waited to see what would happen next.

Somehow I ended up with my head pressed right next to the large speaker just off stage left. I knew I'd pay for it the next day with throbbing eardrums but I didn't care. Once, I turned around to share with Christine my stare of disbelief over the blind swan dive Morrison took into the audience during the long organ solo on “Light My Fire,” but she wasn't there. I searched the sea of bodies until I saw her still standing exactly where we'd docked when the show had begun. Even more incredibly, she wasn't even watching the band, was blabbing away with her two new girlfriends over top of the blaring music.

Except for a couple of blues covers, I didn't know any of the songs. It seemed like everybody else in the place did, though, especially Vito's girls hurling their nearly naked bodies around the dance floor like insane ballerinas while lip-synching along with Morrison's every bark, grunt, and shout. An hour, two hours, ten hours later—I'd lost all track of time—the first tentative tingle of “The End” fluttered through the room. Everyone stopped moving, and I mean everyone.

The music was everything what had come before hadn't been: sorrowful, meditative, with a mildly Eastern-tinged note of lilting menace. Vito and his harem just stood there in the middle of the room with their hands at their sides and their mouths hanging open like a broken circle of lost children. Nobody moved. It was group hypnosis time. The bartender stopped serving drinks.

When the song was over the organ player blew out his candles and the guitarist set down his guitar and the drummer his drumsticks and Morrison his microphone and they all walked off stage one after the other. The audience's stunned silence was the loudest applause it could have delivered.

The lights came on and people started moving again and talking. But gingerly, softly, like they were slowly waking up from a trance. Everybody except Christine and her pals. She saw me standing by the speaker and came skipping over with the other two in tow.

“You're not going to believe this,” she said, “but Lee and Emily know a place close by called Tiny Naylors where you can get vegetarian burritos and hummus sandwiches and pecan burgers and all kinds of good stuff that we can actually eat. They're vegetarians, too, can you believe it?” Lee and Emily grinned and nodded together in testimony. “I'm starving just thinking about it. It's on La Brea, wherever that is, but Lee's got a car. And guess what? They're both helping organize a protest against the closing of some club called Pandora's Box that the city wants to tear down to make room for a bigger road and a three-way turn signal. I'm going to help them make signs tomorrow after our show so we can get every hippie in California down here. Isn't that great? God, I'm starving. Are you ready to go?”

I wanted to hit her. Not hard, but hard enough that I could knock some sense into her, enough so that she'd quit talking about food for a minute and pay the proper amount of respect to what we'd just witnessed. No, I didn't want a fucking pecan burger, I wanted to shout. What I want is to inhale a mountain of coke and round up Thomas and Slippery and Heather and tell them all about what they'd missed and for the five of us to break into the recording studio tonight and try to make
Moody Food
so perfectly
perfect that one day someone will catch
our
act and hear
our
music and want to shout out loud themselves.

“Great, sure,” I said. “Just let me take a leak first. I'll meet you outside.”

I shut the stall door and snorted what was left in my plastic baggie; wet my finger and stuck it inside and rubbed the remaining coke dust across my gums like I'd seen Thomas do.

I hit the street and there was Christine waving me over from the back seat of a brand new '66 red Mustang convertible with AM/FM radio, power windows, and full leather interior. I knew it, I thought, waving back and climbing in beside her. Rich-kid revolutionaries trying to be cool slumming it.

Lee turned on the radio and she and Emily kept gently bumping each other shoulder to shoulder and slapping each other's hands play-fighting over who got to pick the station. I looked at Christine leaning forward and grinning at their goofy touchy-feely game. I rubbed my nose and wrapped an arm around her and pulled her back and as close to me as I could.