by Scotto Moore
She was thanking me for supporting her before either one of us understood the stakes involved in giving a shit about music. I mean, you don’t have to care at all about music, there’s no stakes involved in basically flitting through life without a favorite song or a favorite band, people do it all the time and lead full, satisfying lives and their funerals are well-attended by sad people. But if you do decide to care about music—and in Sierra’s case, if you decide to care so much that you have to play music—then your whole life is changed. You’re always on the hunt for the next best song.
“Sierra,” I said, when I thought I had her full attention, “tell me what’s really going on here.”
To my surprise, she took a moment to look around and see if anyone from the crew or the venue was within earshot, and when she was satisfied no one could hear her, she said, “The album we’re releasing is a musical incantation. It draws power virally from the psychic network of minds that are rapidly attuning their brain waves to our musical signature. You must have already felt how you can’t ever shake hearing one of our songs in your mind, even when you’re listening to some other stupid song on the radio or whatever. It’s charging you up like a battery, and every time we release a new track, we’re charging the entire network up to a new energetic level. Tonight’s gonna be special, though, because it’s our first live performance. Our first chance to charge and draw directly from a raw physical network of minds. Airee’s got something big planned if she can pull enough power from her collective audience. Does that answer your question?”
“Are you joking? No, that doesn’t answer my question. What’s going to happen here tonight?”
“We’re gonna play a fucking gig,” she said.
When the doors opened, William and I made our way to a position front and center, leaning against the barrier in front of the stage. No one except the occasional bouncer patrolling in front of us was going to get between me and Airee Macpherson tonight.
William had brought foam earplugs with him to offer to young women in the crowd as a conversation starter. I had my own high-end pair with me, of course. I felt lucky I’d never suffered hearing loss as a younger idiot attending shows, and now that I was older and wiser, I had zero desire whatsoever to risk losing it tonight or any other night. William gave his own pair away.
The lights dimmed, and the extremely familiar and pleasing opening passages of “Overture” began in the darkness as one by one, the band entered and began taking their places. A huge chill almost overwhelmed me. I realized I’d only ever listened to this densely layered electronic masterpiece on headphones. I’d never heard it blasted out of a professional sound system at maximum safe volume while leaning on a gigantic subwoofer.
Sierra’s confident drumming kicked in as the band transitioned from the prerecorded “Overture” into a live version of “The Awakening.” I say “version” because it rapidly became clear that they didn’t intend to stick to the precise arrangement they used on the recording. The instrumentation was different, for starters: more muscular, not as smooth. The lights rose very slowly on a tight four-piece unit: drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, each with a laptop, pedal station, and sampler. The texture of their sound wasn’t as silky as the recording, but their rhythm was absolutely locked. They were each dressed in matching form-fitting black robes that gave them maximum mobility while eliminating most of their physical distinctions. Under these dim blue and purple lights, amidst a light haze from the fog machine, wearing identical wigs and makeup, it was impossible to determine anyone’s gender or ethnicity, even standing as close as we were. I wouldn’t have recognized Sierra if I hadn’t known she was drumming.
My whole body tensed up when I realized “The Awakening” was almost over. I glanced over at William. He was frozen in rapt attention, back arched, swaying slightly, his hands gripping the railing of the barrier in front of him. Almost in pain, really. The two young women on either side of him seemed a little more nonplused, but William seemed like he was on the verge of something not at all enjoyable.
Then a surprising figure lurched out of the darkness from the back of the stage. Towering over the rest of the band, the figure was draped in diaphanous strips of red, dark red, and darker red. Its arms extended into long bony claws, and its head was an enormous goat skull with gleaming eyes and towering horns. For a split second I thought I was on the set of a terrible prog rock music video, but then the goat creature sang and the room fell impossibly silent.
It must have been Airee Macpherson inside that towering goat-head beast-thing costume, singing the first verse of “Undeniable Presence.” And I mean singing the absolute living fuck out of it. My brain kind of shorted out for a minute or two. If you imagine synaesthesia as a blending of senses, you could say I was experiencing a form of synaesthesia in which all the senses were reduced to sonic inputs on some level, and my entire existence was converted into rippling ecstatic audio waveforms—a transformation that felt irreversible, albeit only briefly.
Someone elbowed me hard in the back, almost driving me to my knees. A very large man was pushing his way through the crowd to get to where I was standing. I want to say he was oblivious to me in his pursuit of Airee’s voice; I mean, I understood the impulse. But his willingness to throw an elbow at a stranger was probably just barely lurking below the surface of his conscious mind at all times; something in the air tonight gave him permission to act on it. I caught myself on the railing of the barrier on my way down, then spun furiously to face my (hopefully) inadvertent attacker. He glared at me with a comically menacing expression.
William suddenly lurched in between the two of us, got his face right in the other guy’s face, did the proper alpha male chest bump to make it clear we owned this particular chunk of floor. I’m not sure why this of all things caught William’s attention in the middle of Airee’s performance, but I was sincerely glad he’d noticed.
The guy lifted William up off his feet and almost threw him across the floor. Bouncers started shouting and climbing the railing, but Airee’s attention was on the guy too.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST START SOME SHIT AT ONE OF MY SHOWS?” Airee shouted, her voice amplified by bone mics inside her costume goat helmet. “THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES!”
That marked the start of the band’s next song.
Remember how I had innocently tagged their first track as allurebient, hoping to imply “seductively trippy” or some shit? Yeah, so this was as far from seductively trippy as I could imagine. “There Will Be Consequences” was a raw aural assault. Airee’s voice was nails across the cosmic chalkboard, amplified to eleven, and the band had seemingly abandoned Western musical chord progressions in favor of feeding their instruments into invisible industrial grinders. Amazingly Sierra was keeping a fierce beat in the middle of it all—you could fucking dance to this shit. A couple of cannons went off on the far sides of the stage, shooting flames into the air and causing the entire crowd to rise up in a roar of glee.
The big guy saw trouble headed his way; he went ahead and tossed William aside like he was a rag doll. Three bouncers pounded into him, surrounding him in a flurry of blows, and suddenly the energy on the floor went nuts.
A mosh pit exploded into existence behind me. I’ve been in some mean mosh pits before. Not mean as in trying to hurt your feelings or whatever. Mean as in this is some serious shit but look, we are all in it together so let’s take care of each other as we slam against each other forcefully and mercilessly in pursuit of bone-crushing nirvana. This mosh pit was different. The people crowd-surfing weren’t volunteers. They were being hurled into the air shrieking and passed around like puppets or dolls. Fights broke out over which assholes were manhandling whose girlfriends; which seemingly innocent pixie was actually wielding sharpened fingernails for raking across bare skin; why every now and then some unwilling crowd-surfer was suddenly dropped on their back or their face. The big guy who had thrown William stood up with a roar from underneath a pile of angry people.
> Security personnel swarmed from the back of the venue to break things up. I was pinned against the barrier, huddling, trying not to get stomped, trying to avoid being underneath some human missile as it careened toward the floor. I could barely manage a self-preservation instinct in the chaos, let alone the instinct to cushion someone else’s fall—probably would just break my bones anyway if I tried. People took advantage of the momentary misdirection of security’s attention, and started climbing the barrier in the other direction, aiming to climb the giant towers of loudspeakers on either side of the stage, or worse, aiming for the band.
I had a few spare moments to study their faces—the faces of the possessed, racked in uncontrollable spasms of almost-agony—but security didn’t seem to be affected. Neither did I, for that matter, or the petite young women that William had befriended, who were so thin they were actually sliding underneath the barrier to try to get to safety.
This experience lasted about three minutes, at the end of which, someone from the venue pulled the plug on all the electricity to the stage. In the sudden abrupt darkness, before the house lights had a chance to rise, I heard a shriek from above and then a horrible crashing sound, and then silence . . . and then, moans rising up. The house lights finally came up, and one of those towers of loudspeakers was sprawled out on the floor. Toppled, I guess you’d say. I finally found William—his right leg was pinned underneath one of them.
I turned toward the stage. The band was nowhere in sight.
Track 05
I was sleeping in the hospital waiting room when Sierra found me. She roused me roughly and offered me a cup of shitty hospital coffee.
“You look okay,” she said. “You okay?”
I had to pause for a genuine think before I answered that question.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost six a.m. C’mon, we’re giving you a ride,” she said, trying to inspire me to stand up.
I didn’t comprehend at first. I thought she meant a ride to the airport, but my flight wasn’t until later that afternoon.
“A ride to Houston,” she clarified. “That’s where we’re headed. Next show is tonight.”
“You’re doing a show tonight?” I asked, trying to disguise my raw incredulity.
She gave me a condescending stare.
“My friend went into surgery about three hours ago,” I told her. William’s tibia and fibula in his right leg were broken and most of the surrounding ligaments were torn. They were hooking him up with sufficient metal plating to hold the whole mess together while it healed. He was lucky.
I matched her condescending stare with my own very hard stare.
“I’m surprised the police are letting you leave town,” I told her.
“Can’t stop us,” she said, almost muttering, half shrugging, kind of not admitting what she was admitting.
“Stopping people’s actually one of the main things the police are good at,” I said.
“Maybe. Not these police.”
“And what’s so unique about these police?”
“They wanted to see the video from the show.”
Oh.
Oh, Jesus, what?
“Yeah, we don’t have all day here. Maybe another half hour before the station calms down and someone thinks to wonder what happened. We need to be very gone by then.”
“Won’t they just come after you?”
“They will definitely go after the tour bus we are sending to Albuquerque. For the big show we’re playing tonight in Albuquerque. We took out ads in the newspaper there and everything.”
“I thought you were playing in Houston tonight.”
“Yes! You’re catching on. Now c’mon, the van’s outside.”
“If you’re trying to convince the police you’re playing in Albuquerque tonight, how do you expect to pull an audience in Houston?”
“That’s what we need you for! Will you please pull your shit together and let’s go?”
I had that one moment right there where I could have just stepped off the roller coaster. I should have stayed to make sure William was going to be all right. I should have clued in that if these people were planning on running from the police, then the last thing I should do is go with them on the lam. I should have recognized how much antipathy was baked into what they were doing.
But then she said, “Airee’s gonna let you be the first to hear the next track.”
Jesus. Jesus fucking Jesus. I was so entirely owned I couldn’t stand myself, but I got up, threw my shitty hospital coffee in the trash, and followed her out to the van.
* * *
Sierra sat next to me in the backseat, carefully gazing out the window and feigning disinterest in my conversation with Airee. The driver was the band’s bassist, a woman who’d introduced herself to me as Susie Satori. On the floor behind me, two young women were curled up napping—the guitarist and keyboardist. They were twins, and we were never introduced. Another van followed behind us with the band’s gear and two roadies. The video crew had been dismissed to parts unknown to edit the footage. The track from last night, “There Will Be Consequences,” was already blowing up in the musical blogosphere, and some of the reports coming in were disturbing. Parties that went south in a hurry; screaming matches about how loud the track should be played; people smashing their stereo equipment; warnings not to listen to it while driving.
The deal was I would get first dibs on posting the new Beautiful Remorse track on Much Preferred Customers. The catch was that I would be introducing it as the debut track from a new band called the Augmented 4th. But I’d be expected to write the post in a wink-wink kind of fashion to make it clear to my loyal followers that yeah, this actually, secretly, was That Band You’re All Talking About. They wanted me to jump on Maxnet and quietly spread the word as well, get other bloggers talking about this new band too. And the button on the agreement was: promote the Augmented 4th’s debut show tonight in Houston. Get as many of the faithful there as possible.
“They’ll listen to you,” Airee said, almost nonchalant about it, “because you’re my Herald. So that’s the deal.”
Yeah, I skipped right over that part the first time she said it. Like, I’m going to just pretend you’re not giving me an official title, lady.
“If I listen to this new track,” I said, “am I going to go crazy like everyone did last night?”
“Not everyone was affected last night,” she replied carefully. “You weren’t. The bouncers weren’t.”
Oh—of course. Me and the bouncers—we were wearing earplugs for the show. Mine were industrial grade, meant for construction sites. I wasn’t exposed to the full signal of the music.
“Anyway, no, I don’t need to repeat myself in my work,” she said. Not haughtily—just blandly matter-of-fact about it like any other supernaturally creative mad person might be. She handed me her iPhone and her Ultrasone Signature Pro studio headphones. “If you’d rather not be the first person to hear and post that track, by all means let me know. I’m sure your friend Imogen Sweetness would be thrilled to get the chance. Don’t look so surprised—you’re not the only one who requested an interview with me.” Then she swiveled back around to face the highway from the passenger seat of the van.
I looked down at the iPhone in my hand, which displayed the title of the new track: “You’ve Been Given a Simple Choice.”
I put the headphones on and started the track. It was a ballad. I should have guessed—this album was due for a ballad.
* * *
I jumped onto Maxnet and addressed the entire channel at once.
“Hey people—gather round, I’ve got a bit of a scoop for y’all.”
One by one, I saw avatars light up in the chat room as fellow bloggers switched their focus back to Maxnet from whatever trivial internetting they’d been in the midst of. To my utter surprise, the granddaddy himself, Maxstacy, was one of those who answered the call.
“I surely do hope so,” he said in the bland but te
rrifying manner that I assume every legend maintains.
Strangely, Imogen did not appear. Perhaps egotistically, I thought she’d be excited to hear from me after such a long absence. (An entire day! I know!) I thought about texting her. I almost texted her. I really should have texted her. I did not in fact text her.
“I’ve got the next track,” I said. I didn’t have to say the next Beautiful Remorse track. They knew. “I’ll give it to anyone on Maxnet who’s willing to promote their show tonight.” And when general agreement followed, I said, “There’s a catch. They want to be promoted as the Augmented 4th now.”
After a small pause, Ricochet chimed in with “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—no, seriously, are you sure they don’t want to be the Artists Formerly Known as Beautiful Remorse? Because that’s got a ring to it, amirite?”
Of course, Ricochet wasn’t wrong to question this weird change of direction. When you build buzz that rapidly, you definitely don’t burn it just as rapidly and expect career longevity. But I couldn’t explain the true reason Airee was changing the band’s name—to keep their tour going as long as possible before bad consequences caught up to us.
Then Maxstacy DM’d me.
I repeat: I received a direct message from the godfather of music blogging, for the first time since I received my invitation to join Maxnet years ago.
“What happened in Austin?” he asked. “Are you even still there?”
Cold sweat—I’d seen a few news reports and blog items about a crowd disturbance and multiple injuries at an Austin rock show, but ironically, the night’s headliner was currently taking the blame, even though they hadn’t had a chance to perform.
Anticipating my question, he said, “William hasn’t been active since before he left to meet you at Emo’s.” Pause.
I was staring at the keyboard of my laptop, connected to Maxnet via hotspot, parked at a truck stop, alone in the backseat of the van while the band was inside eating at a presumably horrifying truck stop diner. I was enmeshed in something I didn’t understand and couldn’t back out of; I had left William alone in the hospital without saying good-bye; I was confused about my own culpability in last night’s debacle; I knew something was weird about my enthusiasm for carrying out my end of the deal I’d made with Airee; and now I had the founder of Maxnet asking me pointed questions about my involvement.