by Greg Rhyno
“Aja? Dude. This is classic Dan.”
“It’s classic something.”
As Deacon pulls out of my driveway, we listen to a seemingly endless guitar solo that sounds suspiciously like jazz. Then Deacon asks me about History class.
“How’d the bonspiel go today?”
“Hard to say. I think Hildebrandt was winning.”
Before I had him as teacher, I heard all these rumours that Hildebrandt had once suffered some kind of nervous breakdown and either got suspended or sent to the loony bin for a semester—that part’s always a little vague. In September, he seemed fine. I mean, his class was pretty boring, but he was just like any other middle-aged teacher—balding, jowly, slowly fading into the chalkboard. Then, a couple weeks ago, he started to space out when the class got noisy. At first I thought it was some kind of classroom management strategy, like I-can-wait-just-as-long-as-you-can, but on Tuesday he stared at the same spot on the back wall for almost five straight minutes. Then it got even weirder. He started curling. He crouched down and threw imaginary curling rocks down the centre aisle of the classroom, again and again.
Today, I tell Deacon, he changed positions from skip to sweeper. With impressive determination, he cleared the path for phantom rocks for nearly twenty minutes. Some students trickled out, and others stayed to watch the show.
“So when are the nice men in white coats going to take him away?”
“Not for a while, I hope. The longer he stays crazy, the less Western Civilizations I’ll have to read.”
We’re able to get a half-decent parking spot outside of Jack’s. When I hop out of the car and get my feet on the sidewalk, I feel a giddy energy. Later on, it will turn into panicky butterflies, and I’ll seriously consider the logistics of climbing out the bathroom window, but when we’re just loading in I feel like I’m part of something that’s about to happen. Something exciting.
We try the front door, but it’s still locked. I’m about to suggest to Deacon that we try the back when I notice he’s gesturing to a couple of figures walking down the sidewalk. One is Soda. The other guy, I’m not sure about. He’s bundled up in a blue lumber jacket and an orange hunting cap. I recognize him, but I can’t place him.
“Hey. You guys know Andy, right?” Soda says once he’s in proximity. “He’s going to lend me his amp tonight so we won’t have to worry about the Peavey crapping out.”
Andy Thaler. Thaler the Wailer.
“Hey, Andy,” I say, holding out my hand. “I’m Pete.”
He grins broadly, cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth, then gives me a big, swinging handshake. His fingers are rough with guitar-player calluses.
“Oh, I know you, man,” he says. “My trumpet player wants to kick your ass.” His cigarette bounces up and down as he talks.
For a second, I’m not sure what to say. Deacon looks at me, a little worried.
“Don’t sweat it,” Thaler says. He laughs, and then slaps my shoulder. “That guy’s all talk. Steve’s a good musician, but he can be a bit of a dick sometimes.”
“You coming to the show tonight?” Deacon asks.
“For sure, dude. Got a couple buddies coming too. You know Wheels and Townie? Actually, Townie said he’s going to review the show for his zine.”
“Cool.”
To be honest, I don’t really care if Townie reviews us in Bigmouth Strikes Again!, but I am interested in whether or not his sister is coming to the show. I’m kind of hoping Thaler volunteers that information, but Soda changes the subject before he can.
“Uh, so ...” I can tell by the look on Soda’s Cheshire Cat face that he knows something Deacon and I don’t. “Guess who’s playing drums for the Super Friendz tonight?”
“Phil Collins!” Deacon blurts out.
“No,” Soda says, screwing up his eyes. “Not fucking Phil Collins. Why would Phil Collins play drums for the Super Friendz?”
“Because Phil Collins is a fantastic, completely underrated drummer. Have you ever listened to Selling England By The Pound? It’s amazing.”
“It’s not Phil Collins. Guess again.”
“Karen Carpenter?”
“Jesus,” I say, exasperated with both of them. “Just tell us already.”
Soda takes a drag on his cigarette and points at me. He smiles as if he knows I’m going to like the answer. Then he exhales. “Chris Murphy.”
“Chris Murphy from Sloan, Chris Murphy?”
“Yep. We just helped him and those other guys load in before they all took off to the Calabria for dinner.”
“Weird. I didn’t even know he played drums,” I say.
Whiskey Jack’s manager, Frank, opens the front door and we start bringing our gear inside. We don’t talk about it, but I’m pretty sure Deacon and Soda are thinking the same thing I am. Besides playing bass, and apparently now drums, Chris Murphy also runs a record label. A record label that signs bands that are just getting started. Bands like Giant Killer. So all of a sudden, tonight just became kind of important.
An hour before we’re about to go on, there’s still only a handful of people milling around the bar. I get that sinking feeling that everyone’s bailed. I try to think of all the other things going on tonight, all the competing social events. I know that Shelley Vallenti is having a party, but most of the people who would go to that wouldn’t come to our show anyhow. There’s some Tom Cruise vampire movie opening at the Cumberland, but I can’t imagine people would stand us up for that. Would they?
The Super Friendz and their star drummer are still out eating dinner, so after our sound check—on Chris Murphy’s blue oyster pearl Ludwigs—I help Rita set up our merch table, which really just consists of a handful of t-shirts, stickers, and little buttons that Rita made with her button maker.
“Where the fuck is everybody?” I finally ask.
She stops and sizes up my distress.
“It’s early,” she says. “People will come. We advertised the shit out of this show.” She looks around at the near-empty bar, then says, “Look. You’ve got two jobs tonight: play the drums and talk to Chris Murphy. Make sure he watches your set. In the meantime, go get Soda and Deacon and get them out of here for about half an hour. Now scoot!”
I do as I’m told. I grab the rest of the band, and we take off down the street. In the last hour the weather has gone from cold to vindictive, and I can feel the air fit to my face like a mask of ice. As we head toward Red River Road, groups of people wander away from us in tiny apathetic herds. I resent everybody who isn’t walking toward our show.
Soda suddenly decides he’s hungry and ducks into Mr. Sub. Deacon and I follow. We sit in a hard plastic booth and watch Soda inhale a meatball sandwich. I can’t imagine eating right now. Already my stomach is reconsidering the whole dinner arrangement I made with it earlier.
“Think we should play ‘Necessary Evil’ tonight?” I ask. “It’s a little Sloanier than our other songs. Might be good, considering who’s in the audience.”
Soda pulls a plastic mickey out of his coat, spins off the cap, and pours some Silent Sam into his Coke.
“Guy doesn’t want to hear another version of his band,” Soda says. “Don’t mess with the set list. It’s fine.” He sucks down the rest of his drink.
Eventually, when we’ve killed off enough time, we start to walk back to Jack’s and run right into Matty Wheeler walking the opposite way.
“Hey, Wheels,” Soda says.
“Oh, hey, dudes,” he says. For a future member of our audience, he seems oddly surprised to see us. “What’s happening?”
“We’re just heading back to the bar,” I explain. “We’re on pretty soon.”
“Oh shi-i-t,” he says. “Is that tonight?”
Soda nods.
“Ah, man, I totally thought it was tomorrow. I’m sorry, I can’t make it tonight.” Soda jumps on the awkward silence before I even realize it’s happening.
“That’s cool. We’ll catch you next time.”
“Absolutely,” Matty says walking backward and pointing both index fingers in our direction. “One hundred percent. Break a leg!”
We watch him wander down the street like a bad omen.
“Well,” Deacon says, “there goes one third of our confirmed audience.”
We go around to the back of the bar, and Soda produces the mickey again. We each take a couple turns knocking back a shot, grimacing, and stomping our feet into a layer of packed snow. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to sneak a beer later on.
“All right, boys,” Soda says, tossing the plastic bottle over a nearby fence, “I’ll see you on stage.” He pushes through the back door, and as it opens, I listen for crowd sound. I don’t hear anything.
Deacon looks at me and shrugs. “I’m going to see if Ruth’s in there. I forgot to put her name on the guest list.” And then he’s gone too.
I wait for a minute out there and brace myself for the likelihood that the bar will be as empty as we left it. I tell myself all the reasons why it won’t matter. I tell myself we could just as easily put on a great show for ten people as we could for a hundred, and I almost manage to convince myself.
But when I go inside, the bar has transformed. It’s been less than an hour, but already the house lights are down and the coloured stage lights are up. A fog of cigarette smoke hovers near the ceiling. The soundguy is blaring Metallica’s Kill ’Em All over the PA, but I can barely hear it. It takes me a moment to realize why. The place is packed and buzzing. The miracle of people has happened.
A few moments later, I spot her. Kim is sitting at a table with Townie, Thaler, and a couple other people who aren’t, thankfully, Sudbury Steve. With her hair tied back and the curve of her neck visible, she’s even prettier than I remember. There’s an empty chair beside her, and I’ve got just enough vodka flowing through my veins to say hello. There’s nothing stopping me.
“Hey, Pete! You watch X-Files last week?”
Nothing except Twatkins.
“Ever notice how you never see where Mulder sleeps? I think it’s because he sleeps in Scully’s bedroom. Except, I don’t think they do much sleeping, if you know what I mean.”
I sentenced myself to this conversational prison earlier this week when I told Toby Watkins—a sausage-lipped kid in my Science in Society class—that he should “come check us out on Friday.” Now, there’s no escape in sight.
“I also heard David Duchovony’s a sex addict, and it’s in his contract that he can’t have an on-screen romance with Gillian Anderson because it might trigger his animalistic urges, and he might be forced to, you know, ravish her.”
That’s the word he actually uses. Ravish.
After a science fiction eternity, Lovely Rita finally rescues me.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says to Toby. “I have to borrow Pete here for a minute.”
“Thank you,” I say when she pulls me away. “I really need to say hi to somebody.” I look over in the direction of Kim, and for the first time that evening we make eye contact. She looks away first.
“Nuh-uh,” Rita says when she realizes who I’m looking at. “No pretty, unavailable girls for you right now. You need to talk to Chris Murphy. Get him to watch your show. He’s over there with Frank. Wouldn’t hurt to talk to Frank a little, while you’re at it.”
She pushes me in their general direction, and a moment later I’m hovering next to two people having a conversation that doesn’t involve me at all. I smile and nod in hopes that maybe they’ll think I’ve been there all along. Eventually, Frank fixes his humourless gaze on me. He’s heavyset and dressed all in black with a black beard to match. He looks like he’d be better suited behind the wheel of a transport truck. Or a pirate ship.
“You’re with the opener tonight, right?” he asks me. “The—what is it—the Giants?”
“Giant Killer. Yeah,” I tell him. “Yeah, I am.”
“Okay. You guys should be ready to go on in ten minutes.”
It’s not like I wasn’t expecting the moment to arrive, but when he lays it out like that, it suddenly feels real. And reality feels like someone just filled my underwear with snow.
Frank turns back to Chris, who has been watching us patiently.
“Well, I should let you talk to your fan club here,” he says, gesturing in my direction. “I hope things work out for April. It’d be nice to have you guys back. All ages or not.”
Frank slips away into the crowd, and suddenly I’m face to face with a guy whose band is on every mixed tape I’ve made since I was fifteen.
“Hey,” he says, chewing gum and looking at me over his glasses. “I’m Chris.”
He’s skinnier than I would’ve expected. He’s got a bit of bed-head, and he’s wearing a too-tight yellow t-shirt you could spit peas through. It reads I was the Centaur of Attention. At Mackenzie King, he’d be an easy target for the Pussies, but here, he’s a rock star.
I introduce myself then quickly realize I have no idea what I should say to him. Will you sign our band and take us on tour? might seem a bit forward.
“So ... I’m using your drums tonight,” I finally tell him. “Anything I should know about them?” It’s a lame excuse for conversation.
“Well, you should probably know how to play them.”
I laugh stupidly and tell him I do.
“Then you’ll be fine. Nice turnout, by the way.”
I can see him look past me for a polite way out of this conversation, and I figure I’d better cut to the chase before I become his Twatkins.
“Hey, do you think you’re going to stick around and watch the show?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he says. Wouldn’t miss it. His exact words. “I’m just going to grab a sweater out of the van, but I’ll be right back. Give ’em hell.”
He slips through a crowd of people who all say Hi, Chris like they know him, and he smiles and waves at them politely as he backs out the door.
From across the room, I see Deacon pointing his finger at me and then jerking his thumb toward the stage. It’s time to go on. I signal back, but make one more run to the washroom to take a final, nervous piss. For a minute, everything smells like disinfectant and urine, and as always I momentarily consider squeezing out of the bathroom window. I walk the gauntlet from the back of the bar toward the stage while Soda and Deacon are up there, switching on their amps and raising their guitar straps over their shoulders. Already a few people in the crowd are sounding off.
Yeah, Sodapop!
Giant Killer!
Woo-hoo!
I’m halfway to the stage when I feel a twinge shoot up my hindquarters. Unmistakably, someone’s just pinched my ass. I turn around and see Kim sitting at her table, cigarette dangling from two fingers, a curl of smoke leaving one side of her smile. She raises a glass of beer in my direction, and I grin back like a little boy. Then I make my way up onto the stage.
It’s kind of pointless to talk about what it’s like to play drums at a rock show. I read somewhere that Levon Helm said it’s like having the best seat in the house. For me, though, it always feels like I’m strapping myself into an electric chair. I sit down on the stool, look at the crowd, and promptly forget everything I’ve ever learned. All the angles and surfaces of the skins and cymbals look suddenly alien under the stage lights. My arms are useless. Dead weight. I feel like a fraud. I certainly don’t deserve to be the Centaur of Attention. I hear Chris Murphy’s joke in my head: You should probably know how to play them. It’s not so funny now.
When we play live, Deacon does most of the talking on stage. The Banter, he calls it. He usually starts off with some dumb line like Warning: People in the first few rows will get wet, or You wanted the best? You got us instead. The hottest band in Port Arthur! He must be feeling a little nervous, because tonight he just thanks everyone for coming out and then looks back at me and nods. It’s my cue to count in, and I do it even though I have no idea what comes next. For a second, there’s only terror and free fall, but then, som
ehow, the parachute of muscle memory opens up, and I watch my hands play the drums. The sound through the monitors is terrible, but no one in the crowd seems to mind the house speakers. No one’s got their fingers in their ears, in any case. Then Soda walks up to the microphone.
I guess the thing that sets us apart from your average shitty high school band is this: Soda can actually sing. He doesn’t do that power-saw screaming, but he’s not into that mumbly shoe-gazing stuff either. There’s this weird, fugitive quality to his voice. Just when you think you’ve figured out who he sounds like, it slips away from you.
“Officer, you can read my rights / Cuff my hands and take me downtown ...”
His lyrics aren’t half bad for someone who claims he’s read one book his entire life. Of course, he has read a lot of record sleeves.
“Pull the shade and shine the light / interrogate me until I break down ...”
We tighten up and lock in by the second chorus, and if Deacon and Soda are making mistakes, I can’t hear them.
“There is a cage inside my chest / I’m under cardiac arrest ...”
By the time we start the second song the dance floor is standing room only. I see Evie and Ruth near the front. Ruth is wearing a Giant Killer t-shirt that Lovely Rita designed and Deacon probably gave her. A few guys with stringy hair and moth-eaten cardigans nod their heads in time. For the most part, I try to keep my eyes on the drums.
Some people talk about stage fright as something that they get before a show, something that goes away the moment they walk on stage. I wish that’s how it worked with me. I heard the drummer from Fat Like Dad keeps an empty beer pitcher beside his kit so he can puke in it. Apparently he barfs out all of his nerves after the first song, and then he’s rock solid for the rest. They’ve kind of made it part of the show.
For me, though, the nerves never go away. Part of it’s like that nightmare when you show up to school and realize you’re not wearing any clothes. You feel all naked and vulnerable. But the other part is that, when you’re playing live, it kind of forces you to live in the moment. People spend most of their time thinking about the past or worrying about the future, and they do it because it’s safe. Good or bad, it can’t get at you for the time being. When you play live, you’re completely stuck in the present. All you can do is hope your timing is dead on. Now. Now. Right now.