Bandwagon

by Andrew Fish

across the front of the stage and had obscured the band entirely. Disconcerted but determined to continue, the band played on, but after a few songs the bassist got so annoyed at the sheer insanity of it all, he used a spare amplifier and a few ounces of legal explosive and blew the whole wall up. This proved so popular with the audience, after the set the band negotiated a deal with the builders to repeat the feat at every venue for the duration of the tour. The theatre where it all began was left unfinished, but nobody seemed to mind.

  Other acts with a smaller budget or without the lucky accidents have had to use less grandiose schemes to draw the eye. Fashions such as elaborate costumes and make-up have come and gone in many parts of the galaxy, usually to be replaced by cheaper ideas such as torn jeans and leather jackets. Female acts have opted for revealing outfits and sexual dances to lure their audiences, even in venues where only the front three rows would have the slightest chance of seeing anything titillating, and male acts have opted for whatever the current macho man is expected to wear in order to appeal as an icon to their predominately male audience.

  All girl group Heresy is a typical example of this approach to showmanship. Beginning their careers in the traditional revealing costumes favoured by male managers everywhere, they soon found that the sheer volume of other bands with a similar approach meant that they were losing both their edge and their audience. Their only option was to up the ante and so the band took to dividing the second half of the show into individual striptease acts, each girl divesting herself of her garments to one number, until, by the end of the show, the band were entirely naked. Initially, this did prove remarkably successful – the natural reluctance of Heresy’s competitors to follow suit guaranteed them an increased concert audience and an unexpected new market in branded field glasses – but as their career progressed, the band found themselves spending an increasing proportion of their income on cosmetic surgery. Heresy ended their career as poor as they had started it.

  Interestingly enough there are no historical examples of male musical acts that went to the same extent as Heresy. Masculinists claim this is because men are more sensible; feminists claim it is because men prefer to find other ways to embarrass themselves.

  ‘Are you going to be in there all day?’ Ben yelled at the top of his voice as he stood outside the door of the dressing room. Hoping to boost the morale of his performers, Tony had persuaded Harry to convert the bedroom nearest to the stage into a dressing room and had even had a plastic star mounted on the door. Providing a single dressing room was, however, proving to be somewhat of an oversight.

  ‘Won’t be a moment,’ Dobbsy yelled in reply. Ben looked at his watch; Dobbsy had been in the dressing room for half an hour now and there were only ten minutes left before they were due on stage. He was just about to give up and go on without brushing his hair when the door opened and a figure emerged. It took Ben several seconds to realise that the white-faced creature with purple glasses and hair fashioned into three black spikes was, in fact, Dobbsy. Whilst this information was filtering through his brain, he simply gaped at the apparition before him.

  ‘What d’ya think? Good isn’t it?’ said Dobbsy cheerfully, oblivious to Ben’s discomfort.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Ben managed after a few more seconds of silence.

  ‘Hair gel. After you left last night, someone threw beer at me and my hair stood up on end when it set. It seemed to draw attention, so I thought I’d try a new look.’

  ‘You put hair gel on?’

  ‘Well I wasn’t going to use beer.’

  ‘And the face paint?’ Ben refrained from asking if there could possibly be a sane reason for looking like an accident in a flour factory.

  ‘Well, if I just did the hair then I’d look silly.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ben, sporting a that explains everything type expression on his face.

  Dobbsy, taking Ben’s lack of response as a cue to continue, took off his sunglasses to reveal black stars over his eyes. ‘It used to be all the rage back home,’ he continued. ‘There was a whole scene going when I was a kid. I figured that perhaps they hadn’t come across it here.’

  Ben thought about it – he did vaguely remember images of painted faces from his childhood, but he’d always thought that they had been clones. Travelling shows from foreign lands had always featured a clone act, where the idea was that you were supposed to be confused by the fact that everyone wore the same face makeup and were meant to overlook the fact that the shortest man was two feet shorter than the tallest and think that they were the same person. Not surprisingly, with the increase in the sophistication of the viewing audience, the tradition of travelling shows had lost popularity in recent years, especially since acts involving singing whales in huge tanks of water had been banned in response to animal rights activists from Saiph.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Ben asked, suddenly remembering that there was a reason that Dobbsy was getting dressed up.

  ‘They were getting ready in their own rooms,’ replied Dobbsy. ‘Here comes Mark now.’

  Ben turned to see the bassist approaching, his hair sticking out in every direction known to man and his face a swirl of random colour. ‘What are you made up as?’ he asked.

  ‘There isn’t a mirror in my room,’ replied Mark apologetically. ‘Has it come out smudged?’

  ‘Has what come out smudged? ‘I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be?’

  ‘It’s the surface of the planet from space,’ Mark explained. ‘I followed the map as closely as I could.’ He held out a book. Ben glanced at the cover, which gave the book’s name as A Child’s Atlas of the World, and then looked at the page that Mark had been holding open.

  ‘That’s not a map,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t it? I haven’t got my lenses in.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a pie chart of population statistics.’

  ‘Oh. I thought there were rather a lot of colours.’

  Ben shook his head despondently. ‘Why didn’t you put your lenses in?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t want to get paint on them.’

  ‘And I suppose whilst you’ve been studying practical sociology you haven’t been practising your bass this afternoon either.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because your bass is still in my room after I borrowed it this morning.’ Ben snapped. ‘Look, you’re never going to make it as a band if you don’t learn to play your instruments properly. It’s not just about an image – the music’s important too.’

  Mark remained calm under the assault. ‘What’s eating you?’ he quipped. ‘It’s not as if you’re some great musician, is it? You don’t even play.’

  ‘Being on a stage with you guys has made me painfully aware of that,’ said Ben. ‘That’s why I’ve been practising.’

  Throughout the exchange Dobbsy’s gaze had been flipping from one verbal combatant to the other as they spoke. Now, at what seemed a break in hostilities, he chose to speak. ‘We’ve only got five minutes till we go on,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Ben.

  ‘Aren’t you going to get dressed up?’

  Ben looked Dobbsy up and down. ‘If you think I want to look anything like that, you’ve got another thing coming,’ he replied and wandered off in the direction of his room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Dobbsy called after him.

  ‘To get the bass,’ replied Ben without looking back.

  Much to Ben’s relief, Gary and Vic looked relatively sane when he arrived on stage. Gary apologised for the omission, claiming that there had been insufficient time for him to use the dressing room, whilst Vic made no such apology – his religion prohibited facial decoration for anything other than ceremonial purposes. Ben silently thanked Vic’s god, although he still had absolutely no idea which one it was.

  The band assembled onstage, Mark looking slightly awkward without his instrument. Ben, for his part, had already decided that th
ere had to be one dedicated musician in the band and, if only by default, it would have to be him. He’d known this was coming: with Gearhead’s prior history he had no reason to suspect that the band would magically acquire talent if left for long enough, which was why he’d already spent the last few mornings learning the bass parts for their set and running through some of Vid’s bass lines. The robot’s improvisations were deceptively complex and good practice for a budding bassist.

  One of the interesting things that had sprung out of this period of intense practice is that he’d rewritten the bass on Sheila so that, instead of simply thumping out a steady beat, he played a series of short riffs, the idea being that the drums would carry the rest of the beat. This was, he admitted, probably an optimistic idea when the drummer was Gary.

  Looking purposefully at Mark, Ben put the shoulder strap of the bass around his neck before turning to the mic. Dobbsy gave Mark a puzzled look, shrugged, and then, feeling embarrassed, made an elaborate pretence of tuning his guitar. Having no idea what he was doing, he soon gave up this charade and shuffled up to the other microphone next to Ben.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.

  ‘Playing bass, what does it look like?’ Ben hissed back.

  ‘What about Mark? What’s he going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know – he can go and paint rainbows on his face as far as I care and for God’s sake tune that guitar.’

  ‘I don’t know