by Karina Halle
“So you don’t all hang out in Sacramento,” I said, bringing the conversation back around.
He shook his head and blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “No. We used to. Sage and I were best friends. I guess we still are. But he’s been busy. Like, really busy. This last album ate him up from the inside.”
“You can tell. It’s excellent.”
Robbie shrugged again. “I guess. I’m not too fond of it, I think some tracks are too soft, but what can you do. You heard Sage in there. He’s always right.”
“That’s what you said.”
“It’s all I know,” he said sadly. He passed the smoke back to me and flashed me a cover-worthy smile. “But that’s life. That’s part of being in a band and I’m grateful for every day I’m with these crazy fuckers. It’s just hard being in a relationship with five fucking people. I have enough trouble with one relationship.”
“Your fiancé?”
“Cheryl,” he corrected me. “She’s lovely but it’s hard. She doesn’t trust me on the road.”
“Gee, I wonder why!” I stamped my foot.
“Hey, Redwood, we have an understanding. When I’m on the road, I’m a free man. If she had a problem with it, I wouldn’t be…well…you know. Whatever you saw last night.”
“Speaking of,” I began, wondering how much I should say, “are all your groupies so loosey goosey?”
“Hey, they don’t come to our shows for the music,” he joked.
“I don’t mean easy,” I said. I looked around me as if I shouldn’t be talking about it. The parking lot was empty of living souls and the cars on the highway rumbled to and fro. “I mean as in nuts. Crazy stalker type nuts.”
His mouth twitched and he took the cigarette back from me, taking a final puff before throwing it on the ground and crushing the butt beneath his boot. “Uh, well, there are a few girls that…might have mental issues.”
I leaned in closer to him. “Yeah? What do they look like?”
“Well, they’re hot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tell me you slept with mental cases.”
He looked shocked. “No. Look, I don’t need to get involved with a psychopath, and these chicks are clearly psychopaths. But anyway, if you must know, they aren’t after me. They like Graham and Sage. They follow them around on every single tour.”
“Is one of the girls tall and thin with long white hair and purple eyes?”
“I don’t know about her eye color but that sounds like Sonja.”
“Sonja?”
“You’ll know if you met her.”
“I think I might have.”
He regarded me carefully. “Did it feel like you had your soul sucked out of you, like she drained every essence of your being and you were left with nothing but a shell?”
I looked at him askance. “Maybe. The girl I met was in the bathroom, and yeah, I don’t know about the soul sucking per se, but she was very strange. She told me some crazy shit that didn’t make sense, then said she was coming after Sage.”
He nodded. “Oh yeah, that’s Sonja. She’s the crackpot ringleader of the GTFOs.”
“You mean the GTOs?” I was thinking of Girls Together Outrageously, which was a more or less respected and nearly professional groupie outfit led by Miss Pamela, Jimmy Page’s muse (who charmed him, along with Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, and a million other men).
“No, the GTOs are lovely ladies. We call these chicks the GTFOs—or Get the Fuck Outs.”
I had to smile at that, despite being riveted to everything Robbie was saying. “So who else is in this, what was it, crackpot group?”
He listed off his fingers. “Sonja The Soul-Sucker. Terri the Know-It-All, who, by the way, pretends she’s a music journalist too. Don’t fall for it. She’s not. And Sparky. She’s the short round one. You’ll see them again, unfortunately.”
“And they’re stalking Graham too.”
“Yep. And for some reason, I guess cuz Sparky’s all pro-Satanic cult, Graham likes to have them around. Keeps his damned and needy soul feeling wanted. He usually goes off with them and they leave us alone, though I shudder to think what they’re doing.”
I made a disgusted face, not wanting to think about it either.
“Graham’s a bit of an odd one, isn’t he?”
A dark expression momentarily clouded his face. “Odd is an understatement. Sometimes he can get a little scary…”
I frowned at that, ignoring the skin prickling feeling at the back of my neck and was about to ask Robbie what he meant when we were interrupted.
“What are you guys doing? Get your arses over here!” Jacob boomed, poking his ginger head from around the corner.
I shot Robbie an apologetic look. “Sorry if I got you in trouble with the boss.”
“Oh whatever, we pay his salary,” he said dismissively. “I’m glad you talked to me. And again, I’m sorry about last night. I’ll try to do my, um, wheelings and dealings in private.”
“Thank you,” I said, and we made our way back to the bus, feeling like a couple of kids who sneaked off of school property.
The bus ride was ripe with tension. You could feel it coming off the ugly walls and bouncing on the fake wood cabinets. Sage and Robbie weren’t talking. Actually, Sage wasn’t talking to anyone, and had decided to go lie down in the back.
I decided to get cracking on my journalist thing and get some interviews down before we arrived in Kansas City, but my results were as flat as the passing landscape. Noelle was back to being a pissy, spoiled brat, Mickey was trying to coddle her and gain her forgiveness, and kept shooting me a look as if I was the one who forced him to hook up with a groupie the night before. I felt I got enough out of Robbie that morning and didn’t want to push him, and Graham flat-out told me I could only interview him between 2AM and 3AM. Total bullshit but he was sticking to it.
“It’s the dark hour, when my mind is at my sharpest,” he told me with total lack of irony in his voice.
I heard Robbie groan to himself and knew the rest of the band was pretty fed up with his faux-Satanic ways but Graham seemed to fully believe it.
We pulled into the auditorium around noon and I was relieved to see Chip and the rest of the roadies there, having traveled in two large Astro vans. I was also relieved to see a stack of payphones outside of the building. I had forgotten to call my father the night before to let him know I landed okay, and I was itching to make a call to Mel and fill her in on everything that was happening. Not talking to someone other than a band or crew member was killing me inside.
My father didn’t answer so I left a quick message telling him and Eric that I was fine and the band was taking good care of me. I called Mel next, plunking in the last of my stack of coins, but she wasn’t home either. Her mother seemed glad to hear from me though and said she’d pass on the message that I was fine and that I missed her. It was true, too. I did miss Mel and her snarky attitude on life. Not that I wasn’t capable of sarcasm myself, but it was nice when you felt like you had someone else on your team that you could compare notes with. I didn’t have that with Hybrid, and that was something I was just going to have to get used to, hopefully sooner than later.
When I hung up the phone, I spied Sage leaving the Astro van with one of his guitars in hand. It was black, sleek, and sexy, just like the man himself, and his intricately tattooed forearms bulged as he handled the musical beast. I shook my head lightly, snapping out of my strangely lustful daze, and decided to take my chances with him.
“Sage?” I ventured carefully, walking toward him. He had seen me coming and seemed to be forming excuses in his head already.
“What is it?” he asked, barely glancing at me, walking off toward the backstage doors leading into the building.
I trailed after him. “How are you feeling?”
The question surprised him and he slowed down a bit. “How am I feeling?”
“You seemed a bit snappish at breakfast,” I said. “Last night too. Thought
maybe you have an object lodged up your ass or something. Something a doctor should remove.”
I couldn’t believe I just said that. Neither could Sage. He didn’t just slow down, he stopped and gave me an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”
Way to go Dawn, I thought. As if he couldn’t hate you more.
I licked my lips and tried to smile. “Well, do you?”
He seemed speechless. This probably wasn’t good.
But then, he did something I hadn’t expected.
He smiled.
And then he laughed. It was short and brief, but genuine and made the dimples stand out on his scruffy cheeks. It was the best sound I’d heard all year.
Then he shook his head and continued walking off toward the auditorium, strumming his guitar as he went, leaving me with a view of a tight ass in tight black pants.
What I had meant to do was ask him when a good time to interview him would be. I totally messed that one up.
I watched him go for a few beats, then I decided to give up on him for the day and try again tomorrow. Tonight I was going to concentrate on the music and just the music. If the band wanted to play hard to get with interviews, fine (and if I was going to bungle up some interviews with my big, fat mouth, fine). That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to observe and then compose the best damn live show review. Ever.
I shuffled back to the bus, gathered my purse, my notepad, my tape recorder, and the venue’s All Access Pass, and went to go catch Hybrid’s soundcheck.
Eight
I discovered that although I got a perverse sense of importance and satisfaction standing at the side of the stage with Jacob and all the other privileged people, the best place to see the band, any band really, was to be in the crowd with the rest of the fans. Though I was closer to the band on the side stage and had a great viewpoint for watching Sage work the guitar or Graham pound away on the drums like a man possessed, it felt removed and distant, like I was merely observing them. I wasn’t part of the experience. So fifteen minutes into Hybrid’s monstrous set, I excused myself from Jacob’s stoic company and made my way down the stairs at the side of the stage and into the Kansas City crowd.
I let the human tide, ebbing and flowing toward the stage like multi-colored water, take me, and within seconds I found myself squished in the middle of the floor, in between two metal heads who only stopped banging their heads to take a hit of pot. I was in my element here, and though I got a few curious glances at my All Access Pass (which I did wear a little too proudly), people paid attention to the band. And so did I.
The acoustic set from the night before was a nice change, but this show was the real Hybrid, a living breathing band that aptly mixed Sabbath-like downtuned licks with a dash of Jim Morrison lyrics and the funky, blues groove of Muddy Waters. During that show I forgot all about the talk I had with Robbie earlier, or the unexpected sass I delivered to Sage. I was just a fan, always a fan, a worshipper who talked to God in her head but fell to her knees at church.
There were lights and smoke, from the stage and from the audience, and Robbie and Sage gave the crowd everything they had. They were dueling against each other, pushing themselves for glory, and by that act, pushing each other. They were both winners here with Robbie leaping into the crowd like a soaring Messiah, making love to the microphone pole, telling the world his secrets with the deepest of growls; and Sage slinking along the sides, surging forward to join his equal, then disappearing into the shadows of the stage, giving the audience only a glimpse of his blistering fingers and the incinerating peels of sound he demanded from his guitar.
It was an epic, flawless, tingling-deep-in-my-belly type of show. I took notes between songs—just the feelings flowing through me or descriptions of the audience. Their enthusiasm built me up at times, and when a solo threatened to bring the crowd to its knees, I was sinking down, down, down with them, tears in my humble eyes.
It was a high unlike any other, a wave of perfection and human unity. It was all the purple prose in the world. It was magic.
Until I had a beer thrown in my face.
It happened near the end of the show, during one of my favorite songs, “A Loss to Win.” It wasn’t an accident. I was standing there, mouth agape at Robbie’s power, when I felt someone sidle up to me. I barely paid them any attention until I noticed their eyes flowing up and down my body and settling on the pass around my neck. They burned there, and I could have sworn my chest flared up with heat.
I took my eyes off the stage where Sage and Mickey were serenading each other with their strings and looked down. A short girl with Rod Stewart hair, dyed black as coal, and giant boobs was staring at the pass. I could have sworn she licked her lips, which were lined with dark red lipstick. She was dressed head to toe in black and her eyes were dark and soulless.
“Can I help you?” I asked unsurely. I didn’t feel like getting into an altercation, but I was at least taller than she was and a good deal lighter where it mattered.
“Can I have your pass?” she asked sweetly. She finally ripped her eyes off my chest and looked at my face. I shuddered internally. She looked crazier than I originally thought, and I immediately knew who I was dealing with—Sparky, one of the GTFOs.
“Um, and who are you?” I knew to handle the wannabe devil worshipper with care but I was annoyed I had to deal with her during a song I had been waiting for.
“Someone who deserves it more than you, bitch,” she answered. One of the metal heads in front of us looked behind him to see what was going on, and upon seeing her, he shot me a “good luck with that” smile and turned back around.
I put my hand to my pass and clutched it in my hand. “I don’t know who you are, sorry. This is my pass. I’m a journalist.”
I put my attention back to the stage and prayed she’d go away.
She sidled closer and reached out with her hand, attempting to close it around mine.
“Give me your pass!” she screeched like a jungle monkey.
I was flabbergasted but quick to act, and I backed up into the crowd, feeling their hands at my back, supporting me for the meantime. “Holy fuck, what’s your problem, you psycho!?”
“You don’t deserve it, you fake fan. You know nothing about him and I was here first,” she said coming forward, her black-nailed hand outstretched like some crazy fucking witch.
I put my palm out to stop her, and for some reason it did. But it didn’t stop her from taking the cup of beer that she had in her other hand and throwing it in my face.
“I’ll see you in hell,” she snarled and stormed off into the crowd, amused concertgoers parting for her like the Red Sea. I watched her go, speechless and shaking with adrenaline as the warm beer soaked me.
“Whoa, chick is tripping,” said one of the metal heads who had been holding me. Now that I was able to stand, his hands were at my ass and copping a feel.
I shrugged him off and gave him a dry “thanks” as I shook the rivers of beer off my arms.
Chick was tripping, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with drugs. Though who really knew in this day and age. I patted down my wet hair and carefully wiped the smelly, cheap draft beer from my face and under my eyes, pulling up my tank top to do so. The metal head stared at my bare stomach with glazed lust, and I decided it was a good a time as any to get my ass off the floor. My favorite song had ended and Hybrid`s spell had been broken by a groupie witch.
I pushed my way through the sweaty crowd, Noelle`s basslines rumbling beneath my feet, and climbed the stairs to the backstage area. There were a few people in front of me so security was busy grilling them about their passes or lack thereof, and over their heads I could make out Jacob at the very edge of the side stage as it sloped toward the back, talking to a young girl.
He didn`t look too impressed with her and was making shooing gestures with his hands. The girl waved her pass in his face and pointed at the stage and the show in progress, but Jacob just shook his head, not budging over whatever they were arguing
about. The girl looked like a replica of Sonja, with the same pale hair and skin, just a bit shorter and with bigger hips. When she finally gave up and walked away, her nose beaked sharply in the profile and I caught a flash of violet eyes. I had a feeling that was GTFO numero three, Terri the Know-It-All.
Finally I was let through by the stocky gatekeeper with a close inspection of my pass and a pitying glance at my drowned rat appearance.
“Christ on a cracker,” Jacob exclaimed as I slogged toward him at the side stage. “What happened to you?” He sniffed me. “You fall in a pint?”
“Something like that,” I said with a sigh. “Hey, who were you just talking to?”
His mouth twitched in a grimace. “Oh, the usual riff raff.”
“Robbie told me about the GTFOs.”
Jacob shook his head with annoyance and started fiddling with the rings that adorned his fat fingers. “Of course he did. Robbie’s jealous that Sage and Graham are getting all the attention and he has to deal with normal groupies. He doesn’t get the crazies. Makes him feel left out.”
“What did that girl want? Was it Terri?”
“I don’t pay attention to their names,” he said calmly, twirling a big gold ring around. “She did mention you though.”
“What? Me? I’ve never met that girl.”
He cracked a smile and lifted his shoulders back, looking down at me slyly. “She knows you though. Says you’re a wannabe music journalist and can’t be trusted. Says you’re just a groupie in disguise, and that she’s the one who should be writing the story.”
“Are you serious?”
He shrugged. “I’m always serious, love. For what it’s worth, this Terri as you say, has an actual media pass. She writes for someone, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a private magazine out of her parent’s basement, judging from the looks of her.”
I crossed my arms, not liking this at all. “So what else did she say?”