THIRTY.
“Guys, we want to thank you for being here tonight,” said Nomad into his microphone.
They had come to the end of their show at the Vista Futura, in Austin on Saturday night, the 16th of August. It was a packed house in this club, another black box on the knife and gun circuit. People had been turned away when the doors closed. It had been advertised as a free concert for those who came wearing a The Five T-shirt, which meant they’d been to another of their gigs or had bought the shirt off the website. All ages were welcome. It was approaching midnight, and it was nearly done.
Nomad stood cradling his Strat in a cone of clear white light. At his side, a few feet away, was Ariel with her acoustic Ovation. Behind them was Berke, at the center of her Ludwigs. Amazingly, only her snare and a floor tom had been damaged in the trailer. She was a firm believer now in styrofoam cubes and color-key labels.
Tonight there was no bass player, and there were no keyboards on the stage. It was just the three of them, and they’d had to improvise and fill in and do what they’d needed to do, but they were professionals and the show must go on.
But not, as Nomad had realized, on and on and on.
He looked out at the small lights of cellphone cameras. Some people had brought video rigs and set them up, but the space was tight. It was okay with the band that the whole concert was filmed. Put up on YouTube. Used to show the grandkids what grandmom and granddad did back in that long-ago summer of 2008, before musicians played everything in the air on virtual instruments.
It had been a quiet show. Nomad had done a couple of hot movers but his heart really wasn’t in them, and they didn’t sound so hot without Terry’s keys swirling in and out. Tonight belonged to Ariel’s voice. It belonged to her acoustic guitar, which she played with the precise passion of someone who wants not only to be clearly heard, but to clearly speak.
“I guess everybody knows, this is our last show.” He held up a hand, palm outward, when the predictable moaning and groaning came from the audience, but they knew it already and they were just doing what they thought the band expected. It was like a heart thump that went into a peace sign.
“The Band That Will Not Die!” someone shouted, over on the right.
“Yeah!” another voice hollered, and then the crowd erupted into whoops and whistles and whatever they needed to do to express themselves, and Nomad waited until they were done until he smiled out at all the faces revealed by the reflection of stage lights and said, “Thank you.”
He cleared his throat. “We lost three of our friends last time out,” he said. It was the first he’d spoken of this tonight. There’d been a brief introduction from the MC, and then The Five had started right into ‘When The Storm Breaks’. The songs had gone past with just a brief intro from either Nomad or Ariel between them. He didn’t make any jokes about limping around like an old man, because his sprained right ankle was still bothering him though it was taped up under his jeans. Ariel said nothing about her slightly purpled nose. Neither did Berke offer any explanation about the bass guitar pin she wore on one lapel of her black jacket, and the keyboard pin on the other. The news stories had told everything, to everyone who wanted to know. Nancy Grace had done her interview and so had Greta van Susteren. Berke had done a telephone interview with Rachel Maddow on her radio show and was going to be featured in The Advocate next month. She would go again to the obvious tag the press wanted: Deranged Iraq war veteran stalks rock band, is killed in the New Mexico desert, hi ho.
That was the line they had pushed, with True’s help.
The magazines and newspapers and networks and bloggers had emerged by their multiple thousands. Even Wally was a celebrity who found reporters hammering on his trailer door. Wally on his motorcycle, coming upon what appeared to be a wreck in front of the old Pure station that had once served the community of Blue Chalk, and then the people staggering out to the road, and all that blood.
Eric Gherosimini had been discovered by one of those tenacious door-knocking reporters. Rediscovered. The genius of the 13th Floors, one of the most influential acid-rock bands of the ’60s. Justin Timberlake said he’d been looking for him for years, to get permission to re-do a song in modern style. Lily Allen said she had all his old shit in a box in her closet. Eric Gherosimini announced through a spokesman that he was moving to Jamaica.
But not before he left a boocoodle of money to the University of Oklahoma to offer music scholarships at the American Organ Institute in the name of Terry Spitzenham.
They specialized in maintaining the tradition of the magnificent pipe organs that were played in churches, cathedrals and in the grand movie theaters, the kinds of keyboards most people never knew still existed.
George called them from the hospital when they were being interviewed by remote on MSNBC. He was doing some therapy now, he said. He was out of the woods. He was home free. He sounded strong. Nomad took the opportunity to ask him, on the air, why he wore pennies in his loafers, and George said that was easy to answer: for good luck.
“This is our last show,” Nomad repeated to the audience. “We have one more song to do.” He had to pause for just a few seconds, and Ariel wanted to touch his shoulder but she stayed her hand. He was a big boy now. “This will be the last song,” he said. “We’re not going to do an encore. It’s late, and from the looks of some in this crowd it’s past your bedtime. Kidding,” he said to the exaggerated boos, but he really wasn’t. “This song is one we wrote together on the road, all of us adding some lyrics. Ariel’s going to sing it, and it’s called ‘New Old World’. Thanks again, guys.” He stepped back, so Ariel could be front and center, and the audience applauded and waited as Berke started a steady beat, smack on 126 beats per minute, relying on the dark voice of the bass and the bright snap of a hi-hat.
Ariel strummed the intro on her Ovation. She was dressed tonight more funky than lacy, because she wanted to try something different. She had on a pink blouse, black jeans and a sleeveless blue vest with large red and pink polkadots. She wore a blue porkpie hat, tilted jauntily to one side on her strawberry-blonde ringlets. She had made the decision that it was time for her to start having fun at this, her calling. She thought there’d been enough pain, and now it was time to let some pleasure in. Starting with her closet full of hippie duds. She would always go vintage, but she needed more and brighter colors. Like the song said, some things do change, and they change with you.
She began on the A chord. The song had a triumphant sound. It suggested just a hint of strut. It bore in its bones the strength of English ballads and smoldered with the earthy heat of Tejano. At its heart there was a touch of Soul, but at its heart of hearts classic rock ’n roll.
She sang in her warm, full voice.
“Welcome to the world, and everything that’s in it.
Write a song about it, just keep it under four minutes.
Got to figure what to keep, what to leave behind, and like life it’s never easy.
I wish you safe travel, and courage when you need it,
I wish you safe travel, and courage when you need it.
You’ll need it. Oh, you’ll need it.
Won’t you move my hand, please tell me what to write.
I’m sitting here like a candle on the darkest night.
I’ve got my hot flame, got my flicker on, but where am I when my light is gone?
I wish you safe travel, courage, you’re gonna need it.
I wish you safe travel, courage, you’re gonna need it.
Gonna need it. Oh, gonna need it.”
There had been a meeting in Roger Chester’s office.
It had been yesterday afternoon, up on the fourth floor in the gray building on Brazos Street. The Five had cancelled their Friday night gig in Dallas. They’d stayed with True in the hospital in Albuquerque until his wife could get there. The Albuquerque FBI had been very helpful. They’d arranged for the contents of the wrecked U-Haul trailer to be truck-shipped to Austin, they’d taken car
e of Terry’s body and brought Jeremy Pett in from the desert where he’d died, and The Five had flown from Albuquerque to Austin courtesy of Roger Chester’s checkbook.
“I want you to look me in the face,” said Roger Chester, sitting behind his desk in his office with a picture window onto The Live Music Capital Of The World at his back, and Ash sitting elegant, composed and expressionless in a brown leather chair to his left. “I want you to look me right here,” he said, pointing with one hand, two fingers, into his own dark brown eyes slightly magnified by the tortoise-shell glasses. “And tell me why Ash says you won’t do a reality show.”
Nomad, Berke and Ariel were all sitting together on one brown leather sofa. Before them was a glass-topped coffee table with magazines on it like Money, Texas Monthly, Billboard and of course the People with them in a small box at the upper right. Nomad wished Berke would put her black high-heeled boots up on it and sweep the magazines aside, but she didn’t. His gaze kept being drawn to the huge horns on the bighorn sheep head mounted on the panelled wall between the picture window and the ceiling. If something like that fell, it could knock a man’s brains out.
“Don’t everybody talk at once,” Roger Chester said. He glanced at Ash. “How come they’ll spread it out thick to you, but to me it’s as thin as a spick’s wallet?”
Nomad almost said Mr. Chester ought to ask his pal Felix Gogo if his wallet was so thin, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Okay, I know you’ve been through some heavy…” Chester hesitated, seeking the right word for a man of his standing. He settled on, “Shit. Everybody knows it was rough. And I absolutely think you ought to take some time off. I guess you’re shell-shocked. Well, who the hell wouldn’t be? Right?”
“Exactly,” Ash agreed.
“But we have to talk about your future. We have to get serious about it. We have to strike while the iron is hot.”
Berke shifted her position. Nomad thought for an instant that she really was going to put up her boots and knock the magazines off, but the moment passed. He couldn’t help it. He had to say, “That’s a term used in branding cattle, isn’t it?”
Roger Chester peered at him over the rims of his glasses. “Oh, mercy!” he said. “Mercy me and Johnny Jehosophat! What’s your problem?” His voice not only took over the room, it nearly broke the picture window.
No problem, Nomad almost answered, but it would be a lie and that phrase could still send him into a rage thinking about a crazed waitress in Tucson. “We’re breaking up,” Nomad said. “Tomorrow night’s the last gig.”
“Yeah, I heard that from Ash.” Roger Chester drank from a coffee mug with a UT logo. “Didn’t listen to it, though. Didn’t listen, because it didn’t make any goddamned sense. You’re telling me you’re calling it quits, after all you’ve been through, all the shit, all the work, and now you’ve got network TV people interested in following you around with cameras and broadcasting your life to the world, and publishers wanting to do quickie books that ghost writers will write for you, and promoters crying out for you all over this country and in three foreign lands, and record deals hanging from money trees ready to be plucked, and you’re calling it quits. Quits,” he said to Ash, as if the suave fellow from New Delhi had forgotten his clipped English.
Ash just shrugged and smiled, showing some front teeth that Nomad thought would look so pretty on the floor.
“We need time,” Ariel spoke up, “to decide what we want to do.” She started to say Sir, but her lips would not let it through.
“And we definitely no way want to be in any fucking reality show,” said Berke.
“Oh, is that beneath you? That’s what this is about? You think it’s crass?”
“I think it’s unnecessary,” Nomad said. “We all do.”
“Do you think making money is unnecessary? Hm? Because that’s what it would be. A whole big truckload of money. Plus super exposure, an opportunity to promote new songs and CDs, maybe a tie-in to a televised concert special, and—” He slapped the edge of his desk. “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe I’m having to spell all this out! Look, you’re on top right now! You’re somebodies, instead of the nobodies you used to be. Your powder’s hot and you’re about to make one hell of a flash.”
“Yeah,” Nomad said. “Flash. That’s kind of what I was thinking, too.”
“Is there some cryptic meaning to that, or will you enlighten me?”
“I’ll ask you a question.” Nomad stared across the desk into the man’s eyes. “Can you name one song we’ve ever done?”
“‘When The Storm Breaks’,” said Ash.
“Not you. I’d like Mr. Chester to answer that. Any song titles come to mind?”
Roger Chester stared back. He took a drink from his coffee mug.
“Any lines from any of our songs?” No response. “How about CD titles?” Nomad asked. He raised his eyebrows. “Anything?”
In the Vista Futura, on the Saturday night stage in a shaft of yellow light, Ariel sang.
“You might be in a place where the old skin won’t fit.
You might feel as worthless as a cup full of spit.
Well some things don’t change, you know they never do,
but some things do change, they change with you.
In this old world.
In this tough old world.
In this hard old world.
In this old world.”
And now Berke’s drums strengthened in volume, the cymbals spoke with their shimmering voices, and Nomad stepped forward to lay down a solo with his Strat. The solo was loose and easy, almost with a bluesy vibe. It sounded like something that might have spilled onto the rainslick street from a club where the sign said One Night Only. Dean And The Roadmen.
He was nervous, not because of the solo—he had that knocked—but because the verse he’d written was coming up next, and because deep down he feared this song.
“One CD title,” Nomad had said to Roger Chester, in the fourth-floor office. “I’ll give you the first two words of our newest CD. Catch As—”
“I don’t need to know,” the man across the desk replied. “That’s Ash’s job.”
Nomad nodded. The way Roger Chester had said that spoke volumes.
“Do you even like music?” Nomad asked.
There was no longer any need for pretense. “Not your kind, no. Not particularly.”
“Do you like any kind?”
“Listen, don’t get smart. My grandfather started this business, friend. Started it from a travelling caravan of country singers who played places you people wouldn’t piss in. And my grandfather was the barker, standing in the back of a pickup truck hollering through a megaphone. Bringing in the customers from the fields and the barns, and charging them a little money for a lot of entertainment.” His voice was making the glass rattle. Nomad thought it was just a matter of time before the bighorn sheep had its revenge.
“Ohhhhh, now I get it,” Roger Chester said, his eyes gleaming. But not in a good way. “Ash, take at look at these three. You know what you’re looking at?”
Ash must’ve thought it was a trick question, because he refrained to commit.
“Arteests,” said the big voice. “I run into them occasionally. They go out to change the world and make grand statements, and they wind up living in their cars and playing on the street corner for lunch money. Well, can I tell you something?” He waited, but not very long. “Nobody gives one good fuck about art. About messages. It was true in my grandfather’s day, and it is for hell sure today. People want to be entertained.” He stressed that word with three distinct syllables, as if his guests had never heard it before. “They don’t care what music says. They don’t even listen. They want to go out to a bar on the weekend, have fun, drink some beer, maybe meet a girl or guy, and you know what you are to that? Background noise.”
Berke put one boot up on the table.
Roger Chester glanced at it, but he was a mouth in motion now, a speeding fireball of truth, and
he’d decided he was going to give these people what they’d asked for.
“This business is about money,” he said. “Not art. Fuck art. Unless I can make a lot of money from it, and then I say ‘Bring me more art!’ But the profit on selling messages to people is mighty paltry. If it can’t be branded, and packaged, and promoted, and sold to a demographic, as far as I’m concerned, friend…it doesn’t exist.”
It was the second ‘friend’ that almost sent Nomad over the edge. But he held himself back. He held himself. He put his hands on his knees and gripped hard, and he tried for a tight smile but it emerged as a grimace. He had nothing against entertainment. Entertainment was fine. The Five’s material was mostly party band stuff, feelgood rockers or ballads, but still…to be told they had a boundary, a line they were not supposed to cross, a box they were supposed to be happy and glad and pleased not to ever climb out of. That seemed like a kind of death, in itself. The death of experimenting, the death of the noble failure from reaching too high. The death of caring whether what you did was good or bad. You just wanted to get paid, and to go home to your big TV, because nothing was more important than the cash.
“Mr. Chester,” Nomad said, “you don’t know anything about our music, do you? But it’s the same as it’s always been. A month ago…you’re right, hardly anybody knew us. We were working, and we had fans, but—”
“You weren’t going anywhere. I’ve seen your numbers.”
“Right,” Nomad said carefully. “So…what’s changed? We’re suddenly famous and all these people want a part of us—and you want to push us into everybody’s living room and iPod—because two of our members are dead? And one was put in the hospital? What about the music? That’s the same. We work, and we work, and we try our best, and we can’t get anywhere unless we trade on the deaths of our friends?” His voice broke. He thought the rest of himself would fly to pieces at any second. “You didn’t do these things for us before. That’s not right. We agree on this, sir. The Five is done, because if we’re ever successful again we want it to be for our music, not because of tragedy.”