got a headache,’ said Riff, looking up from where he was sat on the floor tuning his guitar. ‘It’s been a tough night for him.’
‘I’ll see if he’s OK,’ said Nutter. He left the room, walking slightly unsteadily.
‘Those two seem to be getting on well,’ said Keys, absent-mindedly tidying up the dressing table.
‘Well, Nutter is the drummer, isn’t he?’ said Vid. ‘The non-musical ones are bound to stick together.’
‘I wouldn’t say that to him,’ said Keys.
‘Which one?’
‘Either one. We don’t want to cause any arguments.’
The sound of the door swinging open caused them to break off abruptly. The robots looked to see Ben and Nutter returning with Ben’s aunt in tow. Vid had a sudden flush of guilt, but Ben showed no sign of having heard the recent discussion. He looked tired and fed up, but then that’s how he’d looked when he’d left. Surprisingly, however, Nutter also appeared downcast. Ben’s aunt’s expression completed the theme and Vid, assuming he’d said nothing to spite her, absolved himself of blame.
‘Something up?’ said Keys.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ said Nutter.
‘It’s like this,’ Ben’s aunt began. ‘It’s been lovely having you play here and you’re a great band, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to find somewhere else.’
‘Was it that glass I broke, Mrs Floyd?’ said Vid. ‘I did offer to pay for it.’
‘No, it wasn’t that.’
‘What about the plate?’
‘What plate?’
‘Oh. I thought you knew about that.’
‘It doesn’t matter. When I agreed to allow you to play here, I did it as a favour to Ben - I thought you’d get a bit of exposure and I’d get a few more customers and that would be that.’
Keys was puzzled as to what the problem was. ‘The place was packed tonight,’ he said.
‘Yes, but none of them bought so much as a drink,’ said Mrs Floyd. ‘What’s more it was so loud that the people who did want to eat stayed away. Nobody wants to eat with all that racket going on.’
‘It wasn’t our fault, Mrs Floyd,’ said Nutter.
‘I know. And I don’t mind the noise myself – God knows my hearing isn’t what it used to be – but if I lose custom, I can’t afford to keep letting you play.’
‘You want us to tone down the act?’ said Riff.
Mrs Floyd shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s the act, dear,’ she said.
‘Maybe the girls won’t come next time,’ said Ben.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Floyd. ‘I was a girl once and I know what they think. If they’ve found you once, they’ll keep coming until they’re hospitalised for throat disorders.’
‘You mean you were like that at that age?’
Mrs Floyd blushed. ‘No, dear, but I did used to spend long nights mooning over Frankie Boy and the Harmonics.’
‘He must have appreciated that,’ said Vid.
‘It means smiling,’ said Mrs Floyd curtly.
‘Ah.’
‘So you don’t want us to play here anymore,’ said Riff.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘No problem,’ said Keys. ‘It’s been a good run. I only hope we haven’t put you out too much.’
‘Not at all. I’m only too glad to have given you the chance to play. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ And she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
‘Well, I guess that’s that,’ said Ben sullenly.
‘What do you mean?’ said Riff.
‘Did you miss all that? We’ve got no gigs.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Keys. ‘It’s not as if they were paying gigs. It was just a bit of fun.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Riff. ‘Anyone would think this was the only venue in town.’
‘I know it isn’t,’ snapped Ben. ‘There’s plenty of subway stations.’
‘That’s not all,’ said Riff. ‘There’s somewhere else – and they pay too.’
Everyone turned to look at him expectantly. Riff, choosing to ignore their gazes, picked out a tune on his guitar. After a few bars he looked up.
‘Well?’ said Ben. ‘Aren’t you going to tell us?’
‘It’s obvious,’ said Riff. ‘It’s time to go back to the Turret.’
13
Publicity for an entertainer is, like oxygen for a carbon-based lifeform, very hard to live without. One way or another, it is absolutely vital that when the curtain goes up there is an audience there to see it, or at least to pay for the privilege of not seeing it – as in the case of Invisible Eric’s tour of the Horsehead Nebula.
To ensure the presence – or paid absence – of the audience, there is a critical decision to be made as to the point at which artificial promotion can best be deployed to further the cause: too early, and the public will disregard it; too late and the band may already have become jaded with the whole music business.
Most entertainers establish themselves in the first instance by word of mouth – a form of promotion, which benefits struggling artists by costing absolutely nothing. This isn’t always possible: the people of Procyon, for example, are somewhat handicapped in this regard in that they have no mouths. This means that they are mute, which means they have no spoken language, which additionally means they never bothered to work out how to write it down – so a newspaper review (another form of free publicity) doesn’t achieve much either.
Procyon - a peaceful world, very popular with stressed businessmen on weekend retreats and dealers in commodities requiring the utmost confidentiality - has, nevertheless, developed a highly sophisticated culture. In lieu of the spoken word they have evolved a form of language based on hand signals and a rich variation on the art of mime. A wave conveys general interest or recognition, the raising of a thumb the desire for a lift and walking against the wind that the planet’s notoriously strong trade winds are once again in season. Unfortunately, because of the sheer volume of signs and signals required for communication between the people of Procyon, the people are not much given to travelling away from their home world – largely because some of their gestures have been known to cause offence.
In societies with mouths, words from them remain an acceptable and reliable form of promotion. After it was discovered that Invisible Eric, whose act was promoted entirely by pullouts in the Sunday papers, lacked substance by virtue of being not only invisible but entirely absent, merely distributing a audiotape recording of his show to venues and waiting for the money to come in, some planets banned the publicising of any act which didn’t show evidence of having built a following first.
This evidence was usually monetary in nature, levied as a tax on admissions, and meant that only a band prepared to pay for its own tickets could cheat the system in order to get an advert in the tabloids. Not unnaturally, the measure came in for considerable criticism from those acts so specialised that they couldn’t hope to reach their audience without advertising. On Betelgeuse, such exotic acts as Three Men and a Tennis Ball, The Long Faces and The Exotic Acts took their shows into the streets to protest, but were largely ignored by a confused populace.
The government of Betelgeuse, a largely octogenerian group who still remembered when triangles had three sides, chose to ignore the protests, their argument being that any group of people who were too small and poor to form a credible opposition party to the government could safely be ignored. Unfortunately, they were right, and so the exotic acts left the planet to find somewhere they would be appreciated.
They may still be looking.
Publicising an act which already has a following and which is merely changing venue is, by comparison, a relatively straightforward and painless operation. It is usually sufficient to put up a poster on the door of the old venue telling people where to go (some care must be taken with the phrasing) and to ensure that this poster isn’t covered up by bill posters or condemnation notices if the reason for leav
ing the old venue is due to its closure.
Ben sat in the bar of the Turret with a drink in his hand. There was still half an hour to go until curtain up and the bar was depressingly quiet. The only people in attendance appeared to be the usual crowd of robots, halfies and other general outcasts.
It was a worrying sign: since his first visit, the venue had gone through one of its frequent changes of ownership and one of the biggest changes was that the open mic spots had been axed in favour of more profitable ventures. The management had been persuaded to give them a first gig, but they had refused to be drawn on whether this would lead to a second. Admittedly it had sounded very impressive when they’d told the manager they’d had to leave Café Igneous on grounds of being too popular, but the truth was that popularity was based on just one gig. For all Ben knew the screaming girls could have been on a day trip from some kind of asylum.
He stared disconsolately at his glass. The burst of confidence he’d gained from their moment of stardom had faded with the intensity of the memory, and like Nutter’s stammer, his mood had returned to its customary state.
He knew, of course, that had he never joined the band he would never have even considered the chance of changing career. But now that he’d tasted the sweet flavour of hope, the bitter smell of failure made him feel almost physically sick.
Riff sat down beside him and placed his drink on the table. ‘Pretty quiet so far,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Not to worry. I suspect most of our audience won’t have been here before. Give them a chance to find the