Oedipussy (5 page)

If I used the color copier to make the band photos rather than having Jenny make photographic prints, we were going to get our name out to eight venues for less than two bucks each. Perfect.

We walked next door to the pizza shop and ordered slices and root beers, and we talked strategy as we ate.

"What’s next," I began, "is that we just need to line up some dates that make sense, and work together to keep us driving forward. We start with some small venues, and then maybe try to add a song a week or something, and then practice all of the earlier ones. We might even be able to book, what, a show a week?

"Do you think that one rehearsal and one show a week is too much for everyone?"

"Reasonable to me - I don't know about the other guys. I mean, we all have a job. We'll just have to see."

"True..." Between the Nirvana thing, and the fact that I only knew this young man as a result of some bizarre acquaintancehood, I figured it was time to find out who this guy was.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Who am I?"

"Yeah, I mean, I know little. I know you're nice, you can beat a drum, your family is Vietnamese, and a few other things... But I want to know who you are and what you want to do."

"I am just a guy, I don't know."

"What do you like?"

"Music. Probably going to go to school for biology after I get out of here, though. I applied to some tech schools that I have a pretty good chance of getting into because of my SAT scores. I don't really know, though. I’m still trying to figure things out." He looked at the ceiling. "I have four younger sisters and a brother who is older than me. Big family. I don't know."

"Do you really not know who Kurt Cobain is?"

"Are you kidding? I don't follow the news or anything. People worship him and stuff, so I don't know. I don't. I make my own music."

I appreciated his frank, virginal self-assessment.

We left the pizzeria and headed home. As we waited at a red light, John hit my arm.

"Hey - look."

He pointed to The Caffeine Machine, a dark corner coffee shop. It was mainly ignored by our peers. The dark walnut and gothic interior was a stark contrast to the bright yellow photocopy in the window that anyone could read from the street. It read, "live music wanted."

"Whoa!" I immediately cut the wheel and turned onto the street next to the corner restaurant, the wheels slightly giving way to squeak over the pavement. We parked on the street a half a block up and collected our first press kit from the back seat. We got out of the car, and walked toward the cafe.

The front of the building was a curved sculpture of brushed steel with waves of curled, papery sheaves and spiky pen-like appendages shooting into the sky. Steel cups and smoky swirls emanated from them in a postmodern gothic and industrial work of art that surrounded the tinted windows. In the dusk, the darkness invited us with radiating warmth.

As we walked in, the interior was earthen wood. I smelled incense and coffee, a creamy green pleasantness that surprisingly complimented the atmosphere. Gene Loves Jezebel was playing on the cafe's sound system on the border of too loud, but we were the only customers in the room. Darkness crept through the city.

A thin man in his mid-forties in a t-shirt, jeans, and an apron leaned on the counter. He was reading a magazine that he put aside as we approached.

"How can I help you gentlemen?"

"We saw your sign," I said, indicating the sign in the window. I put my hand out for a handshake, "I'm Todd, this is Johnny X, and we're members of The Dawn Ego. We are interested in finding some new places to play. What kind of bands do you have?"

"We haven't had any. That sign has been up for a month or so. I want to get more people in in the evenings, and would love any band to come play to make this more of a community space."

"Nothing yet?"

"Nope."

"Here’s our kit." I handed him the letter, tape, and some stickers. He put the stickers in front of the register, perused the letter and bio, and turned the tape over in his hand.

"I'm Paul." He held his hand out. "How about Friday?"

"-yes," I blurted.

John had turned to me and was about to begin a discussion, but I was ready. I knew we were ready, and I knew that this was our shot at something. I could have sounded a bit less desperate but it would be easy to call everyone in, or even last until Friday without a rehearsal.

We had no stage identity, and no brand without the artwork on the letter and the tape. We were essentially nothing but the songs - but perhaps jumping into it this way was the most drastic, damaging, brazen, and striking way to hit the scene. If we sucked at the coffee shop, so what?

This wasn't the big league... This was the beginning.

"Excellent. It’s last minute, I know, but maybe I could have you in again in a week. Maybe I could have you in every Friday, or we will skip one after we see how it goes...  I am not sure how it will look, but you are first, so you are first. I can give you free coffee as payment for the night.

"The only thing I ask is that you promote yourselves - but this looks like you have PR down pretty well. Make it happen. Promote, promote, promote, and I will give you the space and make the coffee in exchange for allowing me to run my shop. I will even sell your tapes, whatever you want. I can keep inventory, and give you your money at the end of the night."

We nodded.

"Great. I'll see you Friday night - how does seven sound? You can come load in any time after five."

We nodded, again.

"See you then." He held out a menu, likely printed by Kinkos. "My number is on here if you guys have any problems or need anything."

We thanked Paul and walked into the evening, the music dumbing down behind the plate glass. The streetlights and headlights danced over the brilliantly polished artwork of steel, and the store was a golden, shimmering dais. This was where it would all start. It was our kismet machine. Fate breathed into us.

"I can't believe it - this is insane," John said. I couldn't tell if he was upset, or surprised, or as excited as I was.

"What do you mean?"

"We haven't been going at this much more than, what, a week? Two?"

"I think that's how these things work."

"He didn't even listen to the tape!"

"I know. I have a feeling it will all be ok."

"I do too," John said. We got into the car.

"Tomorrow we get the other guys on board. I'll go back to Kinkos and make more posters. I have work tomorrow night, anyway. Then, we go crazy and get all of our friends to show up at the show - our friends, our moms, our cousins, everyone - and we get this guy to sell a lot of coffee to them. Then, we'll have one solid place we can count on."

I turned the car back into traffic. We waited at the light parallel to the coffee shop.

"Do you think we're ready?" I asked.

As a leader I know I wasn't supposed to show doubt, fear, or to waver in any way. In art there is never a right answer; there is always room for improvement. It’s better to fear perfection than to assume it.

John was confident and sure of his response when he said, "I do."

The night was crisp and frigid.

Kurt Cobain was dead.

We were alive.

We only had so much time left on this planet, and we had to drive forward regardless. To honor our king, we had to become royalty. We created in his image.

I rolled the window down. Damp, cold air pooled into the car and puddled at our feet as the light turned green.

Through the store's plate glass, I was certain that I heard the muffled tones of The Dawn Ego EP playing as we pulled away. Paul hadn't picked his magazine back up, but nodded his head to the light thumping of John's bass drum.

Friday.

We had just finished unpacking the white, windowless van beside the café outside the loading door. I realized there was one more box that I needed to take in before John moved the van that John's uncle used for his Vietnamese restaurant.

The last box. Thirty more copies of the EP. Five bucks each. Two hundred stickers to be freely distributed by Paul and Jenny as the audience left.

It was a brisk night, and the weather was changing for the better. Buds hung on the trees along the sidewalk, and the moon was bright and sharp with atmospherically clear clouds trailing across it. In the west, a pitch darkness trailed like a line across the night sky. Above one half hung cumulonimbus clouds lazily dragging over the heavenly orb. The other half was a cloak of nothingness seeping into clarity surrounded by cutouts of a billion brilliant stars.

I walked to the door and lay the box on the floor next to some microphone stands and cables. John appeared in the doorway.

"Where do you think I should park it?" He asked.

"Want to bring it around the corner off of the street so everyone can park?"

"Makes sense to me." John got in the van and drove away. The exhaust hung in the crisp air for a moment before dissipating.

I turned back into the cafe and pulled the heavy steel door behind me. A whoosh of cold air curled around me before being replaced by an intimate warmth.

We were assigned a spot near the back door. To the immediate left was a hallway with bathrooms and a second entrance to the supply storage area and presumably the office. The performance space was straight ahead in the deepest corner of the cafe, a rudimentary stage made from some old pallets. We put a rug down, and put an overhead projector that shone a transparency of the band's name and our presidential ouroboros on the wall.

John had already set up his drums, and Steve was arranging the amplifiers and microphones just so. I taped the set lists to the monitors. Everything was in its place, and the band was enjoying cappuccinos and buttoning up the final arrangement of our equipment. In an hour, we would be performing our first show.

The past week was a blur of working, studying, making new posters, hanging them around town, and doing all manner of preparation for this first night. The easiest part of the week was my school work, the best was rehearsing, and the warmest was Jenny.

The two nights I worked at Kinkos were relatively easy. After some simple training, I was finally taking care of customers on my own the second night. On my first night I got several Oxford shirts, and they loaded me up on tchotchkes. They gave me a nice pen and a keychain with a triangle work-life-passion spinner on it. The keychain was a weird gift for your first night.

Of course, my favorite part of the job was the discount. In the span of the past week, I designed and cut three different poster styles based on the original designs to promote the show. Nonsequiturs such as "new," "grunge," "coffee and rock," "processed cheesefood product," puzzled the eye. Most importantly, they had a time, a venue, and "all new house band" emblazoned across them. I was able to print six hundred posters on a variety of colored cardstocks for six dollars after my employee discount, and an added "he might be able to tell there's more in this stack, but won't say anything about the number I gave him" discount.

Each member of the band destroyed the school, the community, stores, doctor's offices, gyms, and bathrooms with our posters. Twin Falls sunk under a colored snowfall of excitement, color, and immediacy. Cars had them under their windshields, supermarkets had them wrapped around automatic doors, and the library bulletin boards were sick with them. It was as if Twin Falls was a dragonian and serpentine ouroboros in its own right, rainbow scales fresh from molting under the new guidance of rock and roll.

So here we were. It was our first show and we were ready. It was all going to be a surprise, unique in the world.

John returned and made final adjustments to his drum kit.

"How are we looking?" Paul asked. "Todd, John, can I get you a drink? You guys didn't get anything yet."

"I think I'll wait until we're done. Nerves." John responded similarly.

"No problem. So we’re about fifteen minutes out, and I think I would like to introduce you once I sell some things and then invite you on stage. What do you have left to do before I unlock the door?"

"Sound check, I guess, just to make sure it is the right levels. Some final tuning."

"Great. Just head on out back when you are done and I'll open up."

My heart began to feel the weight of actually starting this thing. I picked up my guitar, and my hand felt sweaty against the polished enamel and the silky strings. I was nervous.

I clicked the amplifier on. The light warmed on and the hum began to expose me to the room as it bloomed. Steve and Kurt stood at the ready, and I could hear the ka-klack of John picking up his sticks off his snare drum.

We began to play our first song, adjusting the sound for the space as we went. The bass bounced the little room from floor to ceiling, and was greased with the polish of the guitar's treble. The mirrors shook and vibrated with excitement and purity. It was a natural cohesion of sound and space, and we hammered down the song as if it was our duty to do it all along. Everything was perfect before we even finished the song.

We put our instruments down and walked into the little back room. Stock surrounded us, floor to ceiling. Foam cups, bags of beans, straws, and stock boxes climbed to the ceiling, and we found ourselves in a forest of industrial foodservice.

Up the hall we heard the ca-chunk of Paul releasing the bolt on the front door, and a bajingle with every opening of the door.

"I call this first meeting of the band of the next decade," I began with a sniffle and a nod. They were modest men of little words, but incredible talent. They smiled and acknowledged me, and it was a moment of revelation and acceptance of our fates together.

Bajingle.

"Let’s talk about tonight. We have our set lists, and everything is all set. What are we forgetting?"

"What do we do after the first half hour?" Steve ‘The Practical’ had a point.

"Right. Well, we haven't really gone much farther than that, have we? Five songs, about three to five minutes each. Consensus, gentlemen: what do you think we should do?"

Bajingle-Bajingle.

The whoosh of the espresso machine.

"I think we should jam," Kurt interjected. "In between. We've done well with that." The man said little, but it was always a gem of wisdom.

I looked at John and Steve, and they nodded in agreement.

Bajingl
e
.

"John, when we finish a song, start...something jazzy, four-four, and we will come in? Do you want to change key each song, or keep to the same?"

"I call sticking to C or E," Steve began. "Most of our songs are there anyway, and it would transition well."

"Good call. And maybe a little intermission in the middle or so? Go no longer than seven minutes of that, and move to a real song?"

"Sure," Steve continued, "and let's alternate, C, E, C, E, C."

Bajingl
e
.

Kurt seemed happy.

"Kurt?" Steve wanted to check.

"You guys are on rhythm and bass, so I will just do what makes sense."

Bajingl
e
.

"Perfect."

Bajingle. Wooshshshshshhhh. Spa-clink.

"Anything else?" I scanned. No one seemed to have any comment - bajingle - and I wanted to commemorate the night with a rallying battle cry.

In one of my classes we read the speech from Henry IV about Saint Crispin and coming back with scars and talking about the triumph of the day even though the battle was dire and it was impossible to win the war. We were going into this show with absolutely nothing - bajingle - and like Hal I was leading this small band of brothers to the front with little more than an idea and a few songs.

This wasn't Shakespeare. This wasn't war.

Just start, already.

"We are here tonight to do something new. We are here to make a community stronger, to make our bond stronger, to make a masterpiece of music and sound (bajingle) and a bond of determination. We will rouse the saints of goodly notes  (bajingle) and trumpet them on high to our small audience. We will be their sound-gods, carrying the armies of the muses to the forefront of our little cafe in the middle of Twin Falls Idaho, and purchase their hearts and minds to follow us. They will revel in us.

"We are going to carry the children of Twin Falls to their musical apex, assisting them to be the notes, and march to our rhythms like the little cherub rats of Hamelin following their note-driven Piper away."

Where was I getting this stuff? The espresso maker 'whoowoowooshed' in response.

"So tonight, we drink in our music and our successes. We focus on what we are and what energies we have. We focus on everything we want to be because of everything that has come before us and drives through us. We do it tonight because Cobain can't."

From down the hall we heard a change in the atmosphere. The silence was immediately apparent.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Paul began, "Welcome to the Caffeine Machine's first show in what we hope will be a new perio...." I tried to stop paying attention so I could finish my speech.

"We will be going out there in a minute. But I wanted to just-"

"...and here they are, for the first time at-"

"I wanted to say, thank you for going on this journey with me. Let's go out and have some fun and really make some magic." I put my hand in the middle, and then Kurt, and then Steve, and then John. "We are-"

"Ladies and gentlemen,"

Paul, John, Steve, Kurt, and I said it together.

"The Dawn Ego."

We left the stockroom and turned down the hall. At the end of the hallway, a face appeared. Two faces. Three, layered. As the threshold approached and widened with perspective of the room, it became apparent.

We dove into a sea of bodies. Bodies on the floor sitting cross-legged, bodies against the wall standing, bodies layered on bodies. There were people from school - Jenny was front and center - but there were few I could recognize individually in this sea. The people were amass amid the scent of coffee and cinnamon, sweet cream and nutmeg. Was that hundreds of bodies? And fabric? And cologne?!

They clapped, cheered, and we walked awash in the cotton of applause. We entered this storm. There must have been seventy-five people in that tiny room. More?

The windows of the restaurant dripped with condensation, foggy like a late night drive. It was incredible. They were all here for us.

John sat at his drums, and began a beat as we pulled our guitars over our heads.

The hum of the amplifiers.

I turned to Kurt and nodded. He nodded.

I turned to Steve and nodded. He nodded.

I turned to John and nodded. He nodded.

The hi-hats counted out. One, I turned back to the audience. Two, I approached the mic. Three, I positioned my hand and raised my pick. A silent four, and I looked up.

My hand dropped through space.

The pick made contact.