FicWad

7. "Hello, welcome to the show"


The day of our first gig was a Saturday, which allowed my three band members to spend plenty of time dressing up, dumping tons of colored creamy liquids in their faces and grooming each other´s hair. (Seriously, the last time I saw something like that I was in front of the monkey cage at the zoo with my fourth grade class. The girls smelled better though.)

I had followed the threesome into Joyce´s bathroom with a magazine. Every now and then I would look up from an article to check how far they had gotten in the meantime. I was in my checkered pants, the Clash top and a green hoodie. While Fox was toweling her wet hair off she looked at me and said, "Sweety, you´re gonna lose that hoodie when we´re on stage, right? Cos you got a nice pair of boobs and we want the kids in the crowd to remember us ´n´ stuff."

My eyes widened as I looked at her. I pulled up my zipper to the very top.

Joyce who had watched me giggled, "Ah, you know, it usually helps when we ladies try to look extra good during a performance." I was starting to wonder what kind of ´performance´ they intended to stage. Probably I should have brought my go-go dancing boots. (Nah.) "We girls have to take a lot of shit from people in the music scene. There´s tons of pricks who don´t think we´re up to it cos we don´t have dicks."

I didn´t understand how putting on opera fashioned make-up and semi-slutty clothes would be fighting that prejudice but I nodded anyway.

"I got a lipstick that would go so well with your hair color.", Nadine´s eyes wandered over to me.

"I wasn´t aware that my natural lip color clashes with my hair.", I attempted to avoid letting my band mates use my face as their canvas.

"And I´m thinking a little mascara couldn´t hurt either.", Fox sneered at me.

"Actually I used some this morning.", I informed her.

"´Fraid I can´t see that, sweetheart."

I sighed, walked over to the mirror and applied some of the brownish red lip stick and even more black mascara. It didn´t look all that bad. When Joyce looked at my hair suspiciously, that´s where I drew the line though. "My hair stays that way. I´m not your barbie doll!"

"Take a chill pill.", Nadine advised me.

Fox shook her head, "What´s wrong with trying to improve your looks? Don´t you wanna look pretty?"

"I´m fairly contempt with my appearance, thank you.", I snapped back. This was starting to annoy me. If they put half as much effort into improving their music skills as they did into coloring their little faces and putting clips into their punky hair-dos we´d be better off. "I thought we were part of a music show and not a beauty pageant for the Warped Tour´s teenyboppers."

I must have looked funny to Joyce as she burst into laughter and shook her head slightly. After she had calmed down she tried to appease me, "Well, what matters is that you feel comfortable. We don´t want you to do something you don´t wanna do. That would only affect your performance on stage."

"Thank you.", I said, still semi-angry, and sat back down on the rim of the bath tub.

"I´m surprised she knows what Warped Tour is.", Nadine whispered to Fox.

Somewhat ashamed of my overreaction I decided to leave the battlefield of estrogen and informed the others that I was heading for the garage to go over the bass lines for the songs we´d perform later again.

Joyce nodded at me and smiled.

On my way to the garage I passed a mirror and stopped. I removed the elastic band from my hair and fluffed it out, resembling Claudio from Coheed and Cambria all of a sudden. (How do you like my Alternative Press knowledge, Nadine?) Then I continued my way to the garage. When I had made it halfway down the stairs to the ground floor I heard somebody playing the drums. I entered the garage to find Andy there.

"Hello, bass -", he looked up at me, "babe?"

I blushed and he laughed. "You look different."

Yes, a bit of lip stick and my hair not in a pigtail turned me into a completely different person. Hm, whas that different good or different bad?

I walked over to my bass, "I guess I was prone for some external adjustment to your sister and the others."

"As if you needed that..."

I said nothing and picked up my instrument. "I mean you´re the best musician in the band. You´re probably the only one who is technically allowed to be called a musician.", Andy laughed lightly. My heart sank a little, I thought he was complimenting my looks. Damnit, those girls had messed with my head.

I switched on the bass amp, "You don´t mind if I practice a little, do you?"

"Not at all.", the guy replied. He put his drum sticks down and surveyed me from behind his drums as I was going through the three songs we had planned to play at the youth club.

_ _ _ _ _


"Give it up for ´Pretty in Punk´!", the presenter screamed into the mike before he left the stage to us. I detected the guys in the crowd, looking at us with expectation. Andy yelled "Yeah!" and Joe was smiling at Nadine, giving her a thumb up. Patrick was tugging at his hat - it was a less ugly item this time, probably a sign of showing us respect on our very first show - and didn´t look directly at us.

Fox hit the bass drum a few times and counted backwards from four to one. (Very imaginative start for a performance, I know.) Nadine was supposed to start on the lead guitar but she didn´t. Joyce, Fox and I looked at her. She looked back at us, biting her lower lip. What? Did she have stage fright?

Fox repeated the earlier routine, "One, two, three, FOUR!" Still no movement or sound from Nadine. By now she was staring helplessly on the floor of the stage. Some people in the crowd started to giggle. I could see Joe shaking his head, Patrick and Andy were taking glances at every single one of us and looked rather sympathetic.

Joyce was about to walk over to Nadine, probably to ask her what was going on as someone screamed, "Are you gonna play tonight, girls, or are you just there to look pretty... in punk? Ha ha." Man, we seriously had to do something about the band name.

"What the heck...", Joyce said and started playing Nadine´s intro part. A few bars into the song Fox and I joined her. While Joyce was taking the lyrics to the second verse I looked over to Nadine. She looked pretty lost.

It´s funny how I´m timid and shy when I´m around new people. Sometimes I don´t know how to get into a conversation and things like that. However, I´m confident when it comes to letting my bass speak up for me so it probably wasn´t surprising that the crowd (ok, it was a rather small one) wasn´t making me too nervous to play. I knew my bass lines by heart, I had been playing them back and forth on my instrument and in my head whenever I had found the time. In fact, I had even thought about little alternations to them to make them somewhat more interesting and fun to play. I had decided to talk to the other girls about them after they had gotten more used to me and I would feel comfortable enough to suggest to ´improve´ our material.

Our first song was over. Joyce looked at me and motioned her head towards Nadine. I guessed she wanted me to check on her. Probably it would have been a better idea to have Fox do that, considering that they´ve been friends for a longer time than the females and I. Also, there had been the bathroom drama earlier. But I could see it would have looked even sillier to have our drummer crawl out from behind her drum set and so I headed over to the other side of the stage to the paralyzed Nadine. Joyce tried to entertain the crowd. She introduced all of us and then started telling naughty jokes...

Really, Joyce could have done anything and the crowd would have loved her. She could have picked her nose and they would have shouted "Encore! Encore!" She reflected so much self-confidence and yeah, she looked gorgeous in her punk outfit again today - what´s new?

"Hey, what´s up? Stage fright?", I asked Nadine while the crowd was cheering at Joyce´s one-woman show.

"All of a sudden I forgot like every single note.", she looked at me sadly.

"Things like that happen.", was my lame attempt at comforting her. "Do you remember the notes to ´Screwdriver´?", I asked, referring to the next song on our short set list.

She put the guitar strap over her head and then put her isntrument down, "I don´t think so."

"It goes something like that.", I started humming her parts to her.

"It´s no use.", the girl pressed her guitar into my hands. Then she left the stage. A few people in the crowd pointed at her. That´s when Joyce turned to me with having an inquiring look on her face. I walked over to her and the mike and announced, "Our lead guitarist is sick. Sorry." That was the best I could come up with to try and save Nadine´s face.

I covered the mike. "Can you play the lead guitar for the other two songs as well?", I asked Joyce.

"Ah, I probably could if I didn´t have to sing at the same time." I frowned. That was just great. Now I was getting kinda nervous in front of all these people.

I turned around to look at Fox. She sat behind her drum set, shaking her head before letting it drop into her hands at chest-level. Very helpful.

Joyce and I looked for our guy friends. Joe was gone, probably looking for Nadine. Patrick and Andy were talking to each other, then they came closer to the stage. "Want Patrick to fill in for Nadine?", Andy asked his sister and me.

I frowned at Patrick, "Do you know the songs?"

"I think so. ´Screwdriver´ and ´Don´t even talk to me today´, right?", he answered, naming the songs that we wanted to play tonight.

Joyce nodded, "Yeah, that´s a good idea. Come on up." She extended her hand to Patrick and he got on stage. While he adjusted the guitar strap according to his taste Joyce in formed me that Patrick was a "musical genius". Good to know and even better to have one around when your lead guitarist suddenly finds out she suffers from musical amnesia when
confronted with a crowd of about fifty people. (Yeah, that was not a nice thing to think but it stayed inside my head, so no harm done. I was just getting slightly pissed off by this girl band fiasco. Again.)

Patrick led us through our two remaining songs and the crowd seemed rather pleased with our performance when we left the stage. "Thanks, Patrick.", Joyce put her hand on his shoulder and smiled at him. "You saved our asses out there."

He grinned shily at her, "No problem."

Fox and me also thanked him for his help and then we went to search for Nadine. We found her with Joe. They were deeply engrossed in a conversation. Joe tried to keep his voice low but Nadine was shouting.

"Are you kidding me, Joseph?", she yelled at him, looking shocked.

"No, I´m not. I´m sorry.", he heard us approaching and glanced at us quickly. "Yeah, I gotta go now." Nadine stared at him, then she started playing around with her top.

"Bye, guys.", Joe muttered as he passed us.

"Bye.", Joyce´s eyes followed him as he turned around the corner and left the backstage area. Then she glanced at Nadine, "What happened here?"

She burst into tears and told us that he had just broken up with her, snobbing uncontrolably. "You´re kidding.", Joyce shook her head. "What an asshole."

Fox looked disgusted, "That SOB better not come near me anytime soon." Both girls walked over to their crying friend.

I stood around and looked stupid.

Joyce hugged Nadine, "It´ll be alright."

"I´m sorry about tonight. I just forgot how to play...", Nadine pressed her teary face against Joyce´s shoulder. Fox started stroking her hair.

"There, there. Forget about it, there´s more important things right now.", Andy´s sister comforted her.

"Yeah", Fox said with a clam voice, "it´s alright, honey."

I decided I should probably say something encouraging as well so I cleared my throat. They looked at me. Something encouraging, something encouraging... "Ah, I just had a frog in my throat."

"AAAAAHHH!", Nadine cried louder now.

Fox looked at me, kinda angry. I frowned.

"Andy got me a stuffed frog on Valentine´s Day.", Nadine sniffed and then sobbed some more. Alright, I should seriously start working on my acceptance speech for the foot-in-mouth award. For now, I settled for standing around, looking stupid and keeping my mouth the fro- I mean, fuck shut.

After a while Nadine´s sobs grew fainter and she seemed to be getting a hold of herself. Joyce asked her if she wanted to tell her and Fox what was going on with her and Joe. She got a nod for a response and suggested that they would drive over to her house and talk things over in privacy.

I knew that I was probably not welcome to join the girl-to-girl talk and frankly, I didn´t care for it either in my current mood. So I said bye to them and headed out of the backstage area to look for the guys. I guess I was going home with them now. (I still had my hoodie lying around in Joyce´s car but honestly, I wouldn´t have dared to ask to have it back right now: It had a picture of Kermit printed on the backside.)