Entry #676796, added on 11-18-09 @ 11:02 pm EST
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| yesterday, nothing. today, 4226! Woohoo! | Entry #676796 |
Time whizzed by like the last week of summer vacation. Everything was going perfectly: studio time was flawless, and their CD was ready for distribution by the end of the week, looking really professional with Jess’s cool album art. Uncle Razz booked them two more gigs before they travelled to Vancouver for the regional Band Wars championships: they played SWC’s Welcome Back dance, followed by a DJ and insane levels of enthusiasm. Then, they went to the next level, playing “Open Mic Night” at Wannamaker Dinner Theatre. Again, they were allowed fifteen minutes, three songs, but the audience demanded an encore and Razzamatazz became the first amateur band to get a second time slot in one “Open Mic Night” in the history of Wannamaker Dinner Theatre.
Uncle Razz took his managerial position very seriously, and reduced his hours at his real job so he could put more time and effort into managing Razzamatazz, and it wasn’t just because his name was in theirs. “You kids have something here,” he explained, “and with my help, I think you’re gonna take it all the way.”
Uncle Razz got their version of “Maniac” in the soundtrack for a full-on Hollywood movie, Pump it Up, the movie version of the dance video game. He found eight online venues for selling their CD, and promoted their music the ‘old fashioned’ way, by sending “Turn Up the Radio” to radio stations across the country.
That’s why they skipped playing in bars and clubs all together. By the time Josh was turning 18, old enough to work in licensed establishments in Alberta, Sony was signing a six-record deal and re-recording all their music in their top-of-the-line studios. Sony decided to release “Maniac” as their official debut single, and within days their Sony music video was enjoying top-gainer airtime on MTV and MuchMusic.
The video was simple; basically it focused on how good-looking they all were, by switching between footage of a fake performance on a fake stage with no audience, and footage of the four of them hanging out in a park and looking amazing, with an animation technique called rotoscoping, where some frames from the live film were coloured over with a digital crayon effect, which made an otherwise very ordinary video look really cool.
It doesn’t take long to rocket to stardom, with the right combination of a good idea, good looks, and a great manager.
Soon, they were touring. Touring meant a nifty tour bus, that was like a really shiny RV inside. Uncle Razz got tears in his eyes when he signed the lease with Music Biz Coach: “It’s biodiesel friendly,” he said with a sniff, wiping a single tear from his left lashes.
Razzamatazz ran through their new mobile accommodations with joyous anticipation.
Josh poked at a console behind the driver’s seat. “Ipod stations,” he shouted, sticking the extending cable into his Nano.
“I get this bunk,” Braden said, climbing up into a shiny black fold-away upper bunk in the rear of the bus. “Dude! a TV! This is the life!”
Sliding onto the leather bench surrounding the dining table at the center of the bus, Matt exclaimed, “Is that an X-Box?”
Jess fingered an apple in the complementary fruit basket in the bus’s kitchenette, and slid into the other side of the bench to start up her laptop.
Eyeing her, Matt said, “Your going to work?”
“The pamphlet said there was wireless internet,” Jess explained.
Braden, off the bunk and now flipping through the magnetically closing cupboards and closets, said, “Oh, I get it. Can’t live for weeks on the road without your internet porn, eh?”
Jess ignored him.
Each of the band members had their own agenda for the tour.
Josh saw it as an opportunity to meet lots of chicks. During concerts, he made eye contact with as many female audience members as he could, while still managing to get his playing, on the keyboard that is, mostly right. Indeed, their first show brought him a plethora of groupies. He chose the girl with “I Josh” handwritten on her tight white t-shirt and took her to the tour bus. Within weeks, pictures of Josh with various well-known teenage celebrities were surfacing on internet sites and teenybopper magazines everywhere. Indeed, Kristen Stewart twittered about him.
Matt, always the sensible one, was planning for the future. He spent hours on the tour bus researching one-hit wonder potentials for inclusion on their next album. Downloading and listening to hits from various lists, looking up the artists on wiki to make sure they indeed were wonders of only one hit, imposing rules (“For our purposes, it counts as a one-hit wonder if only one of their songs ever went to number one on Billboard. Number two doesn’t count. And these European hits and UK hits don’t count. Look at these guys – wankers.”) Matt checked licensing and started to learn some of the behind-the-scenes business stuff during his chats with Uncle Razz.
Jess wanted to start incorporating some traditional Native American drumming in their songs. She wanted to use the hand drum on tour, and on their next album, she wanted to hire some circle drummers to perform on one or two tracks.
“What’s the point?” Braden asked her. “I mean, why change anything now?”
Matt answered for her. “I think it’s an ok idea. Like, we’re just covering other bands’ songs. Maybe we should add a, like, personal twist.”
“We’re not all Indians, dumbass,” Braden said.
“No, but our drummer is, and we’re talking about some personalization in the drum beats. She’s not asking you to do a war dance and go whoop whoop whoop,” Matt did a classic western movie war cry, patting his hand over his open mouth. Jess smiled.
Josh got up from the table where they were all sitting and started dancing around the tour bus doing his really feeble imitation of a spaghetti western Indian, and Matt put him out of his misery with a shot from his finger six-shooter.
Braden looked right at Jess and said, “Look, if you want to embrace your heritage, go for it. Go to pow-wows or whatever. Get drunk. But leave the band out of it.”
Jess shot a death look at Braden, got up, and slammed into the back room, the bus’s sleeping quarters. Matt said, “arsehole” to Braden and followed her. Confused, Josh tried to figure out how he could continue worshipping his idol, Braden, when even he knew that was a dirty crack, but eventually followed Matt.
With a heavy sigh, Braden flipped on the Xbox.
From her bunk, Jess said, “I quit.”
“Don’t,” Matt said. “I know he’s an arsehole. But we need you.”
Jess’s voice was so low they could barely hear her. “Not all Indians are drunks,” she said.
“I know,” Matt said.
Josh came in and sat on the edge of the lower bunk, Matt’s bunk, next to Matt. “Sorry, Jess,” he said.
It was a long time before anyone said anything else. Matt was trying to think of how to explain Braden to Jess. Finally he said, “Look, I like your idea. So does Josh.”
Josh nodded his agreement, his head bobbing so fast his lion’s mane looked like it would flip right off his head.
“Three against one,” Matt said. “Braden might think he’s boss, but he ain’t.”
“It’s not that,” Jess said.
The others waited for her to go on. Her black-denim-jacket sleeve was across her face, but the muffled quick breathing from underneath eventually told them that she was crying. Being guys, neither knew what they were supposed to do.
Josh whispered, “I hate when chicks cry.”
“Shut up, wanker,” Matt hissed.
Jess sniffled a laugh, and moved the arm up a bit.
“I wanted…” she said.
Nothing.
“Wanted?” Matt asked.
She sighed. “It’s hard to explain,” she said.
“Yeah, and we’re kinda dumb,” Matt said, “But give us a try.”
Her pretty pink lips smiled below the jacket sleeve.
“People don’t really know much about Indians,” she said.
“Yeah, cuz, like…” Matt tried to have this conversation, but it was harder than he thought it should be. People didn’t know much about Indians, including him, and he didn’t really know why not.
Josh said, “Cuz of, like, stereotypes.”
A rare lucid moment. Josh was the one who had to actually pay attention in school to get passing grades, though. Matt looked at him.
“Yeah,” Jess said. “Most people think like Braden does, that we’re all drunks. Because of media, and reserves; I mean, a lot of Indians do have problems, with drinking and stuff…”
“But you wanted to be the famous Indian drummer girl, and change perceptions?” Matt asked.
Jess smiled again. “Sort of,” she said. “Not exactly like that, but I thought, if I can show that we don’t have to abandon our heritage to enter the general population, maybe more Indians will be, like, inspired or something.”
“You wanted to be a leader among your people,” Matt said, “by taking Native drumming into the limelight.”
Jess took the arm off her face and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Take your hand drum on stage with you next show,” Matt said. “We’ll back you up. Right mate?”
Josh did his goofy nod again. “Yeah.”
Jess sat up. “It’s not that,” she said. “I can’t stand Braden. He’s such a dick.”
“Well,” Matt said. He still hadn’t come up with how to explain Braden to Jess, but they couldn’t afford to lose her. She was the one in the group with the most talent, and the most drive. Matt wasn’t sure, but he suspected that at some point they would fall apart if they lost her. She was the only one that took them really seriously; she and Uncle Razz.
“Braden,” he said, “he isn’t really a dick. I mean…”
“He has absolutely no respect for me at all,” she said.
“Yeah,” Josh piped in. “He calls her the token female and token minority. He won’t admit that Jess’s awesome.”
Jess gave Josh a sweet smile, and her cheeks pinked up to match her puffy red eyes and nose.
Matt said, “Yeah, but he does that because he’s scared s***less of Jess and her awesomeness.”
“He’s not scared of anything,” Jess said.
Matt explained. “Braden’s used to being the most amazing person around. His parents taught him that. As long as I’ve known him, he’s never had any competition for sheer awesomeness. So you, you join our band, right. Braden didn’t really mean anything by starting a band, just another way to showcase his face and make people think he’s cool.”
“Like,” said Josh.
Jess said, “So, what does that have to do with me?”
“You know,” Matt said. “You have mean talent on those drums.”
“Well, you guys have talent.”
“Right, but, that’s ok, cuz we’re Braden’s buddies, and we joined his band to back him up, you know, while he parades his face in front of the world. But you, you really want to make music and take it places.”
Jess thought a bit, then said, “So this band, it’s more important to me than it is to him? And that intimidates him?”
“It terrifies him,” Matt said. “Because you’re real. He’s just messing around. I think he’s scared you’ll expose him. Maybe even that you’ll expect us to do something, like, real, with this band. And he won’t be able to.”
Jess thought some more. Josh was pulling his hair down and trying to look at it.
“Well,” Jess said, “I still want to do some Native drumming in the songs.”
“Yeah, cool,” Matt said. “I’ll try to get Braden to stop being such a dick to you.”
Jess smiled. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Yeah, it does,” Matt said. “Move, douchebag,” he said to Josh, stretching out on his bunk. “All that intense philosophizing made me tired. I think I’ll watch some sweet, high-res satellite TV for a bit.”
So that was how it came to be that Jess, unrestrained by Braden, walked onto stage for their next show holding her hand drum. They were opening for The Jonas Brothers for this portion of the tour, ten shows. “The Jonas Brothers will never have anything as cool as a Cree hand drum,” Uncle Razz said. With four against one, Braden didn’t have another word to say on the subject.
She didn’t use it much. She counted them in on a couple of songs with it, tom tom tom tom. But it was noticed, and Jessica Wildcat’s ethnicity and background became the subject of many the blog/tabloid article/facebook group for the next several weeks. At the next show, still opening for Jonas Brothers, she used it for “Somebody’s Watching Me”, because it had the simplest drum beat and sounded really cool with the hand drum. After that, the hand drum became the standard beat for “Somebody’s Watching Me”, “Come on Eileen”, “How Bizarre”, and “Too Shy” at all their shows. According to Billboard.com, it gave their otherwise unoriginal sound a whole new dimension. It was their first write-up in a reputable source. Uncle Razz printed it off and stuck it up on their mini-fridge. Braden took the whole thing without a word, and maintained his usual happy-go-lucky, flamboyant frontman façade.
Three things then happened simultaneously, but still nothing shook Braden’s resolve to shoot to fame and stardom without doing a fleck of work.
First, Jess was the first of them to be interviewed. It was obvious that Braden thought flamboyant frontmen should always be the subject of interviews, but he took it in stride. Besides, she was being interviewed by a First Nations magazine published in Saskatchewan, so he didn’t think it was a big deal. Jess did, though.
Second, their Sony publicist strongly suggested that they write some songs for their second CD. Another CD of covers wouldn’t be taken seriously. Braden was the opinion of, so what? Millions of teenagers across the globe were hopelessly in love with them. Who needed seriousness?
Third, perhaps the most crushing blow of all came when it was discovered, and quickly spread around the entire world via the ever-present internet, that Braden was lip-syncing. He still didn’t get his interview, but Uncle Razz and Jim Fields, their Sony publicist, both made public statements that nobody ever tried to cover up the fact that he lip-synced, that the recordings were his own voice, so he wasn’t some sort of ghost of Milli Vanilli, and that they (his manager and publicist) insisted that he pre-record and lip-sync so he could put all his energy into his vivacious stage-show.
No matter what the critics said about Braden and which big words his people used in his defense, his zillions of adoring fans continued to adore him. “Braden’s hot, who cares if he can sing?” famously twittered one fan.
Despite everything, Braden, and therefore his faithful companion Josh, blithely bounded forward with fame and fortune and everything that goes. Josh was lucky that he had Uncle Razz to stop him from destroying himself in the back of the tour bus; he took a groupie or three back with him after every show, and many of them had all sorts of nasty habits. Luckily for Josh, he was bright enough to listen to Uncle Razz’s advice and just stuck to ‘messing around’, as he put it.
Jess had her share of fans, but she was either too shy or too sensible to talk to any of them. Matt, considered the most attractive of the boys in many circles, maintained his isolation, what some would call his aloofness, and what others would call his gayness.
Braden, constantly high on adoration, danced and lip synced his sheer joy with unabating energy and perpetual enthusiasm. He did enjoy his share of groupies, too. But nothing lasts forever. Not even Braden’s arrogant bliss was indestructible.
During the third phase of their tour, they were opening for Lady Gaga. At some shows, a local band joined the opening acts. In this case, it was a sort of folky act consisting of two guys and a chick. The chick did guitar and sang, sitting on a stool. She had long, straight hair that hung like a curtain and draped over her petite shoulders, neatly framing an idealistic face, large honey-brown eyes filled with hope for a super-fantastic future, with world peace and no famine, disease, or animal cruelty. Somehow, despite his anti-idealism, Braden, who generally laughed in the face of morals, was smitten.
He spoke with her for about seventeen seconds before her show, long enough to notice the distinctive color of her eyes and how perfectly it matched her satiny hair and not have a clue what she had said to him. Her haunting, hopeful melodies, songs about peace-loving lions and making love not war that he normally would have poked fun at, suddenly made sense to him, and he stood backstage listening to every word, mesmerized, enraptured.
During the seconds after her show and before theirs, Braden managed to stammer “You, uh, that was… I really like… ok, so…” before Uncle Razz stuck his headset over his delightfully haphazard blondness and kicked his ass in the general direction of on-stage.
The girl, Amber, and her bandmates were still there when they finished their forty-minute set, about half their debut album plus a couple of one-hit covers they had been working on for the next album, just sitting there backstage. Amber reintroduced herself to Braden.
“It’s really an honor to be meeting you,” she said. She was terribly eloquent. She didn’t talk like a teenager at all. During their show, she had put on a little scrunchy beige corduroy hat that just made her look that much cuter.
Braden, usually so sure of himself, stammered some more.
“Uh-oh,” Matt said, and led Jess, smirking, back to the bus. They had watched Lady Gaga the first few shows, and although they thought she was an impressively creative performer with a great voice and unique kaleidoscope of style, they’d seen enough of her for the time being and wanted to relax. Josh fell right in with a gaggle of giggling groupies; opening for Lady Gaga was way better than opening for The Jonas Brothers, in his opinion. The two boys that came with Amber were fixated on the Gaga show, though, leaving Braden for once uncomfortably alone with a girl.
And what a girl.
She peered longingly at Braden, but it wasn’t the usual longing of ‘OMG he’s so cute!’ that girls usually peered at him with; she longed to get to the bottom of his confidence, his charisma, his blanket ability to be popular.
“I think your show is really fantastic,” she said.
“Thanks, I’m just, I’m dancing. I lip-sync, you know,” he said. He felt the need to explain himself and live up to her compliment.
Amber smiled, a warm, neat-toothed smile that pushed up the corners of her honey eyes with cheerful little lines that said ‘I’m the most honest, caring, delightful person you’re ever going to meet’. Her eyes said that, while her mouth said “I know, but I mean, the amount of energy you put into your show. That’s what your audience loves. Everybody wants to be up there, dancing with you. You’re like a gymnast, you’re so…”
Braden’s heart felt like it was being squeezed in a lemon juicer. Her complement meant more than the adoration of a million untouchable girls. Her eyes were flicking back and forth in front of his for once disarmed face, as if she was trying to look past his countenance and into his thoughts. He felt he ought to say something, or she’d think he was a complete moron and disappear from his life. The incredible urge to keep her in front of him made him say “Your songs are cool.”
Cool? Of all the lame, stupid, she would know he was a moron now. But she nodded slowly and did that eye-scrunching smile again. “Thanks. I’m trying to incorporate a catchy style with meaningful lyrics, but without being preachy. You know?”
He didn’t really know; his songs were selected for hit-ability, not meaning or level of preachiness. He decided to discuss the one song that had made the most sense to him, the one about the peace-loving lion. “I like your song about the lion,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. “I used the lion as a symbol, like, for, like a conglomeration of world powers. I know it could stand for the UK, but I kind of want it to symbolize all of them. That’s why I incorporated the eagle, and…” Her eyes said that she thought she’d lost him.
Braden was not to be lost. “And the dragon,” he said. “For China.”
“Right!” Amber cried. “But the idea is also from the Bible, you know? Like, the lion shall lie with the lamb.”
Good Lord, this girl was deep. Braden tried to imagine he was sitting in English class, to get back into scholarly literary mode. “But in the Bible,” he said, grasping at something he’d seen on The Simpsons once, “Three years of world peace come before a thousand year war, and THEN the lion lies with the lamb.”
“Wow,” Amber said. “I didn’t expect to be debating with a theology professor tonight! I just was referring to the lion instead of a different animal, because of its biblical connotations. Not, like…”
“Yeah, cool,” Braden said, “the lion is more significant that, say, a tiger or a shark, even though they’re all, like, violent and stuff…”
“Exactly,” she said. Then she smiled that KO smile again, and its punch sent Braden’s brain right out the back of his head.
He was forced to change the subject, so, not wanting to lapse the conversation too much, he reverted to the one subject he could never run out of: himself. “Our music is more, like, just fun,” he said. “I think, like, once we get the world’s attention, then we can start, you know, saying stuff.”
Amber nodded. “That’s really smart,” she said.
You bet it was. The idea had never crossed Braden’s mind before, and in fact he didn’t like it much now, but how could he explain that to Amber?
“I heard you guys are working on your next album now,” she said. “So, are you going to have some new material on it? I mean, stuff you wrote yourself?”
Braden nodded. He could feel his lie, not just a lie but a complete and utter falsification of everything he stood for, growing exponentially, like a hot air balloon with the heater turned up all the way and a bottomless tank of fuel. Every nod of his head, the fire got hotter. Time for another subject change… from the always fascinating topic of him to… her?
“Yeah,” he said. “So,” and what do you ask a girl, that will get her talking? Braden was normally good at getting into the minds of girls, but this was no ordinary girl. Her music. That was her topic. “You write your own songs?”
“Yeah, I write the lyrics, and, like, Joel, that’s the bassist, he plays guitar too, and he, basically, like, writes the melodies for the lyrics. Um… after… well, we kind of work together.” She thought a moment. “But not, together, together, we’re not, like, together, we just… work together.” She giggled sheepishly at her very poorly concealed attempt to let Braden know she was AVAILABLE.
Braden salvaged her pride by sticking with the topic of her music. “Are all your songs political and stuff?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she said, relieved at his letting her blatant appeal slip away, “like, I’m into a lot of issues. Environment, women’s rights,”
“Animal rights,” Braden said.
“Yep, animal rights, for sure,” she said. “Are you a vegetarian?”
“Uh, um… not entirely,” Braden said. “I don’t… I like to, you know, I like some meat.” For her, he would like vegetables, though. “Are you?”
Amber nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Do you know, the way commercial farms keep animals, it’s terrible. Have you ever seen a chicken farm?”
Braden shook his head no, smirking. She was so passionate about every thought she had.
“The chickens, like the ones they serve at, like, KFC, they’re kept in little wire cages so small they can barely move, and the bottoms are just wire so the chickens’ feet get all mangled,” she illustrated by bringing her hands up, rigid and tense like claws; she had delightful hands, small, slender, pink-skinned like a child’s. “And their feed comes through a little trough in front of the cages. It’s made of by-products. Ground up bones of other animals and stuff,” she said, grimacing. “I can’t bear to eat those poor creatures.”
“Poor chickens,” Braden said. “They should be walking around a sunny farmyard, pecking kernels of corn with their chicken buddies.”
“Exactly,” Amber agreed, with a nod of her little chin, and gazed into his eyes with earnest.
Amber and her boys opened for Razzamatazz at the next two shows, both in Georgia, and were then booked in Florida, too. All in all Braden was able to spend every waking moment with her for a period of nearly two weeks. That was just long enough to fall hopelessly in love.
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© Copyright 2009 katt (UN: kattbee at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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