***
The boy—Grant, we learned his name was—was far from the best drummer. He had his own set, but he took so long to set it up that I doubted he practiced on it much. Once he got started, he kept losing the beat and playing notes twice. In so many ways, he was where we’d been two years before.
After his try-out, we thanked him for his time and told him we’d talk about it. I was as nice as possible, and in return he bought another copy of our CD for his friend. After a few days of discussing we decided not to accept him, but he was really gracious about it. He even asked if we wanted to hang out some time, outside of practice.
Diane set us up for another gig, at a local bar we weren’t even old enough to enter… Except for the fact that we were the night’s entertainment. It was funny in a way; one of the supposed perks was free drinks all night, but the only drinks they stocked that we could order were diet cokes and tonic waters.
Besides that, I knew the audience wouldn’t be the same as before. When I mentioned that to Diane, she just dismissed it, but I knew—knew—that the people we’d be playing for weren’t our audience.
I tried telling myself it would be good for us to have more practice in front of a less receptive audience, but darn it… I’d had enough of that. What I couldn’t get enough of were shows like the Underground Club, shows where I could personally meet fans and tell that they were sold on us.
Regardless, we started setting up at six. The venue had wooden walls, round tables with padded stools gathered around them, and a sixteen foot long bar. It looked more like the place where a Taylor Swift-type would make her bones than a punk rock band, but at least there was a decent crowd: somewhere around fifty people. There was only one who looked like he was under thirty.
“Hey everyone. We’re Auburn.” No one paid me much mind; they were busy in their own conversations. Charlie and I shared a shrug at the lukewarm welcome. “Um, okay. Well, anyway, this is Starstruck Lullaby.”
We got a little attention as the song started, but even after I began to sing all I could see were sidelong glances from the patrons, often as not followed by an eye roll. I got more animated, putting more emotion into the song like I’d learned at the Underground Club. But the harder I made it to ignore me, the more eye rolls I got.
“Pass me by,” I sang, giving up and dropping into a soft melody for the final bars of the song, “Whoa, pass me by. In this starstruck lullaby. Just pass me by tonight.”
Quiet seemed to be the right way to play things. Being quiet got me fewer eye rolls. It made sense when I thought about it; unlike the Underground Club, we weren’t the main attraction. Heck, we weren’t even in the top three. Our job at the bar was as little more than a radio, some noise in the background so the lonely drinkers didn’t have to listen to their own thoughts.
Before the next song started, I didn’t even say the name. I just turned to the boys and whispered, “Jaded.”
We hadn’t played Jaded in a while, probably because it was our first song and I felt like we’d grown so much since freshman year.
From the first verse, I could tell I’d picked wrong. “Feeling lost, twisted and confused. Abused like a puppet, caught up in a winter tempest.” The eye rolls became something more; at the closest table, I saw a man with a goatee lean over to his friend, look at me and say something, and pull back laughing.
But I’d suffered worse. The song itself reminded me of everything I’d been through. I kept singing for Ashley—not Ashley, the up-and-coming punk rock singer; Ashley, the scared freshman girl who’d just wanted to disappear in every hidden corner of the world. If she could only see me now, I thought.
As the night wore on, I got better at picking songs. We got the best reaction with our softer stuff, so I started repeating Starstruck Lullaby and Early Flight. The first time we played Early Flight a few of the people who’d rolled their eyes actually nodded appreciatively.
We were supposed to play until eight, which meant we had to do a lot of covers of Queen Anne’s and Falling Dutchman. The general inattention worked to our favor, since hardly anyone noticed or cared that the songs weren’t ours. In fact, I started enjoying the performance. It was different than the Underground Club, but in a way it felt just like practice; we were background music, but playing background music could be just as fun as taking center stage. Especially when I reminded myself that we’d be splitting seventy dollars. The agreement was for two hundred and fifty, but Diane got her cut and two-thirds of what was left still got reinvested.
Even though I wasn’t a math whiz, I knew the pay worked out to more than minimum wage. Considering our main purpose behind being there was getting experience, the money was a nice added bonus.
We left the bar to a short round of applause, but that might have just been because they were happy we were done. Outside the double doors, night had fallen, leaving only the street lights to see by. Their yellow light bathed the busy corner. I breathed in and smiled for no reason at all.
Charlie turned left and headed down the block. I wasn’t sure why, since Joey had parked in the opposite direction, but I followed him to see where he was going.
I got my answer when he stopped at a patch of sidewalk, tapping his foot against it with a frown. “Did you guys know this was where we were performing?” he asked, looking up at Joey and me.
I shook my head. “No, not before now.” It was the street corner where we’d played for tips, where Principal Wroth had approached us.
“It’s just a bit of concrete,” Joey said. “So what?”
Charlie shook his head, his tongue stuck between his teeth as he thought. “It’s not just a patch of concrete. Any more than the three of us are just kids playing instruments, or songs are just poems set to a melody. This means something, for all of us.”
“Back where we began?” I asked, not sure what he was getting at.
“No, not that either. I mean, physically, yes. We’re back where we began. But not really, when you consider where we’re at in our lives. We’re in a whole new place. And I think that’s kind of cool.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just nodded.
“I think I’m gonna get a car,” Joey said with a half-grin. “With all the money we’re making. Can we use the band funds for that? Since we’re using my car for transportation anyway?”
Well, that’s a little selfish, I thought. “Um… No, I don’t think we can use our money to buy you a car. Maybe we could pay for gas or something, but no car.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “No car for you. Unless it comes in a Hot Wheels box.”
Joey laughed. “Deal! I’m gonna get one of those ones that costs thirty thousand dollars off Ebay, and then I can trade it in for a real car.”
As if we’d ever be able to afford a thirty thousand dollar Hot Wheel car.