Chapter 30: No Fear! (The Album)

Medway High School Gym, Arva, Ontario

5:28pm, Saturday, December 8, 1979

After fifteen seconds of Lynette’s keyboards and Kalena’s violin sounds, Sammy on her acoustic guitar, Eda and Lisa all softly added their instruments to the eerie sounds of our introduction to Rock N’ Roll Dreams Come Through. I told my band mates I wanted to start with this song as a show of support for Sammy, after her harrowing experience at Friday’s Montcalm house. While Sammy gave me a little bit of grief over this, she pretty much knew she was going to lose out on this opening song decision.

When the five girls created their mysterious vocal ‘woos’ and groans, Brad nodded to me and hit the switch to open the curtains. The crowd roared as the mezzanine spotlight shone first on Eda as she lightly rapped out the backbeat to this song. Both spotlights then flashed across the stage as curtains revealed all five of the girls playing their instruments. I then walked out from beside Brad’s hidden location to sing:

While a lot of our friends and fans had heard us play this song before, we never had Kalena join us and play her violin on it. My time-travelling daughter’s instrument created a truly unique mysterious vibe for this song as we continued with this hauntingly beautiful song. Lynette and Lisa created a wonderful harmony with my vocals as I sang the chorus, as well as with some of the second verse’s lyrics.

After I ended my melancholy guitar solo, I turned Silverburst around to my back and walked over to Kalena. I then pulled her over beside Sammy’s acoustic guitar playing location. Once more with just the five girls playing softly in the background, I stared out into the darkened gym and said, “Fear! ... Fear is the one word that can disrupt everything we hold dear. Fear ... of never seeing your mother, again ... after being adopted by a loving foreign family,” I said as I squeezed Kalena to my torso and gave her a kiss on her forehead.

“Fear ... of being drugged and assaulted by thugs at a house party,” I then said as I pulled Sammy into my body with my other hand. After kissing her cheek, I let both girls go and walked over to Lisa playing her new purple bass. With a smile and a kiss, I said to her, “Fear ... of some crazy ass medical condition, which can flare up and cause you pain at any time.”

I then turned and waved back at Eda and Lynette and said, “Fear ... of being naked on national television, in front of millions of viewers and thousands in the audience.” I then pointed to myself and said, “Fear! Fear! Fear! ... For my, for all our futures... Fear! The one emotion can destroy our lives ... But, but there is one word ... one emotion ... that can conquer fear, and that is ... Love. By opening our hearts to each other, our love can wipe away all our fears. So ... how about we let our love shine, as we bring this school to its knees with...”

Without hearing what I had planned on saying to them, my band mates still instantly knew to fire it into overdrive with their instruments, just prior to my powerful vocals:

“I treasure your love,
I never want to lose it.
You’ve been through the fires of hell,
And I know you’ve got the ashes to prove it.
I treasure your love,
I want to show you how to use it.
You’ve been through a lot of pain in the dirt,
And I know you’ve got the scars to prove it.

Remember everything that I told you,
And I’m telling you again that it’s true.
You’re never alone, ‘cause you can put on the phones,
And let the drummer tell your heart what to do.
Keep on believing, and you’ll discover baby. (All the girls sang this line)

There’s always something magic,
There’s always something new.
And when you really, really need it the most,
That’s when rock and roll dreams come through.
The beat is yours, forever,
The beat is always true.
And when you really, really need it the most,
That’s when rock and roll dreams come through.
For you!”

We ended that almost eleven minute song with the four of us ‘mobile musicians’ jamming like demons at the front of the stage. While Kalena’s violin usually has a ‘reserved’ sound to it, I wasn’t surprised that she knew how to make her Stradivarius instrument wail along with our three guitars.

The crowd was shouting, “No Fear! No Fear! No Fear!“ as we took a few moments to regroup after that emotionally draining song.

When I stepped alongside Lynette at keyboards to give her a little kiss, she said, “Doesn’t that sound like a good title for this live album?”

“Smart minds think alike,” Sammy’s voice said through our ear-piece monitors.

“They sure do,” I replied as all five girls gave me a ‘thumbs-up’ or a head nod in recognition of their recommendation for this live album’s title.

With that pretty much decided, I wasn’t surprised when Lisa stepped up to the microphone and said, “Hey, gymnasts and Medway folks! We’re glad you’re here with us as we’re recording this show for a possible Christmas time, live album. We just wanted you to know that ... as well as thank you for giving us the title for our first album!“

The crowd broke out into another round of, ‘No Fear! No Fear! No Fear!“ as Lisa and Eda started to play the beat of their chant. E quickly took control of the situation and adjusted her double-bass drumming to get us into I’d Do Anything for Love. Because this was being recorded, we planned on playing a shortened version of this song by cutting out some of our instrumental aspects before the killer ending segment. Lynette and I loved how Sammy took over the keyboards near the end of the song so Cano could join me out front to sing her solo questions to me:

“Will you raise me up?
Will you help me down?
Will you get me right out of this God forsaken town?
Will you make it all a little less cold?”

“I can do that!
Oh, I can do that!” (I sang my response.)

“Will you hold me sacred?
Will you hold me tight?
Can you colorize my life? I’m so sick of black and white.
Can you make it all a little less old?”

“I can do that.
Oh, oh! Now, I can do that.”

“Will you make me some magic with your own two hands?
Can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand?
Can you give me something I can take home?”

“Now, I can do that.
Oh! Now, I can do that!”

“Will you cater to every fantasy I got?
Will you hose me down with holy water, if I get too hot? (HOT!)
Will you take me places I’ve never known?”

“Now, I can do that.
Oh, oh! Now, I can do that!”

Our playing suddenly died down in intensity as Lynette let out a long sigh and softly sang:

“After a while, you’ll forget everything,
Just a brief interlude, and a midsummer night’s fling.
Then you’ll see that it’s time to move on.”

“I won’t do that.
I won’t do that!”

“I know the territory - I’ve been around.
It’ll all turn to dust, and we’ll all fall down.
And sooner or later, you’ll be screwing around.”

It was my turn to pause after Lynette got right in my face to softly question me with her final line. I took a step back from her, let out my own long sigh and looked out at the darkened, hushed crowd for a moment. I then turned back to my true soulmate in this timeline before I softly sang:

“I won’t do that!
No, No! I won’t do...”

With just Sammy’s soft keyboards playing in the background, I then finished:

“Anything for love,
Oh, I would do anything for love.
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that,
No, I won’t do that.”

Lynette then stepped up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck to plant a smoking hot kiss on my lips. When she stepped back, she moved over to Lisa and gave her a gentler kiss on the lips and said, “Sorry for hogging Cuda on that song, Bricky.”

Lisa just shook her head and said, “I know you two are soul mates. I’m just glad to be a part of your loving group.”

Eda just killed us as she heard those words through her ear-monitors by saying through our monitors, “Are you here to play or get a hotel room?” With that, she jumped right into the opening of our cover of Elvis’ Don’t Be Cruel.

We played a mix of hard driving rock and country songs, and slower rock ballads during our first hour and six minute set. The crowd really loved Sammy’s banjo and Kalena’s fiddlin’ solos on our souped up version of Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy. All of us, except for Eda, had a mini-twenty-to-thirty second solo, but the uniqueness of their banjo and violin solos definitely caught the audience’s attention.

The crowd gave us an appreciative round of applause when Sammy informed them we’d be back for another hour plus set of music after we finished our first set with our combination of All Summer Long and Sweet Home Alabama. We took a fifteen minute break, with the Mrs. Bumstead and the GAA girls providing us with waters as we went into the gym to get with our friends for a few minutes.

I wasn’t too surprised to see that Mr. Murphie and Ms. Thompson had gotten together with Mr. Williamson, St. Georges, Connors, Feelt and Ballows along the side wall of the gymnasium. When our six-foot-seven-inch music teacher waved at us, I led Lynette, Sammy, Eda and Lisa towards those adults.

The Little-Man, Mr. Ballows gave us his version of the evil eye and said, “Mr. Murphie just informed us that you might want to have a backing jazz band during your concert. Just when were you three Yahoos...” he semi-sternly said, pointing to Lynette, Sammy and me, “going to let Stretch and me know about this? We can’t just get our jazz band up to concert quality standards without practice time.”

“Well, we, uh,” Lynette stammered as she turned to me for help.

“Relax! Lynette, Guys!” Mr. Feelt laughed after we all looked like we were going to have heart attacks at our other music teacher’s inquisition. “I think we can put something together with nearly a month’s time ‘till your concert.”

“We’ll have to get together sometime on Monday to go over what you’d like our jazz band to play in your concert, though,” Mr. Ballows laughingly said as Coach St. Georges slapped the diminutive music teacher on his shoulder for so skillfully catching us in the trap they set for us three Medway band members.

“You’re not very nice,” Sammy laughed as she playfully threatened our music teacher with a few ‘air-Martial Arts’ motions.

As the five of us turned to walk back to our friends, Mr. Williamson put his hand on Sammy’s shoulder and asked her how she was doing.

“I’m good, Sir. Thanks. I guess one of the benefits of those knock out drugs is that I can’t really remember what those guys did to me before Mike and Wayne broke into the room to stop their assault,” Sammy softly replied in the somewhat noisy gym.

“Well, if you need to ever talk about it, my office is always available to you,” our VP said as he walked with us back over to our group of friends, along with the girls from St. Mike’s gymnastics’ team.

After briefly talking with Colleen, Lilly, Evy and the identical twins, Toni and Tawni Charlton of St. Mike’s, I tapped Jennifer on her shoulder and said, “You ready to boost the estrogen level up on the stage with us?”

“I suppose I am,” Jennifer chuckled.

“With your high-powered testosterone flowing up there, you’ll need Jennifer to balance things out,” Colleen laughed as she winked at both Jennifer and me.

“Play well, Jenn!” Evy, Lilly and the twins all called out as we started to follow the other Time Bandettes out of the gym to the rear stage door.

“I’ll try,” Jennifer replied over her shoulder as we hustled after the other girls.

Because we weren’t going to play YYZ in today’s show, we allowed Eda to have a brief sixty-five second drum solo to start our second set. She did a masterful, condensed solo before leading us into Ain’t That a Shame. As we rehearsed, Jennifer took on the lead vocal role from Lisa in this song. The crowd, especially the gymnasts in the audience loved seeing and hearing one of their own sing or play on our five song mini-set of Waiting on the Bus, Jesus Just Left Chicago, Old Time Rock N’ Roll, and Love Will Keep Us Alive. Jennifer was as smooth as ever playing her saxophone on Old Time, and skillfully took advantage of the additional soloing time I unexpectedly gave her.

As Jennifer was tearing it up during her solo, I saw both Mr. Murphie and Ms. Thompson grooving to the music near the PE offices. When the CBS Records official saw me nodding down at him, he gave a big ‘thumbs-up’ gesture to let me know he was definitely good with Jennifer playing on these opening songs of our second set.

Sammy did a great job of building up Jennifer’s performance to the crowd, after she sang co-lead with our guest on Love Will Keep Us Alive. I additionally thanked our beautiful brunette saxophonist-vocalist for rejoining our band for those five songs as I switched out Silverburst for my Ibanez twelve-string acoustic guitar. All four of my band mates grabbed their acoustic guitars with Sammy joining me with her twelve string beauty.

I really enjoyed playing Two Steps Behind with all four girls on acoustic guitars. Eda and I were able to play simple chords on our six- and twelve-strings during the song, while Lisa, Lynette and especially Sammy were able to really spice up our basic sound with their skilled playing.

Eda, Lisa and Lynette all took off their acoustic guitars and huddled up around me, along with Sammy, as I sat down in a chair to play my acoustic guitar and sing our story-like song, The Greatest. Only Eda’s soft bongo beats between my vocals in, ‘as the softball falls ... to the ground,’ were added to my acoustic sounds. Even though I knew how the girls were going to harmonize with my vocals on the ‘swinging misses’ in this song, I was still loved at how they progressively added their voices from Lisa, to Lisa and Eda, to those two with Lynette, and finally to all four girls as they sang, ‘... all the way around.’

“I loved that, Mike!“ I thought Lilly or Evy Ashton yelled after the surprise ending to this softball girl’s low-skilled batting, but high-skilled pitching evaluation.

Sammy and I played our new acoustic version of Jason Duffy’s written song, Feels So Good. Once more Eda sat Indian style on the stage in front of me, and played her bongos as Lisa slipped on her new bass guitar. All four girls harmonized with me as I sang our stripped down version of this future Van Halen song.

All of us but Lisa quickly changed out, or returned to our main instruments as our busty bass player introduced our final two songs for this performance; Sammy’s Hit Me with Your Best Shot, and my Best of Both World songs. We nearly rocked the cinder block walls of Medway’s gym down with both of those songs. We extended our power-loaded ending to Both Worlds, as we half-way decided ahead of time to have this be the final song on our first live album.

When we previously decided to play Bat Out of Hell, with Jennifer rejoining us for this twelve minute beast of a song as our encore song. We had to work doubly hard, trying to convince our gymnast friend to get back on stage with us on this song during lunch on Friday. Jennifer said she wasn’t really comfortable playing her sax and Sammy’s Stratocaster during the ‘motorcycle-guitar’ sounding segment of this awesome Meatloaf song. However, after I whispered to her that I would give her an Energist boost before she played with us, she reluctantly agreed to join with us on this encore song.

Because this was a super long encore cover song, I went over to Wilson and said, “If you think our cover of Bat won’t be included in this live album, feel free to stop your recording.”

“Oh! Hell! No!” Mr. Sikma forcefully laughed over the crowd’s encore inspiring noise. He then added, “If you guys are going to do this Meatloaf song, I’m damn well gonna record it. It might not make it on this live album, but I’m pretty sure our CBS bosses would fire me if I didn’t get it on tape for them. I’d put money down that they will find some use for it down the road.”

“Alrightly, Wilson,” I stated as we shared a high-5 before I moved back to my front and center position on the stage.

Eda patiently waited until our former band member had Sammy’s surf-green Strat slung over her back, and her Tenor-Z Yamaha saxophone clicked onto her neck strap. With Jennifer’s wireless head piece set turned on, Eda softly asked, “Are you guys ready to destroy this place?” through our ear-monitors.

After Jennifer turned, smiled and nodded to our drummer, Eda fired off four rapid, sharp ‘high-hat’ muffled strikes to get our long, classic encore song underway with the curtain drawn closed. The crowd explosively erupted when they heard E’s powerful drum strikes, Brick’s driving bass, and my volatile electric guitar sounds, announcing our intention to bring our school down to her knees.

Both Cano and Sammy made their two keyboard systems sing out the well-known sounds of Meatloaf’s signature classic. After I ripped out a wicked guitar riff to match their sounds, I eased off my guitar playing, and Jennifer took over with a killer thirty-second sax solo. We were like five-year-olds on Christmas morning on the stage as we jammed for nearly two minutes. Lisa alternately bounced back to back with Sammy, Jennifer and me before she whispered-shouted in my ear, “Do this song justice, Mike.”

I believe we all did just that as I sang Jim Steinman’s lyrics with all the raw emotion I could muster, as the five girls played like ‘bats out of hell‘ in support of my lead guitar and vocals. These five girls also created an awesome harmony with me as we sang:

“Oh baby, you’re the only thing,
In this whole world,
That’s pure and good and right.
And wherever you are,

We’ll both be ... so alone.” (I delayed my vocals on the last phrase to forcefully echo the girls’ harmony.)

After I sang the emotionally charged, ‘Crawling on back to you,’ lines in this song, everything stopped for a few moments. Jennifer, who had earlier unclipped her saxophone and positioned Sammy’s electric guitar on her pelvis, walked out to the front of the stage. Our brunette guest musician, along with Sammy on her synthesizer, created a magical thunderstorm for our song’s motorcycle guitar segment. Our stage lights flashed like lightning to add to the effects of their playing.

Brick saddled up to me again during this brief lightning session, and we played back-to-back after joining in with the other members of our band. We played off of each other as we finished out this hard driving rock classic. The crowd was going nutso as we neared the grand finale of Bat.

Lisa and Lynette did a great job of responding to my pained cries of, ‘Like a Bat Out of Hell!‘ with their forceful, ‘You’ll be gone when the morning comes!‘ replies. They knew enough to let me finish with my final cry of, ‘Like a ... Bat ... Out of ... Hell!‘

Everyone, especially Eda and Jennifer killed the concluding musical segment of this Meatloaf classic. E finished her powerful cymbal run, by tossing both of her drum sticks out into the crowd as she stood up behind her monstrous drum kit. She ended this song with a fisted slam into her largest cymbal. Jennifer, Sammy and I all grabbed the remaining guitar pics from Lisa’s and Sammy’s mic-stands and flung those little trinkets into the boisterous crowd.

When Lynette and Eda joined us out front, the six of us took a bow and waved out at the still darkened, shouting crowd. With her wireless head-mic still hot, Eda shouted out, “Make sure you go buy this live album for Christmas!”

“We will!” a group of students shouted in reply.

I then added, “Thanks for being such a great crowd for our first live recording.”

Because Brad flipped the switch to close the curtains as I said those words, we gave a final wave, and moved to put our guitars down on their stands. The six of us shared a group hug, and we thanked Jennifer for her singing and playing with us, today. Sammy even joked, “We’ll be sending you a nice Christmas bonus check,” as the girls hugged.

Wilson then added, “I’m pretty sure Miss Jennifer will be getting a small chunk of change for being a guest performer on this live album. Same goes for Miss Kalena, to a lesser extent, if typical music contracts are used for this record.”

“I’m all for that,” Lynette quickly replied. Lisa, Eda and I immediately agreed with our keyboardist, and I gave Jennifer one more hug of thanks.

Back in the gym, a good many of the gymnasts from the five other schools were grouped together. Colleen and Evy waved at us, so Jennifer and I lead our band mates over to talk with the holy hoard of attractive young ladies and a few of their boyfriends, who came to watch them compete.

“Your show just made this one of my ... our best weekends, ever!” Kimberley Mellanson of Windsor Assumption exclaimed as a tall fellow had her wrapped up against his chest.

“Yeah! You guys were great,” a girl with a Whitby jacket added with a smile.