Chapter 1A: The Power of Music

September 13, 1980
Heritage, California

Heritage, California was certainly not the center of anything, especially not the rock music scene of the west coast in the year 1980. But little did the citizens of this moderate-sized metropolitan region in the most populous state know, the mediocre venue known as D Street West in downtown Heritage would one day become a Mecca for rock and roll music lovers worldwide because of the performance that would take place here tonight.

D Street West was arguably the most exclusive venue in the city although that really wasn't saying a whole lot. It was a single story building occupying a corner lot in downtown Heritage, at the corner of 3^rd and D Streets, in a low-rent portion of the high-rise district. The bar could hold 400 people, though on nights The Boozehounds played, it often held about 200 more than the fire marshall would have legally allowed. The Boozehounds were Heritage's most popular local rock group. Fond of songs about drinking and smoking pot and fornication and sometimes all at the same time, they were a competent band with a lead guitarist who knew most of the chords and could play them with something that resembled proficiency, a singer who had enough range to hit five or six high notes per set without his voice cracking, and a drummer and bass player who could keep time with the songs well enough to make what came out of their amp sound like actual music. Though The Boozehounds had been trying for eight years to secure a recording contract with one of many Los Angeles based record labels, they had been turned down at every turn, told they were "small time" and "great for a cow town, but not worth shit in a real city". And so they stayed in Heritage, squeaking out a living by playing three nights a week at one of the ten or so clubs that featured live rock music.

At 5:00 on this Saturday afternoon, ninety minutes before the club would open, three and a half hours before The Boozehounds were scheduled to take the stage, two vehicles-a 1966 VW Microbus and a 1971 Ford van-pulled in the back parking lot of D Street West and parked near the backstage door. Five young men piled out of the two vehicles. All were dressed in blue jeans and dark colored T-shirts. All but one had long, shaggy hair. These were the members of the rock group Intemperance, a band that virtually no one in the Heritage area-or in fact the world-had ever heard of. They were opening for The Boozehounds tonight, their set to begin at 7:00 and last for 45 minutes. It was to be their first performance before an audience.

Jake Kingsley was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist. He was tall and a bit on the thin side, his shoulder length hair dark brown. At twenty years old he still had the last vestiges of adolescent acne marring his face in a few places. He puffed a filtered cigarette thoughtfully as he examined the backstage door, still marveling over the fact that they had an actual gig, that they were actually going to be paid to perform their music before an audience. And not just any audience either. They were at D Street West opening for a band that had almost legendary status in the region. "Did you see our name out on the board out front?" he asked Matt Tisdale excitedly. "Right under the Boozehounds. Can you believe that shit?"

Matt was the lead guitarist. He was twenty-one, a little shorter than Jake and a little broader across the shoulders and the middle. His hair was dyed jet black and had not been cut since he was seventeen. It fell almost to his waist in the back and was constantly getting in his eyes in the front. It was he who had suggested they audition for the gig despite the fact that the flyer they'd found on the bulletin board at Heritage Community College had specified "only experienced acts need apply".

"Fuck The Boozehounds," he said contemptuously as he flicked his own cigarette into a nearby drain. "They ain't shit. If they were any good they wouldn't still be playin' in this fuckin' place after eight years."

"He does have a point there," said Bill Archer, the piano player. Bill was the one among them without long hair. His hair was in fact cut almost militarily short in an era where even businessmen sported their locks well below the ears. At nineteen years old, Bill was the youngest member of the band. He wore black, horned-rim glasses with lenses about as thick as they could come. In his spare time he liked to study astrophysics, computer science, and the principals of electrical engineering. As far as the rest of the band knew, he had never been laid in his life, had never even had a girl's tongue in his mouth. He was also a prodigy on the piano, a fact that had been recognized by his parents well before his sixth birthday. Jake-who had known Bill all his life since he was the son of one of his mother's best friends-had been the one to convince the other band members that Bill needed to play with them. Though most hard-rock groups these days eschewed the piano on general principals, it had only taken one session with Bill accompanying them to convince the founding members of Intemperance that his skill and ability to blend the ivories with the crushing guitars and the pounding drum beat gave them a sound unlike any other group. Plus, he was fun to get stoned with. He could entertain them for hours with his large vocabulary and his lectures on just what E=MC squared actually meant.

"It could be that the music industry is deliberately keeping them down," suggested John Cooper, the drummer, who was known pretty much universally as "Coop". He had thick, naturally curly and naturally blonde hair that resembled that belonging to a poodle. It cascaded down across his shoulders and onto his back. Coop-who had been smoking pot at least once a day since approximately the age of ten-thought there was a deep, dark conspiracy for everything. He genuinely believed that men had never walked on the moon, that the government had killed John F. Kennedy, that fluoride in drinking water was intended to pacify the populace, and that the world was going to end in two years when all the planets aligned.

"Why would the music industry keep them down?" asked Darren Appleman, the bass player. He was twenty and perhaps the best looking of the group. His physique was well formed to begin with and made more impressive by the weight lifting he did five times a week. His dark hair was shoulder length only, always carefully styled. You would never catch Darren without a comb in his pocket. Though he wasn't any great shake as a bass player, he was very consistent with the rhythm, rarely missing a beat, and had a decent voice for back-up singing.

"You know how it is?" Coop said, which was what he always said before launching into one of his conspiracy theories. "They probably didn't like a contract or something back when they first started and tried to change something. Now they've been blackballed. The industry keeps a list, you know."

"A list?" Matt said, raising his eyebrows, although with his hair you couldn't really tell he'd done it.

"Damn right," Coop assured him. "They only want the right kind of people in the industry. People they can control. If they think you're gonna try to push them too hard, boom, you're on the list and you'll never get a record contract no matter how good you are." He then ended his lecture with his signature end of lecture statement. "It's the way the world works, dude."

"Shit," said Matt, shaking his head. "Or it could be that they just suck ass, which they do. Singing about bonghits and boffing fat chicks. They're a fuckin' comedy act, that's why they don't get signed."

Matt was treading on what was considered sacred ground in the Heritage area. You just didn't talk shit about The Boozehounds. But of course, all of them knew he was right, even Coop. The truth was, The Boozehounds really weren't all that good. Matt could blow their lead guitar player away with one hand tied behind his back. And Jake could sing their lead singer under the table with laryngitis.

"C'mon," Jake said. "We'd better get our stuff inside. We need to get our sound tuned in. You know how long that takes."

"Fuckin' forever," Darren grumbled. Then something occurred to him and he brightened. "Do you think they'll give us some free drinks after our set?"

The backstage door was locked but pushing the button next to the jam soon produced the sound of footsteps and the clicking of numerous locks and security bars from the other side. The door swung open at last and there stood Chuck O'Donnell, the owner and manager of D Street West. He was a small, unassuming man with a bald scalp atop his head and a long ponytail in the back. A failed rock musician himself, he had purchased D Street West ten years before and had turned it into Heritage's premier rock and roll club. He wasn't a millionaire by any means but he wasn't hurting either. He had quite an ear for music. Though the inclusion of Intemperance on his audition schedule two weeks before had been a mistake-he had failed to check the bogus previous performance dates that Matt Tisdale had fabricated on their portfolio until just before the band arrived-he had allowed them to play for him anyway, partly because their deceit had left a twenty minute hole in his schedule, but mostly out of cruel amusement. His plan had been to let them start playing and then to cut the power to their amps shortly into their first song where he would then debase them as rudely and crudely as he could and humiliate them into never trying such a stunt again. That had been his plan anyway. But then they had started to play and he discovered something astounding. They were good, very good in fact, perhaps the best new band he had ever heard. The lead guitarist was a magician with his instrument, able to play riffs of amazing complexity, to wail a solo that was right up there with Hendrix or Page and that fit in perfectly with the rhythm of the song. The lead singer-who played a pretty mean backing guitar himself-had a voice that was both rich and wide-ranging, a voice that would send a chill down the spine with a little more development. The kid could sing. And then there was the piano. There were many who believed a piano had no place in a hard rock group, that it was an instrument best left for the bubblegum pop bands. O'Donnell himself had always believed this with all his heart. But goddamn if that nerdy kid on the keyboard didn't pull it off. This band knew how to play, had an instinct for music that could only get stronger as they matured, and perhaps most importantly, they had a distinct sound unlike anything that had been done before. They made The Boozehounds-his most valuable and popular band-sound like what they were: a bunch of hackers. He had a good feeling about these five young men.

"Hey, guys," he said, his salesman grin firmly upon his face. "How are you all doing today?"

They all mumbled that they were doing fine.

"Good, glad to hear it," Chuck told them. "You're right on time. I like that in a band. Why don't you go ahead and start bringing your equipment inside and setting up. You know where the power supply points are. Remember, have everything tuned and sound checked before we open."

Matt, acting as band spokesman, agreed that they would be dialed in long before the first customer pulled into the parking lot.

"Good," he said, patting Matt companionably on the back. "I'll just be doing some paperwork in my office. I'll drop in on you from time to time to see how you're doing."

With that, he disappeared, leaving the door wide open for them to find their own path to the stage. Once in his office he snorted two lines of cocaine and dreamed a little more about what he might have once been.

It took the better part of twenty minutes just to get everything inside. The band had nine amplifiers, a fifteen piece double bass drum set, a sound board, five microphones with stands, an electric piano, two electric guitars, an electric bass guitar, six effects pedals, and nearly four hundred feet of electrical cord to connect everything together. The stage was a twenty by fifteen foot platform against the rear of the bar, raised four feet off the ground and covered in black boards. Lighting sets hung from scaffolding above. They stacked four amplifiers on one side and five on the other. They then set up the microphone stands and connected them to the master soundboard. While Coop assembled his drum set and Bill set up his piano, Jake, Matt, and Darren ran power lines to the amps and connected the effects pedals that helped twist and distort the sound of the guitars into music. They then opened up their guitar cases and removed their instruments.

Jake's guitar was a 1975 Les Paul in the classic sunburst pattern. It had cost him $250 dollars when he'd purchased it three years before and it was his most prized possession. It was a versatile guitar for the multiple roles he asked of it. It could produce a smooth acoustic sound that was about as close as one could get without actually having an acoustic guitar, or it could pump out a grinding electric distortion for backing Matt on the heavier tunes. He removed it gently from the case, lifting it as a father would lift his newborn infant from the crib, and then wiped it with a soft cloth until it shined. Only then did he sling it over his shoulder by the strap and carry it over to the length of cord leading to the string of effects pedals.

"Be sure you have enough picks," Matt told him. "Stick two in the guitar and a bunch in your right pocket in case you drop one or break one."

"What if I drop one in the middle of a song?" Jake asked, silently cursing Matt for giving him one more thing to be nervous about. When such a thing happened during rehearsal they would simply stop the song until the dropper could pick it back up or find another one. They wouldn't really be able to do that in front of an audience, would they?

"You'll have to use your fingers until the next song. Or at least until you get a break in the rhythm."

"Bitchin'," Jake said, frowning.

"The fuckin' show must go on, my man. The fuckin' show must go on. Remember that."

"Right," Jake told him, wishing for a beer or maybe a bonghit, just to calm his nerves a little.

Matt opened up his own guitar case and removed his favorite of the five electric guitars he owned, an instrument that he had vowed upon purchasing two years before, would be the only one he would ever play onstage. Though he certainly didn't know or even suspect it at the time, it was an instrument that would one day, twenty-five years in the future, be placed in a display case in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. It was a 1977 Fender Stratocaster, the make and model that Matt considered the finest guitar in the history of music. It was deep black on the top, shiny white beneath the three pick-ups and the tuning knobs. It produced a rich, heavy sound and it was as familiar in Matt's hands as anything he had ever held before, including his penis. The "Strat", as he called it, was his baby, perhaps the most important thing in his life, the instrument he had dedicated his life to, and he treated it with all the reverence such an icon deserved. He would have been more upset at its loss or destruction than he would've been at the loss of his parents or his siblings. He even talked to it, usually when he was stoned or drunk, but also when he felt it had been played particularly well, beyond what he believed his own considerable talent could be responsible for alone. He talked to it now as he slung it over his shoulder, as his fingers ran lovingly over the frets, the strings, the whammy bar. "We're gonna kick some ass tonight," he whispered to it. "We're gonna kick some fuckin' ass."

Jake plugged his guitar in first. He turned the power switch on and adjusted the tuning knobs upward. Next he turned on the amplifier it was connected to, keeping the master volume relatively low, the pre-amp about three quarters up, and bypassing the effects for the time being. He strummed a few times, listening to the tuning first and foremost. Though he had carefully tuned the instrument earlier in the day, before packing it up for the trip over here, he had a morbid fear that it had somehow come out of tune. It hadn't. The sound emitting from the amplifier was as rich as always, richer even since he'd put new strings on only two days before.

"It sounds like a freshly fucked pussy smells," Matt told him, turning on his own power switch and belting out a quick power chord that reverberated throughout the room. He squeezed his fingers down on the neck, stopping the vibration and, subsequently the music. "Now lets get our sound adjusted. You ready, Nerdly?"

"I'm ready," said Bill, who had long since accepted the unflattering nickname Matt had bestowed upon him and had even learned to like it.

"Then let's do it."

It took them the better part of forty minutes to get everything just right. Bill was the closest thing they had to a sound expert and he always made sure that when they played they sounded the best they possibly could with the equipment they had available to them. Each instrument and each microphone was hooked up to its own individual amplifier, which would be carefully positioned and then adjusted so everything would blend together harmoniously. The goal was to keep their music from simply coming out of the amps like most club bands' music-which was to say to keep it from sounding like a bunch of indecipherable noise dominated by overloud guitar riffs and bass that would distort the singing. He wanted those who watched them to hear and understand every word Jake sang, to be able to differentiate between the rhythm and lead guitar, to hear each piano key being struck, to hear the harmony they worked so hard at in their back-up vocals. All of this had to be matched carefully to Coop's drumming, which was strictly acoustic only. Everything was checked and adjusted one by one in a particular order. Darren's bass went first, with the sound being turned up and down to match the output of the bass drums. Next came Matt's guitar. Distortion levels were adjusted first, both with and without the effects, then the actual volume itself. The same process was repeated for Jake's guitar, only this took longer because he had to continually switch from the acoustic sound to the electric distortion, adjusting both individually. Then came Bill's piano, which was where perhaps the finest line existed between too loud and not loud enough. Once the instruments were properly adjusted the microphones could be set. The back-up microphones were the most difficult since they needed to be adjusted first individually and then as a group. Last was Jake's mic, which would transmit his resonant voice through the most expensive of their amps, a $400, top-of-the-line Marshall designed specifically to reproduce clear vocals in venues with poor acoustic conditions. For more than ten minutes Jake used standard singing exercises intermixed with snatches of their lyrics while Bill turned the knobs up and down, down and up, while he had each instrument strum a few bars, while he had the rest of the band sing into their own microphones. This, of course, led to other minute adjustments of the instruments and other mics themselves and even more adjustments of the main microphone.

"Gimmee some more, Jake," Bill would say as he kneeled next to the master soundboard, his ear tuned to the output. "Do the chorus from Descent."

And Jake would sing out the chorus from Descent into Nothing, their most recent composition and the song they planned to open with. "Falling without purpose," he would croon, carefully keeping his voice even, emitting from his diaphragm, as he'd been taught long before. "Sliding without cause."

"A little too high still," Bill would say and then make an adjustment. "More."

"No hands held out before me, no more hope for pause."

A nod from Bill, another minute adjustment. "Okay, now everyone."

And all five of them would sing the main part of the chorus, just as they did it in the actual song. "Descent into nothing, life forever changed. Descent into nothing. Can never be the same."

They did this again and again, sometimes using the chorus of one of the other sixteen songs in their repertoire, sometimes having one instrument or another chime in, sometimes having all five instruments chime in at once. Nobody joked. Nobody even talked if it wasn't necessary. They took their sound check as seriously as a cardiac surgeon took his pre-operation preparations.

"I think we got it, Nerdly," Jake finally said when he could no longer detect any differences from one of Bill's adjustments to the next.

"Damn straight," Matt agreed. "We're dialed in tighter than a nun's cunt."

It was necessary for one or both of them to tell Bill this at some point. If they didn't, he would go on making adjustments to every single setting for another hour, maybe more.

"I guess it'll have to do," Bill replied with a sigh, knowing deep in his heart that if he could just play around a little longer he would achieve true audio perfection, but also knowing that Jake and Matt were tired of screwing around and were taking control back from him.

"What now?" asked Coop, who was nervously twirling a drumstick in his hand. "It's only ten after six. Should we run through a song or two, just to make sure?"

"That don't sound like a bad idea," agreed Jake. "Let's do Descent one more time since it's our newest piece. Just to make sure we got it right."

Darren and Coop both nodded in agreement. But Matt-the founding member of the band-utilized his unofficial veto power. "Fuck that," he said. "We've rehearsed Descent at least a hundred fucking times over the last two weeks. We've rehearsed the whole goddamn set at least twenty times. We're dialed in, people. We rock! And if we fuck up tonight then we fuck up tonight, but pounding out a few more tunes in the last twenty minutes ain't gonna prevent it and just might encourage it. You dig?"

Jake wasn't so sure he dug. If nothing else it would've kept their mind off their apprehension for a little longer. But he kept his peace and agreed with Matt, as Matt expected him to do. "We dig," he said. "Why don't we go grab a smoke before they open?"

They shut off the guitars, the mics, the amps, and the soundboard, making sure not to accidentally move a single volume or tone knob on anything. Matt, Jake, and Darren put their instruments carefully down, necks facing up. They then headed backstage as a group. There they met Chuck O'Donnell who was in the company of two men in their late twenties. Every member of Intemperance-being the veterans of the Heritage club scene that they were-instantly recognized the two men as Seth Michaels and Brad Hathaway, who were, respectively, the lead singer and the lead guitarist of The Boozehounds.

"Hey, guys," Chuck greeted, smiling in a way that only good cocaine could produce. "I heard you doing your sound check."

"Yeah," snorted Hathaway, not even bothering to hide his contempt. He was a greasy looking man flirting with morbid obesity. His large belly spilled out the bottom of his extra-large black T-shirt. His hair was tangled and matted and looked as if it hadn't been washed or combed in at least a month. "Over and fucking over again. Are we a little unsure of ourselves?"

"Hey, give 'em a break, Hath," Chuck said diplomatically. "It's their first gig. They were just trying to make sure everything's perfect."

"Perfect, huh?" said Michaels, who was a sharp contrast to his guitar player. Almost painfully skinny, his long, curly black hair appeared to have been painstakingly styled. He wore a tight, white, rhinestone studded shirt and leather pants. He looked at Darren, who was closest to him and who had the most intimidating physique. "It's like they think people actually give a shit what they sound like."

"C'mon, Mikey," Chuck said, shooting an apologetic look at Jake and Matt. "Don't come down on people for being over-careful with their sound check. Don't you remember your first gig?"

"Over-careful?" Michaels said with a chuckle. "This ain't Madison fucking Square Garden. It's a shitty little club in a shitty little city that's widely heralded as a hemorrhoid on the rectum of the world."

"That may be so," Matt said calmly. "But there's still gonna be an audience out there, ain't there? Shouldn't a group of musicians always strive to sound their very best whenever performing?"

Michaels looked at Matt now. "Performing," he snorted, rolling his eyes upward. "That's a fuckin' laugh. Nobody gives a rat's ass what you sound like. You're an opening band. Don't you know your job is just to kill the time until we come on? You don't think these people are here to see you, do you?"

Jake tensed up a little, preparing himself to grab Matt if he decided to choke the skinny little singer into oblivion. The only thing Matt liked more than his music was brawling. But Matt stayed mellow. "I'll give you that," he said quietly. "They're here to see you tonight. But that'll change, my mediocre friend. That'll change."

It took about fifteen seconds for Michaels to realize he had just been insulted. When it finally came home to him he turned red in the face. "Just finish your fucking set on time, hackers," he said, pointing a finger. "When you're done, you got fifteen minutes to clear your shit off the stage. Fifteen fuckin' minutes. Understand?"

"Perfectly," Matt told him. "Unless of course, they ask for an encore. We can't really control that now, can we?"

Michaels, Hathaway, and Chuck all both broke out into laughter at this suggestion. It was clear they thought that Matt was joking, trying to mend the fence that had been so quickly erected between the two bands.

"Right," Michaels said, still chuckling. He actually clapped Matt on the shoulder. "If they do that we'll cut you a little slack, won't we, Hath?"

"Oh, you bet your ass," Hathaway said. "Do as many encores as you need."

"We'll do that," Matt told them with a smile.

The two Boozehounds members and the club owners then disappeared, heading in the direction of the bar, still chiding each other over the thought of their opening band getting an encore request.

Only Jake knew that Matt hadn't been joking.

Ten minutes after the doors were opened, D Street West was about three quarters full of customers, most between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, about an equal mix of males and females. Jake and Matt sat on either side of the back-stage door, looking out over the stage and the gathering crowd. Matt was smoking a cigarette and tapping the ashes into an empty soda can. Jake was fiddling with a guitar pick, dancing it back and forth across his knuckles, eyeing Matt's cigarette with envy. He desperately wanted a smoke to help calm his nerves but he didn't want to risk drying out his throat before taking the microphone. Neither of the young men deluded themselves that the crowd was rushing in so early because they were the opening band. It was simply an accepted fact at D Street West that if you wanted to get a good seat to catch The Boozehounds, you had to show up at opening and claim your seat.

"You know what I'm looking forward to the most?" asked Matt. "Now that we're starting to get gigs, that is?"

"We have one gig only," Jake reminded him.

"We'll get more," Matt said confidently. "How many times I gotta tell you? We fuckin' rock, dude."

Jake nodded absently. While he agreed that they did indeed rock, his confidence level was never quite as high as Matt's. Just because one rocked did not automatically make one a sure success. Though he didn't put much stock in Coop's conspiracy theories, he instinctively knew it wasn't all that easy to make it in the music business, that the chips were stacked against them by default. He didn't want to have this argument now though. "What are you looking forward to?" he asked.

"Groupies," Matt said greedily. "How long do you think it takes until they start fuckin' us just because we're in a band? I could see it happening just after one set. How about you?"

Jake chuckled, shaking his head a little. "Not spreading your message to the masses, not fighting for social justice with your newly acquired voice, but groupies. That's why you want to be a rock star?"

"Social justice?" Matt scoffed. "Jesus, Jake. You fuckin' kill me with that shit, dude. You're the one who writes songs about social justice and politics and love and respect. You ever hear me writing songs about that shit?"

Jake had to admit that Matt had a point there. They had both penned a roughly equal amount of the lyrics for their music but their styles were on quite opposite ends of the spectrum. While Jake enjoyed writing political and social lyrics-everything from songs about the proliferation of nuclear warheads to the angst one felt by growing up as a misfit-Matt favored hard-biting, almost angry lyrics about picking up women and using them for his own pleasure, partying until the sun came up, or taking advantage of society for one's own gain. When he did write songs about love, it was to put it in a negative context, such as his most poignant piece, Who Needs Love?, which was basically a rant about all the negative emotions a committed relationship would cause. "No," he said. "I guess I never have."

Chapter 1B »