If you haven’t read Part I, here you go
It had been a week since Maui and I had our world views torn asunder by a short Asian man wailing away on a Fender Stratocaster like he had exorcised the Devil himself from between the frets of his guitar. We needed redemption. We needed a miracle. Looking back, we got neither.
The morning of our return to the Hideaway Maui called me to make sure I was a)Alive and b)actually going to show up that night. We had invited a group of friends that consisted of Maui’s co-workers and one or two of my friends. I may have failed to mention that at this particular point in time in the history of the universe, Maui for all intents and purposes was our singer. I always honestly felt he was a good singer when he was in his range. We had practiced a few times before the show that night and we were totally convinced that the night would end in rounds of applause, women shrieking and tearing their clothes off wanting nothing more than to be close to such musical genius, bartenders waiving bar tabs and bringing copious amount of tequila and rum in the empty skulls of our foes who dared make light of our new found musical path and chose to ridicule it.
I might have been over-estimating…Naaaahhh….
With what I believe, if memory serves me right, a 3 song set which consisted of 2 originals and 1 cover (STP’s Interstate Love Song) we arrived separately at the venue. I, wearing my Stoner/Alcoholic Fashion forward jean shorts with a semi-respectable shirt with minimal stains and Maui….fucking MAUI…arrived wearing a goddamn black turtle neck. Fucking baffled didn’t even cover how confused I was. Maui had much better fashion sense than me but what in the devil’s red dick was he doing wearing that?!?! The mental picture still haunts me to this day. As I sit here and type this I cannot stop shaking my head. That boy there….damn shame.
We strolled into the bar like 2 Desperados in from the harsh terrain of the wild west, except Maui had on a turtle neck which I cannot stop talking about now. Our friends were already in waiting and they sat right up next to the stage area. There was Rick “The Devastator” Lee, a strumming Prometheus bringing the flame of Mount Olympus down to us mere mortals to warm our cold hearts by. We signed our names on the sign up sheet and next to mine I actually put an exclamation point as if to say “I MEAN IT MOTHERFUCKER!” And there I was, still wondering what type of drug Maui had ingested to make him think that it was totally cool to wear a turtle neck to a blues bars open mic night, taking sips of my beer and thinking “I might have a coronary right about now. That would stop the show. Then I wouldn’t have to play! YAAY!!!”. While I looked for stimuli with which to trigger a minor heart attack, they called our names. DAMNIT! We were so early we were the first ones to go on. SHIT!
As we sauntered up to the stage like a pair of fashionably challenged oafs, our friends gave a light smattering of applause to welcome us up there. I sat on a stool and Maui grabbed another. That’s when I noticed that there was an actual camera recording the entire event. The little red light on the camera looked more like a laughing demons eye and the lens a portal to all things I feared. Not only was I going to do this one time in front of people, there was a chance the hilarity and subsequent tragedy of this entire moment would be forever imprinted on a form of celluloid that could makes it way into the hands of….god know who. My bid to be President seemed to fade with that moment. Nevermind the alcohol abuse and dabbling with substances of questionable legality; those could still be explained away and BAM, I’d be drinking chardonnay out of a globe in the oval office. But this? How could I explain this???
The honorable Rick Lee presiding as Justice of the Peace announced our names over the microphone. The sentence was final; PLAY OR DIE* (*not really die).
We took a quick look at each other, gave each other a nod and proceeded to strum while Maui began to sing. In less than 4 bars into the song, I realized something terrible was happening. It was awful. An injustice so egregious I would forever remember the lesson it would teach me. The sting of that moment was seared into my chest like a Tiger Uppercut from Sadat.
Two guitars being played at near full volume…and neither one of them in tune with the other. It was like listening to a dove murder a kitten. Wrong on all levels. There was no stopping the show. There was no slowing down. Like a drunk desperate man laying on top of the ugliest girl from the bar he could rustle up at last call, we plowed through the set trying to not to look anyone in the face. It was a moment so utterly wrong that typing this is giving me indigestion. Were as I would normally dissolve my Alka Seltzer in water, this moment calls for popping them like pills.
It wasn’t until the final song, the STP song, that Maui decided not to strum along anymore. I played my part while he sang the vocals and we both made a last ditch effort to walk away with some form of our dignity in tact. When we finished, we looked up at the audience, at the ugly girl we took home at 2am and the faces betrayed very little. We had promised these people musical pornography and instead we delivered a haphazard snuff film. There were some obligatory claps here and there and I think someone whistled but it was the dive-bomb whistle that people make when you’re trying to find the right onomatopoeia to say “Wow that was fucking unreal in a really bad way”.
If looks could neuter I would have no chance in 100 lifetimes to conceive any offspring. Our friends encouraged us but we knew…we ALL knew…this was fucking horrible. And then I looked and saw the camera with it’s unblinking eye. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of a dank lifeless room lies a videotape that if watched, will kill you in 7 days. We played the soundtrack to that video.
Redemption would come one day in the future. But that is a story for another time.
HAHAHA I’ve always wanted to say that.
