All the young punks out on the sidewalk, roaming in hordes over from Bronson Park, crossing Michigan Avenue in heavy traffic, skating, smoking, swearing, tattooed. Ain’t that America. Bimbo’s Pizza is next door to Club Soda, so close they share a T-shaped front entrance. Framed photos of old Kalamazoo on the walls, early Beatles or other oldies always on the jukebox. Plus they have a bathroom with a locking door and a plug-in air freshener and soap always in the dispenser. A must.
This is our first Monday New Music Night. Vine is the headliner and we’re next to last. The opening band, Urination of Sharon, has already started. I’ve always hated the UOS singer, a slumming ex-mall dude who yelps lyrics about sexism on television in a voice like a dachshund getting raped up the butt with no lube.
Ellroy Marx blows into Bimbo’s and takes in the scene, looking malnourished and exhausted, yet somehow still above the fray. He’s got his Public Enemy hat and a Laughing Hyenas T-shirt, lording over his kingdom.
“This is war, dude. Okay? I’m talking, this is the cooption of a whole, of our whole culture and for what? So fuckin Kurt Cobain can see himself on MTV?”
“Yeah but it’s, I mean, is it really Kurt’s fault, I mean it’s art.”
“Dude. Listen to me.”
“I mean he just, he wrote some songs, didn’t he, isn’t that all he.”
“It ain’t art if you can buy it at Kmart.”
Helene is wearing oversized sunglasses and a red feather boa. She pours half-and-half into her coffee, then stirs it and sticks the wet spoon upside down in her mouth.
Wheeler flips through an old issue of MRR, barely glancing at the pages. The whole table is trembling slightly from the constant insane bouncing of his leg. Every minute or two he looks up, looks around, takes a big deep breath.
Jake eyes a fresh new crop of emo chicks, all with black Xs on their hands, bleached hair, big jeans and tight T-shirts. “Give em another year or two,” he says.
Helene glances over. “What do you mean?”
“These straight-edge chicks, man. No drugs or drink? It’s untenable. I’ve seen it before. They go to one party, try a cigarette, sip a beer. Pretty soon they’re fucking chain-smoking and dropping acid and sucking malt liquor down like it’s mother’s milk.”
“What about the dudes?”
“They tend to stick with it. Some of them anyway. The real true pussies.”
“So it’s only the girls who have no resolve?”
“To what? Not have fun? No, I’m just saying the girls fall harder.”
“When they fall at all,” Helene says.
Arthur Motts, the Vine singer, walks in, followed by a young beret-sporting acolyte. Motts is talking about something Russian and how there’s a poet he loves who shot himself in the heart, as usual tossing out words like postmodern and futurism.
Wheeler starts tearing pages out of the MRR. “Fuck it,” he says.
“Fuck what?” I say.
No answer.
Helene’s hand shakes as she raises the coffee cup to her lips, eyes hidden behind the big black lenses. There is an element of late modern Bono in her look that I’m sure she’d be pissed if I mentioned. She’s got her fingers in the boa. She brushes it lightly against her nose, saying, “How could I have ever lived without one of these?”
“What a terrific question,” I say. “Life without a feather boa sure doesn’t sound like life to me. In other news, half the world is starving.”
“There’s that rapier wit again.” She makes a gun with her finger and thumb and aims it right at me. “Bang,” she says.
Wheeler watches this. He leans over and touches her arm, rubs her leg under the table, which for the moment has stopped shaking. They stare into each other and smile. I see them as if from the bottom of the ocean, thinking about the predawn hours of my birthday, wondering what happened to that feeling, the sense that Helene and I were alive for a reason, made to kiss and love and be together.
Why do I cling hopelessly to this ghost?
“Because it’s so much more than music. So much more than just entertainment. Okay? This is our identity. Our lifeblood and what, we’re supposed to just fucking sit here and let MTV and fucking Rolling Stone and some fucking A&R guy with a coke spoon up his ass and a gold ring on every finger take this all away from us?”
“No but I mean if you look at it a different way, from just a bit of a slightly different perspective, you know, it’s like Kurt is just.”
“Because I’m sorry okay excuse me but that is bullshit.”
“I mean he’s just a guy like us who wrote some songs.”
“A guy like us? Are you insane?”
“Well no but.”
“Hold on a second here. Remind me again how much you’re making at Bunca Car Wash, if you could just for a second refresh my memory.”
“It’s not a ton, you know, it’s not, obviously I’m not making Kurt money but.”
“Oh that’s right. You’re making minimum fucking wage.”
The door opens. A quick blast of UOS, one of two songs in their repertoire written from the point of view of a slave. “Plantation,” it’s called. No one is talking. Wheeler stops tearing and puts his hands on the table, which is bouncing again. The jukebox clicks over. “Norwegian Wood.” Never have I felt more divided, more like I was drowning, yet at the same time breathing in great golden light. Beauty exists, so does pain. And you can live through both and feel the same sting and wonder.
Helene sighs, sips coffee, chews her lip.
When they fall at all.
THE MIC TASTES LIKE beer and smoke. “Check one two check check.” We’re tuned, ready. Jake does a few bars of “Ceremony.” At the edge of the stage there’s a row of blinding white band T-shirts, five or so, lined up like punk rock billboards. Beyond that a hazy darkness. But I know you’re out there, claws out, you and your slavering army.
I’m no longer thinking. I’m dreaming the noise.
We’ve never played through a sound system this good. Jake leaps onto a monitor and flies back and the stage shakes when he lands. Wheeler’s never attacked his kit with this ferocity. At one point we lock eyes and meet for a second on some remote psychic plane and I swear to fucking god he can see into me and through me and he knows.
During a long squall of feedback I grab the mic. “What you’re hearing right now is only music,” I say. “It’s just another form of entertainment, like TV or anything else. We’re all fucking products,” I say, “so get in line and get used to it.”
After the show I feel a hand on my shoulder. Ellroy Marx is standing very close to me, his mouth just a few inches from my ear. He nods at the bare stage. “Sweeney, do you really believe all that shit you were saying up there?”
“Ellroy, it’s all true,” I say, grinning like a madman, so close to him we’re almost hugging. “The punks are too late. Coca-Cola and McDonald’s already own us. One day we’ll wake up with MTV logos tattooed on our heads and IBM computer chips planted in our nuts. Resistance is futile. Now let’s go smoke a little grass.”
He steps back and eyes me with a mix of amusement and contempt. “Keep it up with that kinda talk, Sweeney, and I’ll have you excommunicated.”
“From what? The scene? You’d be doing me a favor. You have no thoughts. Or you do but they’re a stack of band T-shirts and a column you read in some stupid zine. Why do you have to hold this shit over everyone’s head?”
“I don’t. I was kidding. Now I’m not. I’ll never book any band you’re in again.”
With that he turns and wanders back through the thinning crowd.