part0005

Nick sighed. He was tired from starting work at the supermarket early so he could finish early and from loading all the gear into the van, like a game of Tetris with expensive heavy black pieces. And then they had to load everything out of the van again when they got to the venue. He wanted a pint of delicious, cold, fizzy lager and a smoke.

Nick, Ian and Paul were three-fifths of Eviscerated Panda. Nick was the vocalist, Ian played rhythm guitar and Paul was the drummer. It was half past five on a Friday evening in late May. They were in sunny Berkshire, England and were setting up for their first ever gig together that night. Ian paused from kneeling to fiddle with his effects pedals and stretched. He was tall, reaching almost six foot four and he was slim. His black fourteen hole Doctor Marten boots, tight black jeans and black Bolt-Thrower T-shirt with the arms cut out (all the better to display his tattoos) suited him well and created a pleasant silhouette on stage (although no-one had witnessed this yet). He had long, straight, very dark brown hair almost to his waist and was clean shaven. He’d thought hard about what to wear today.

Although they wouldn’t have liked to admit it Paul and Nick had too. Nick was wearing brand new pants and socks, green combat trousers, black Vans trainers and a Slayer T-shirt. Nick’s build was more muscular than Ian’s and he was just a little shorter but still over six feet tall. He had dyed black, voluminous hair. Blond Paul wore dark blue boot cut jeans, navy Converse all stars and a Black Sabbath T shirt. The T shirt was a tribute to Bill Ward, one of his favourite drummers. He was also a big fan of Nicko McBrain. They finished setting up and went to the bar.

They hadn’t promoted their first gig as much as they could have done, partly due to nerves. They were in the ambivalent position of wanting people to come and see the amazing music they played and also of not wanting people to come in case they turned out to be rubbish and an embarrassment. It was hard to anticipate whether what sounded great to the five of them in their practice room would sound great to a room full of the discerning ears of local metal fans.

Ian and Nick considered this their first proper band. They didn’t count the dicking around they’d both done from the time they were in their separate sixth forms and up to before the formation of the Pandas, playing at youth clubs, church halls and on one occasion for Nick in school assembly.

Ian had worn his lucky pants to all his early gigs but his lucky pants had since been thrown out by his Mum for being too scruffy. He had lost his virginity in his lucky pants, or rather out of them. He had then worn them infrequently so as not to use up their powers. To the casual observer they’d appeared to be a fairly standard pair of black boxer shorts from Marks and Spencer. However, they had taken on an almost mythic significance to him one day after a study period in the sixth form had turned into something more practical.

Her name was Sally and they had been dating for a couple of months. Her parents had gone on holiday to Florida and they went back to her house, having no lessons for the rest of that afternoon. He thought of her still sometimes, images of her saved in the bank. Also, if he heard the word ‘Florida’ he’d tend to get semi-erect. TV programmes about Disneyworld made his balls ache. As he’d stepped into his new pants (which were black with a red flame print) he’d thought; I’m going to make these my lucky pants. They are brand new and have no History attached to them, yet…

Paul was more experienced musically (and also sexually). He had played in a hard rock covers band for a few years but he was still a little apprehensive this evening. He was used to playing tried and tested crowd pleasers, often to an inebriated wedding audience or Saturday night pub crowd. Paul worked as a painter, decorator and general handyman for a housing association. He enjoyed his job which would often be different every day and it came with the perk of a van that was very useful for gigs. He was used to getting along with people he’d only just met (mainly elderly residents and single Mums with young children) and within an hour or two he’d be getting tea and biscuits from residents while he improved their flats and houses. By the end of the day he’d be admiring pictures drawn of him at work by toddlers or photos of Grandchildren and listening to people’s stories. He’d been careful to wash all the plaster dust out of his long, partly curly dark blond hair after work. He’d also had to cut a little bit of green paint out of his hair at the front where it had escaped from the pony tail he wore for work.

Nick was not usually prone to nerves. He’d learnt to be confident at the boys’ only private school he’d attended. Occasionally his confidence spilled over into arrogance but not frequently. His parents were disappointed that after spending thousands of pounds on his education he worked in a supermarket. This wasn’t his first unglamorous job that they had disapproved of. His first job after leaving school was working for a fast food chain. He’d applied full of bravado and rebellion. He was keen to show his parents that he wasn’t a snob like he perceived them to be. He got hired and started work almost immediately which he saw as a sign of success rather than a sign of the restaurant being desperate for staff due to their high turnover. His worthy maverick notions soon wore thin when he had to work long hours while wearing brown trousers, a mustard yellow polo shirt and a baseball cap. And he constantly smelt of vegetable oil.

He lasted for six weeks in that job. After the first two he felt like meat was murdering him. He got free food on his breaks but began to be able to taste the disinterest and resentment with which it was made. Some of the other staff teased him about his accent and the managers were bullies, trying to give him all the unpopular shifts, thinking they could get away with it because he was young and new. He was not enamoured of it at all. He went home after a shift and he never returned. He didn’t eat fast food for a couple of years after that. Everything nasty you heard about hygiene in these places was true, he’d discovered. The disgruntled male employees scratched their balls with the orange juice stirrer and if you were rude to the counter staff your burgers may well have unadvertised additions. After that kind of taste sensation pot noodles seemed like ambrosia to him (the food of the gods, not the Devon custard, although he thought that was nice stuff too). He had been the only person working in the restaurant to have studied classical literature at school but not the only person to have read it.

Music was Nick’s main interest and motivation. He could apply himself to writing lyrics and spend hours with a guitar but he had no desire to apply himself to accountancy or any of the other professions his Dad would consider worthwhile. Nick desperately wanted to achieve some measure of success with music to prove his Dad wrong. His Mum, Gloria, was less disappointed than his Dad and often made peace between Nick and Nigel, his Dad. She would point out to Nigel that Nick was reliable, enthusiastic and that he turned up for work on time every day. He didn’t phone in sick unless he was genuinely ill and he didn’t expect hand outs from them (although Gloria would often give him some extra money for clothes and treats when his Dad wasn’t looking).

Gloria also pointed out that Nick was still young so there was plenty of time to mess around for a while and then choose a career. Nick had achieved good exam results and could always go back to education. She pointed out that Mick Jagger had done very well out of music. Nigel would harrumph at this and say ‘Well, if that’s what you consider very well then we have different ideas of what doing ‘very well’ entails’. What Nigel would have liked was for Nick to do things he understood and that he could talk about at the golf club.

Nick and Ian had met when the bands they were in were playing at a youth club. They were both eighteen at the time and they were both feeling that they were getting far too old to be playing youth clubs with their audience of fourteen-year-olds pretending to be drunk on cider they’d swigged surreptitiously round the back of the club. They’d bonded instantly by talking about music they liked. They soon began hanging out at each other’s houses and in the Green Man, their local Rock pub. They had both seen the advert for band members wanted to start a Thrash Metal band one Saturday morning, in their local music shop, The Right Note. They had both applied and had both been auditioned on the same day, one week later.

The advert had been placed by Phil Winter, a veteran of many bands, after leaving his previous band, Nightshade Milkshake, in a hurry. The drummer had found out that Phil was sleeping with his fiancée and this had necessitated a sudden change in personnel. Chairs were thrown and angry words were exchanged. Phil had decided to start a new band with all new members.

His advert was printed on fluorescent yellow paper and it read;

Do you want to be in the next Slayer? Then read on. Why is another Thrash Metal band necessary? If it isn’t to you then walk away from this advert. Lots of things which aren’t necessary are fun but I want serious musicians with the drive to succeed. If you’ve liked metal for years you probably think that you know everything about it. Good. I might disagree with you about some of it. That’s okay, there’s room for alternative viewpoints in metal, that’s why it’s so powerful. Rules were meant to be broken and guidelines were meant to be evaluated to see if they are useful and used if this proves to be the case or disregarded if it doesn’t. If you love Thrash Metal (you must truly love Thrash Metal and not just be lying to get it into bed) and are an excellent drummer, rhythm guitarist, bass player or vocalist looking to form a band and create new material with an experienced guitarist in his own practice space then give me a call. Wimps and Posers should leave the hall. Today Berkshire, Tomorrow The World.

Paul had seen the advert and had thought it was a bit over the top and potentially the work of a weirdo. But something about it appealed to him and he auditioned because he loved the idea of playing original, heavy music. He’d been a bit wary of Phil at first, finding it hard to fathom what his real personality was as it was being drowned out by his boasting about what a phenomenal guitarist he was and how rock and roll he was. He wasn’t sure if Phil liked him or not, as a person, rather than as a drummer. He wasn’t sure if or how he’d ever know. He found Ian and Nick easy to get along with.

Cleo danced around her room to the sounds of her getting ready to go out playlist. This included AC/DC’s ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, X-Ray Spex’s ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’, Flotsam and Jetsam’s ‘Hammerhead’ and Danzig’s ‘The Hunter’. It was the end of her working week and she was looking forward to seeing her friends at the Pandas’ gig that night.

After graduating from Coventry University in English last summer Cleo had got the first job available so she could pay off her student debt. She worked in the sales office of a luxury biscuit company and from nine a.m. on Monday morning to five p.m. on Friday afternoon found herself having to make apologies such as

Before going to Coventry she’d felt bored and restless in Reading. Her best friend Jenni was going to the University of Reading and so would be staying at home with her parents. Cleo didn’t feel like this was an option for her and felt she’d go mental if she stayed at home with her Mum, Peggy, who was still coming to terms with Cleo’s Dad’s death.

‘I’m so bored’. Cleo moaned to Jenni. ‘I’m even bored of vodka. I’m tired of putting up with Mum’s moods’. Cleo had decided she had to move away to go to university. Her Mum’s anger was too huge for there to be room in the house for Cleo too. Cleo was sorry her Dad was gone too but being angry wouldn’t bring him back.

Once in Coventry Cleo felt free. She decorated her small room with posters of her favourite bands. She had a calendar with kittens on, one for every day of the month. Art students thought it wonderfully ironic and kitsch but she chose it because she liked kittens not because she was being ironic. Cleo thought it was great being away from where she grew up and away from Peggy and all the associated nonsense. She enjoyed meeting new people and seeing herself reflected back in their reactions to her.

She liked looking out of her window on the top floor of a massive ugly concrete block at the surrounding town and listening to Type O Negative’s ‘October Rust’ album. Over the years Cleo was in Coventry she and Peggy learnt to get on acceptably with each other again. They would never be very close, like Jenni was with her Mum, but it was an improvement and since Cleo had finished university and moved back to the family home they co-existed peacefully, each knowing and staying within the boundaries of their relationship.

She brushed her poker-straight waist length red hair and put on some pale face powder, black eyeliner, black mascara and red lip gloss. A quick glance in the mirror showed her that her short, tight, black, safety pin print dress, big boots and leather jacket looked fabulous. She added her Vivienne Westwood skull necklace and felt ready to go out. She was one of those women who always looked like she wasn’t trying too hard. This was because she wasn’t trying too hard.

Women had had since the seventies to perfect the rock chick look and Cleo just effortlessly extolled it. Fashions come and go but a short skirt, long hair and a smile is always a winning combination. Marianne Faithful had lived in Reading and although she didn’t know it Cleo had walked past her house many times. Perhaps some of Marianne’s magic still lingered and had attached itself to Cleo.

Her phone rang, playing AC/DC’s ‘Touch Too Much’ as the ringtone. It was Jenni saying she was nearly ready and she was really excited and she couldn’t wait to get to the club. Cleo picked up her bag, checked the contents; purse, keys, phone, tissues, face powder and sweets and then walked the ten minutes to Jenni’s house through the sleepy suburb of Reading she’d lived in since she was a toddler. Curtains twitched a little, not in a malicious way, just in the comfortable way of local people taking an interest in other local people, especially those of them still young enough to do something of interest. She said

Cleo loved Jenni’s Mum Pam, who had let her live with them for weeks at a time when she was in her late teens and when her Mum, Peggy, had been severely depressed, irrational and hard to live with. Cleo ran up the stairs to Jenni’s attic bedroom on the third floor. She had no time for tea and no desire for anything sensible. She’d been sensible all week and it was becoming tiresome. She could hear The Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Temple of Love’ from the second floor landing.

Jenni’s house was in a slightly more affluent part of Reading than Cleo’s. Jenni’s Dad was a lecturer in Sociology at the university. The house had a basement, three stories and large garden. It was crammed with an eclectic selection of books ranging from the intellectual to the distinctly less so. The same bookcase contained Albert Bandura, Dennis Wheatley, Hunter S. Thompson, Erving Goffman and Nancy Friday.

Cleo flopped down on Jenni’s bed, staring up at the Peter Steele poster on the ceiling while Jenni put the finishing touches to her make up. Jenni was tall, five foot nine to Cleo’s five foot four, and she had long, dyed black hair with purple streaks. She wore lots of black and silver eye shadow and a tight fitting black matt PVC corset top and skirt combo with purple fishnet tights. She had a tattoo of a flock of bats from her shoulder to just above her right breast. She’d waited until she was twenty-one to have it done, fearing anything she choose before that she wouldn’t like a few years later. She had celebrated passing her final year exams by having this tattoo. She’d chosen bats long ago, when she was watching Elvira Mistress of the Dark once or more a day. She could very clearly remember sitting in the tattooist’s waiting room wondering how painful it would actually be. She had gone alone. The waiting room made her feel light headed, the buzzing, like at the dentist, seemed to be a promise of pain to come. She had found it to be not as painful as she had expected and when she looked at her watch afterwards it had taken less time than she’d thought. Time had a habit of slowing down during new experiences she found.

Jenni had studied Biology at Reading and was taking a few years out to earn some money before applying for a Master’s degree in biotechnology. Her Dad had hoped she’d follow him into the social sciences but she liked the clearer cut discipline of Biology. She worked as a lab technician at the university and liked that she could wear anything she wanted to work because it got covered up by a lab coat. No-one minded what colour her hair was.

They thudded swiftly down the stairs and went into the lounge to say bye to Jenni’s parents. Her Mum, as usual, said

Cleo never had conversations like this at home with Peggy. Peggy was vaguely supportive of Cleo but hadn’t understood her wanting to go to university and then get a job when she could be getting married and having kids. Cleo and Peggy got along well enough but had little common ground. Peggy liked to read romance novels and watch her soaps on TV. She hadn’t married again when Cleo’s Dad had died, of a massive heart attack in his forties, when Cleo was just fourteen. It was as if Peggy had partly shut off from thinking on that day and decided to not get too involved in her own life, just to coast through it, with the help of mundane distractions. It had been hard for Cleo, her Dad suddenly no longer a part of her world, but she was young and resilient. She still missed him but didn’t dwell on it too much, not wanting to become stuck in a now unattainable past like Peggy.

Cleo and Jenni walked to their local rock and metal venue, the Edge Bar, while idly wondering who would and who wouldn’t be there that Friday night. Both girls were single, Cleo having broken up with her last boyfriend when she left university and Jenni having not dated anyone since she was an undergraduate. They were having a lot of fun with their friends and although both would have liked a boyfriend and both spent hours thinking about and discussing the options available to them they were both cautious, not wanting to make decisions they would later regret. They had friends from school and university who they had grown apart from, those who had got stuck into marriage and motherhood in their late teens and early twenties and neither Cleo nor Jenni wanted that.

It was free entry into the Edge Bar that Friday night. They made their way to the back bar, where the bands played. The venue was scuzzy but comfortable, with a large, noisy back bar and a slightly smaller, slightly quieter front bar. They’d been drinking there regularly since they were fourteen. The locks on the toilet doors didn’t work and there was a wealth of graffiti on them. Some of it was so old it had the zero-one-seven-three-four dialling code for Reading and the ladies it claimed would give you a good time were probably menopausal by now.

The velvet upholstery on the seating that ran round the room and that covered the cushioned parts of the bar stools was dark red. It was worn and shiny in places. The Edge Bar pre-dated the smoking ban and occasionally when it was full of bodies and warm you got a whiff of old pub smell, part beer, part tobacco, part sweat, making you imagine sepia tinged people with pipes and cigarettes, drinking their pints and laughing.

Inside the club they met up with Ian and Nick. Cleo, Jenni and Ian had all been at school together, a tough comprehensive that prepared them well for some aspects of adult life and poorly for others. Most of their contemporaries had left school with inadequate exam results for the good jobs. They had a huge bank of shared experiences, like the time when Cleo’s Mum had gone away to Wales for a few days to visit relatives and they’d decided it was time to start drinking. They had bought Special Brew, reasoning that Lemmy drinks it and so it must be great stuff. They had all sat around the tiny Formica kitchen table, with Motörhead’s ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’ playing in the background and enthusiastically opened their cans, each taking a huge swig. As they tasted the bitterness of the booze they tried to rearrange their features into those of connoisseurs enjoying a fine wine. After a few mouthfuls each they agreed it was vile and tried to remedy it by adding blackcurrant. They made it through a can each but none of them had ever had a second.

And then there was the time when it was school photo day and their whole year group were forced to form a human pyramid on wobbly wooden benches in the gym. All the teachers sat on chairs at the front and so unfortunately were unable to see what the assembled students we were doing behind them. While they were trying not to fall off the wooden benches the students were also told to look at the camera, to smile (nicely) and to cease making ‘amusing’ hand gestures. There were quite a lot of wanking gestures, lots of bunny ears over people’s heads, some peace signs and Jenni, Cleo and Ian were throwing the horns. The photographer shook his head, tutted and gave everyone evils. Mr Murray, the Headmaster, had to stand up and tell everyone they would stay there all day if they didn’t co-operate and that this was for their benefit so they could remember all their school friends. Jenni had only smiled a bit. She was thinking

Ian had been standing to the very far right of the photo and the photographer had snapped away unaware, capturing him with horns aloft, preserved in that photo forever. It was four years since they’d all left the sixth-form but their friendship had been one that stuck fast, based as it was on the shared experiences of a shambolic education, a passionate love of music and a desire to do something a little more exciting than work in a shop or an office forever.

As Nick and Ian had already been there for a couple of hours, loading the gear in, they were on their way to being drunk. They were apprehensive about this, Eviscerated Panda’s first gig, but you’d never have known it to look at them right now. It had taken them almost a year to get to this point, to have all five of the band gig ready and with enough material to fill forty-five minutes.

It was one thing for them to be able to run through the set in their practice room (the lead guitarist Phil’s basement) but to do so in front of a room full of their friends, another band, their very best friends and in some cases their wives and girlfriends was another matter. Ian smiled hugely when he saw Cleo and Jenni, he felt reassured by their presence. It felt a little like when they had been waiting to go into exams together. Instead of expressing this he said to Cleo

He laughed and went to the bar to get vodka and Diet Coke for Cleo and a Jack Daniels and Coke for Jenni, to thank them for coming to see the Pandas. He’d just got paid and his job in IT support meant he had plenty of disposable income, especially as he still lived at home. Cleo and Jenni both hugged Nick, who they knew well from numerous weekends spent in the Green Man pub.

Paul wandered over with Angie, his wife, who had rushed around getting ready to go out after she finished work at six-thirty. She worked as a hairdresser in a traditional salon frequented mainly by women aged over fifty. She and Paul had married three years ago. She was a sweet girl, with thick, shiny brown hair that always looked and smelt wonderful and reminded Paul of a conker. When he’d told Angie this she hadn’t been impressed even though he had meant it as a sincere compliment. She was slightly chubby in a deeply attractive way, the half a stone of extra weight she carried was on her chest and on her bottom, giving her killer curves. She was Coco Austin rather than Coco Chanel and none the worse for it.

Tonight she looked particularly cute in a green leopard print dress, red kitten heels and a fake red rose in her hair, which was mostly up, except for a few curls left loose at the front. She didn’t know how pretty she was or how many guys snuck surreptitious glances down her cleavage or at her shapely bum. She was unambitious for herself. She wanted to have a strong marriage and she hoped to have children and give them a cosy, happy home, unlike that of her own childhood. Angie, her younger sister Tracy and their mother, Pearl, had been abandoned by her father when Angie was eight.

Angie’s wedding day had truly been the happiest day of her life. In the absence of her own father she had been given away by Paul’s father Reg. She loved how his family had welcomed her into their midst. At twenty-six and twenty-seven years old Angie and Paul had just begun to think about starting a family of their own. Angie couldn’t wait. They’d agreed that morning that she should stop taking her contraceptive pills. She fetched a Diet Coke from the bar and a pint of lager-shandy for Paul, who was driving the van, and made a mental note to buy some folic acid tomorrow.

Angie was startled from her folic acid buying thoughts by a pinch on her bottom.

‘Ange, sweet-cheeks, looking hot!’ Exclaimed Suzy, giving her a big hug, kissing her on both cheeks and then making her way round everyone else with similarly effusive greetings. It was the first time Cleo or Jenni had met Suzy and so Ian introduced them. They too got kissed on both cheeks and enfolded in big friendly hugs. Suzy had bounded ahead of her on-off boyfriend Jim, the Panda’s bass player, like a friendly Labrador.

Suzy was excitable, twenty-eight years old, bisexual, dark blonde and exceptionally outgoing. She worked as a sales rep for a cleaning products company during the day and as an Ann Summers Party Organiser for a few evenings every month. She liked to say she thought clean during the day and dirty in the evenings. Jim felt lucky to be with her but sometimes felt like he couldn’t quite keep up and couldn’t give her everything she wanted. He was thirty-one years old, worked as a mechanic, and liked to go to the pub, listen to music, go to gigs and watch TV.

Jim was uncomplicated and the rest of the Pandas loved him for his lack of ego. Phil thought this might be a disadvantage on stage as he’d just stand there, playing bass with proficiency but without flourish. Jim took up a lot of room. He was big without being fat. He was a neat six foot tall and he was broad shouldered. He had thick medium brown hair and thick eyebrows that Suzy made him wax in the middle. His large brown eyes were fringed with generous eyelashes. He was easily the hairiest of the Pandas.

As a couple Jim and Suzy were dissimilar but appeared to be deeply, truly fond of each other, each one admiring in the other characteristics they didn’t have. Suzy wishing she could be calmer and less impulsive and Jim that he could be more outgoing, but finding it hard and so making their relationship rockier than Jim would have liked. It bothered Suzy less. She didn’t have the same need for security as most people and found it perfectly easy to live in the present moment for much of the time.

The Pandas and their FWAGs (Friends, Wives and Girlfriends) found a big booth to sit in and got comfortable. The Pandas were due on stage at nine-thirty and were supporting a local band called Demon Speeding. They had got the gig through Damon, Demon Speeding’s singer, who was a regular in the Green Man pub like most people who liked rock and metal and lived in Reading. The sound engineer came over and asked them to sound check. They were still waiting for Phil, the lead guitarist and self-proclaimed Panda’s driving force. Nick went outside to call him.

Phil was the oldest of the Pandas at thirty-seven. He’d never married, never had a relationship lasting much over eighteen months and he liked to think of himself as a charming, irresistible ladies’ man. Just lately he had been slipping into Leslie Phillips instead of Russell Brand. He would settle down he promised himself, when he found the right woman for him. He was very much into the journey and less focused on the destination.

He’d been chatting to some girls on the train and trying to persuade them to come to the gig and have a drink with him after. He had got on the train at Tilehurst, where he lived, spotted two girls he liked the look of, sat down opposite them, looking resplendent he thought, in his tight around the crotch trousers and asked them

He’d eventually managed to get a lukewarm reaction out of them by the time the train reached Reading but they chose not to accompany him. He told himself it would all change after tonight, once he started gigging again. Phil was an accomplished guitarist and his confidence in that area was not false pride. He’d been playing for twenty years. His close friends thought he was getting stranger, the more he worked from home, coming out with more and more things that would be best left as thoughts rather than vocalised. But none of them questioned his guitar ability.

Phil bustled into the Edge Bar, went straight up to the sound engineer, apologised for being late and offered to buy him a pint. He was aware that the sound engineer had the power to make him sound terrible, okay or great. Luckily Ed the sound guy was a reasonable sort and was well used to working with musicians, some of whom tended to work very much to their own timetable. The Pandas sound-checked briskly, aware that the bar was filling up and people were watching them but that they didn’t want them to watch too closely just yet. It sounded good and Ed gave them a series of big, reassuring thumbs up gestures.

After the sound check the Pandas returned to their table and Ian introduced Phil whose gaze lingered on Cleo and Jenni for longer than on Suzy and Angie, who he had met before and who he knew to be unavailable. Suzy and he had flirted quite outrageously on one occasion and although in other circumstances Phil would have been keen to get to know her better he tried to keep his distance. He thought he recognised his female opposite number in Suzy and after leaving one band through misuse of his penis he didn’t want to repeat that mistake. Especially now he was ready to let the Pandas loose. He thought he had a chance of success this time and didn’t want anything to screw it up.

When the Pandas went on at twenty to ten the Edge Bar was busy but not full. All their FWAGs clustered near the front of the stage, at the side. Angie was feeling slightly nervous for Paul. She knew he was looking forward to playing something that wasn’t cover versions but also that he was slightly out of his comfort zone with drumming faster. As he was at the back of the stage he was less worried about being on show but more worried about staying in time so he didn’t put the others off. Angie thought he would be a cool Dad, letting their children have a go on his drum kit.

Jenni was fiddling with her camera, planning to get some photos of this momentous event. Phil was thinking that he’d show these youngsters how it’s done, both on stage and then off stage, chatting up the adoring women that were sure to result from his virtuoso playing. Ian was studying his effects pedals, trying to breathe slowly and hoping very hard that it went well. Jim was ready to go. The great thing about not having too large an ego was that he wasn’t risking anything. He played because he enjoyed it. If he stopped enjoying it, he would stop playing. Maybe due to his day job as a mechanic he tended to see things as being simple, you serviced bits, cleaned bits and replaced bits and everything worked out fine. He was gratified to see Suzy smiling at him and he smiled back hugely. Nick was staring into the middle distance. He was planning what he’d say to rouse the audience if needed and he was hoping his voice would be loud enough in the big venue.

The set list had been decided weeks ago and was eight songs long. They started with ‘Hit Where it Hurts’, a song about a relationship break-up including a fight that involved being hit in the testicles. Next was ‘Conflict of Interest’ about the greed of bankers and about how letting banks regulate themselves can’t possibly work. Then came ‘Metal Fix’, which had the fundamental message that metal is great, liking metal is fun and other types of music aren’t as great. This had taken Phil half an hour to write and followed in the tradition of Judas Priest’s ‘Metal Gods’, AC/DC’s ‘Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’ and Manowar’s ‘The Gods Made Heavy Metal’.

This was followed by ‘Plastic Purgatory’, about the shallowness of people having lots of plastic surgery, trying futilely to remain youthful and then not being happy with how they look and having still more surgery until their original features were distorted. Song five was ‘Alucard’, a vampire song, based on the Hammer Horror film Dracula AD 1972. Song six was ‘Screaming Green Murder’ which had an environmental theme. Song seven was ‘Angry Ever After’. This was about how life is not like a fairy tale and how bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and it’s all a bit random and unfair. Nick had written the lyrics to this after reading Richard Dawkin’s book ‘The God Delusion’.

The final song was ‘Unevil Genius’, about Alfred Nobel and his discomfort in having invented dynamite. This had a particularly powerful chorus, ‘What price the prize? What do you prize? Too late the prize? Destroy the prize’. The Pandas felt that they had created a varied set, with a mostly thrash metal sound but also classic heavy metal influences and some punk sounding simple choruses. They could probably have started gigging sooner but Phil had insisted they get everything right and everything tight first.

They could also do a cover of Slayer’s ‘South of Heaven’, if asked for an encore. The cover had caused some disagreement, with Phil insisting they play something well known to help them stick in the memory of drunken audiences if it was going well. Ian and Nick felt that they didn’t need to, they should be memorable enough anyway and that if they covered a Slayer song they should choose something less well known, but which they liked more, such as ‘Die by the Sword’. Paul was in two minds, he liked the familiarity of covers and he’d never played it before, it not being a big favourite at weddings. Jim just sat back and watched the disagreement and then made peace. They decided to have it in reserve if needed,

Another contentious song had been ‘Metal Fix’, written by Phil. It was just the chorus that caused disagreement. The lyrics to the chorus were ‘Got to get my metal fix, got to bang my head, got to drink another beer, got to find a chick to bed’.

‘If it’s good enough for Judas Priest, AC/DC and Manowar then it’s good enough for us’. He insisted. Nick agreed to sing it as long as everyone understood he was being ironic. He cringed a little inside when he sang ‘got to find a chick to bed’ but he’d developed a habit of covering his face with his hair for that line so no-one could tell. In general Phil and Ian wrote the riffs and Nick wrote the lyrics but sometimes Phil would write lyrics and often Nick would show Ian unfinished lyrics and they would finish them together, maybe over a pint in the Green Man. Sometimes Cleo would help finish them off too, her large vocabulary from studying English coming in handy.

The stage in the Edge Bar was low and wide, taking up the whole back wall of the club. The lighting was nothing special but it was adequate. Red, green and white light shone on the Pandas quickly as the lights were tested. Jim was delighted to find himself in a pool of green light. He felt a bit like Lemmy and had an uncharacteristic moment of self-awareness, hoping that someone would get a photo so he could remember this. Then the stage went almost dark and the background music, Quiet Riot’s ‘Bang Your head (Metal Health)’, was faded out. The Pandas looked around at each other, checking they were all ready. It was almost quiet in the venue. Everyone had paused in their drinking and talking to focus on the stage. There was an expectant atmosphere, everyone waiting to be entertained.

Phil counted them in with a quiet one, two, three four, that was more felt than heard because he tapped his foot while counting and then Paul and Jim came in, to be joined by Ian and Phil at exactly the right moment and then Nick began singing moments later, his gruff thrash metal vocals taking over the room. It was like a tidal wave of noise, gaining momentum and they kept the audience’s attention, unlike other bands they had seen in the Edge Bar who found they were playing to half a room after the first few songs. In the Edge Bar people could go out of the back bar and into the front bar if they weren’t being adequately entertained. Bands wouldn’t get booked again if this happened too often.

After the first three songs Nick trusted his speaking voice enough to address the audience without wobbling.

Nick could see people moving their heads to the music. It was going well and he was beginning to really enjoy himself. Before the last song Nick introduced the band.

‘On drums we have the animal known as Paul Wright. On bass guitar we have Jim Parker. Rhythm guitar is brought to you by Ian Edwards. On lead guitar we have the venerable Phil Winter’. Nick forgot to introduce himself and no-one else had a microphone so he remained anonymous.

They had got through their set with only a few very minor errors, nothing that the audience would notice and they did their encore. The Edge Bar gigs didn’t run strictly to time and if the band was going down well they would always be allowed another ten minutes. The Pandas played their Slayer cover and then they played ‘Metal Fix’ again.

They came off-stage and moved the equipment that Demon Speeding, the headline act, didn’t need, into Paul’s van. There was a half hour before Demon Speeding went on and it seemed to the Pandas that it was almost entirely full of people telling them they had been great and asking when they were going to play again.

Cleo hugged Ian and Nick and told them how awesome they had been. Jenni did likewise. Angie told a sweaty Paul that he’d been great. Suzy congratulated Jim and then Phil. Then they all clustered near the front of the stage to watch Demon Speeding play.

The Demons were industrial metal. Their front man Damon had dreadlocks and baggy jeans. He was wearing a glow in the dark Rammstein T shirt. As well as their own original stuff they covered Ministry’s ‘Bad Blood’, Nine Inch Nail’s ‘Terrible Lie’ and oddly for an industrial band, ZZ Top’s ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’. Damon had misheard the lyric ‘With my can of dinner and a bunch of fine’ as ‘with my can of bitter and a porcupine’ but he always sang his misheard version which he preferred. There were about the same number of people watching Demon Speeding as there had been watching the Pandas which was a good sign. Demon Speeding finished just before midnight and a DJ took over. He asked Nick if the Pandas had a CD of their music he could play.

All of the Pandas felt a warm, fuzzy feeling of accomplishment and of relief. Their friends, members of Demon Speeding and even people they didn’t know congratulating them felt amazing.

The Pandas loaded a few final pieces of equipment into the van. They had lent various bits to Demon Speeding, depending on who had the best stuff. Phil had amassed quite a collection over the years and he found it impossible to part with of any of it. He didn’t just have guitar stuff for his own use, he also had mikes and drum bits and various amplifiers. He felt sure his destiny lay in music.

Damon shook hands with all of them and said they had been a hard act to follow. Dean, Damon’s best mate, said the Pandas were the most exciting new band he’d seen that year. Paul drove back to the practice studio which was also Phil’s house with Phil and Angie and they unloaded the equipment into his large soundproofed basement. It was the basement feature that had led Phil to buy this house, although the rest of the house was lovely too, with three stories and a large, long garden.

After Paul and Angie left to drive back to Reading Phil stood outside staring at the clear sky, wondering what it would be like to be really successful, not just well known locally, but well known nationally and internationally. If he could get there before he was forty he’d be happy. He enjoyed his web design day job but it wasn’t what he was truly passionate about. In the van on their way home Angie was full of praise for Paul. He modestly accepted her praise.

The Edge Bar was open until two a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Jim, Suzy, Nick, Ian, Jenni and Cleo hung around until closing time, chatting and drinking. Ian had a long conversation with Dean (who worked in The Right Note, a local music shop) about effects pedals. When Suzy overheard Dean say ‘Big Muff’ she giggled. Dean wasn’t sure what was funny. Suzy said the next time she had an Ann Summer’s party at her flat Jenni, Cleo and Angie must come along.

Suzy made friends in a heartbeat whereas her boyfriend Jim took a while to decide he liked people. When he did he had a fierce loyalty that meant he made friends for life. Suzy trusted people immediately. Jim liked to observe people’s behaviour for a while before making his mind up about them. This could be a source of stress between them.

Before leaving with Paul and Phil, Angie had invited Jenni and Cleo to call her so they could meet up for a drink. Angie made friends easily and gracefully, like her husband Paul she thrived on the novelty of new people.

At closing time Ian and Nick walked home with Cleo and Jenni. Nick lived closest but decided to walk Jenni and Cleo all the way home with Ian and then walk back home himself. It was a warm night and he was nowhere near ready for sleep. He was still thrilled by the triumphant first gig and full of adrenaline.

‘It was like the first time I heard Megadeth or Slayer. It was like Eviscerated Panda were standing behind a door holding a baseball bat with spikes in it and then the door opened and Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Michael Myers and Ivan Vanko were standing there rocking out’. Cleo replied.

Nick smiled. He found both Cleo and Jenni extremely attractive and their good opinion of him bolstered his ego. Both girls had put Ian firmly in the friend zone, having been to school together where the unwritten rule for girls of not fancying anyone the same age as you was strongly in effect. But Nick was different. Nick thought that Ian and Cleo would make a good couple, although Ian claimed they were great friends and nothing more. He wasn’t so sure about this and for this reason he’d never really pursued Cleo, fearing it might interfere with his friendship with Ian. He’d never really pursued Jenni either although he found it hard to account for why. He was unconsciously a bit intimidated by the fact she was planning to do her Masters’ degree and follow a career path his Dad would approve of. He was consciously aware that she smelt nice, looked lovely and if he didn’t see her for a week he missed her. Luckily this rarely happened as they were generally in the Green Man every weekend.

When they got to Jenni’s she invited them in for a cup of tea. Jenni’s parents were happy for her friends to come and chat at the big wooden kitchen table as long as there was no loud music after ten p.m. Cleo made tea while Jenni uploaded the photos she’d taken and emailed them to everyone in the band, getting Phil, Paul and Jim’s email addresses from Nick, who had a great view down her top while he was standing over her, typing away at the computer.

Jenni looked through the photos she’d taken, some of them were great, some were not so good and some were just a blurry mess, where the lights had changed and the auto-focus had delayed taking the picture. She’d managed to get at least one good one of everyone, partly by luck and also by taking loads of images. She’d got a couple of half decent band shots. There was a good one of Jim bathed in green light.

Cleo fished around in her handbag until she found a bag of fizzy cherry sweets. She usually had a bag of sweets in her bag, something she had begun doing when getting trains from Reading to Coventry while she was at Uni. The trains were often late and it cost one pound for a Kitkat, which on a student budget was a lot. They dissected the evening, over tea and sweets. All agreed it was a massive success and the start of a sure-fire trajectory to such things as headlining Download, Wacken and Hellfest.

They joked about the eventual decline into drug problems, hair loss and fatness after decades of success. Cleo and Ian left at about three a.m. Nick stayed for another cup of tea before walking home. Jenni hugged him on the doorstep before he left and again said how much she enjoyed the gig. He hugged her slightly more tightly and for longer than usual. It would probably have caused comment if anyone had been around to see it but no-one was.

Ian said goodbye to Cleo five doors away from her house, near a house with a very large, overgrown hedge. This was an old habit, from Cleo’s teenage years when Peggy would get mad if any boys called for Cleo. Peggy had probably been trying to protect her daughter in a strange way. Having lost her husband with little warning when Cleo was barely a teenager Peggy was in a strange place mentally for a few years. This hadn’t stopped Cleo from meeting boys, she had just made sure to do so at a discrete distance. It had been exciting to arrange secret meetings in leafy well-kept parks. Or Cleo would meet boys at Jenni’s or go to their houses.

Ian hugged Cleo goodnight by their long established privacy privet and then he walked home. He felt as if he was at the start of something big and fun and slightly scary. Looking out at the audience in the Edge Bar (when he’d worked up the courage) and finding himself the focus of so much attention had been a tremendous feeling. He thought about it all the way home and wondered when the next gig would be.

Cleo changed into her nightclothes (a size extra-large Ramones T-shirt) and got into bed to write her diary. Her cold legs soon warmed up. She’d been keeping a diary since school and she never stopped doing it, liking to be able to look back sometimes to what she’d been doing the previous year, or many years ago. She found it could give her a sense of perspective if she was unhappy or troubled about anything. Her diary entries from a year ago were all about finishing university and about breaking up with her boyfriend at the time. Then she had worried about finding a job and about living with Peggy again. Both of these issues had sorted themselves out.

Cleo put her thoughts in order, cosy in her bed, with her bear Ozzy, on the shelf above her, watching over her. Ozzy was her Dad’s bear, one of the few things of his she had kept. He was expensive and furry when he was first bought, back in nineteen fifty-five. Now he was scruffy and worn with very little fur left. Cleo preferred to think of him as well loved rather than haggard. She opened her diary and wrote;

Eviscerated Panda’s first gig was truly, truly awesome. I can’t believe someone I went to school with can do something so cool. Demon Speeding were great too but I preferred the Pandas. Jenni and I met loads of new people and talked to some people we’ve only met briefly before. Suzy (who is Jim, the bass player’s girlfriend) is going to invite us to the next Ann Summers’ party she holds and we’re going to go for a drink with Angie, who is Paul, the drummer’s, wife. Phil is a brilliant guitarist, as good as Ian. I like to meet older people who are still doing what they want. It gives me hope that I will be still doing what I want when I’m their age, rather than being drained and tired like some of the people I work with all week.

By the time Cleo put her diary away in her drawer sunlight was shining through a gap in her Rainbow Brite patterned curtains. She had meant to replace these years ago but always had something better to spend her money on. Her bedroom was pretty much the same as before she’d left for university. There were a lot of posters of men with long hair and a lot of books, magazines, clothes and CDs scattered around. The shelf which Ozzy sat on also held a troll with pink hair and a green Care Bear.

Ian got in and suddenly he felt exhausted. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and tried to detect any changes in his face since he had last looked in the mirror earlier that day. Earlier he had been nervous, now he had played a successful gig with the Pandas. His face looked disappointingly the same. He wondered if his brain looked different, if some neurons used for recording nervousness had died and been replaced by ones which recorded confidence.

He decided his black pants with the red flames could now be regarded as lucky. He fell asleep in them. He dreamed he was on stage in just these pants but that no-one in the audience minded and they were cheering him but he was uncomfortable at being dressed in only his pants and he kept trying to leave the stage to put some trousers on but each time he tried he had to play another encore.