From Visions of Garleyville

Battle of the Bands

The road north looked exactly the same.

Hank had driven me this way once or twice when on his kick for going to Hamburg or Middletown. But I hadn't come back since and never with the band, and frankly, I didn't understand why we had to travel so far just for a gig. Pauly seemed to have similiar reservations, though knew more about where we were going.

"So who the hell booked us in this place anyway?" Pauly asked, sitting up front as the car climbed the hill out of Pompton.

"Lewis," Garrick said from beside me in the back seat, the lights along side the road splashing over his unhappy face.

"Figures," Pauly said. "Give me a cigarette, Hank."

Hank reached into his shirt pocket with one hand as he steered with the other, and came out with a pack of Larks and gave one to Pauly, who lit it from the car lighter, and slowly sighed out the smoke.

"Why?" he mumbled. "Are Lewis' rich friends looking for cheap thrills?"

"Not exactly," Garrick said.

"What does that mean?" Pauly asked, turning around in his seat so the hand with the cigarette hung over the back, practically into my lap.

"It means this isn't exactly a gig," Garrick said slowly. "It's a battle of the bands."

"What's the difference?"

"We don't get paid."

"What?" Pauly exploded. "You mean to tell me you dragged me away from Passaic to sing my heart out for nothing?"

"It's not for nothing," Garrick said. "The band that wins gets time in a recording studio."

"Oh, la di da!" Pauly said, waving the cigarette around in the air. "Am I supposed to be impressed? Well, I'm not! I don't sing for wishes and dreams, I sing for money, and if there's no money in this thing, then you boys might as well just turn the car around. I'm not singing."

"You have to sing," Garrick said. "Lewis promised."

"And who is Lewis when he isn't giving away the store for free?"

"Trying to do right by us."

"If he was doing right, I'd get paid. That's why we hired him on as our manager? Does he think we're still back in the garage, playing for fun?"

"No," Garrick said. "I don't think that. But he sees this as an opportunity for the band to break out of the club scene and maybe get a recording contract. You're the one who's always bugging everybody to write original songs."

"Rock and Roll songs," Pauly snapped. "You really think a down home band from Passaic going to impress a bunch of spoiled little brats from Woodcliff Lake? They don't listen to rock and roll, they listen to disco."

"Good music is good music," Garrick said. "If the band plays the way it does in the club, it'll win this thing hands down."

"That depends on who's being the judge," Pauly snapped. "If they're judging, they'll want glitter, and then we're just wasting our breath."

"You could dress up a little," Garrick said. "Get your sister to paint your face again the way she did..."

"No way!" Pauly snapped.

"But you've got to sing," Garrick said. "It's not just Lewis I'm thinking about, but the agent, too."

"Agent? What agent?"

"The agent that's going to be there to look everything over. There's always an agent poking his nose into these things, trying to get a handle on up and coming talent. If we don't go on, we'll get a bad rap on the circuit."

The car headlights sprayed over the landscape along the highway, rocks and trees, and animal eyes staring out from sections of deeper woods, the unpaved part of the state that allowed rich people to escape the hustle and bustle of life like we had in Passaic, hiding behind gates and guards and security cameras. I didn't like the idea of stepping over from our side to their side either. Those people always tried to make me feel small and insignificant. In New York, they walked straight into me on the street as if I didn't exist.

"So how many sets do we have to play?" Pauly asked after a long time silent.

"It's elimination," Garrick said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you play until you're the last band."

"How many bands are we talking about?"

"We won't know until we get there."

"Which means we could be playing all fucking night!" Pauly yelped and sucked on his cigarette, although it had already burned down to the filter. "And I'm sick, remember? My voice won't hold out for a marathon."

Pauly had mumbled earlier about being dizzy, and suggested that he might be getting one of his more serious bouts of cold. He got them from time to time, though Garrick often said Pauly was faking, just using his cold as an excuse not to perform.

"Pauly doesn't get as sick as Hank, though he likes to think he does," Garrick told me more than once. "But he does go on and on about how much he's suffering."

"Feel my head," Pauly told me, after stubbing out his cigarette when the stench of the burning butt made him realize how low it had burned.

I reached over and touched his head.

"Do I feel warm?"

"A little," I said.

"Don't start that," Garrick said, knocking my hand away. "You're not going to win any sympathy from me. You're going to sing tonight and you're going to sing better than you ever have, or you're going to find yourself walking home -- and with the change of weather, you'll definately be sick by the time you get home."

"Bastard!"

"Is this it?" Hank asked, as the headlights revealed a huge wooden sign with carved letters spelling out "Woodcliff Lake."

"Yeah," Garrick said. "Make the next right."

Hank turned and the headlights revealed an arched gate made of brick, and perfectly trimmed hedges running along either side, more fortress than many of the castles King Arthur had beseiged, floodlights winking on as we came, red light of closed circuit television telling us we were being watched. Finally, we came to a bridge, arching over a landscaped moat, the sound of rushing water fading as we rumbled over onto the other side, where we could finally see signs of life beyond the trees, beyond the swimming pool and the tennis courts and the nine-hole golf course, an inaccessible fairyland to which none of us belonged.

"Holy shit," Garrick mumbled, staring through the trees at the parking lot behind the guarded inner fense, cars with logos for BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, Jaquar, as if indeed, beyond the fense was another country that did not hold to the same Democratic principles as this side did, recognizing wealth as the sole criteria for power.

"It's like we used to dream about," Hank said, awe hissing out with his words.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Pauly asked sharply.

"That's Garleyville," Hank said. "It's what we wanted to do."

"Bullshit!" Pauly said. "We never envisioned this. We never wanted to lord over anybody else. We just wanted room to ourselves, and if you hadn't spent all that money you got from the car accident, we wouldn't be sitting here looking into somebody else's yard, we'd be on the inside looking out."

"Even then, we wouldn't have had nothing like this," Garrick said, staring down into the valley. "No swimming pool or golf course in our little land."

"Ours still would have been better," Pauly said. "We would have owned it, and god help anybody who tried to hoist disco music on us. We'd run them out, tarred and feathered. Come on. Let's just get this over with."

So Hank drove down to the inner gate, where several guards popped out of their little brick guard house, looking at us as if we were an invading army, each reaching for his revolver, then pausing, as if not quite certain if they had the right to pull on pistol on us or not.

"This is private property," one of the guards said, slowly advancing on the car as Hank rolled down the window.

"We know," Pauly said shouting out passed Hank. "We have an invitation."

The guard looked skeptical.

"We do," Garrick said, yanking a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and shoving it at Hank to hand to the guard. "We're here for the battle of the bands."

The guard stared at the unfold piece of paper that had likely sat in Garrick's pocket for a week, then up at Hank and Pauly, his face losing a little of its disbelief to a look more resembling alarm. He clearly did not relish the idea of letting us in.

"You just sit there a second," the guard said after a moment. "I have to go check this out with my boss."

"You do that," Pauly said, casting a dark stare at Garrick, who only shrugged. "Another fine mess Lewis' got us into. If we're getting this much hassle, I wonder if he's even gotten here with the van yet."

"He said he'd come early," Garrick said.

"Then why didn't he think to tell the guards we'd be coming, ease their concern a little?"

"Because Lewis doesn't think that way," Garrick said. "This is his crowd. No one's ever treated him badly or looked down on him, so he wouldn't think anyone would do it to us."

"The fool ought to try it once," Pauly said. "Maybe he'd give up his money and become a monk."

"Ut oh," Hank said. "I don't like the look of this fellow."

The guard returned, followed by a man much more militaristic in appearance, a man wearing the same bluish uniform as the guard, but with the bearing of a U.S. Marine Corps. DI, from the brush-like crew cut to the snap in his step. Both he and the guard marched towards the car then halted beside the driver-side window.

The taunty and tawny face said it all, as grim as a messenger of death, reminding me of the drill sergeant I had when I served my brief time in Fort Dix, only this one, slightly sadder, slightly out of shape, struggling to maintain his dignity with his short hair and guard's uniform and officer bars on his collar, as his belly creeps out over his belt and his jowels jostle.

"You boys are in the wrong place," he said. "Now why don't you just turn this here car around and go back the way you came?"

"This is the right place," Garrick said. "We're here by invitation."

The head guard's face soured.

"I don't care if you've got an invitation or not, you boys aren't getting in this place," he said. "I've seen your hippie kind before and know you mean to cause trouble, and its my duty to keep these people safe. So get out of here before there's trouble."

"Turn the car around," Pauly said. "Let the little dictator have his empire."

"No," Garrick said. "We're here now, and we're going to stay here. Listen, mister. If you don't let us in, we're going to cause trouble. Our friend, Lewis arranged for us to come. He knows people inside who won't like what you're doing. If you want to keep your job, you'll let us pass."

I'd seen the look that exploded into the head guard's eyes before. It was the same took Hank got from the gaggle of cops he stopped when they ran a red light on him, or the look every bureaucrat gets when some son of a bitch like Garrick threatens his job, furious, outraged, threatening violence, backing down finally because he's not the drill sergeant any more, but some retired has-been who couldn't get another job like this in a million years and knows it, and won't let no hippies like us lose it for him, nodding at the other guard with a stiff head, refusing to give in except for that, ignoring us and our car as the gate lifts and we drive on, as if perhaps if he closed his eyes and listened to our fading motor, he could pretend he turned us back after all.

Not that we won anything driving on.

I went to Disneyland once and hated it, feeling so put upon by all the bullshit, everything so unreal, designed for my entertainment, that I wanted to puke. I got the same way in Willowbrook Mall, where guards and distance kept white people from confronting blacks, except as servants, and here, even the servants were bound to be white, because no other face color could blend in so well with the otherwise stark white world, so rich and pathetic, so helpless, services paid to wash their cars, clean their clothing, make sure they eat and sleep on time.

Pauly stared out the window, too, but his gaze suggested a different resentment. Here, he'd been planning his own little world for years, making us drive him all the way to the Candania boarder so as to look at a few plots of land, only to come up a few thousand short when trying to put a deposit down -- and now, to roll in and see how rich folks got what they wanted when they wanted with no trouble or questions asked, how easy it was to steal a dream, and make us come into it just to make us feel small.

"Sons of bitches," he kept mumbling.

I wanted to tell him it was all right, that this wasn't what we had in mind at all, that we wanted independence and self reliance, and that this wasn't either though the rich folks thought it was. This was just another food chain with the rich folks sucking blood from places like wall street and every son of a bitch like the guard and the gardner, the cook and the limo driver, sucking blood off of them, everyone trying to figure out how to get as much money out of these rich folks as they can, pretending these folks were so utterly superior while picking their pockets.

The problem was these rich folks took the best of things and ruin it, buying up the best land, the most convenient location upon which to build their little den of maggots. We had to find places like the one up north with rocky soil and dried up brooks, and trees that looked next to dying. I recalled people on the plot next to one we had building a dome out of beer cans because they couldn't find enough trees, drinking up case after case after case, in order to finish their home before winter, too drunk to make sure the roof didn't leak, too drunk to care if it did.

"Don't get pissed, Pauly," Garrick said. "You won't sing well if you're pissed."

"Fuck you," Pauly growled. "I have a right to be pissed. You and Lewis dragging me all the way up here to get insulted by these people, to have me see everything I want, held up by a lot of snobs."

"You can have your land if we get the recording contract," Garrick said. "And you can make it over into something far better than this if we get a hit record."

"Yeah, if, if, if," Pauly grumbled.

I saw Lewis' van first and pointed it out to Garrick, who pulled the car into the slot beside it, though signs posted at the head of each parking spot bore the name of a resident. Around us, the world grew darker, and yet even the dark could not erase the delicate atmosphere -- perfectly manicured lawns and bushes to match the rigidly construction buildings, small brown housing units that served these people as homes, but with that sense of sameness the Monkees once sang about in one of their 1960s hit songs.

"Well, what now?" Pauly asked, when Garrick had shut off the engine.

Garrick shrugged. "I guess we look for the club house. That's where Lewis said they were holding this thing."

"My God," Pauly grumbled. "It sounds like we're playing somebody's summer camp."

"Will you quit complaining and come on," Garrick said and opened the door. "I'm sure the rest of the band are here all ready. And you know how they feel about your being late."

We all got out of the car. Lewis had emptied the van of equipment, and the wheel marks of the dolly across the thick inch-high grass gave us a clue as to which direction he had taken. We followed the trail onto the walk, and then turned right, noting the few places along the walk where the dolly had rolled to one side or the other, leaving yet more of a trail to follow. Finally, we came to a building that looked larger and slightly different from the mock brown houses, though it had the same woody flavor. A sign above the main door proclaimed it as the club house. Garrick pushed his way in trailed by Pauly, Hank and myself.

The heat hit us immediately, a wave so strong we started to sweat even before we were fully inside. To the right, a frowning face appeared behind a small glass window, a man wearing a look I'd seen numerous times over the years, directed at black and Latinos. I saw the man's fingers creeping along the inside counter towards the telephone, fingers that stopped only when Garrick walked towards the window.

"We're from Erik Lemon," Garrick said.

"Erik Lemon?"

"One of the bands," Pauly said impatiently. "Our road crew is already here. We saw the van outside."

"Oh yeah," the man said. "You're with those others."

He said this with such contempt, Pauly stared, and would have replied, but Garrick stepped inbetween them.

"Where are they?"

The man behind the window jerked a thumb indicating his left. "Up the stairs in the main room," he said.

Garrick nodded and headed for the stairs, and we hurried after him, taking notice of the crowds of people to rooms right and left of us, residents waiting for the competition.

"It seems to be a big night for them," Pauly said. "They must not get out much."

"They're out to support the local band," Garrick said. "A brass outfit."

"Fucking disco, you mean," Pauly said.

Then, we reached the top of the stairs and discovered a room that wrapped around us like a huge horse shoe. The organizers had set up several stages at various points around the outter U. Lewis and the other members of the band stood around the stage farthest to the right, Lewis yelped when he saw us and waving both his arms for us to hurry over.

"About time you got here," Lewis said when we reached him. "What took you?"

"Pauly didn't want to come," Garrick said.

"What?" Lewis said, looking shocked.

"I'm sick," Pauly said and took a sandwich bag from his pocket which had about a dozen asprin. "Is there anything to drink? I need to medicate myself."

"Sick, my ass," Lewis said. "You're just trying to make a fool out of me."

"You don't need my help doing that," Pauly said and then spied a table with several coffee urns and an accumulation of sweet buns, donuts and cookies. "Ah, food."

"Not yet..." Lewis yelped, but Pauly marched towards the table, too quickly for Lewis to stop, and filled one of the styrofoam cups with coffee. "Why do you always have to be so crude about everything, Pauly? Every time I take you somewhere you embarrassment in front of my friends."

"I embarrass you?" Pauly said, looking a little surprised. "I'd be more embarrassed if I had friends like yours, stuck up, self-centered fools with their fingers stuck up their asses to keep from shitting -- people so refine don't shit."

"Will you please hold your voice down!" Lewis yelped, and glanced around, his face so red I thought he might be suffering a heart attack.

Lewis was always the most refined of the Garley gang, though his roots weren't as well established in wealth as his friends. His father had made his money in contracting and had moved up to Lincoln Park to raise his kids away from the dangers of Paterson. Lewis was perpetually ashamed of his father, and never once mentioned Paterson in polite company.

"Look, I'm sick" Pauly said. "I don't want to argue with you. But I certainly don't need you lecturing me either. Just let me take my aspirin and I'll be happy. With this crowd, we won't be here long anyway. They won't like our kind of music."

"That's not true," Lewis said, his thin face losing some of the added color. "They'll appreciate what you do, just like I do."

"Will they?" Pauly asked, glancing around the room at the crowds of young people all apparently posing as advertisements for an L.L Bean mail order cateloge, night time out on the town replacement for their daily regiments of pin striped or Ralph Lauren Suits, so ostentagious, so phoney, they needed isolated communities where they could share each others artificially while avoiding the laughter of real people.

"How many bands are there?" Pauly asked.

"Five so far," Lewis said. "Another band is due, but someone said it might not show."

"Five?" Pauly pondered, shaking his head slowly. "And how's the competition work?"

"Each band plays a three-song set. People vote. The top three play another set. People vote again, widdling it down to two. One last set of three songs and then people vote again."

"My God!" Pauly said. "What the hell kind of nightmare did you sign us up for? Even if we get elminated in the first round we could be here until midnight."

"Pauly, you don't seem to appreciate what I've done for you?"

"That's because I don't appreciate working for nothing."

"I won't be for nothing when you win."

"We're not going to win," Pauly snapped. "Those people wouldn't know good music if you hit them over the head with the instruments. We're going to play our balls off and they'll vote us down, and all for nothing. Look at them looking at us." Pauly pointed towards the crowd, and the other bands, all of whom gawked like tourists. "Are those the judges?"

"You mean at the table?" Lewis asked. "Yes, they are."

"Then we are doomed. Can't you see how much they hate us, even before we've played."

"But they won't hate you after they hear you?"

"So you say. But I know their kind. Once they get it in their head to hate you, they hate you forever. It's a superiority thing, Lou. They can't afford to like anybody as primative as we are. If they admit we have talent, then their whole social order falls apart. They have to believe they are God's gift to the planet, otherwise, they're just the same old geeks we knew in high school, the ones with pocket protectors and their hair greased down."

"Don't look now," I said. "One of the judges is coming this way."

And indeed, she was, a top-heavy women in her mid-forties, too fat for the leotards she wore -- which clearly came via Mary Tyler Moore's role on the Dick Van Dyke Show, her version of being "a cool cat."

"Excuse me," the woman said, in a tone so nasely, I nearly couldn't understand her, though the attitude and tilt of her head made it clear she was not any more happy to see us than the guards at the gate had been. "Who are you and what do you want here? If you do not have an invitation, I wish you would leave."

"We're with the band," Pauly said, his tone as sharp as hers was defuse, drawing the very shocked expression he clearly desired.

"What?" the woman said and glanced at Lewis, whose thin face had turned nearly purple again. "Is this true?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Lewis said in a hoarse whisper. "Pauly's the leadsinger, and Garrick's the sound man."

But the woman only shook her head slowly from side to side. "I thought I knew you better than this," she said. "I thought you knew better than to bring such riff raff here."

"Pardon me, lady," Pauly said. "But I would watch the name calling. I'm very sensative about such things."

The women's eyebrows shot up as she turned and glared at him.

"What was that, young man?"

"We're here to play music, lady," Pauly said, "Not take abuse from you. This is a battle of the bands, remember?"

"This is meant for local musicians," the woman said. "Not some hoodlums from downtown, Paterson."

"We are local," Pauly said. "We're out of Little Falls. Which I'm sure, Lou already told you."

"Yes, he said as much," the woman said. "But he implied that you were musicians of some talent, not some barroom brawlers."

"Oh God!" Pauly moaned. "What the fuck did you get us into, Lou!"

"Do you mind!" the woman yelped. "I will not have you using such language at our fuction. Our children might hear you! And to tell you the truth, I find that kind of language utterly inappropriate in any venue."

"All right, all right," Pauly said. "Get off your high hourse. I won't curse again. Now are we here to play or do we go home? I don't care which at this point."

"I think you should leave," the woman said.

"But why?" Lewis protested. "You agreed I could bring them."

"I already told you why," the woman said. "This is a private community."

"But the function isn't private," Grarrick said, speaking up for the first time, drawing the woman's wrathful stare.

"What was that?"

Garrick didn't flinch. "You put an advertisement in the newspaper for bands," he said, drawing a wrinkled piece of newsprint from his pocket. "That's an invitation. It doesn't say anything about where we should come from."

"I'll call the police," the woman said sternly.

"And if you do, the cop will only tell you we're right," Garrick said.

The woman's nostrils flaired as she let out an indignant snort. "Will they now?"

"So will your lawyer when I get my uncle to sue," Garrick said.

The word "sue" registered on the woman's face like a blow.

"What was that?"

"This is a free country, Ma'am," Garrick said. "But there are laws about things like this. It's called discrimination."

"That's only for those negro people," the woman said.

"It's for anybody," Garrick said. "Now do we get to play or what?"

"Well, I don't know..." the woman said, interupted by the arrival of a much younger woman.

"Mother? Is something wrong?"

The woman turned. "Oh goodness, yes, Hilda," she said. "These hoodlums say they want to play at our affair. Is this true? Could they have actually been invited?"

"Of course, they've been invited," Hilda said, shaking her thick head of blonde hair as if she had just walked out of the pages of some fashion magazine, her white blouse so tight I could see her hard nipple pressing against the fabric. "I invited them myself."

"You?" the woman said in disbelief. "But why would you bring such characters here? You know how your father feels about such things?"

"I brought them because my friend Lewis said they played well," Hilda said, casting a glance and smile at Lewis, who blushed. "And what's the point of having a battle of the bands if we aren't going to bring bands here that can really play?"

"We have our own musicians," the woman said.

"Spoiled little rich boys whose parents bought them all kinds of gizmos," Hilda said. "They pretend to play, and they sound pretty good with all those tape loops and echoes. But I've been out in the world, mother, despite your attempt to keep me from doing so, and I've learned what real music sounds like. And I want other people here to know what they've been missing."

"REALLY, Hilda," the woman snapped. "That's a very irresponsible attitude."

"I don't care, mother. The band is staying and they're going to play. Unless you call security and put them out. In that case, you'll have a lot of my angry girlfriends to deal with. They want to hear this band, too."

The woman stared at her daughter for a moment, then at us, shuddered, closed her eyes, and sighed. "All right, they'll play. But if there's trouble, I will hold this against you, Hilda."

"There won't be trouble, mother," Hilda said, but her mother had already started indignantly away. Then, Hilda looked to Lewis, and smiled again, making it clear just why Lewis had committed the band to play here for free. He practically melted in his shoes.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Garrick said, drawing Hilda's appraising stare. She looked at each of us in turn, her face growing more pleased.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I do think the girls will be pleased when I show you boys off. Why don't you come and meet them. They're all over at the other side of the..."

"What a great idea!" said John, the guitarist, who plunged out from behind Lewis, this thin frame belying the kind ballsy music he was capable of producing.

"Forget it!" Garrick said, grabbing John's arm. "We have to set up."

"Ah, come on!" John howled, glancing at Hilda and beyond Hilda to where the other rich girls stood, girls giggling and staring back. "We have roadies to do that!"

"We stick together," Garrick said. "Or we're all going home right now. This place is trouble and I don't want you messing with the women the way you do in the clubs. I don't want us to wind up in jail tonight."

"Jail?" John said. "For talking with some girls? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"You don't stop with talk," Garrick said. "And that's the thing I'm worried about. Set up your stuff. I want to be ready to play when this thing starts. That goes for you, too, Hank."

"What?" Hank said, pausing in mid-step as if caught in the act of a crime. "I'm just a guest of the band."

"But you're just as capable of getting us in trouble, especially with the underage girls. Stay with us, or I'll lock you in a closet."

Yet if Pauly intended to keep us isolated for the whole night, his plans were soon dashed, because those girls moved towards us like a flood, giggling and blushing as they came, looking every bit like the teenyboppers Hank and I used to see invading Greenwich Village during weekends in the 1960s, middle class curious girls arriving by bus load to taste the forbidden fruits of the hippie generation. But these girls, with their clattering jewelry and their over painted faces, were hardly middle class, and they did not study us the way those teenboppers did the hippies, these girls were rich and spoiled and bored with the boring, spoiled rich boys that fate and securty had condemned to them to date. They saw us, grinned at us, with debauchery in their eyes, knowing that every step towards us, every smile and wink, only made their parents more furious than anything else they could have done.

And this fury was nothing compared to that which went on with the boys in this community. They, huddled in an alcove near one of their own bands, glared at us from across the room, looking very much the way a herd of sheep would in the presence of a pack of wolves, cursing us, glaring at us, whispering of what they might do to us if security and their parents weren't arround, secretly thankful for their parents and securty for fear of what we might do to them if they tried.

I lost sight of them the moment the wave of women struck. John swept up two immediately and took them towards the stage -- his arms around them both -- to show them his instrument. Jack, the drummer, did as much, letting one very pretty girl thump his bass drum, her high heal catching in the peddle's mechnism so that Jack had to kneel down and losen it, drawing giggles from the girl when his fingers probed just a little too high up towards her thigh.

Hank and Lewis, and the bass player, Ritchie, fell in with this crowd, too, trying to talk to all of them at once, trying to sort out the names from their jabber. Only Kevin, the other guitarist, Pauly and I, resisted the flood, retreating into the doorway beside the stage where we might avoid the onslaught of voices, girls so desperate to make our acquaintance, they scared us. They didn't seem to have the same cold calculation that marked most women we dealt with in the clubs. John later called these girls "easy pickings" and claimed them so desperate for real men that none stood much of a chance among his kind. John boasted to have scored with a score that night, though the number was likely less -- though not by much. Even lonely Hank scored, nearly getting caught in a closet with his pants down, and his organ in one pathetic rich girl's mouth. If anyone other than Pauly had pulled open the door, Hank would have been in jail for statetory rape, and we would have been tarred and feathered.

As it was, I knew we would not fair well musically if we had to rely on the parent or male vote in this battle of the bands. From the gazes of the boys, I suspected one of us should check routinely on the van and car to make sure all the tires remained uncut and no one put sugar in the gas tanks. Would they be brave enough to ambush one of us on our way in and out? I could not accurately guage the size or strength of them as they were dressed, the silk shirts and slicked back hair making them all look like John Travolta, making them all seem part of that "Saturday Night Fevor."

And as if to make matters worse, Hilda's mother appeared again at the front door, trailed by three beefy men in uniform, men with the same security uniforms as those at the front gate, except these three wore the mean, anti-hippie look I'd seen on the faces of cops during Vietnam protests when I was a kid. The woman pointed at us. One of these men, clearly the leader -- from all the ribbons that hung from his uniform and from the glint of outrage in his eyes -- nodded solumly, promising with his stare to stir up trouble later, one of those guardians of morals that haunted me since grammar school, priests, nuns, soldiers and cops all one one side of an imaginary line and me on the other.

"I don't like this," I told Pauly. "Maybe we should get the others onto the stage -- away from the girls. If we don't, we might have something ugly."

"We already have something ugly going on," Pauly snapped. "This whole fucking community stuff sucks. It's like living in Orwell's 1984. I'm surprised they don't have us bugged or on camera."

"Maybe they do," I suggested.

Even Garrick looked uncomfortable, staring at the cops, and then at the gang of boys gathering near one of the other stages.

"I'll go reign in the others," he said, and then stomped off, grabbing the band members, pointing them at the stage. Pauly, meanwhile, leaned against one of the speaker stacks, trembling a little.

"I wouldn't mind this shit half as much if I didn't feel so bad," he said. "But I'm coming down with a fevor and I'm in no mood to spend the night in jail. I should be home. In Bed. Sipping a cup of soup and reading a book. Under a thick set of blankets, not waiting for some pig-headed rent a cop to come beat me up."

Suddenly Hank burst upon them, wagging his forefinger under Pauly's nose.

"What is this shit about me having to stay over here with you guys?" he asked. "I thought this was all supposed to be fun. But here, Garrick is telling me that you want me to stay away from the girls. Are you crazy? Do you know how horny these chicks are?"

"They're jail bait, Hank," I said.

"So?"

"So you'll get us in fucking big trouble if you start trying to poke them," Pauly snapped. "We're not here for you or Lewis to get off on the girls. If you want to get laid, wait until we get back to the Red Baron. That place has plenty of women who'll help you with your sexual gratification."

"It's not the same," Hank said. "These girls are..."

"Vulnerable?" I suggested.

"Rich," Hank said, glaring at me.

"Too bad," Pauly said. "You'll stay put or I'll have Garrick tie you up and lock you in the van. You hear me?"

"I hear," Hank said, but clearly didn't like it.

"Fine, now where the hell is Lewis? We're going to do this thing and then leave before anybody has a chance to cause any trouble."

<br>

**********

<br>

It wasn't as simple as that, of course. We didn't get to play first. And we could see just why Lewis brought us to this place from the way the other bands played. In any fair arena, we were best. These little rich boys didn't know how to rock. And except for the brass-bassed band across the hall from us who thought they were Blood, Sweat & Tears, most of the bands didn't even know how to play their instruments well.

One band played pop stuff from 1964, early Beach Boys and Ventures, with long, pointless solos they screwed up half way through. John scoffed openly at them, shaking his head as they played, drawing hateful glares from them as they became aware of them.

"Ametures," John said, loud enough for them to hear, which made them angry, which made them make more mistakes, and drew dark glances from that segment of the audeince who had come to hear just them, some aspect of the little rich kid population -- that I later learned came via another walled community from up Route 23 more. In fact, every other band in competition had come from one walled community or another, bred and inbred and protected from harm by wealthy wall street parents who bought them horns, guitars, drums or piano in order to keep them quiet and their mouths shut, only to learn they could make a lot more racket with the instruments.

The next band played much more acceptable music -- a least on the surface, starting off with a Monkees, then the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, Frankie Avalon, The Four Seasons, Turtles, Mama's and Papas, New Christy Minstrils -- but they played this nearly as badly as the first band, missing cues, messing up harmonies, so that they even their most die hard fans cringed over their mistakes. Visually, they looked like youth league supporting the reelection of Richard Nixon, from short haircuts to shinny shoes. Even their ties looked all American, though not Red, White and Blue. No one booed, but they got only a polite clap, suggesting they would not survive the first round.

Then we went into a real time loop, with one band after another taking us back so far in time, our whole band stared in disbelief, starting with some piano, guitar, drum and crooner doing Frank Sinatra, Andy Como, Mel Torme and that lot, very popular with the parents, but only the girlfriends of the band seemed to find them remotely entertaining. After this came the du whop singer who brought back all those painful reasons why the world needed the Beatles, filling the room with complex harmonies they learned off records, but on the street, using electronic echo to enhanse their voices when the originals had nothing more than some skany bathroom somewhere when doing this in the 1950s.

The next band shocked us, starting with a descent chuck berry riff, going into some Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and then, topping it off with Elvis. Even John was impressed, though more so than the audience who saw this music as dated at the other two bands, and gave them a mild applaus when they clearly deserved better.

"Hell, if we weren't in this thing, I'd vote for that band myself," said Garrick under his breath. "For little rich kids, they did pretty good."

After them, we had a pop band playing everything from the Jackson Five to Roberta Flack, throwing in Simon & Garfunkle, Sonny and Cher, Chad and Jeremy, Jan and Dean, and a host of other groups whose tunes made people in the audience smile and hum, bringing up memories rather than admiration.

But it wasn't until the brass band started that we started to shake, loud, tight horn section blasting out tunes from Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears and other groups I hardly knew, sharp tunes that made the room sit up and take noise, and drew a quiet "ut oh," from John. This band had the room rocking in a way we'd not seen so far, and I learned later, every member of the nine piece band studied in some conservatory, or in the jazz section of the William Paterson College group that had toured China.

"We're next," Garrick growled, stirring us up, though none of us -- least of all the sniffling Pauly -- wanted to be stirred or felt like we were going to stand a chance against a band as tight as this, the horns leaving their mark on the faces of everyone in the room, even members of the other bands.

"Fuck that," John said. "How are we going to sound after these people get through?"

"Like the professionals we are," Garrick growled. "We can out play those sons of bitches and you know it."

"We can," John said. "But will people know it? Look what happened to those other guys. They played chuck berry as good as anybody, and they hardly got anybody to clap."

Then, our turn came, and Pauly, coughing hard into his hankerchief, waved his hand, signalling for John to hit the first chord of what a well-rehersed set, starting light, ending up heavy, doing Bowie, Beatles, Stones, Mott the Hoople, and Led Zepplin, shifting from one song to the other as we had recorded it straight from each album. We didn't think about the songs. We didn't worry over them. When John went into solos, that's all he thought about -- carrying the mood on in high and low notes, slipping back into the body of the song as easily as he had slipped out, with the rest of us coming on with it, making the music sound like it always did. Pauly was a little off with his singing, and that got a look of concern from Garrick over the top of the sound board. But Pauly wasn't off so much as anybody other than us would notice. In fact, the crowd that started coming towards the stage didn't seem to mind Pauly at all, their faces so shocked from the sudden shift in texture. We were a working band. We didn't have time for the subtlies that the other groups displayed, all that side grinning and self acknowledgement they gave each other when they did something they thought was great.

John was great. We all took that for granted in practice and performance. And we were good enough to play on his level, otherwise none of us would have been on the stage or taking the tour of bars the way we were. Bar crowds where we played didn't take shit. They didn't like cute bands, or flashy bands, they liked bands with balls, and that we had. We had so much in the way of balls that it rolled out over people's upturned faces and threatened to knock them over.

And we didn't imitate exactly like the albums either. Pauly didn't sing like Bowie, he sang out of the soul Bowie created, out of the rock the Stones made, out of the wail Zepplin shaped, out of the cockiness Mott the Hoople displayed. John didn't learn parts either. He learned the songs, learned to listen for the style each guitarist gave these songs, and then dublicated the style, for solos of his own that sounded as good as those created on record, just not note for note.

All this was not lost on the other bands. They showed the same shock some high school baseball team might have shown if the New York Yankees showed up on the field to play ball with them, each band looking at us, shaking their heads at us, wondering just what planet we had come from and why we had picked on them on this particular night.

And we were on.

Maybe we were pissed at the whole place, wanting to prove to these wall-dwelling dweebs that talent has nothing to do with money, and that we poor rock and roll souls from places like Little Falls, Paterson and Passaic could outplay these sons of bitches on any day of any week regardless of the lessons they got at college or the money their parents spent on their instruments. We felt our music because it came from the street. Even as Pauly's voice loosened up, I could hear the garage sound in it, and remember the months of playing to no audience at all, trying to capture, not the music, but the feeling of the place, trying to make people smell the mildew and see the rats, to make people feel the pain and pleasure that only rising out of such poverty brought -- though in truth, that poverty still clung to our heals, one more orphaned child of our past that would take years for us to shake. Pauly, hearing it, too, grinned at me, and put a little extra in the shaping of his words, as if a little spice to this stew.

As we played, I saw the guards loosen up, too, their hard edges suddenly growing soft as we played for them the kind of music they probably listened to themselves, while in their cars on their long drive home. They weren't rich kids, they didn't come from walled fortresses, but from the heart of the same cities we came from, working men with wives and kids, and memories of days when they used to speed around in hot rods blasting this kind of music through the streets. They nodded their heads, they tapped their feet, then even hummed along under their breath as we went on, John's sharp guitar cutting the air into pieces, Pauly's gruff voice taking each and every person in that room down the dark allies of his dark mind, making them face the moody atmosphere of pain that incorporated most people's lives, people without walls, guards or an exaggerated sense of importance, people who moaned and groaned and cried at night, from back break, heart ache or loss.

We played Gene Genie. We played Bitch. We played Sweet Jane, and then, we played Sympathy for the Devil, and that changed everything. Not that the guards minded. Or most of the younger kids. But the woman who had greeted us earlier, suddenly stood up and shouted for us to stop, shaking her head at us, and when John and Pauly refused to end the song just because she said we should, she grew redfaced and called to the guards to make us stop, and even then hesistated, sensing conflicting feelings, caught between a paycheck and a memory, and unfortunately, the paycheck won out, though they made no move towards the stage until we finished our song, and then slowly, on either side of the protesting lady, they marched up to Pauly.

"Is something wrong?" Pauly asked with his usual wit.

"I should say so!" the woman snapped. "How dare you bring that kind of language in here, ruining our kids with such thoughts."

"Language?" Pauly said, glancing at me then at John. "I didn't hear any swear words in what we sang. We do have some songs we could have played that have some questionable language, but we chose to play only the safe stuff tonight. What exactly did you find objectionable."

"All of it," the woman said. "Especially the volume. Must you knock down the walls when you play? Why can't you play nicely like the other bands did."

"Because that's not us, Lady," John snapped. "We play hard and we play loud."

"We'll you're not going to play any more tonight," the woman said. "I want you to pack up your things and go. We've had enough of you."

"And you call that fair?" Pauly asked, suddenly so serious he drew a surprised stare from Garrick.

The women glanced at Pauly. "Fair? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about dragging us up here, making us play for free, and then kicking us out when it looks like we're going to win this competition over one of your precious `nice' bands. If you ask me, I think people call that cheating."

"You can't be serious to think this band would win," the woman said.

"I'm not only serious, I know we would. And so do you. That's why you want us to leave, so that some other band can win that doesn't come from some place like Paterson. You seem to think we ought to be privileged just to play in the same room as you, we shouldn't expect to actually win anything, too."

"I want you to leave because you are vulgar louts who have no business coming into polite society with your jungle music. Guard! Show them out. I won't stand another minute of having them here. I won't have our children ruined by them."

Of the three guards who had accomplied the woman to the bandstand, the two of lesser rank looked at us, their gazes filled with relutant understanding. They had seen this kind of thing before in places such as this, yet had never felt so bad about doing their duty as they did this time, knowing just how right Pauly was about the performance, and how little right the woman had to call our music vulger. These guards understood the meaning of rock & roll, and its primative, almost revolutionary appeal, how its backbeat tapped into some aspect of our evolutary makeup, drawing feelings out of us that civilization had sealed up. It was the Egar Allen Poe cat bricked up inside a wall, crying to be let out every once in a while.

But the captain of the guard showed no such reluctance. He might have come from our stock once, but had gone through such a transformation, he no longer felt any sympathy for our plight. He worked for the masters of our society and knew where his loyality lay, stiffening at the woman's command, glaring at us as if we weren't just an intrusion by an enemy he would like to destroy.

"Well?" he said coldly. "You heard the lady. Pack up your things."

"Now wait a minute!" Pauly said, then fell into a fit of coughing.

"See!" the woman screeched. "They're even diseased ridden. Get them out of here before I have to call the board of health."

"NO!" Lewis shouted as he came around the guards from the crowd, the young wealthy man looking exactly those in the crowd, part of their society and their general attitude. His time with us had always amounted to little more than slumming, one of those little rich kids in search of a hoppy.

"What do you mean no?" the woman asked. "We like you hear, Lewis. But I can't say we like your choice in friends. And if you're going to continue to come here, I suggest to adopt a new attitude and new friends."

"That's not fair!" Lewis said. "There's nothing wrong with my friends."

"Oh?" the woman said, one eyebrow rising as she eyed Lewis in this new light.

"I mean they're a gruff lot, I'll admit," Lewis said hurriedly. "But they're good hearted fellows and they're great musicians, and the kids here like them."

"All the more reason to put them out," the woman said. "And since you're so fond of them, you can go, too. Guard, do your job."

The captain of the guard moved to grab Lewis by the arm, but Lewis grabbed his arm away and stepped back.

"DON'T YOU TOUCH ME!" he screamed.

"Lewis," the woman said. "Don't make a bigger scene of this than it already is."

But the battle lines were drawn. Garrick stepped up to Lewis' side, as did the rest of the band, the two underling guards stiffening with the sense of an upcoming fight, taking their proper places beside their chief. Pauly, alone, did not step into line, but leaped up to the microphone and shouted: "STOP THIS SHIT!"

Everybody in the whole room stared at him. And once he had everybody attention, he began to speak, about how people here ought not to look down their noses at us, how people ought to listen to our music and take that as a sign of who were are.

It was a rambling speech, the kind of which I'd never heard Pauly utter, a gushing of emotions he generally didn't express except in sarcastic bursts. But he seemed so racked with his illnness that he seemed out of touch with himself, saying all this, begging for someone to come up and tell "This Woman" to leave us alone.

"We're just here for the music," he said. "And I thought that's why everybody else came. So why can't we just play and not have all this social stuff getting in the way?"

Many of the people in the crowd agreed with Pauly, grumbling their disapproval at the woman's attempt to spoil what was promising to be the best battle of the bands they'd seen so far.

"Yeah, let them play!" someone in the back of the crowd shouted. And then others joined in on the protest, getting louder and more angry at the fact that the music had stopped.

"We came to hear a battle of the bands," someone else shouted, while a few yelled for Pauly to sing. Even some of the other band members complained, saying they didn't like the guards throwing around their weight.

"You mean if you don't like the kind of music we play, you throw us out?" one of the performers from the brass band complained. "How fair is that?"

I caught a look in the eyes of that band, a kind of respect few of the other bands had, as if responding to our challenge and wanted a chance to refute us musically, and not be cheated by this woman or her guards. If we walked out now, no one would know for certain which of the two bands was best, and even though their bands would win the prize, questions would remain in the back of most other people's minds as to whether or not we should have had it instead. Pauly caught this, too, and grinned at them over the heads of the woman, her guards and the protesting crowd.

The indignant woman stared at us, at the brass band's members, at the angry faces of her own, spoiled children who did not want this band to leave and threatened a minor revolution if they did. Many said they wanted their chance to vote. Most, however, just wanted another chance to hear their music again and see how it stacked up against the brass band's, and to hear how the brass band would respond. For the first time, I felt the energy flowing, not just ours, but everybody's in the room, setting up an inevitable confrontation between us and the brass band -- if this damned lady called off her dogs.

The good guards looked nervous, glancing from side to side as if such a thing as this was beyond their reckoning. They had always figured that the danger was outside the walls, not inside, and the prospect of having to beat back the children of the people who hired them, did not sit well on their faces. Their boss looked annoyed, not nervous, glancing at these children as if he wanted a chance to finally teach them a lesson that would keep them in line for the rest of their lives, panty-waisted children who had no business talking to their parents like they did, no business doing anything other than what they were told. Worse, he looked at us as if we were to blame, our music bringing out the savage in the most civilized of people, and because of this, he looked as if he didn't just want to beat us to teach us a lesson, but to eraticate us and keep us from inspiring this kind of disrespect in the future.

But the woman didn't look half as angry as she did embarrassed, glancing at the children, at the guards, at us, as if none of this was supposed to happen, and that she needed to regain control of the situation, even if it meant leaving ruffians like us to play yet another set. After all, she clearly figured, didn't the brass band have the talent to beat us head on? Why did she have to worry? We would be gone soon enough.

"All right," she said. "They can stay. But they have to lower their volume and they can't play the kind of songs they've been playing."

"Lower our volume?" John protested. "But that's the way we play our music. And what kind of songs do you want us to play, something by the Osmund Brothers?"

"I want you to play decent music," she said. "Or I will have the guards put you out."

"All right, we agree," Pauly interjected before John could protest again. "Now can we get on with this thing?"

The woman looked indignant, and a triffle disappointed at how easily we had come to terms. She had wanted us to put up a fuss, had wanted to have the guard drag us out as if the public specticle would prove her point about how uncouth we were. While two of the guards looked relieved, their chief looked equally furious, as if he'd held similiar visions as to our fate as the woman. The crowd, cheered by the decission, dispursed, moving towards the tables where they went through the first round of voting, writing down their favorite bands, then stuffing these piece of paper into the ballot boxes.

Pauly leaned agianst one of the speaker stacks and lit a cigarette, sucking in the smoke so slowly and with such intensity that half the cigarette burned in that single toke. He let the smoke out more quickly.

"I'll bet you they vote us down," he said, though sounded more as if he was hoping. He snuffled a little. The spell that had kept him a float through the first seemed to waiver now. He looked like an old man, wisened with the weariness of the world.

"That's bullshit," Garrick said. "They won't vote us down. Not on this round anyway. Out of the original ten, five have to survive for the next round. Then, three after that, and then the last two play one more set. We'll make the three cut for sure. Most likely, we'll make the final play off."

"And then we'll lose," Pauly snapped. "All this work, and then they'll show us the door. That's the bullshit part."

We didn't have to wait long. We saw Lewis running towards us from the table, as exited as a puppy, grinning as he held up a sheet of paper which said we'd made the next cut. As did four other bands. And again, we were scheduled to play last, and again, we listened to the other bands start up with their next best set, tunes a little more contemporary, though the brass band punched up its act with a little Sly and the Family Stone, making even Garrick swallow a few times wondering if we would make the next cut after all, especially with Pauly as sick as he was.

But when we started to play, Pauly pitched in, his voice a bit craggy for the effort, but that only gave the songs an authenticity we sometimes missed when he sang these songs too smoothly. He was bringing these kids back to the streets where they belonged, teaching them the ethics of survival, how boys and girls like them did not have walls to keep themselves safe, but wit and guts and quick steps. John was sharp, too, each lead emphasizing the message Pauly's voice had delivered, cutting the audience up with bitter strings of notes, making them sway, then stopping their swaying, making them lean towards us, then chasing them back with furious contempt, making them ache for the pain that came from the roots of our music, from the roots of our souls.

No one clapped when we finished this time. No one shouted or laughed. All of them stared, mouths slightly ajar, as the last of our music faded in the room, chasing any remaining dust of the previous bands from the corners and cracks.

"That'll show em," Lewis said, with his own awe more visible. "They're never going to hear better than that."

"I wouldn't count on it," Pauly said. "That brass band isn't as impressed as the rest of the room. I'll bet they have a real killer set up their sleeves."

"So do we!" Lewis said. "You haven't played any of the good stuff yet, the stuff that wipes them out in the clubs."

"That's because we were told to keep it clean," Garrick said. "We start playing anything like Gene Genie or Sympathy for the Devil and we'll find ourselves out on our heads, and our instruments in shatters around our ears."

"That's not dirty," Lewis complained.

"Not dirty, but they'll think it is," I said. "People like this don't mind talk of sex and drugs, but don't mess with religion or mention revolution."

"Let's not worry about our next set yet," John said. "We haven't made the next cut yet, and we haven't heard what the others are going to play. We could get buy with some plain old blues or Clapton."

"Maybe," Pauly said, but sounded doubtful.

We made the cut. Us and them. The rock band and the brass band. Glaring at each other across them room. Garrick talked with the person in charge. This would be the last set. They would play first.

And Garrick was right.

The brass band pulled out their killer set, dipping into classical and jazz, belting out songs from Bennie Goodman to Janis Joplin, and they rocked in their own way, burning up that room with blaring frills, ending their three song set with the echos of their music burried under the audience's applaus. These were the home boys, the local heros, battling against the evil huns from the city, putting on a fine show with their glitter and their gleam.

We had to come on dark now. We had to blow them away with dirt, and everyone, even Garrick knew it, yet we couldn't move into it quickly. We had to start light and move heavy, but had to do it in three songs.

"All Stones," John suggested.

"No," Pauly said. "We have to mix it up. We'll start Zepplin, Bowie and then Stone."

And then, to Pauly's nod, we started, the sharp strokes of my guitar cut and recut by John's easy flowing blusy notes in Dancing Days, Pauly's horse voice driving its message into the room. People stared. People like grave stone statues staring as we shifted into the dualing guitars of Genie Genie, my guitar and John's guitar, winding around each other until both dropped from a single high note into silence -- and then, Ritchie's bass began slowly with the beginning notes of Sympathy for the Devil.

The audience gave a collective breath as I joined in, and then John, the drum pounding out the beat as if we were coming to war, and the people on the dance floor, and the people near the door, and the people near the bar began to sway, and began to pick up on the beat with their feet. Not dancing. This couldn't ever be called dancing. It was something more, something diabolic, something that oozed out of that part of the primative mind even they could not control, drawn out by us, relating to what we were doing in a way that was no longer music.

The feet stamped. The drum pounded. Pauly sang the lyrics so clearly no one could have missed their meaning, drawing looks of sudden concern on the faces of only those old enough to be immune, of that generation of big band and doo whop, of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The woman glanced around at the younger people, looked around at her daughter, at her daughter's friends, and saw faces so absorbed, so caught up in the moment they looked inhuman, like robots or savages marching to some beat born inside their brains. She screamed for us to stop, but the music had gone too far and the beat too loud, and the stamp of the feet threatened to knock down the building or burst through the floor, all the same feet striking at the same time, all of the people moaning and groaning as Pauly sang, joining on the "shoop shoops" as me and John did.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" the woman shouted and rushed towards the stage, her face so furiously red she might have done as a devil herself, trailed by an even larger devil in the shape of the security chief, and his two, more than confused cronies -- who could not resist the beat themselves, yet could not refuse to listen to their cursing commander when he ordered them to stop the band. But by then, we had finished, and the music stopped. The pounding did not. The feet kept on going and going, even as we put our instruments down, and Garrick came around the board to intercept the woman.

"I want you out of here right now!" she screamed, the stomping stopping only as her screech rose in pitch and she had reached the stage with her group of henchmen.

Pauly, whose voice had gone so gruff during the last song that I knew he was really now very sick, sagged, gripping the mike stand, less with the idea of using it as a weapon than with the idea of needing a crutch.

Across his face marched the parade of memories we all knew fit this scene, he and me and the others the angry young men of our time, now growing older, more desperate for a break at success, needing this gig so someone might take notice of our talents, might give us a contract before we turned too old for the scene altogether.

"Rock and Roll is a young man's game," Pauly told me more than once during his meloncoly phases, especially after one of those nights at the club when we did well and nobody took notice.

His face showed that constant cycle of disappointment, as if he now saw life as the same, miserable game played out again and again, the hippies thinking they had invented revolution, the rock stars thinking they were the newest innovation, when all the time, revolution and innovation had little importance in the world, only the wealthy did, the wealthy and the powerful setting the rules by which the rest of us follow, skewing the game so no one by they themselves could win -- rules they could change at will if any of us learned how to play too well.

"All right," Pauly mumbled. "We'll leave."

"Wait a minute!" Lewis yelled. "Why doesn't somebody check the vote?"

The woman would have egnored him, except that others in the crowd picked his message up like a chant and began to repeat it. The woman tried to shush them, and looked to the captain of her guard to make the crowd behave. But the captain stared around at the young faces, and was suddened troubled. It was one thing to deal harshly with people like us, outsiders, rock and roll freaks from town's these people hated. But to enforce a silence on these kids, was to cause himself grief. He could not beat them down the way he might have tried with us, not if he thought to keep his job. He sighed, shrugged helplessly, and subjected himself to the woman's outraged stare. He would hear about this later.

The woman's glare turned on us as the chanting continued, chanting that said what everybody already knew, what the last song had said in calling up this place's demons, and she knew she could not stop us from winning, could not stop us from collecting our prize, could not make us or the world we represented go away.

Finally, she sagged, too, and mumbled at someone to go count the vote, as she pushed her way weakly through the crowd to escape us again, slamming the front door as she left.

Later, of course, she would cancel the prize check, and call the agent who'd booked the studio for us. We did not get our recording gig. But then, we all knew what we'd done that night couldn't be caught on tape in a recording studio, only in the hearts and minds of a throbbing, stomping audience of kids, all of them adding the "shoop shoops."

Email to Al Sullivan

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