Chapter 30 #2
“So, we’d landed a gig playing at the Potomac Mills Mall,” Rebel said, laughing harder when my face scrunched up. “Yeah, that’s how we looked too when Ozzy told us about it. He did all of our booking back then. To this day I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking with that one.”
“Exposure, probably,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it was a shitshow,” Rebel said.
“Half the gear was stuck on the side of the road with Terry and Griff. They were our roadies at the time. They’re Dash’s cousins.
They were bored and had a van, so we hired them.
Anyway, something went haywire with the engine, and they got stuck fifteen miles away, so we rolled up with an acoustic guitar in hand and nothing else for instruments.
Not only that, but luggage was in the back of the van with the gear.
You’ve seen how we travel; we like to be comfortable.
It was summer, and the air conditioner was on the fritz, so it was pretty much tank tops and basketball shorts.
We’d throw our flip-flops in a box by the door for when we made gas station stops, but that was it for shoes in the van. We were a mess when we went in there.”
“Is that how you played?” I asked.
“Naa, it was a mall, remember. We went on the fastest shopping spree in band history while Bruce, who was our driver at the time, took the van back for the equipment. You should have seen the look on this dude’s face when he stepped into the men’s room to see four half-naked guys standing there, clothes all over the floor, as we frantically tried to get dressed in clothes we hadn’t taken the time to try on, so not everything fit.
Dash had to run back to the store for a pair of jeans he could pull up all the way, and we shredded a tank top into a belt for Johnny because his jeans were too loose, though not loose enough to fit Dash; we tried that.
We even tried giving my jeans to Dash and me wearing the ones that didn’t fit Johnny, but I couldn’t zip the damn things. ”
“Wow,” Kit said. “So, there were definite wardrobe issues.”
“Man, that was just the start of the wardrobe issues for the night,” Rebel groaned.
“In the crazy race to get everything set up, I snagged the pocket of my jeans on something, tearing it off and leaving a hole in the back. Mid-show, Johnny tripped on a cord that hadn’t been taped down properly, and Dash reached out and managed to snag the tank top belt to keep him from falling. ”
“Oh no,” Steel muttered. “I can already see where this is going.”
“Not right away,” Rebel said. “But with all the jumping around, air guitar, and that yank, yeah, the tank top belt came apart, and Johnny’s jeans started slipping.
So now he’s holding the mic in one hand and the jeans in the other, still belting out the song.
Meanwhile, Griff slips onto the stage behind Johnny, and he starts trying to fix the belt between songs while Johnny’s announcing the upcoming single and the other area dates we have coming up.
Griff’s struggling, so Dash sticks his finger in to hold the pieces in place so Griff can tie them together, and the next thing we know, he's got Dash tied to Johnny while Ozzy, who can’t see what the fuck just happened, starts tapping out the intro to the next song. ”
“All you need is a cartoon duck, and this would be comedy gold,” Steel sputtered.
“Man, I’m glad I asked for the notebook tonight,” I said. “Please tell me someone got a few photos."
“They’re in a scrapbook, along with a bunch of others back at my place,” Rebel said.
“I’ll break them out one night while we’re lounging around.
They’re always good for a laugh. Wait until you see some of the hairstyles we tried out over the years.
Bet you’ve never seen a picture of Ozzy with a mohawk. ”
“And he’d better not see one either!” Ozzy’s voice startled us both as he leaned in the doorway, shooting Rebel a pointed look. “I thought we burned those?”
Ozzy’s words were met with silence from Rebel as he lay there smirking as he stared into the fireplace.
“Rebel…” Ozzy growled.
“No one said anything about erasing the memory card,” Rebel said, a few snickers slipping out. “I just printed more the next time I went to the photo center. I’m sure he could find them floating around the internet if he looked hard enough. I’m just offering to save him the trouble.”
“Fine, but while you’re showing him the worst hair decision of my life, you make sure he sees those pictures of you with the pink mullet.”
“It wasn’t pink,” Rebel protested. “It was fuchsia.”
“It was as pink as a Barbie dream house,” Ozzy declared. “Pepto-Bismol pink should have been the name on the side of the box you used. It was so blindingly pink that you could have starred in a live-action version of Candyland.”
“Oh shit, now I want to see both the shockingly pink hair and Ozzy with a mohawk,” I said, laughing at the thought of Rebel with hair like the pink side of the cotton candy ice cream we’d had earlier in the night.
“How did we get on the subject of that mohawk, anyway?” Ozzy asked.
“I was telling him about Potomac Mills and Dash getting tied to Johnny,” Rebel explained. “He asked if I had pictures, and I said yes, along with the evolution of our hairstyles over the years.”
“Aw, shit, Potomac Mills,” Ozzy said, coming in and dropping into an easy chair.
He rubbed his chin as he stared into the flames like he was watching the memory play out there.
“Did you tell him about the big-ass dent Dash put in my drum?” Ozzy asked.
“I was just getting to that part, actually,” Rebel said.
“That fucker better be lucky it didn’t go through or his head would have been next,” Ozzy said, but there was no heat to his tone, just a fond smile as he shook his head. “God, that was a shitshow.”
“What did he dent the drum with?” I asked.
“His bass, when he yanked his finger free, since Ozzy was almost to the spot where Dash was supposed to jump in,” Rebel explained.
“All of a sudden there’s this boom that I sure as fuck didn’t make, and I look down and you can see the outline of bass keys in the drum. How it didn’t punch through, I don’t know, because you could see two of them as clear as day.”
“That’s because the amp caught him,” Rebel explained. “He wound up sitting on it instead of falling all the way back. Played the rest of the song that way, looking completely perplexed every time I glanced over at him.”
“Because who the hell expects any of that shit to happen?” Ozzy said. “It was like the metal gods had put a curse on us.”
“Did the belt hold up for the rest of the night?” I asked.
“Man, the belt didn’t last the song,” Rebel said, cackling in between words.
“Johnny wound up saying to hell with it, bunched up the loose fabric around his waist, and secured it with a hair tie, but his side was red and all scraped up by the end of the night. He lost enough layers of skin that we almost took him to the hospital to get it looked at.”
“Would have if Bruce hadn’t brought that giant first aid kit along,” Ozzy reminded him.
“Medic!” Rebel squawked, laughing so hard he could barely get the word out.
“Do you remember that shirt we got him for Christmas one year?” Ozzy said. “He loved wearing those things backstage.”
“I’m not a real medic; I just play one on TV,” Rebel said, nearly falling off the couch as he was laughing so hard.
“Seriously though,” Ozzy said, turning his gaze on me. “He sure saved us on ER visits. Have you gotten to the list of challenges never to try again?”
“Not yet,” I replied.
“Keep reading,” he said, settling in like he was going to stick around and get in on the storytelling too.
So I dove back in, eagerly looking forward to a night of laughter and history.