The Five (52 page)

In this old world.

In this tough old world.

In this hard old world.

In this old world.
”

And now Berke’s drums strengthened in volume, the cymbals spoke with their shimmering voices, and Nomad stepped forward to lay down a solo with his Strat. The solo was loose and easy, almost with a bluesy vibe. It sounded like something that might have spilled onto the rainslick street from a club where the sign said
One Night Only. Dean And The Roadmen
.

He was nervous, not because of the solo—he had that knocked—but because the verse he’d written was coming up next, and because deep down he feared this song.

“One CD title,” Nomad had said to Roger Chester, in the fourth-floor office. “I’ll give you the first two words of our newest CD.
Catch As
—”

“I don’t need to know,” the man across the desk replied. “That’s Ash’s job.”

Nomad nodded. The way Roger Chester had said that spoke volumes.

“Do you even
like
music?” Nomad asked.

There was no longer any need for pretense. “Not your kind, no. Not particularly.”

“Do you like any kind?”

“Listen, don’t get
smart
. My grandfather started this business, friend. Started it from a travelling caravan of country singers who played places you people wouldn’t
piss
in. And my grandfather was the barker, standing in the back of a pickup truck hollering through a megaphone. Bringing in the customers from the fields and the barns, and charging them a little money for a lot of entertainment.” His voice was making the glass rattle. Nomad thought it was just a matter of time before the bighorn sheep had its revenge.

“Ohhhhh,
now
I get it,” Roger Chester said, his eyes gleaming. But not in a good way. “Ash, take at look at these three. You know what you’re looking at?”

Ash must’ve thought it was a trick question, because he refrained to commit.

“Ar
teests
,” said the big voice. “I run into them occasionally. They go out to change the world and make grand statements, and they wind up living in their cars and playing on the street corner for lunch money. Well, can I tell you something?” He waited, but not very long. “Nobody gives one good fuck about art. About
messages
. It was true in my grandfather’s day, and it is for
hell
sure today. People want to be entertained.” He stressed that word with three distinct syllables, as if his guests had never heard it before. “They don’t care what music says. They don’t even listen. They want to go out to a bar on the weekend, have fun, drink some beer, maybe meet a girl or guy, and you know what you are to that? Background noise.”

Berke put one boot up on the table.

Roger Chester glanced at it, but he was a mouth in motion now, a speeding fireball of truth, and he’d decided he was going to give these people what they’d asked for.

“This business is about
money
,” he said. “Not art. Fuck art. Unless I can make a lot of money from it, and then I say ‘Bring me more art!’ But the profit on selling messages to people is mighty paltry. If it can’t be branded, and packaged, and promoted, and sold to a demographic, as far as I’m concerned, friend…it doesn’t exist.”

It was the second ‘friend’ that almost sent Nomad over the edge. But he held himself back. He held himself. He put his hands on his knees and gripped hard, and he tried for a tight smile but it emerged as a grimace. He had nothing against entertainment. Entertainment was fine. The Five’s material was mostly party band stuff, feelgood rockers or ballads, but still…to be told they had a boundary, a line they were not supposed to cross, a box they were supposed to be happy and glad and pleased not to ever climb out of. That seemed like a kind of death, in itself. The death of experimenting, the death of the noble failure from reaching too high. The death of caring whether what you did was good or bad. You just wanted to get paid, and to go home to your big TV, because nothing was more important than the cash.

“Mr. Chester,” Nomad said, “you don’t know anything about our music, do you? But it’s the same as it’s always been. A month ago…you’re right, hardly anybody knew us. We were working, and we had fans, but—”

“You weren’t going anywhere. I’ve seen your numbers.”

“Right,” Nomad said carefully. “So…what’s changed? We’re suddenly famous and all these people want a part of us—and you want to push us into everybody’s living room and iPod—because two of our members are
dead
? And one was put in the hospital? What about the
music
? That’s the same. We work, and we work, and we try our best, and we can’t get anywhere unless we trade on the deaths of our
friends
?” His voice broke. He thought the rest of himself would fly to pieces at any second. “You didn’t do these things for us before. That’s not right. We agree on this, sir. The Five is done, because if we’re ever successful again we want it to be for our music, not because of tragedy.”

“John.” Roger Chester let the name sit out there like an egg being fried. He smiled; it went away; he smiled again. “Nice speech, but pointless. Let’s say you three walk out of here today, mad as hornets, and you decide that’s it with this agency. You decide to
fire
me, for trying to make you lots of money and be very successful. Well…the thing is…I run this show. Not just me. Others like me, everywhere. See, we kind of guard the gate. We look for musical talent, sure. Got to have that. But there are
lots
of folks with musical talent. Then we look for the pretty people, or the people with something quirky about ’em. The people with attitude and personality. Something the mass audience would buy. We look for the rebels, or we create ’em. We line up the critics and the mentions in the magazines. We water grass, not weeds. So if we’ve let you in and you don’t click, if you don’t have the amount of sales we’re looking for, if it’s just not
right
, then…we kind of push you toward that gate again. And we’ll hang with you for a while, but if it looks to us like our time can be used more productively…then we have to push you out the gate, and we hope you do real well in the future. So you can walk out of here, but where will you go? Oh, I forgot the Internet! Like you can ever make any real money, or a real career, off half-assed bloggers and low-rent CD pressers.”

Roger Chester took a long sip of his coffee.

Then another long sip.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

Nomad’s solo was finished. It was echoing off along the black walls. Ariel stepped to her microphone again, and sang.

“So welcome to the world, and everything that’s in it,

It’d be a poor old world, described in just four minutes.

You got to get out there, see what’s in it, don’t let life make you crazy.

I wish you safe travel, courage, you can find it.

I wish you safe travel, courage, you can find it.

Was the old world,

Today the new old world.

Was the old world,

Today the new old world.”

And then the drums quietened again, to the beat of the bass and the snap of the hi-hat, and Ariel sang softly, as if reciting a children’s rhyme.

“
Try and try, grow and thrive
,

Because no one here gets out alive.

Try and try, grow and thrive,

Because no one here gets out alive.
”

Sitting on the brown leather sofa with Berke and Ariel, Nomad thought of the plight of Ezra’s Jawbone, and the men in the suits saying that the awesome rock opera
Dustin Daye
, which followed no model nor copied any current sound, was no good because it lacked a single the kids would buy. And they made the members of Ezra’s Jawbone think they had failed, when it was the suits who couldn’t hear the music.

Nomad knew. It was partly why the man’s speaking volume was so loud and uncontrolled. “You have a tin ear,” he told Roger Chester. “Your hearing’s fucked up. So you wait for someone else to say music is worthwhile, it has value, and then you rush around and gladhand people and say you knew it all along. Maybe you’re afraid, because you have investors who are looking for quick money, and you can’t—won’t—support anything but the sure thing. But you make more money with the sure thing, right? The comfortable thing? So if you don’t like music anyway, if you don’t see the value in it beyond money, then how can you lose? And there
we
are…one day nobodies, the next day as sure a thing as you can get. Because tragedy struck, and we got some attention.”

“Sounds like a golden opportunity to me,” said Roger Chester.

“How you got yourself in control of people who really care about music, I have no idea. And
you
,” Nomad said to Ash. “You’ve got your ears up your butthole.”

Roger Chester took his glasses off and wiped the lenses with a white hankerchief. He still wore a slim smile. “All I can say to that is, we’re talking about the age-old war between business and art. Correct? Friend, business won that war a long time ago. And if you don’t already know that to be the truth, then…” He put his glasses back on, the better to see the face of the vanquished. “Welcome to the world,” he said.

Nomad told Berke and Ariel that he thought it was time to go. They all stood up, and then Roger Chester went a buttkick too far.

“I guess this means your friends died for nothing.”

Nomad stared at him across the desk. One month ago he would have thrown himself at the man, no matter who the fuck he was or how old he was, and he would’ve made that mouth regret its lips. He would’ve folded this man up at the joints and made him smile where the sun did not shine.

But not today.

He said, “You know where to send the checks.”

“I certainly do, Mr. Charles. Minus our fifteen percent commission, and minus expenses for travel, various promotional considerations and extra expenditures as specified in the agreement. I certainly do.”

They started out of the office. Before the door closed, Roger Chester said, “You’ll be back.”

On stage, Nomad couldn’t help but wonder what this song would’ve sounded like with Mike’s bass thumping at the bottom, and Terry’s keyboards floating in and out like golden smoke. They were almost done, it was almost finished, and Nomad still feared this song because he didn’t understand it, not the why of it, and he didn’t know what was going to happen when the last note was played.

Ariel, her mouth up close to the silver microphone, repeated the rhyme once more.

“
Try and try, grow and thrive,

Because no one here gets out alive.
”

Then the drums came in full-voiced again, Berke put her muscle into it, Nomad launched some soaring lines into the multi-colored air, and Ariel finished it out with an impassioned cry.

“Oh yeah, from this old world,

Could be a new world.

Could be a new old world.

Could be a new world,

Could be a new old world.

Might be a new world.

Just not the same old world.

It was the old world,

Today the new old world.

Might be a new world.”

And she let the last line stretch out until her opera-trained voice roughened and rasped and held on to its control by the thickness of a thinned-out vocal cord.

“
Just not the same old world
.”

They approached the end, a few seconds away. The music began to quiet, and with one last sweep of electric guitar like a sword through the air Nomad was done, and Ariel went out with the same progression that had opened the song, and Berke hit the bass and snapped a hi-hat, and it was over.

As far as Nomad could tell, nothing changed in this old world.

The audience cheered and clapped, the cameras flashed and the videos were captured, the cries instantly went up for more, Berke threw her drumsticks into the crowd, Nomad said, “Goodnight, and thank you,” and he unplugged his Strat and walked off with it. Ariel followed him, and then Berke. The house lights came up, saying the concert was done. Recorded music spilled from the speakers, the voices of some other band. The audience, nearly all of them wearing The Five T-shirts, began to file out in small groups. They were happy; it had been a good show.

Thor Bronson came backstage. He wore a white suit and his Five T-shirt. His tan glowed and his hair was lemon-yellow. Hanging on his arm was a blonde fox who could’ve been his teenaged daughter, and she was dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl and kept a BlowPop in her mouth. Nomad figured that Thor was now tapping the porn dolls. “You’re one cheap sonofabitch,” Nomad told him, referring to the fact that Thor had saved himself ten dollars by wearing the shirt, and Thor said that now the little prissy motherfucker had time on his hands he ought to come out to Cali and kick it with him. Nomad said he’d think about it, and Thor said don’t think,
do
. He said he was staying at the Driskill, going to meet some studio people and party for the next few days, catch some Texas sun, hear some new bands, and he said that if Nomad didn’t come visit him he would roast a pair of balls over a campfire and though he was not gay he would eat them on a slab of Texas toast with habanero sauce.

“Okay,” Nomad said.