Revels Now Ended

We killed.

The room was on fire; faces were melting, heads exploding. That is to say, not in a literal sense—we weren’t murderers or anything. There was, however, a lot of screaming.

We rocked as if we were never to rock again, which ironically happened to be the case. We just didn’t know it at the time.

As we wrapped up our nine-minute, penultimate epic with a buzz of guitar feedback slicing through the thick air, steamy and pungent with the mingling scents of stale beer and fresh sweat, our lead singer Trent set us up for the next and last song with one of his over-the-top shrieks.

“Are you ready for one more?!”

More screaming. The crowd surged forward as Billy, our guitar player, launched into the chiming arpeggios that opened our first single and go-to show closer, “Leave It Alone.” A standard move, really—leave them with the catchiest song still bouncing around their heads.

After an eight-count the whole band crunched into the main riff. The song was an uppity if straightforward rocker of that perfect tempo that inspires head-bobbing and fist-pumping, and not by accident; we wrote it to be a hit, just as countless others have done but pretended not to. At some point, the once-refreshing angst of all those great rock bands of the early-to-mid 90’s had run amok and infected the assembly line of clones and imposters that followed. Alienation and anger became commodified to the point that post-grunge modern rock bands seemed unaware that rock and roll was supposed to be fun, too. As we saw it, that was where we came in.

The crowd was spellbound as we raged through the first half of the song, adhering to the always-effective “Smells Like Teen Spirit” template of quiet(ish) verses and explosive choruses (which Nirvana themselves borrowed from the Pixies, and so on). At the song’s bridge section we returned to the opening guitar figure over a broken down but surging beat.

Trent paced the front of the stage, facing downward, his hair shrouding his face. “So,” he started, still pacing, still looking downward, “we’ve been on tour for, what, two fucking years now. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, but we’ve pushed through, doing what we do. No matter what, nights like this and crowds like you make it all worthwhile!”

Big applause from the crowd.

The band kept the beat going.

“One thing I know, that I’ve learned from all the crazy shit we’ve been through, is that I want to live my life one way—without regret. If you follow your dreams, there’s always gonna be someone trying to knock you down. You just got to get back up, keep going and learn from your experiences. Because without trying and failing, you never move forward, right? LET ME HEAR YOU!”

Trent threw his arms up in the air as a signal for more applause, which always worked—he was like a Pentecostal preacher in a tent show, rallying his acolytes. The rest of us quietly chugged away over the song’s opening theme until it was clear Trent had wrapped up his sermon. From there we segued into our version of a current radio smash, in which pop’s latest comely songstress weighed in on the pleasures of lip-locking with a member of the same sex. The girls in the crowd got excited by this, which made the boys excited too. We knew what we were doing.

We kept our foray into mainstream, pop-radio bliss relatively brief, running a single, rocked-out verse and chorus of the song before settling back into the bridge of “Leave It Alone.” Trent turned his usual high spirits completely inward during this section of the song, returning the microphone to its stand and clasping it with both hands, standing still. Although I couldn’t see his face from my position behind the drums, something about his bearing suggested that his eyes were closed, as if he were in a trance.

The lights went low and blue as the bridge reached its quiet conclusion with a one-beat pause, before…BAM! Bright lights flooded the stage and the band exploded into the final chorus. (It’s remarkable how much better you sound and look when you tip the sound and light guys before you play). Our movements became more animated, each of us now thrashing about in time. The crowd moved in similar fashion, like the swelling of a small sea (though really more like a pond, at best). Even the bartender, at the back of the room, bobbed his head with the song as he poured a beer.

The whole room—about the size of a football field (stadium not included)—appeared in motion. There were awestruck youngsters accompanied by parents, adolescents whose pumping hands sported black X’s to indicate their being under legal drinking age, college-age young men and women proudly brandishing yellow wristbands to prove that they were, in fact, of drinking age (and whose rowdiness seemed in direct correlation with the novelty of their achievement), and comparably temperate adults standing off to the sides or toward the back of the room, enjoying the show while avoiding the raucousness occurring in front of the stage. And, as also tends to happen on the good nights, there were lots and lots of girls. We were that type of band.

After repeating the chorus with an extra layer of backing vocals and slightly beefed up instrumentation all around, we finished the set with our usual “big rock show” finale, a heroic kick to close the show—strictly in terms of the musically bombastic coda we tacked on to the end of the song, however, rather than with any of the extravagant pyrotechnics one expects these days from a major concert. We weren’t exactly playing arenas here, and enhancing one’s stage show with fiery explosions in a club setting is an ill-advised, dangerous game.

So we relied on the basics—guitar a-shredding, drums a-crashing, vocals a-wailing, bass a-chugging. Trent (who, despite his formidable vocal abilities, preferred the title Frontman to the usual Lead Singer)—his unruly tresses an array of lengths and colors, matted to the sweat drenching his face and pale, lanky torso—put his mic back on the stand and held his arms up, his hands flashing dual V signs like he was Richard Nixon about to board his post-resignation helicopter.

“Good night, people,” he screeched, “we are Roman Holiday! Thank you for showing us a great fucking tiiiiiiime!” He exited the stage, clapping his hands above his head.

Like every band, we’d struggled in the beginning to find a name on which we could all agree. Eventually we settled on Roman Holiday, after countless sessions of throwing ideas back and forth, smacking most down (and bruising some egos in the process), while letting a few hover and bob in the currents of our squabble as we racked our minds for yet more ideas, our reluctance to share all the while increasing for fear of stinging reprisal. What we came to realize is that most band names sound stupid until the band gets famous, at which point the name just becomes what it is and no one thinks about it. Presumably the members of Pearl Jam weren’t immediately convinced that they were sitting on a gem when that one was aired. Dave Grohl, who started the Foo Fighters as a solo project, freely admits that he came up with one of the worst names in rock history. The Beatles? If they weren’t the groundbreaking musical geniuses they turned out to be, they would just be another old group with a super-lame name (Herman’s Hermits comes to mind). The point is for the band to transcend the name-lameness through the quality of the music. One hurdle for us was that many people assumed we were named after the Audrey Hepburn movie; not a bad movie at all, but also not a particularly bad-ass inspiration for a hard rockin’ band name. (I actually came up with it well before the band was formed, after slogging through some Byron in college—there’s a line in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in which a doomed gladiator is described as “butcher’d to make a Roman holiday.” I scribbled the expression down and kept it in mind ever since. When I eventually proposed it as an idea, there was some serious eye rolling over the highbrow aspect of the name’s origin; ultimately we just considered it the least-so of many evils.)

The crowd certainly had no problems with it. Applause continued unabated as Davey, our bassist, followed Trent’s departure (and just as shirtless and sweaty, only sporting a drenched bandana on his forehead and more tattoos all around), dropping his bass and saluting the crowd with his hands hoisted above his head, flashing devil horns. That left Billy and me, whipping up a frenzy on our respective instruments, trying to one-up one each other playfully until we brought the number back together with a succession of four, tight guitar-and-cymbal hits, followed by an open chord that Billy let ring for a few seconds, then one last unified punch to close. After this admittedly self-indulgent display of instrumental prowess, Billy removed his guitar, bowed deeply and blew a kiss to the audience with both hands. The crowd went nuts, and Billy turned to me and flashed a goofy, exaggerated smile and thumbs up. His undersized “Tide—Loads of Hope” t-shirt, which he sported purely for the presumably unintentional double-entendre (though it actually represented a corporately-sponsored humanitarian effort to assist Hurricane Katrina victims), was soaked with sweat and clung to his trunk like he’d at some point wandered into a wet t-shirt contest. I laughed out loud and, head thrown back, howled enthusiastically.

I felt lightheaded as I returned my attention to the crowd and watched Billy saunter off stage to a thunderous ovation. We were on his home turf, after all, which largely accounted for the size and enthusiasm of the crowd that night. That left me, standing up behind my drum kit, wiping the sweat off my face with a hand towel and tucking my long, dyed-black hair behind my ears. The atmosphere was electric. This sleepy beach town on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Florida represented a tangible example of our modest progress, a place where we had expanded upon our built-in fan base through relentless touring.

For a wondrous, fleeting moment I was overcome with a feeling of accomplishment, as if we were finally gaining some momentum after ten years of navigating the rocky, uphill byway of the music business. People have this perception of rock and roll as one big party—and not without reason. But getting to the party requires a lot of hard work, a humbling existence often at the mercy of unsavory hustlers or incompetent dreamers.

The Rolling Stones once asked, “what can a poor boy do, except to sing for a rock and roll band?” Well, I didn’t exactly grow up poor (neither did Mick Jagger, for that matter), and thus had options at my disposal—most of my friends and peers went into banking, law, or something similarly button-down and steadily lucrative. I chose this path (or perhaps, as some say, it chose me) and had invested myself in the struggle for long enough that I felt committed to see it through, damn it. The payoff, if ever achieved, would be so, so sweet. The odds were the longest of shots but here I was, facing a rabid crowd of four hundred actual fans in a town over a thousand miles from our home base of New York City. The fruit of success that I’d sought hungrily for so many years seemed to be dangling before me, within reach. I felt a warm, tingling sensation and excitedly hurled one of my beaten up drumsticks into the throng, inspired by Tommy Lee at the end of Mötley Crüe’s road-montage video for “Home Sweet Home.” It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

Perhaps I was just caught up in the moment, but I really let that stick fly, no doubt having overestimated the attention level of the crowd at that point of the evening. Instead of being caught by some rapt fan watching my every move, as I assumed would be the case, my stick beaned some diminutive forty-something year-old guy who was trying to chat up a girl half his age and way out of his league. From my vantage point, his post-beaning expression relayed shock, pain, and profound anger. Noticing this, I broke a cardinal rule of Rock n’ Roll Stage Presence 101—never acknowledge a mistake made onstage, as only the savviest members of any audience will ever catch on unless you make your blunder obvious by reacting to it, which I did in this case with a pronounced cringe.

I hightailed it off the stage, hoping to avoid any direct eye contact with my victim. Of course, I also hoped he wasn’t hurt too bad. I’d hate for my innocent, if overly-inflated zeal to result in serious injury to an innocent, if overly-intoxicated bystander. I wouldn’t hear the end of it if our blowout, final night on this tour was marred by a lawsuit—although, an unwritten rule of rock is that you haven’t really made it until you’ve been sued at least once. Every band should account for a certain level of rock and roll collateral damage, especially one in active pursuit of a bad-boy image.

I dashed down the short flight of steps on the side of the stage, which led to a hallway that doubled as a storage area for the equipment belonging to the three opening bands on that night’s bill. It was pitch dark, save for the ribbon of light outlining the door to the dressing room, and in my haste I ran smack into a set of cymbals still set up on their stands, lurking at the bottom of the stairs like a gaggle of amateur ninjas waiting in ambush. The cymbals and I noisily crashed to the ground. It took a minute to disentangle myself, but I shrugged off the pain to my face, torso and eardrums, as a magnificent bounty awaited me in that room at the end of the hall—free booze! There are no sweeter two words, spoken in that order, to a young band on the road. (If the opposite order should occur—booze-free—the situation is best avoided altogether). Our rider—the list of goodies provided for the band backstage—was generally a pretty scrappy affair. Now and then we got some bland, waxy crudités or a pizza or two. Food was always appreciated, if seldom provided. For us, the rider generally revolved around drinks; sometimes we got a case of beer, sometimes we got a few bottles of water and surly bartenders charging us full price for alcohol. Since we generally did well at this particular venue, the promoter hooked us up with a case of beer in a cooler backstage (cold beer was an even bigger bonus), and generously threw us a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to boot. That simple move earned his place in the liner notes to the second record we planned to release. We were easily won over.

I mentioned nothing to my bandmates about the potentially head-injured codger, grabbed a cold one and joined them in a well-deserved toast, delivered by Mel, our tour manager.

“Cheers, boys,” Mel said, raising a can, “to a great final show on our best tour yet.”

A volley of toasts followed Mel’s lead.

“Here, here!”

“Rock n’ roll, motherfuckers!”

It should be noted that although modern filmmakers have collectively decided to run with the idea that every manager of every band ever is British, this is really just not the case. (I suppose there is something charming about a jaded, old Brit having to put up with the unceasingly childish shenanigans of his spoiled charges, but still). Melvin Levine was a wonderful New Jersey Jew. Or, if that offends, he was a nice Jewish boy from New Jersey. It’s hard to keep up with proper nomenclature these days. People get so sensitive about being from New Jersey.

“And,” Mel continued, “just a couple months ‘til our international debut in motherfuckin’ Australia!”

We were particularly excited about this prospect—that coming August we were to be flown Down Under to play a series of festival gigs in front of a collective three hundred thousand or so people, with a total guarantee of thirty grand plus airfare, hotels, meals, gear, transportation and a daily spending allowance all covered by the promoters. In between festival dates, which hit the three, major east-coast cities of Australia—Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne—we lined up a tour opening for the one surviving member of a legendary New York City punk band, which would generate even more money. It was gearing up to be a big tour full of big crowds, big money, big fun.

“Fuck yeah!”

“G’day mate!”

“Now that’s a knife!”

We all had a good laugh and hoisted our cans with vigor. Billy, Davey and I aggressively pounded our beers, while Mel and Trent sipped daintily. We often snickered amongst ourselves about Trent’s lack of drinking ability; he had a tendency to flaunt his drunkenness with typically exaggerated flair after a mere couple of drinks, bringing his inherent need for attention to an even more irritating level than usual. Mel was excused—he had to be responsible for us.

We were all pushing the wrong side of thirty, and yet like a bunch of excitable teenagers whose parents had left town for the weekend, Billy, Davey and I crushed our depleted cans and hurled them at Trent and Mel, who took our tomfoolery in good stride. Trent shrieked with laughter; Mel chuckled and gave an admirable go at pounding his own beer, which ultimately streamed down the sides of his face and into his shirt collar.

It was a wildly successful show overall, but as always, we ran an inventory of the flaws of the night’s performance. We were professionals, once again.

Davey: Chop, is it me or did you bring the tempo way down during the quiet section of ‘Black Tie Gathering?’

Me: Maybe, but a little push-and-pull is part of live music, man.

Trent: The harmonies on ‘No Refund’ seemed wonky.

Billy: Yeah, I couldn’t hear my vocals at all in my monitor.

Davey: Me neither.

Me: Let’s just drink.

Drink we did, riding high on a celebratory wave of adrenaline. We passed the bottle of Jack around for a bit, swigging from the bottle, and opened fresh beers. Playing shows works up quite a sweat, making ice-cold beers a special treat. The dressing room at this venue was fairly typical—dim lighting, a couple of ripped up, vinyl couches, a dirty mirror, walls plastered with countless stickers from bands who have previously passed through. It was a habit of mine to peruse these collages for mementos of bands that we’d toured with or who’d made it big; on this occasion, the only name I recognized was Smashed Hat, a road-horse band based out of West Virginia that we toured with a few times and shared many a crazy night. Each member of that band, incidentally, had genital herpes and wore this affliction as a bizarre badge of honor of sorts; needless to say, we made sure not to share groupies with them. A sticker for a band called Priapism also caught my eye—I imagined that their music was probably about as painful as the condition after which they named themselves.

Before long, the unmistakable (and always welcome) cadence of female voices outside the dressing room became increasingly difficult to ignore. Sensing an opportunity in our momentarily diverted attention, Mel slyly placed the rest of the Jack bottle in Trent’s equipment bag (which I noticed but did not acknowledge publicly, understanding his motives while secure in the knowledge of the whereabouts of our liquor supply). He followed this well-intentioned act of subterfuge with a speech about getting to the merchandise table and meeting the fans. It was hard to argue against Mel’s encouragement to actually make money while getting our collective egos stroked, so we shrugged and agreed.

As we finished our drinks and got ready to face the public, Mel opened the door to the dressing room and greeted the disappointingly small pack of females outside the door with open arms (perhaps their voices had mixed with the perpetual ringing in my head, making them sound like more of a crowd). From my sliver of vision, they also looked dangerously underage. One has to keep vigilant of such potential pitfalls. The freewheeling days of rock stars blatantly carousing with sixteen year-old groupies have long passed into lore, which no reasonable person can really complain about, though it is oddly indicative of the notion that rock and roll just ain’t what it used to be.

“Ladies,” Mel said, smiling widely, “the band is actually about to head over to the merch table, so why don’t you come with me and we can fix you up with some mementoes while you talk to the guys.”

He led the girls back to the main room, at the back of which we had set up our portable table, festooned with an assortment of Roman Holiday paraphernalia for sale. We waited a couple minutes (the importance of an air of mystery should never be underestimated—for example, Led Fucking Zeppelin), grabbed fresh beers and sluggishly made our way out of the room.

Billy had barely made it past the door when he was grabbed by a buxom, Farrah Fawcet-haired seductress, clearly a decade or two older than the rest of the girls in this pack, but still attractive in a trashy, weathered way. Our music and image contained elements of both modern and classic rock, an amalgam that somehow simultaneously broadened and narrowed our appeal—although we did not quite fit neatly into the cookie-cutter format that dominated modern rock radio at the time, we were dreamy and current-sounding enough to appeal to teenage girls while also cute and retro-sounding enough for their moms, who, through us, had a rare opportunity to relive their 80’s rock glory days. Clearly, Billy’s squeeze of the evening fell into the latter category of fans, though hopefully not one chaperoning her child to the concert (not that such a duty necessarily deterred such behavior). She grabbed Billy’s shirt, yanked him into her and started inhaling his face while aggressively mashing her suspiciously round and perky breasts into his sweaty chest. “Loads of Hope” indeed. He floundered at first, clearly dumbfounded by being taken so off-guard and manhandled by a middle-aged sexual predator on the prowl. Billy was no prude, however, and it didn’t take long for him to acclimate to the situation at hand and reciprocate the ardor.

I watched the scene go down with a pang of envy. The thrill of this sort of encounter had yet to wear off for us; if anything, it only bolstered our confidence that we were on the path to becoming real rock and roll stars. As though he sensed my jealousy, Billy raised his arms in a “what can I do?” sort of way, garbling something about being “there in a minute.” His dad and stepmom, who kindly treated us to dinner before the show at the Hooters knockoff across the street from the venue, had already made it clear that they would be leaving directly after our set because of some vague early-morning travel plans. This left Billy dangerously unfettered of any familial responsibility after the show, and we had no choice but to take him at his word—less a word, really, than a grunt and a tilt of his head in the general direction of our destination. Not that we cared. There were plenty more girls and the night was young (unlike the cougar that attacked Billy). I made a mental note to grab the bottle of Jack before we packed up and left the venue. Wherever we were to end up, I knew it would be valuable.