“TRUE! Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am.” So begins Poe. See also: an apt description of when I got served our first concert gig for the Force. Not a coincidental festival jamboree for the 4th of July or playing for some of the boys on leave at a block party. No, this was just at the tail end of old man Godred’s tenure and just at the start of Knox’s, summer of 2460. A kind of half-retirement-party-half-swear-in. And when the Hound in Black tells you to play, you play, and you bet your ass Metröpolis was gonna play.
But I ain’t gonna lie: playing army gigs is the only thing that can pry some nerves outta me. Not because of crowd size–though the stage they gave us was a fucking beast–but the weight of it. We’re playing for the badasses out here fighting tooth and nail for our freedom and that crazy city’s out west. You want to do your best, give ‘em the works, all that good shit. And then that gets you going about picking the right tunes, playing ‘em the right way, and before long you’re deep in your head and halfway down your back overthinking shit.
Now, the four of us all have different ways of combating that. Our white-furred hellion Rory’s answer is easy: booze.
Lots of booze.
Our wundermutt Harry starts noodling on that Strat of his. And I mean full-on, white-hot baroque action moving a million miles an hour. How he still has any energy afterwards for the show is beyond us all, but he still leaves enough in the tank to melt the faces off the front five rows and then some.
As for our favorite brave Brett, he takes a hit off the peace-pipe and tells everyone to calm down. Nothing special in it, just some freshly packed tobacco.
As for me, well your ol’ pal Nic starts playing his records. Not our stuff. Hell, not even rock-n-roll half the time.
I start playing jazz. The cool horny kind that makes you break out into full Bob Fosse choreo. Y’know, all that grinding, hat-tipping, leg-kicking stuff you see at classics night in the movie house. The sleaziest clarinet and sax playing known to wolfkind. You mix that with some modal and free, and–POOF–out it all goes. All the day’s trash, gone in a flash.
I’m grateful for my crippling hard bop addiction because it’s easy to pick your bad habits out here, rock-n-roll lifestyle or no. Take for instance our lunatic du jour for our Hell Patrol run that same day which almost wrecked the whole damn affair.
The Commish had us sicced on Westmore Bronson. White wolf, 5’ 5”, a mad bomber running almost exclusively on synthesized cocaine. I mean the joke writes itself, but I genuinely believe this hound was made of the stuff. Bastard had a Pigpen-halo of Bolivian nose candy around him in his case file photo for crying out loud.
He was wanted on six counts of arson, had about twice as many deaths on his head, and Lord knows he was pushing as much as he snorted as we were getting reports of OD’s in (where else) the Northern territories from which he hailed.
Let’s just say I packed a full case of eight-tracks for the trail because I’d need all the nerve-soothing I could take having to put up with North Division and playing for a few thousand of the desert’s finest that night.
So off we went, hightailing on our usual route to the hinterlands, kicking ideas of how to nail the guy back and forth between us.
“I say we snipe him.” Harry started. “We’re probably gonna catch him in the middle of a drug deal anyway. We give him some space, point-n-pull, then we’re back at Base before you know it.”
“I say blow him up,” Rory radioed in. “Taste of his own medicine, all that good shit.”
Now all of these were well and good, except for the one million dollar problem: couldn’t find the fucking guy.
I mean at all.
We went from town to town, asked damn-near every hound we laid eyes on, and this guy hadn’t been seen in ages. They knew of him, knew about the bombings. Hell, we even found a few of the eye witnesses that got this ball rolling to begin with. Every wolf from here to Timbuktu could make the guy, but this Bronson bastard was totally AWOL.
Now of course the other million dollar problem is that we’re up north and that means dealing with the loony bin we call Northern Hell Patrol. The reason we were even being sent up here was because, while he was native to the region, most bombings happened down in Central; a.k.a. our jurisdiction. We put out our J.G.Z. to everyone on North, and the one guy who called back gave us the usual “we’ll keep a lookout,” which is Hell Patrolese for “fuck off bucko, we’re busy.” Funnily enough, hearing that brought the ol’ BP down for yours truly, at least for now. It meant I wouldn’t have to deal with a gaggle of punch-drunk mutts trying to decide who gets to the honors while their thug is skedaddling out from under their snouts.
All that was left for us to do was keep our boots down, our eyes peeled, and just keep trawling-trawling-trawling. And of course, that’s boring as sin, so lemme skip to the fun stuff. Trust me, I’m saving y’all like three hours of burning gas.
So it starts when I accidentally run over the guy.
Now normally that’s how these stories end, but no shit, I was busy swapping tapes when I hit a mighty fucking bump and nearly shoots my head through the roof of my Hilux. I swing the brakes down and catch sight of the coke-fiend in the rear-view, his ugly-ass strung-out mug in a total state of confusion. Rory and Harry saddle up beside me as I hop out and get a good look at him.
When all three of us are staring him down, he’s dressed in some tattered old denim and blending almost perfectly into his kinda scuzzy chest is a bag of the best Peru can snort and three sticks of dynamite painted white, fuses too.
“Well shit, he’s come to us prepackaged, now hasn’t he?” Rory smirked, crouching down beside the bastard.
Second those words came out of his mouth, Westmore threw himself onto Rory and beat on him like a birthday boy on a coke-filled pinata. The second Rory pulls out his revolvers to put the maniac down, he gets both guns pimp-smacked halfway across the desert.
Now of course, this is where we come in, right? Harry and I go and put a slug in the fella’s skull, we all go home happy. Well I shit you not, whatever stuff this fella was cooking, it had the blood of Bruce Lee in it because he goes from wailing on Rory to sweeping Harry out from under his own legs with one good kick. Then he starts going after him and just pummeling the fucker like he owes him money.
That is… until he sees Harry’s rat rod.
While I was spared the mauling of the century, I wasn’t spared from the indignity of shit marksmanship. I swear to God and sweet gentle Jesus I was aiming my Schofield square at this guy, but Westmore was either eating those laser bullets or I was burning through my cartridge. I finally glanced his leg which sent him tumbling to the ground.
Right next to the red-and-white Ford’s driver-side door.
In he climbs and off he rides, and that gets Harry mad as well.
I shan’t repeat what the kid said that day, because rumor has it those words still hang over the hallowed ground upon which they were spoken. Or rather screamed in piercing, undying fury.
I hauled him into the pickup and made sure Rory was still clinically still alive (he was) and fit enough to hunt down his revolvers and tail the guy.
Now, not only was dear ol’ Westmore Bronson on all our shit lists, but now we had to walk a mighty fine line between “get his ass” and “get the car.” Not just knowing how important that rat rod is to Harry, but because the fucker’s gear was still in the back. And that shit was prime pawnshop bait for a lunatic like this cat.
I get my boot down and Rory ain’t far beyond–bruised to shit as he was–and we all go hightailing after the low-riding 30s machine. Now, whatever high this guy was on, he could drive a straight line at least.
A straight line through a “DANGER: DO NOT ENTER” barrier and right over one of the desert’s many cherished derelict bridges. If Harry wasn’t so focused on relieving the maniac’s skull of his brain, I’m pretty sure he would’ve had a heart attack if he saw how close that rat rod came to kissing the canyon floor.
I was about to myself, but for the sake of all involved, I just kept the Hilux pointed straight and true, cranked one of my eight-tracks to 11 and prayed to everyone I could think of. I felt the tires leave the ground for all of two seconds before slamming down hard on the other side.
Our other white-furred friend this evening, Rory, was frankly enjoying himself too much for someone who just had the piss beat outta him. But hey, at least he was enjoying himself, sending his hog soaring through the sky and right on our 6 as we kept the chase going.
It took us a good quarter-hour before we were really riding Westmore and Harry could get a good lock on him.
Now if you could believe it: this was exactly the time I thought to myself, “hey, what a great point for our guns to jam.”
By the time I got my pickup alongside the rat rod, the hammer on Harry’s Dragoon would not hit the back of the laser cartridge for love nor money, and I was about to brace for an atom bomb to go off in my cab.
“Hey Richter,” I hollered (miracle I even remembered our code names at this point), “Take mine.”
In our brown wundermutt’s blinding rage, he opted for the more sensible solution. Out swung the Hilux’s shotgun-side door and out leapt Harry right into the cab, tackling Westmore out of the driver’s seat. He almost knocked him out of the car, but not only was that not happening under Harry’s watch, he wanted to make sure this fella got seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths. So thorough was this pummeling that the last things Westmore Bronson heard on this Earth were as follows: the crack of his own skull, and his executioner blurting out at the end of his profane tirade: “fuck, my hand!”
Harry jammed on his Ford’s brakes and booted the body from his ride and spent the next half-hour pulling himself together. Rory, having just caught up, got his belated vengeance by lighting the dynamite and standing clear.
My dumb ass was too busy watching the fireworks and ran right into a cliff-face. Thank God for ancient Japanese engineering, but it sure didn’t feel good getting slugged by my own steering wheel. Luckily–then as now–I always had a thick skull to keep the brain safe.
Now given the speed at which this all went down, you’d figured we’d have buttoned it all up in an hour or so and then we hightail it nurse our wounds ahead of the show.
Now you see… that’s the kicker.
Bastard had us chasing him for three hours straight. And the concert was in an hour.
Now, needless to say, a small modicum of panic set in as the three of us realized what the fuck had just happened. First order of business was me dressing Harry’s hand, and making sure he could still play. I got him bandaged best I could with my first aid kit, and he pulled out that cream-colored Strat from the backseat (mercifully spared in all of this). There was that terrifying moment of hesitation at first, like he wasn’t gonna be able to do it. But then, after a few more high-powered F-bombs, he found that he could still shred. Even nailed the start of a fugue.
I was still feeling the sting of that crack to the noggin, but once I made sure Rory was alright (he was alright halfway down his emergency beer for the occasion), I sent us all hightailing right to the Force’s HQ. You couldn’t miss it even if you were bone-stick-stoned; an old one-story high school with a fortified wall. It was way back east, just kissing the edge of the no-go-zone, but if we all hightailed it (and the gas lasted), we would have enough time for a five-second sound check.
I’ve never dead-eyed my fuel gauge like I had on that never-ending drive to the Ambiorixian HQ. Me and that needle were in a staring contest for the ages like you wouldn’t believe, that ever fluttering tick towards that devil-red “E” was like a fresh atom bomb waiting to happen. And it was the only thing I had left in the world to keep me focused because that little stunt with the mesa wall knocked my tape deck out of action for the time being. And as you might imagine, I didn’t exactly have time to pull its ass together.
So here I was driving like the same coke fiend we’d just executed, whistling Mingus and having a mental Mexican standoff with my truck’s gas tank.
I’d complain more but it got us there in time with a gallon to spare. And once Brett saw the state we were in, whatever piss-take he was gonna lay on us went out the window and down the corner.
“Wardrobe’s in the back, I had some friends get the gear on stage. We’re on in 10.”
With nothing left but sweet cortisol in our veins, we stumbled over each other to get into our denims and leathers, grabbed whatever else was backstage we needed, and stormed right onto the platform.
And man… when we heard the screams of those badasses out there in the crowd, every single thing that went wrong that day felt right as a good summer rain. I didn’t even introduce the band that night. All I gave ‘em was “you know what the fuck you’re here for, don’t ya?” and tore right the fuck into the first number.
Didn’t even get to tell ‘em about all the Hell Patrol fun we had that day. All that mattered was saluting the troops and shouting out the new heads of the Force. And there, sitting front row and moshing like a motherfucker was the big dog himself. The Hound in Black, General Leonard Ford Godred. Banging his head and screaming his lungs out. Not bad for a fella who just had a heart attack last fall. Sure looked like he was giving the paramedics on the sidelines one to boot.
They didn’t even mind the fact I forgot I was the bassist and spent half the show hammering away on my bootlegged Strat.
But that, boys and girls… that right there is what it’s all about. Giving everyone a good time come hell, high water, or as the case may be, blinding bloody snow.