A Distraction from Politics

[in_the_blue]

miriammoules challenged me to do another writing challenge, so here goes.

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Rules:

Fandom: any fandom, original or not. If you're feeling nostalgic and confessional, Real Person Stuff^(TM) allowed too.

Word count: oh, let's don't limit ourselves. Go for it. Any length.

Main theme: Life is measured in song.

Ratings: No restrictions.

Duration: Challenge opens now (October 25) and closes at the end of day Friday, November 7.

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Post your fics as comments to this entry but if the rating on yours is >PG-13, please post them in your own journal with appropriate flagging and link to your story below. Feel free to do as few or as many as you want, and if you see one you really like, be sure to leave a review or a comment. Everyone's welcome, so have fun.

P.S. Can't wait for Season Five of Lost? Write with us at 815survivors.

Comments

One of Two

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Fandom: original
Word Count: idkmybffrose
Title: "Why I Love Little Feat"

When I was in college a million years ago, a guy named Lee who had a thing for me. Picture Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters but with long blonde hair and you've got Lee exactly. Glasses and all. He worked production for Don Law, a Boston-area concert promoter. To get on my good side (and to try to get into my bed), Lee invited me to see Little Feat with him. Because of his status he had comped tickets (they were all comped; in our music production circle it was a question of honor not to pay for concert tickets) and the seats were pretty good. I didn't know a whole lot of Little Feat's music, not really being into the whole trucker rock thing outside of an abiding affection for the Grateful Dead, who used to blow through Springfield on a regular basis. This guy friend of mine had a story about being picked up hitchhiking by Bob Weir (yeah right) who shared his exceedingly good Columbian with him. Stoned people make up the funniest stories. I was more into the whole neo-punk movement: the Clash, the Damned, Richard Hell, stuff like that. I wore a black leather motorcycle jacket covered with pins and buttons and they were all full of attitude. The night of the Little Feat concert the one featured right on my lapel was a Clash one: I Want Complete Control. It was very bright, black and white and pink, but small so you had to bend over to look at it because I'm a little bit tiny. 5'3 on a good day. A petite prize for Lee and his long blonde hair, maybe, like that was going to happen.

So we got to the Springfield Civic Center and we had pretty good seats but not the best. It only took a few minutes' contemplation to assess Lee's importance to the Don Law organization based on the seats. Nowhere near the most important guy, nowhere near the least. Yeah, just as I'd suspected, and the lights went down and the Kaz-Fuller band (Pure Prairie League in disguise) opened. At that time, who didn't know their hit song "Amie?" But you know concert crowds and opening acts, and besides, this was Little Feat so the joints were flowing freely down the aisles, one lucky concert-goer to another. Wasn't the Feats' theme song Don't Bogart That Joint? For those in the know it sure was.

My future-Mythbuster-in-disguise date took advantage by throwing his arm around me for the whole set, passed the jay on to the next person. Between sets I was too wasted to remember if he got up to "check" on things backstage or not -- he wasn't working this concert -- but he was back and forth a bit. Maybe he was out buying condoms in hopes of a lucky post-concert thing, I'm not sure. What I do know is this: Little Feat, once they got going, kicked ass. I even wrote down the set list sometime later, because when you worked as many concerts as I did in those days, you had a tendency to forget. And it wasn't just because of the smoke.

(Teenage Nervous Breakdown. Rock and Roll Doctor. Time Loves A Hero. Day Or Night. Texas Rose Café. Keepin' Up With The Joneses. All That You Dream. Fat Man In The Bathtub. Spanish Moon. Gringo Jam. Day At The Dog Races. Old Folks Boogie. Dixie Chicken. Then there were the encores: Willin'. Don't Bogart That Joint. Feats Don't Fail Me Now.)

All that in a three-and-a-half-hour concert. And damn if it wasn't one of the best concerts I'd ever seen, both technically and artistically. I ran stage crew in those days for a lot of bands. Roadied, set up lights and sound systems. That gives a girl a unique perspective on the craft that goes into a stage show and Lee had the same appreciation although he did more of the grunt work than me. I didn't want to lift 40-pound amps. I just wanted to crawl up around on top of a cherry picker adjusting lights and swapping out gels. Back in those days we ran everything manually. An actual human ran the lighting board; it wasn't all computerized and pre-programmed. We did what worked in the moment, and it was a precision art and a thrill and a privilege. This Little Feat setup -- their Waiting for Columbus days, Lowell George's last gasp with the band -- knocked my socks off, or would have if I'd been wearing any.

Two of Two

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

And then the concert ended, and end of story, right? No, this is where my story gets started. We stand up and the crowd files out and Lee says "I gotta go find Don Law. Come with me." Now, I was no stranger to backstage and I was no groupie. Like I said, I was there in my punked-out leather biker jacket, my hair all spiked, my makeup ridiculous and I wore fishnets and a mini and a Sex Pistols t-shirt with more holes in it than fabric, safety-pinned together within an inch of its life. It was pink with blue letters on it that said Never Mind the Bollocks. Not your typical Little Feat jeans-and-long-hair combo. So Lee brought us backstage, stood me in a corner, and said wait here.

Not the thing to do to a girl when you want to get her into bed, cowboy! But he disappeared so fast that all I could do was wait there. And that's exactly where the band members decided to make their post-concert backstage appearance. First it was the bass player, then the drummer, and soon I was surrounded by Feats taking notice of my garb and get-up. Luckily I wasn't easily starstruck: I'd been mistaken for a band member myself more than once and even had someone follow me around asking me for an autograph assuming I was Patti Smith one day, so I knew how to behave. Bass player looked at me, leaned over, read my Clash button. "Complete control, huh?" he said with a pretty lascivious grin.

"Down, boy." It's easier to talk to people when you don't want anything from them, and that night was no exception. All the time I was pretty peeved at Lee for just leaving me there: who knew how long his little conversation with the Big Guy was going to take? I was a captive audience, had nowhere to go, no way of getting home. I thought for a little while that it would serve him right if I palled around with the band enough to head off with them. It wouldn't have been the first time, although usually the tech guys were more my thing. The thing about being backstage was always this: it might start out as a small and intimate party, but eventually the groupies showed up. And the Little Feat groupies were skanky. I mean, disgusting. The minute Lowell George showed up, this chick jumped on his back like he was going to carry her around piggy-back style, her arms around his neck, and wouldn't let go. One of my most priceless memories of those days is the pleading look he shot me -- me, of all people -- trying to get her off his ass. I'll give him this: he was a hot shit. If I had a small abiding love for the band before, that one look made me love them a whole lot more. My hey, let go, get off him didn't even register with her but eventually some security guy came over and peeled the broad off him and kicked her out.

I don't know how long Lee was gone. It was probably only a half hour or so, but it felt like longer. I have to tell you that the guys in the band were all so nice. So nice. After I explained that my boyfriend (I wasn't above abusing the circumstances, I guess) with was off talking to Don Law, they were respectful and flirtatious but hands-off, even if I kind of wished they hadn't been. They were sweet, but I wasn't a groupie and they couldn't sway me. My earlier dismay at being left alone backstage at a place like the Civic Center faded soon enough and it proved to be a memorable cap to the concert.

Eventually Lee showed up and took me home. He stayed as long as I let him but eventually, from my chair in the living room, my eyes wouldn't stay open and he realized he wasn't going to be asked to stay the night so he took his leave. It was our last date, but I didn't mind. He'd given me a night to remember, even if it wasn't the way he would have chosen. He was actually a pretty good guy after all.

A few years later when I was living outside Boston and my rock-and-roll days were no longer an everyday reality, Lowell George dropped dead of a heart attack.

I couldn't help but cry.

Re: Two of Two

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

wow. that reminds me of a whole lot of stuff. i don'teven care if it's about real stuff or not, except that i hope the band exists. this makes me think of a friend I had some years ago. she ws sort of liek that. maybe ishould tr yto find her again?

and you, will definitly stay oen of my favourite authors. whether you'll end up on the bookshelves or not. oe of thoe peopel of whom i'm almost glad they're not jsut writing fanfic any more. {hugs}

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Someone finally read it!

Here, have some live Little Feat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FekVR_SC5M). They really were fantastic. Lowell George sings lead on this one.

Actually, a lot of this story is true. It's an amalgamation of a bunch of different concert experiences, but Lee's real and Don Law's real and Little Feat are real and getting ditched backstage at their concert is real and the Clash button and leather jacket and fishnet stockings and Sex Pistols t-shirt are all real too. Some of the post-concert conversation happened with these guys and some with other bands other times.

But I'm not that tiny. :D

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

what? i am the only one who read it? oh well...i still have your umm other story tucked in somewhere. wouch. ocnei asked for something i got swamped with manuscritps from nano-writers and so forth soyeah.
well y ouwhere to coo lto be made any cooler by knowing these bits about you. but oh well. aaaha. i'll give this a listen. maybe it makes me dig out the grateful-dead tapes i got years ago. and seriously. it might be the spur form e to look up that friend i lost track of.