Reckoning

A struggling musician confirms for himself what rock and roll is supposed to be about.

It’s 1988. I’m a lead guitarist in a band called Bigg Trouble. Yes, it’s supposed to have two ‘G’s” in the name, and no, that wasn’t my idea. Bigg Trouble is a heavy metal band. At least that’s what our lead singer classifies the band as. I think of Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Slayer when I hear the term “heavy metal”, but our lead singer will rattle off Poison, Cinderella, Whitesnake, and their thousands of clones. Nowadays, people would refer to that same type of music as hair metal.
    I became involved with this band due to the shared appreciation of classic Kiss and David Lee Roth-era Van Halen. Everybody had his own influences and favorites. Our rhythm guitarist Dave, who was also the original singer before we found our current frontman, hero-worships David Bowie. Our bass player listens to anything that’s got a great bass player on it, and I mean anything: Motown, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Minutemen, Fela Kuti, you name it. Our drummer digs both Rush and Devo (not as disparate a combination as you would think – play the former band’s Moving Pictures and the latter band’s Duty Now To The Future back to back and you might see what I mean.
    Our lead singer is named Johnny. He can carry a decent tune when he puts his mind to it, but once we started playing live shows with him, it seemed like the music slowly became second in importance to him. Still, he was only ever late to rehearsal once for the first several months and never missed a gig.

If our lead singer had his way, we would be living communally in some cheap flat somewhere in Los Angeles, trying to be noticed by a major label. As determined and focused as that may be, unfortunately our lead singer is someone that is far from determined and focused – at least where making music is concerned. However, the more reasonable-thinking members of the band currently outvote him. Our opinion is that it’s better, less risky, and more realistic to currently hit New York, Philadelphia and maybe even Boston at this early stage of our careers. New York has record labels, too, you know. A few of us have part time jobs. I teach guitar at a local studio. Our drummer is a contractor with his father’s construction company. Johnny was the only one of us who didn’t have a main source of income that wasn’t from the band.

“What is this stuff you’re playing, Cliff?” Johnny said.
    We were driving our van back to Hazleton, Pennsylvania from New York City, after doing a showcase at Irving Plaza for a bunch of different labels.  Since I’d only been drinking Coke, Jolt, and coffee all night, and I like to drive, I was the captain of the ship for the evening.
    Commandeering the steering wheel also meant commandeering the tape deck in the van.  I wanted to hear up-tempo yet mellower music on the drive home, so I had popped in a home-recorded cassette of two R.E.M. albums, Murmur and Reckoning.  Our lead singer, who only ever listened to the type of music he sang, was complaining already. Then again, he was also complaining that he didn't get to have his dick sucked by some groupie after the show. Not even six months into his becoming part of the band, and he seemed to be more concerned with his blowjobs and his per diems than with doing the actual work.
    “It’s R.E.M., Johnny.” I replied.
    “Why do you listen to this s**t?”
    “Because I like it,” I said.
    “No wonder your guitar playing is so ordinary.”
    “What do you know about guitar playing?” David said to Johnny. “I’ve never seen you pick up an instrument in your life.”
    “I know more about it than you do, Dave,” Johnny claimed. “You just play rhythm. I don’t see you playing solos.”
    “Solos aren’t everything,” I said.
    “Without a song, you don’t have something to solo in,” David added.
    “Or sing over,” I said.
    “Every song on the radio and MTV has a guitar solo,” Johnny said.
    “That depends on what kind of radio you listen to, or when you’re watching MTV,” I said. “You only ever seem to watch the Headbanger’s Ball.”
    “Well, at least I pay attention to the kind of music I sing,” Johnny sneered. “You listen to all this faggy college rock s**t to the point where you don't know how badly real guitar players are outplaying you.”
    I heard this s**t every night from Johnny. Early on, I tried to blow it off considering that he was the low man on the totem pole, but his constantly trying to usurp control of the band was getting to be less and less tolerable as time went by.

One week later, we were back at one of our usual clubs, contracted to play three sets of mostly cover versions at an all-ages show. It was a show that we had booked a few months earlier, before we had started to get some label interest. These shows were getting us our “bread and gas” money – or more to the point, the money we needed to keep the band going.
    Backstage, I had my travel bag open. On top of the bag were the new Discman and the CDs of Reckoning and Document that my girlfriend had given me. I was busy restringing my guitar and didn’t notice that Johnny walked in. He had been out on the club floor hitting on some of the young girls in attendance. He glanced at the compact discs and snorted in disgust.
    “What’s your problem?” I asked him.
    “The problem is, all that new technology, and you’re wasting it on lame music.”
    “That’s your opinion,” I replied.
    “No, m**********r, that’s a fact!”
    “The fact is you’re very narrow-minded.”
    “Why didn’t you get the new Poison album?” he asked.
    “Because I don’t like Poison,” I replied.
    “Then, m**********r, why are you even in this band in the first place?”
    Dave almost snapped, “Listen, m**********r, you are not the one who started this f*****g band, I am! This band has been together for a year and three months. You have been in this band not even six months. You are not the one in charge here.”
    “But I’m the lead singer,” Johnny said.
    “And how many songs have you written?”
    “Cliff, listen to me. Look at these guys,” he said, pointing at one of the CDs. “Do you think these guys are getting their dicks sucked on a regular basis?”
    “Perhaps,” I said, wondering what blowjobs had to do with music in the first place.
    “By girls?”
    I had an inkling where this little rant of his was going. “Johnny, what’s your point? Besides the one on top of your head, I mean.”
    “We’re in a rock and roll band, man. Stop listening to s**t that isn’t rock and roll.”
    “That’s right, we’re in a rock and roll band. Pay attention to the f*****g music instead of the ‘fringe benefits’.”
    “No, you’re the one that should be paying attention to the f*****g music…  and I mean the kind of music that this band does.”
    Dave had had enough. “For the last time, Johnny, you are not in charge of this band, I am. Now, we have a show in ten minutes tonight, and another one tomorrow. I expect you to pay full attention to what the band is doing onstage, not what all the women are doing on the dance floor.”
    “But that’s our audience,” Johnny whined. “We’re supposed to be entertaining them.”
    “And you’ll accomplish that by paying attention to the music… understand?” I said.
    “Yeah, concentrate on entertaining them during the show – not being entertained by them afterward,” said Dave.
    “What-the-f**k-ever,” Johnny said, walking off.
    Johnny played the set with the rest of us, but came off like he had a chip on the shoulder for the entire show. It wasn’t his best performance from his standpoint, but at least we didn’t have to worry about his vocals being so half-assed from his perpetually short attention span.

The next evening, we had set up at another club in Wilkes-Barre, gone through our soundcheck, and found ourselves with some time to kill… and I mean, a few hours or so to kill. It was only about 6:30 PM when we finished our soundcheck, and Dave said for everyone to be back at the club at 9. With that in mind, I grabbed my Discman out of my travel bag, put Reckoning into it, and went for a walk to look for a bite to eat and something to do.
    After about 15 minutes of wandering I found myself in downtown Wilkes-Barre. I stopped at a Wendy’s for a cheeseburger and fries (the other choice, some sort of deli, was already closed for the evening) and left afterward to walk around a little more. About a block and a half into my wandering I came across a record store and walked in. For about twenty minutes I looked through the CDs, eventually coming across the Rollins Band bin and finding Life Time. Perfect. A friend of mine had the album on tape. I never found a copy of my own until now. I immediately bought it, opened up the paper longbox outside of the store, and put the CD in my Discman. It was already 8:20 when I left the record store and I took a slow walk back to the club.
    When I arrived there, I saw the back of Johnny’s head in the window of the van. For a moment I wondered what the hell he was doing sitting in there. A passing glance revealed that a young lady had her face buried in his crotch. Fine, I thought. Better that he gets his dick sucked now rather than worrying about getting it sucked for the entire show.
    I shook my head in disdain and walked back into the club. Walking into the dressing room, I saw the rest of the band there.
    “Hey, Cliff. You seen Johnny anywhere?” said Dave. He was warming up on his unplugged electric guitar with some scales.
    “Yeah, as a matter of fact he’s in the van getting his job blown.”
    “Do you think he’ll do a better job of singing tonight than he usually does?”
    “Damned if I know or even care at this point.”
    At 9:30, Johnny walked in with the girl in one arm and a six-pack of beer (with two cans already missing) in the other. “Hey, m***********s, are you ready to rock and roll?”
    I felt like saying, Yeah… unlike you, m**********r.
    I looked at the girl that was with him. Her jeans were extremely tight – probably two sizes smaller than what she should have been wearing – and had various hair-band names written on them in blue ballpoint ink. She was wearing a faded Bon Jovi T-shirt from their Slippery When Wet tour. She couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17 years old. She had one of the cans of Coors Light in her hand. Johnny, for the record, was 25. I was 22. Wonderful, I thought. I felt like calling the police and turning him in right then and there for corruption of a minor, but I had no proof of her actual age.
    “Hey baby,” Johnny said to his new temporary companion. “This is my buddy Cliff, he’s one of the guitar players.”
    Oh, now I’m his buddy, huh?
    Johnny pulled one of the cans of beer off of the plastic carrier and thrust it in my direction. “You ready to rock and roll, m**********r?”
    “That depends on your definition of rock and roll,” I said.
    “Down this and you’ll be ready to rock and roll, my man.”
    “Johnny, you know I don’t drink, and even if I did, I wouldn’t do it when I was about to go onstage.”
    “Ahhh! Man, you don’t know how to party, man.” Johnny turned to his new groupie and said, “Hey baby, show my pal Cliff what rock and roll’s about and give him some of what you gave me.”
    Without saying a word, the young lady knelt down, reached upward, and tried to undo my fly. The Lost In Space robot was already going off in my head – “Warning, warning, warning!” – because I wanted nothing to do with this. Unless she was my girlfriend – or Debbie Gibson – I wasn’t about to let her perform oral sex on me. And if it had been Debbie Gibson, I would have rather been giving her head. Not wanting to make a scene, I simply put my hand in front of my zipper and said, “Sorry, I have a girlfriend, I don’t want that.” A certain Gary Puckett song that I used to hear when I was younger came to mind almost immediately: “Young girl, get out of my mind…”
    The young girl looked disappointed.
    “P***y,” Johnny said in disgust. He took her by the hand, turned to Dave and Mark and said, “Hey, any of you guys want a round with her?”
    “Johnny, what’s her name, and how old is she?” said Dave, apparently reading my mind. Johnny didn’t have an answer. Oh, great.
    “Man, f**k these guys,” Johnny said to his companion. “I could definitely go for another round.” They left.
    I waited a minute, looked down the hall, and saw Johnny and his groupie leave through the back exit. A minute later, I heard the van door slam shut again.
    I returned to the dressing room and said to Dave, “I can’t take this s**t anymore.”
    Dave nodded in agreement.

Johnny’s companion was not only underage – 15 to be exact – she was the younger sister of the guy who booked shows at that particular Wilkes-Barre club. Her older brother was the one who discovered Johnny on top of her in the back of the van with her legs wrapped around him, 15 minutes before we were to start our first set that night. To the surprise of no one in the band, Johnny wasn’t wearing a condom.
    We avoided getting banned from the club simply by firing Johnny on the spot. Dave and I took over lead vocals that night.
    We “broke up” Bigg Trouble after finishing our last couple of commitments under that name as a four-piece, shitcanned all of the hair metal covers from the set list, changed our name to Reckoning after the R.E.M. album, and became an alternative rock band. No longer trapped in outfits and hairdos that could have come from Bret Michaels Clones R Us or restricted musically to bombastic rip-offs of recycled T. Rex and Kiss riffs, we had a much easier time writing material. What few original songs we cared to keep from the old Bigg Trouble set list we rewrote and rearranged to suit our new style.
    Two months after we broke up Bigg Trouble and became Reckoning, we started getting better bookings.
    One month later, Johnny was found guilty to three counts of corruption of a minor.
    In the spring of 1989, we signed a record deal with an independent record label based on the West Coast, made our first record for a mere $20,000 in studio time, and sold over 250,000 copies in the first year after its release – the start of a nice fifteen-year career. We ended the band in 2005 on a high note, still friends and still with our integrity intact.
    Johnny was in jail while we were on top of the world and never got to see us retire. He maxed out his sentence in 2003, got put on some sort of sex offenders list, and was out on the streets a mere six weeks before some overzealous father located his address online and shot him to death.
    Our entire back catalog was just remastered and reissued this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reckoning did a 20th anniversary reunion tour in 2010. Dave’s already e-mailed me about it.
   

Reviews

[T.M. Avery]

Wow. I was left wanting more. The ending seems a bit rush though and it's very fast paced for it to cover ten years.

This is my favorite part:

" "Perhaps," I said, wondering what blowjobs had to do with music in the first place."

I also learned a lot from this. I always thought the singer was the most important part of the band...although now that I think about it, he's usually just a pretty face who's nothing without the band. Course I'm a former drummer and a bass player, so I'm biased.

WL

[Roxy's Writes Rocks th..]

Dude-
I read every word slowly to soak it all in, not a normal pattern of mine. I have been in the business for quite some time. I write for Kelly-Q owns LA Review and her Latest ALW online and soon to go to print globally.

This most def needs to be published. You bring the emotion out it speaks truth and there is a energy that evokes strong emotion in the reader. That is a true writer!

There is always one dork who just screws things up. It is rare to find Artist that blend and are serious.

I love this and if your interested I will see if It can be published in a coming issue your name credited. Names need to be changed?

My Guy, got out of the scene in the 90's could not find any purists. he composes, writes lyrics, lead guitarist various other instruments .... point being he keeps his greatness to himself all because of the above mentioned.

We are starting a purist movement. In our little quiet way, reaching out to find real musicians. Not the 12 million posted on myspace who think they are musicians.

Play an instrument for 30 plus years until you and it are one, breath music, dream about it, without the booze for bravado. Not the hideous gyrations and costumes to hide behind.

Love it, Keep it coming brother you write well.
Peace Roxy