Road Rash (35 page)

“That makes more sense.”

“Yeah.” He looked up from the monitor. “So, you want to go?”

“Huh?” That took me by surprise. “Uh, it’s sold out.”

“We could probably get tickets. If you want to spend the money.”

I thought about it. We were low on bucks. And we needed gas and food to get home. And I hated to come home stone-broke—that would be extra fun when it came to talking to my parents, and … The hell with it. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

It had been warm enough coming down through Utah, but that was nothing compared to Vegas in the middle of the day in the middle of summer. Holy freakin’ smoke—it was like a hundred and twelve degrees or something. We hopped off I-15 a little farther north so we could cruise through town on the Strip, but that might have been a mistake. I mean, the Worm Wagon didn’t exactly have functioning AC. The best option was to roll the windows down and try to keep moving—when it got hot,
the past life of the vehicle began to seep out of the floorboards, if you know what I mean. Plus, whenever we had to idle too long, the temp gauge started to head for the hills, threatening to turn this thing into the flaming bait-bucket from hell.

So I fired up “Highway to Hell” and cranked it as we slogged down the Strip toward our destination. Glenn looked over at me with a wild look in his eye and did this demonic wicked-ol’-witch thing.

“I’ll get you now, my pretty!
Ahh-haa-haa-haa
 …”

I leaned back in my seat so I could get my feet up in the air, then closed my eyes and banged my Converse together. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place
like freakin’ home
!” I opened my eyes and looked around. “Damn …”

Finally, we pulled into this massive parking structure next to Mandalay Bay, which had to be ten times larger than the one at the mall back home.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“Now we go inside and cool off. Maybe see about those tickets.”

When we got out of the van I was struck by how darn hot it was, even though we were in the middle of a structure where the sun never shines. But when we walked inside, all was forgiven. It was like sixty-eight degrees in there. And huge. And nice. And smelled like food. And
coffee
. I was just about to nudge Glenn and point him toward where the good smells were coming from when he turned right and headed through the enormous building like he knew what he was doing. As we walked
along, I started seeing posters for the show and I could feel myself getting excited. We ended up at the entrance to the arena and Glenn walked up to an open window.

“Hi,” he said to the bored-looking guy inside. “Do you happen to have anything for tonight’s show?”

The guy shook his head. “You kidding?”

“How about all the will-call tickets? What if no one picks them up—do you sell them after the show starts?”

“They’re paid for, so they stay here until someone comes to get them, or until the show’s over. Sometimes people’ll be having a winning streak at the tables and they’ll finally show up fifteen minutes before it’s over.” He shrugged. “Hey, it’s their money, right?”

“Thanks …” Glenn turned away and I followed him, totally bummed.

“So that’s it—we’re not going?”

“No, we still have a shot. We just need to be back here by eight, cash in hand.”

We spent the afternoon cruising around. We probably walked ten miles and never went outside once. Mandalay Bay was like this long mall-ish thing and it connected to the Luxor—which was another casino, shaped like this huge black pyramid. Man, you could literally shop until you dropped.

At first I thought it was cool. But after several hours of it I was craving something more … organic, I guess. Anyway, after we got a bite in a place called the Burger Bar, I was overloading on the plasticity of the whole scene. Luckily it was after seven by then, so we headed back toward the arena.

There was a crowd already forming, mostly standing around
waiting for the doors to open, but there were merch stalls set up and they were already doing great business. We found a space off to the side of the lines. “This is good,” Glenn said. “Let’s wait here.”

Sure enough, after a while this guy shows up and starts waving something over his head, calling, “Tickets! I got tickets to Neverland.…”

Glenn waved at him. “How much?”

The guy walks over. “Great seats. Only four hundred each. You’ll catch the sweat off the stage. That’s a deal, man …”

Glenn held up his hand like,
You can stop now
. “Thanks.”

The guy just shrugged and turned away. You could tell he did this all the time. Another guy arrived, pretty much spouting the same story and the same price. I was getting nervous, but just a few minutes before eight a man in a suit came walking fast up the ramp to where we were, looking pretty stressed. Instead of broadcasting, he was going around asking individual people if they needed tickets.

“There’s our dude.” Glenn started toward him, and I followed. “Where are the seats?” he asked the guy.

The guy took out the tickets and looked at them. “Section one-thirteen,” he said, looking at his watch. There was a seating chart on the wall—Glenn and I went and looked at it. They were maybe halfway back.

“They’re behind the mix position—they’ll sound great,” Glenn said to me. “Plus, the room isn’t
that
huge … those aren’t bad seats.”

“Okay.”

“Give me eighty bucks.”

“Huh?”

“The price printed on those tickets was seventy-nine bucks each—I saw when he took them out.”

I gave him the money and we went back to the guy. “Looks good,” Glenn said, holding out my money and four twenties of his own.

The man looked at us for a minute, like maybe he wanted more for them. Just then the doors opened across the lobby and people started pouring into the arena. He finally nodded. “Okay. My girlfriend overdid it, and she’s in no shape to party anymore tonight. So what the hell—at least I’m not out of pocket.” He handed them over.

“Thanks a lot, man,” Glenn said. “They won’t go to waste, believe me.”

Now
that
was an understatement.…

“We’re from New England,” Jeremy, the lead singer, was saying to the cheering crowd near the end of the show. “That’s a long way from Nevada. I love being here, but I love my home, too. And that’s what this next song is all about.”

I turned to Glenn with a big-ass grin on my mug and yelled over the noise, “ ‘Long Walk Home,’ man!”

He just grinned back and nodded.

It was a killer show. In fact, I’d say it was the best concert I’d ever seen, period. We weren’t front row or anything, but there was a big screen above the stage if you were interested in seeing close-ups. Which I wasn’t all that worried about. I was more
into watching the whole band thing, how they filled the stage and interacted with each other and the crowd. They were really good at what they did, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t like they were putting on an act. I think your eyes and ears have like this built-in lie detector, and mine was telling me that these guys were telling the truth.

Plus, the sound was freakin’ awesome. The room was full and the seating went up at the back, so that helped absorb the big echo you sometimes get in large venues. The mix had that thump-you-in-the-chest-with-a-hammer effect, but you could still hear every word. God, what I’d give …

Anyway, we’d been guessing songs all night. And getting a fair amount of them right. Including this one.

“Long Walk Home” was an early hit of theirs, and everyone sang along. Including me. Everybody in the room was on their feet, fists in the air, bellowing out the words. And please don’t tell anyone, but when they finally broke it wide open during the chorus, I actually took out my cell phone and waved it.

I looked over at Glenn and he was doing the same thing, waving his phone and singing away at the top of his voice. At first I was surprised, but it actually made sense. He liked music more than just about anyone I knew, and how can you really love something if you’re too cool to publicly enjoy it?

They got two solid encores after that, and the crowd would’ve definitely brought them back a third time if the lights hadn’t come up.

As we were walking out, Glenn asked me, “So, what do you think?”

“I was blown away, man. That was absolutely awesome.”

“Yeah, me too. Everything. The band, the mix, the lights … amazing.” Then he looked at me kinda funny. “So, what do you think?”

Same words, different question. Hmm …

As luck would have it, when we entered the immense restaurant-shop-casino area, there was a Starbucks to our left, just inside the entrance. He tilted his head toward it. “We need to talk.”

“Okaaaaay …,” I said. “So, what are
you
thinking about?”

“Not food …”

Our preflight was pretty damn brief—three words. “Let’s do it!” I yelled as we ran onstage.

I picked up my sticks from my floor tom, clicked them in time, and counted. “One … two … One, two, three …” On the
and
of
three
I hit my kick, and then rimshot my snare with both hands right on the backbeat of
four
. Not too shy about it, either. Like,
ka-slam
.

And it wasn’t just any old
ka-slam
, either. The kick drum sounded like the freakin’ cannon of doom, just about collapsing my lungs as it pounded back at me from the huge drum-fill monitors on either side of my kit.

So away we went, pounding out “End of the Day” as our opener, which we’d put together over the last few weeks. Okay, full disclosure. The first tune was actually a little … well, I won’t call it rough, because that’s not really fair, but I could tell he was nervous. Not that I could blame him. I mean … the venue, the crowd, the sound, the lights … let alone the freakin’
headliner
. Major whoa-age.

And it wasn’t that he was making mistakes or anything, but he was kind of tentative. I’m sure it sounded fine to anyone else, but I could tell he wasn’t having much fun. And fun is the key to an outstanding groove.

I waved him over with the old low-profile head tilt. “How we doing?” I yelled when he’d gotten closer.

He shrugged, and nodded.

He stood there, playing his bass until the song ended, then I spoke quickly during the applause.

“We good? You sound fine.”

“Thanks. I’m a little nervous.”

“God, are you kidding? I’m ready to puke on my snare drum.” That got a laugh out of him. “Hey!” I said. “Let’s just play like we’re back in the garage.”

“Back in the garage?”

“Yeah. Screw the crowd, forget who we’re playing with, just lay it down like when we used to jam in the garage.”

“Back in the garage …,” he repeated, like it was a mantra.

“Yup, back in the garage—fat, dumb, and happy.”

I nodded across the stage to Glenn, and we went into our only cover song of the set. Glenn started playing his own unique version of “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” while I pounded out that snare and hi-hat groove, and after four bars the bass slid down the neck and joined in with a very simple but solid pattern. So far, so good.

I kept it fairly sparse with no flash, concentrating instead on just locking in with the bass. Our little chat seemed to have helped. He was still playing it smart at the top, basically hitting the root on the quarter notes to define the pulse. And that
worked great. But as he got more comfortable with it, he added more grace notes on the bass and made the whole thing drive along even better. And by the end, when we had the breakdown section where Glenn usually played the opening riff by himself again, the bass played along with the guitar riff in absolute unison. It was smoking hot, and Glenn looked over at him with a huge grin.

That broke the tension, and from then on it was a total pocket party—just slammin’ away in the groove and busting out a cool fill once in a while when appropriate, but never losing track of where the almighty
one
was.

The next song was that slower minor-key thing Glenn and I had first worked on back in West Yellowstone. It pulled the energy level back a hair, but that was perfect—you can’t keep everything turned up to ten all the time, or pretty soon ten becomes the new five. I was actually able to relax and look around a little by then, and as I gazed out at the huge crowd, the thought that went through my head wasn’t
Oh-my-God-look-at-the-crowd, I don’t know whether to crap or go blind
. It was actually something a lot simpler:
This is where we belong.…