The Shameless Sycophants

“Name?”

“Dano.  I’m with The Shameless Sycophants.”  Dano took his hand out of the pocket of his black leather jacket and adjusted his gig bag.

The grrrl at the door briefly looked up from her app with an I-don’t-give-a-shit look and waved him in.

Dano smiled, for a second considered saying something waggish to razz her, thought the better of it, and walked in.  He was immediately hit with the parfum of stale cigarettes casting a pungent note on the odeur of rancid beer.  The almost empty club felt cavernous and looked grim.  Thick layers of graffiti caked the walls.  The old wood floor was stained and grimy.  Ramshackle chairs stood around empty cigarette singed tables.  A sorry looking emaciated old skin-and-bones dog was curled up in front of the bar.

“Good boy!”  Dano bent down to pet it, “I bet you’ve seen a lot in your day.”

“He can’t hear you.”

Dano looked up to see the bartender staring at him with apathetic eyes, a fag hanging out the side of his mouth.  He was wiping the bar with a grubby rag.

“He’s deaf as a doorknob,” the bartender explained, “been here too long.”  His shagged mug made it clear he’d also been there too long.

Dano gave the dog a good rubbing behind the ears, straightened up and looked around.  The red-eyed soundman was fiddling with his console.  He looked like he was hopped up on some serious shit.  The next band up were on stage setting up, trying their best to look cocksure.  The five friends they had managed to round up on a late Sunday night were sitting off to the side, drinking.  Sepp and MaxDrummer were hanging on the other side, Max keeping an eye on his drum kit, Sepp watching his bass.  Yeah, this was Sunday night at the atLounge, famous gRazer music mecca.  Which meant it was audition night.  Only arm-twisted close friends and loved ones showed up on audition night, even if the door was just three credits.

Wait.  Audition night?  In Real?  For real?  As in dragging your sorry ass and all your gear, in person, in Real, to this dump on a Sunday night to perform to an old deaf dog, a fried soundman, a burnt-out bartender, and whoever you managed to rope-in?  What are you, a troglodyte?  Oh, right, it’s a gRazer place, so you must be a gRazer.  You must be, ‘cause if you weren’t, instead of a stupid audition you’d post vids of your band doing their thing, send the link to the club, and that’s it, you’re done, never having left the comfort of home.

But then, speaking of troglodytes, why bother with a zKuntin band?  Who needs one?  A band’s so Pac-Man-Stone-Age-Atari.  Seriously, what’s the point?  To make music?  There are way easier ways to make music.  To be ultra fuKool?  To date models?  To get access to quality pharmaceuticals?  To screw groupies?  If that’s the kind of thing you’re after, you don’t need a band.  Ditch the band.  You’re better off on your own.  When you ditch the band, you ditch extra baggage.  No dead weight.  It’s just you.  The star.

Besides, a band isn’t cheap.  You gotta have gear, expensive gear, instruments, amps, effects, all that shit.  And then, assuming you don’t live in the burbs and have access to a garage, or you’re not a squatter in some crap combatZone loft running your sound on liberated voltage, there’s rehearsal space to rent.  So, unless your daddy’s rich, you’ll need a day job.  And even if your daddy’s rich and you’re sailing smooth on a trust fund, you still gotta learn to play a sodding instrument.  Who’s got the time?  Who needs the hassle?  GarageBand’s waiting.  Copy-paste takes care of everything.  Then, if all that isn’t bad enough, a band’s like your family.  It’s a cesspool of clashing egos, psychodramas, disagreements, bickering, all out fights.  In other words, a total drag.  Who needs that?  What’s the point?  It’s so much easier when you go solo.  No one to argue with except yourself.

Ditching the band makes perfect sense—no rehearsals, no real instruments, no interpersonal hassles.  All you need is a comfortable couch, a pair of good headphones, a device—an app, pad, laptop, whatever, as long as it runs GarageBand.  So, unless you’re a Luddite off-grid gRazer or a yogi vegging out in a cave in the Himalayas, it should be an easy choice: you can join Dano & co. in an empty dump on a Sunday night or go digital in the comfort of home. 

Okay, let’s say you’ve decided to be rational and go digital.  Good decision, but what then?  Well, let’s assume you also decided to ditch the band.  Good decision as well.  It means you can by-pass the whole playing in Real thing.  Club auditions suck, but regular gigs suck too.  So yeah, let’s say you screw the club in Real thing.  What then?  Well, you start by getting a rep, getting known.  You do this by posting a vid on a currently happening hip site, cross your fingers and hope the algorithm gods are with you.  If you get a decent number of clicks, well done, you must be juice, there’s hope for you.

But you never know.  Lady Luck might be in a generous mood as her ghostly presence flitters by.  Hit ‘send’ and you might do better than just a decent number of clicks.  Way better.  Maybe the algorithms didn’t see it coming, but with Lady Luck’s pixie dust you’ve suddenly gone viral.  TikToking teenyboppers all over the planet are reTweeting your vid.  The ‘likes’ grow exponentially.  The next thing you know, bingo!  Jackpot!  You’re an influencer!  You land a corp endorsement!  Nikes, Cheese Doodles, Bud, Chipotle, Levi’s, whatever.  Congratulations.

Totally fuKool if Lady Luck smiles and it happens, but let’s face it, totally unlikely.  Chances are excellent that you don’t go viral.  Just for starters, there’s a gadzillion vids out there on a gadzillion platforms.  YouTube, TikTok, Flitter, GouPak, blah blah, etc. etc., pick your poison.  Everybody’s posted a vid.  Everybody.  And nobody wants their vid to be dead on arrival, so everybody’s spiced it up with clickbait: hunks, babes, sex, funny gags, terminally cute animals, you name it.  The net’s drowning in clickbait.  Which means chances are clickbait ain’t gonna do it.  So you decide to screw the clickbait and instead try to warp into viral channeling va-va-voom fuckin’ eh.  Sharp, exciting, fresh.  You vogue in your vid looking totally fab dizzelish.  But without coming across as an over-the-hill très douche fauxshionista.  Good luck with that.  Especially if you’re over sixteen.  Yeah, you probably are.

So, like I said, chances are excellent that you don’t go viral.   You hit ‘send’ and…crickets.  Your vid sinks like a stone in the deep depths of the digital ocean.  What then?  Well, it was a long shot.  When was the last time you bagged a mega-millions jackpot?  Never?  Exactly.  But what if you don’t even get enough clicks to impress your dog?  Bummer.  Still, don’t give up.  Let’s think this through. 

Given there are vast server farms out there bursting with vids waiting for someone’s, anyone’s, attention, maybe vid isn’t the way to go.  But if you don’t do vid, how do you get noticed?  Holo?  Yeah, holo’s juice.  But there are two downsides to holo.  One, holo requires expensive specialized equipment.  And two, holo’s mainstreaming fast.  It’s headed straight to so-five-minutes-ago.  Maybe it’s already there.

Okay smart-ass, you say, if not vids, not holo, what’s going to get me there?  Get me noticed?  Two words.  Simulated Reality.  SIM.  We’re not talking about your daddy’s simulated reality.  This SIM’s no loRez cartoon.  This SIM’s real.  This SIM’s in your face.  You’re there.  You won’t know the difference from Real, money back guarantee.  And because it’s still early days in this new SIM world, lucky you—there’s a desperate need for content.  And if you throw some at it, hey, you never know, it might stick.  It might even get you a gig at some totally fuKool rad SIMjoint like the noLine.  Bragging rights don’t get much better than I played the noLine.

The downside to SIM?  Like holo, it’s equipment.  You need a serious laptop and serious SIM software.  Most of us don’t own this kind of paraphernalia.  But no worries, surely you know someone who does, or someone who has access to it at work, or someone who knows someone who does.  There are plenty of eyeTs out there bored to tears in mind-numbing corp jobs willing to help just for kicks.  And if you can’t find someone to help just for kicks, and you can’t afford to pay them, you can always promise the future.  You know, as in, hey, if you stick with me there’ll be tickets to sold out SIMshows, groupies in Real, quality drugs, all sorts of great shit.  It shouldn’t be that hard to get an eyeT interested.

But the thing is, it doesn’t matter how good your visuals are (okay, if they’re really good you can ignore this, but they have to be really good), there’s still the music.  Remember, this all started with music?  The ideal thing in the music department is to come up with a hit that crashes the charts with a bullet.  But coming up with a hit that crashes the charts with a bullet is a bitch.  It’s no different than trying to go viral with your vid.  You’ve got five seconds, ten tops, to wow them—that’s the attention span we’re dealing with here.  If you want your ditty to be a smash you’ve got to pull ‘em in fast, then grab ‘em and hold ‘em by the balls.  You need a hook followed by an earworm.  You need to have ‘em dancing and grinding and begging for more.  You need to turn ‘em into junkies hooked on an amyl nitrate speedgasm tune.  Otherwise, whoosh, left swipe and you’re gone.

But, you say, you don’t give a shit.  You never boarded the train to Hitsville.  Never wanted to.  You’re into jackhammer smashMouth, or Berlin NeueIce, or acoustic Delta blues, and you don’t give a zKunt about the charts.  And on top of that, you’re a gRazer.  You’re into doing it in a band in Real.

Really?  Isn’t this where we started?  Wasting a perfectly good Sunday night waiting for your turn to impress an old deaf dog, a couple of your friends, and the jaded staff in an otherwise empty atLounge?  What’s the point of this Luddite bullshit?  Well, it depends.  The thing is, bottom line, if you’re a gRazer, well, you’re a gRazer and you’re not gonna change.  It’s kind of like a religious thing.  To a gRazer, the digital world is a shit sandwich best avoided.  But, with all due respect to gRazers, the problem is that you can try and avoid the digital world shit sandwich, but, alas, the digital world shit sandwich ain’t gonna avoid you.  Even if you go completely off-grid, good luck.  First, your past will still pop up on Google.  Maybe it’s some long forgotten CCTV vid of you, like the one at the Shoppi Hypermarket when you walked straight into the display of canned dog food because you were staring at that hottie in the suede jacket.  Okay, you say, so you’re on Google, but who gives a crap ‘cause it’s ancient history and you’ve just gone off-grid and disappeared.  Well, maybe you think you have, but just because you think you have, doesn’t mean you have.  No matter where you go, or what you do, you leave a digital trace.  Maybe you’re riding freights, maybe you’re sleeping on a beach in the Baja, maybe you’re slumdogging it in some outzone shantytown—you still leave a digital trace.  The net will track you.  Big Brother always knows.  Bottom line, it can’t be done.  You can’t avoid the digital world.

Maybe we need a better, more sophisticated, way to define a gRazer.  Something like this: being a gRazer is about digging the material world.  About getting your kicks in Real.  Whatever comes your way, you deal with it natural.  No digital interface.  Suzuki Roshi said, “to accept some truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.”  In other words, in digital there’s no there there.  Digital ain’t real.  SIM is just garbage messing around in your head.  What’s the point?  Screw being addicted to the net, screw the cold turkey shakes that hit you just ‘cause it’s been five minutes since you last logged in.  Leave that crap to Switch.

Switch?  Yeah, I guess we have to talk about Switch.  Switch are yin to the gRazer yang.  They’re about embracing the digital.  When a gRazer has to go online, chances are it’s an outing on an app so ancient they’re crawling the web slower than the Broadway bus.  Meanwhile Switch flash by like a coked-up biker on a Ducati.  Switch are about rushing into the future with a big grin and the wind in their hair.  They’re about popping tripTabs and deepFreaking the dataStream in brain-net mindMelds.  Switch know.  Know the Truth.  And the Truth is that there’s no difference between Real and SIM.  Real is Maya anyway.  It’s an illusion, a veil.  As George Harrison said, it’s all in the mind y’know.

But if the world’s a veil of illusion, what’s behind the veil?  Well, Switch would say, maybe it’s a stream of ones and zeroes.  What if we’re living in a digital simulation?  It sounds crazy, but think about it.  You have five senses—at least it feels like you do, so let’s just say you do.  Your five senses gather input from an external world and send it to the brain, which processes and interprets it. 

But can you really be sure this is a fact?  What if there is no external world?  What if data is fed directly into your brain?  What if it just seems like it’s coming from senses in contact with an external world?  The point is, would you know the difference?  Your brain is deaf, dumb, blind, and isolated in the skull.  It can’t possibly know if there really is an external world out there.  Maybe you’re strapped to a chair and wired into Total Recall.  Maybe you’re in the Matrix.  Or maybe there’s no body, no brain, and your mind itself is a simulation, a program running in some computer somewhere?

There lies the philosophic divide between Switch and gRazer.  A gRazer would say I think therefore I am.  Life feels intensely physical because it is.  The pain when you tripped and fell; the sunburn you got on the beach; a velvety summer wind caressing your face; the comforting softness of your cat’s fur.  Try telling yourself it’s all in the mind y’know.  And if maybe it is a simulation, a digital construct, a gRazer would say, who gives a shit?  If you feel you’re in Real, you are in real.  Over-thinking it is a pointless mind game.

Let’s over-think it for a moment.  If existence is a simulation, is it a Total Recall experience you’ve signed up and paid for, and there’s a real world out there you’ll be returning to as soon as your dime’s up?  Or are you hooked into the Matrix and there is no real world to return to?  Is this even a multi-player game?  Maybe you’re flying solo, your mind being the only construct that’s experiencing anything?  Bottom line, no way to tell.  You can’t step out of the game to find out.  As David Gilmour says, there are no answers here, when you look out, you don’t see in.  Which is an interesting way of paraphrasing Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem: within a logically consistent system, you can’t prove the consistency of the system itself.

When you think about it, the simulation hypothesis is not so different from believing in God.  There’s no way to prove either.  But then again, there’s no way to disprove either.  If they exist, God, the Digital Simulation, they exist outside our reality.  Within our reality they will never be perceivable.  Gödel’s Theorem.  And then there’s this problem: God or Digital Simulation—well, the thing is, who made them.  If we believe God the Clockmaker is necessary because Life, the Universe and Everything are so over the top wonderful and amazing they couldn’t possibly have arisen spontaneously out of nothing, well, if we believe that, fine, but we kind of have a problem—where did God the Clockmaker come from?  Doesn’t the Clockmaker have to be at least as infinitely deep as Life, the Universe and Everything?  Or maybe more?  So, if Life, the Universe and Everything couldn’t have possibly arisen by chance, could the Clockmaker have?  Doesn’t the Clockmaker need a Clockmaker?  And how about the Clockmaker’s Clockmaker?  The Clockmaker’s Clockmaker’s Clockmaker?  The Clockmaker’s Clockmaker’s Clockmaker’s Clockmaker?  You get the picture.   Infinite reflections in a hall of mirrors.  And the same applies to the Great Programmer…the Programmer’s Programmer, Programmer’s Programmer’s Programmer…

Occam’s razor states that the simplest explanation is often the closest to the truth.  We know we’re here.  That’s it.  That’s the simplest explanation.  Here is Real.  The rest is just thinking about thinking, thoughts about thoughts, thoughts about thinking.  The Zen master slaps the student meditating on a koan.  Which is more real, the slap or the koan?

So here we are, gRazer and Switch, Yin and Yang.  As Kipling said, East is East, West is West, and never shall the twain meet.  But then Lao Tzu pointed out that countless words count less than the silent balance between yin and yang.  Take your pick.  But enough with the digressions.  We’re in the middle of a story, after all.  We left off just as Dano spotted Max and Sepp at the mostly empty atLounge on a Sunday night.

Yes, the atLounge.  At the atLounge they don’t give a zKunt about digital.  The atLounge is strictly gRazer.  You gotta show your goods up close and personal.  No CGI VFX photoshopped deepFake crap to hide behind.  And on Sunday nights, no warmups, no sound checks.  A band drags its equipment in, sets up fast, and WHAM BANG GO!  Ya gotta hit all-out full-tilt in zero seconds.  Then you try to cruise smokin’ stokin’ and shitKickin’ on an unlit stage playing to a cold empty room.  It’s like seducing an ice queen.  You got twenty minutes to thaw her out.  Good luck.

“We’re The Spazms!” growled the lithe singer in kitten heel pumps and skintight gold pants, “and WE’RE HERE TO ROCK!!”  His sneering scream reverberated in the empty room.  The junkie-chic drummer in mirror shades counted four and hit it.  The babe in black fishnets wiggled her fuzzy bunny tail and slammed her Fender Precision hard on the beat.  The vampy grrrl with a Gretsch guitar and a glowering thousand-mile stare stepped forward and cut in sharp.

They’re sure spiffed out for a fucking audition!  Then the thought flashed through Dano’s mind, shit! maybe presentation matters.  Maybe The Shameless Sycophants should have tried a little harder in the visuals department.  Actually, tried at all.  But then the tight-as-hell demented sound of The Spazms hardcore Killbilly washed over him and he smiled and forgot the thinking and his body started to move to the groove.  Totally fuKool!  Totally loud!  But then loud was what the atLounge was all about.  Everybody was loud at the atLounge.  You were loud even if you were a granola group playing flaccid acoustic folky shit.  The red-eyed soundman made sure of that.  He made sure the sound system was permanently set to ten.  Or maybe it was eleven.  At the atLounge loud was the point.

The Spazms ripped through their set blizzo-crazed.  They hit the last note, thank you we’re the Spazms! and proceeded to clear their stuff off the stage.  Their five friends cheered like crazy.  Dano was totaled.  As he stood there blown away and wondering if The Shameless Sycophants would seem lame after that performance, Dano felt a hand on his shoulder.  He turned to see a thin pale grrrl in bovver boots and an ankle length black sculpted coat.  Her long iridescent platinum hair flashed rainbow sparks.

“Audrey!  Holy shit!  Whattya doing here?”

“Duh, I came to see you.”

“In a gRazer bar?”

“Well, it’s the only place you’re playing.”

“Hey, it’s the first place we’re playing.”

They looked at each other and fell into a deep hug.  They looked at each other again not sure what to say.

Audrey and Dano went way back—they’d known each other since elementary school.  They were basically opposites—Audrey a prickly Switch ice-princess from a posh family, Dano a laid-back go-with-the-flow gRazer dude from the wrong side of the tracks—but they understood each other.  As kids they were best friends.  Then, when they were thirteen, they became inseparable because both their worlds went down the toilet and all they had was each other. 

Dano’s went down first.  It all started when that last financial crash hit.  His father, Honza Kalon, lost his Panda Pizza managing job.  Yeah, he wasn’t the only one.  It was hard times all over.  Shitloads of people lost their jobs ‘cause half the godammned businesses on the planet tanked.  But Honza was lucky.  His uncle was a big cheese at the Sanitation Department.  He got Honza a garbage man job.  It was hard stinking work, but it was government work.  It paid pretty much the same as Panda Pizza managing did, and the benefits were way better.  You’d think Honza had landed on his feet and all was well, but alas, this wasn’t so.  Honza’s wife, Lenka, didn’t see it that way.  I married a goddamned manager, not a zKuntin garbage man! she screamed, no fucking way am I going to be the wife of a fucking garbage man!  She must have meant it because a few days later, flashing a finger at Honza, with no word to Dano (who was at school), Lenka walked out. 

It wasn’t the garbage man thing.  Lenka had made up her mind to split long before that, and the garbage man thing was a good excuse.  What precipitated her departure at that moment was the fact that she’d just won a nice fat wad in a game show.  It was for a performance on Get Mugged!—the show that features people mugging in front of CCTV cams for a chance at a big prize.  Lenka did her bit in front of a cam at the Old Town metro station, a spicy ribald number that got her noticed.  She flashed upskirts, her tits popped out, and it didn’t hurt that she was a stunning babe with an awesome figure and great legs.  She got flashVoted into the semi-finals, and then into the finals, and then, holy shit, first prize on Get Mugged!!

Something inside Honza died the day Lenka left.  How did it go so wrong?  Back in the day they were young, happy, carefree.  She was gonna to be an actress, he played guitar in an up-and-coming band.  Then Lenka got pregnant.  There was pressure to get married, so they did.  Honza quit the band and, paraphrasing the Boss, for his nineteenth birthday he got a job at Panda Pizza, a wedding coat, and the judge put it to rest.  No smiles, no flowers, no walk down the aisle.  And for Lenka, no wedding dress.  Honza eventually worked his way up to Panda Pizza manager.  Lenka kept trying to land that big acting gig but never did.  It was just crap bit parts that paid zero.  The marriage soured.  She was bitter, felt trapped, and made her mind up to split.  When she landed that nice fat Get Mugged! wad, she did.  

Honza hit the 80 proof but managed to stay sober enough at work to not get fired.  But after work it was hit the couch, hit the vid, hit the bottle.  He’d start with beer and end with vodka.  He was a sad sack drunk, never mean.  An ember of fatherhood still flickered inside, an ember the alcohol didn’t drown.  An ember that kept him from being a total fuck-up.  It allowed him to see that Dano, too, was hit hard and felt like shit.  The only thing he could think of was to give Dano something that would get his mind off this zKuntin’ world.  And the only thing he could think of that might work was his old guitar.  Remembering long gone days when he was in a band and the future was so bright he was wearing shades, Honza dug into his closet and pulled out the case containing his old Stratocaster.  He hadn’t touched it in years.  Not since Dano was born.  He gently ran his fingers along the neck, but all he felt was nothing.  The guitar was dead.  He was dead.  He knew he’d never play again.  He changed the strings and polished the body.  He had sold his amp ages ago, so he bought one, not expensive, the best he could afford.  Insecure because getting all emotional wasn’t his thing, he handed Dano the guitar and amp and mumbled something about how maybe it’ll make you feel better.  Honza hit the jackpot.  Dano fell in love with the Stratocaster.

A few weeks after Lenka split, Audrey’s world went down the toilet.  Audrey’s world was posh.  Audrey lived in a huge flat on Paris Street, swanky Art Nouveau building, perfectly restored marble lobby, doorman.  Bulgari and Cartier boutiques on the ground floor.  Her father, Karl Winteur, was an acclaimed shrink with all the correct titles, all the right connections and all the proper clients.  He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, he taught at the University, and the crash didn’t hurt his business—probably because onePercenters needed time on the couch to ease their guilt for raking it in while everyone else got screwed.

Dano found out about it after school.  Audrey was more pale than usual.  She said nothing.  She stared straight ahead.  Her sapphire eyes were red from crying.

“Audrey, you okay?” Dano asked, “what’s wrong?”

“Alf,” was all she said.

“Alf?”

“Alf Doubek!”

Alf Doubek was eighteen, a senior, and the hottest Switch in school.  Audrey, a teenybopper Switch wannabe, had a huge crush on Alf.

“What about Alf Doubek?”

Audrey broke into tears.  “He said he wanted to show me something.”

“Show you what?”

“He took me to…” Sobbing, Audrey ran off.

“Audrey…”

“Leave me alone!  Go away!” Audrey screamed.

Dano caught up with her.  She collapsed in his arms and cried and cried.

In fits and starts between bouts of weeping, Audrey told Dano.  She desperately wanted to be noticed by Alf.  She flirted with him, but how else was she supposed to get his attention?  And it worked!  He knew she existed!  She wasn’t just an insignificant thirteen-year-old teenybopper!  Not anymore!  He talked to her!  He invited her to the computer lab.  They were alone.  Audrey was thrilled.  He kissed her.  Audrey didn’t resist.  Maybe she was too shocked, or maybe she was intoxicated with having the hottest Switch in school kissing her.  Then he got serious, at which point Audrey asked him to stop.  It was too late, Alf said.  She wanted it, he said.  She didn’t know it, but she really wanted it.  He raped her.

“Audrey, you have to tell someone!”

“Who?  My parents?  They’ll kill me.  It’s all my fault!”

“No, Audrey, it isn’t.”

“They’ll blame me!  I know they will!”

“But you told him to stop!”

“I begged him to stop…he wouldn’t…”

“Audrey…” Dano wasn’t sure what to say.

“I can’t tell anyone!  You can’t tell anyone!  He said he taped it and if I tell anyone he’ll post it online…Dano, I’ll die if he does…you have to swear!  Swear you will never, ever, say anything about this to anyone!”

Dano didn’t reply.

“SWEAR, DANO!”

Dano held Audrey’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes.  “Okay, if that’s what you want, I swear I’ll never tell anyone.”

The next day Dano walked up to Alf and punched him in the face.  That was all the damage he managed.  Alf wasn’t exactly athletic, but he was eighteen and Dano only thirteen.  Dano ended up doubled over with a bloody nose and a black eye.  But his pride was still his.

The Spazms were clearing their stuff off the stage.  Dano cast his eyes on the aquamarine chip that glowed on Audrey’s temple.  It hadn’t been there the last time they met.  “I see you’ve gone full Switch...”

Audrey’s eyes flashed blue daggers.

“Okay, yeah, I know that look.  But, babe, a chip’s creepy.  It’s a direct connect…Big Brother’s always gonna know what you’re thinking.”

“No he won’t.  This is a DraxLabs chip.”

Dano had no idea what that meant, but he knew when to drop it with Audrey.  “So how’s the university?” he asked, “Haven’t seen you since you started last September.”

“Yeah, I know.  I’m sorry.  Fucking studying takes up all my time.”  Audrey’s eyes softened a little, “I miss you.”

“Hey, I get it.  And I miss you too.  So did you decide what to major in?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.  I have no idea where I’m going.  I mean, this chip has opened my eyes to things I hadn’t imagined before.  I’m still digesting all the possibilities.”

“Great!  Never smother your creative side, babe.  Going all corp eyeT would kill you.”

Audrey playfully punched Dano’s shoulder.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” Dano said, “I know you better than that.”  He noticed that The Spazms had finished clearing their stuff and the stage was empty.  “Babe, I gotta go set up.  Talk to you afterwards?”

“Of course.”  Audrey gave Dano a hug.  “Good luck.  Break a leg!  And by the way, I brought a couple of friends.  I told them you’re awesome.”

Dano noticed a couple of new faces at the bar.

“Well thanks.  I just hope I don’t shatter their illusions.”

“Right.  As if.”

Dano smiled, thinking that yeah, she was right, The Shameless Sycophants had spent enough time at Prince Studios.  They were ready.

Prince Studios?  Ah yes, Prince Studios.  Cheap rehearsal space for haven’t-made-it bands.  Prince Studios, located in a grubby building on a grimy street in a crappy ‘hood.  Take the creaking beat-up elevator to the fourth floor.  A shabby hallway painted the colour of vomit leads to an overflowing trash bin next to a battered cyclone fence.  There’s a button labeled ‘Please Ring Once and Wait’ next to the gate.  It was mostly wait.  Eventually Igor (who looked the part—a fermented demented bottom-feeder) would shuffle out of a fortress-like steel door.  Annoyed and looking like he’s about to go postal, he would mutter something about assholes leaning on the bell.

All surly and sour, Igor would lead the way through the steel door to a rehearsal room.  The air was suffused with that classic rock’n’roll reek of stale cigarettes and rancid beer.  A filthy carpet caked in crud and speckled with a thousand fag burns covered the floor.  The vomit colour scheme matched the hallway.  The equipment—amps, mikes, PA—was, like everything at Prince, ramshackle but (more or less) functional.  Hey, so occasionally it would zap an electric shock or set off a deafening earsplitting feedback howl.  Cheap is cheap and if your wallet’s thin, cheap is good.  Prince was cheap.

The Shameless Sycophants had set up.  Dano stood on the sticky floor—years of soda, beer, booze—of the small corner stage next to a graffiti caked wall.  He looked out into the dark mostly empty room.  The Spazms and their fan club had drifted out.  Some of the next band up had drifted in.  Audrey and her friends were gazing at him expectantly.  He took a deep breath.  It wasn’t like he’d never performed before.  He’d done years of busking in front of the main railway station.  He was a year-round regular there.  He played sweating on hot summer days.  He played on finger freezing winter days.  He learned to project rock n' roll attitude.  He flirted with the grrrls.  He let kids strum his guitar.  He shop-talked with guitar nerds.  He buddy-talked bums and convinced them he was their best friend.  He learned that performing is showbiz.  He learned to do showbiz.

But Max and Sepp were virgins—this was their first time on stage.  Dano hoped they wouldn’t go all wobbly with stage fright, but hey, they had to get baptized sometime.  They were, after all, a gRazer band, and if you wanna be a gRazer band you gotta step out in Real.

Well, here goes nothing.  “Ladies and gentlemen, and dog…” Dano gestured at the sorry old mutt still there curled up on the floor.

Click click click, Max hit the sticks for the count, and on four, POW!, he hit the drums, and the band exploded.  Sepp’s bass boomed rock steady.  Dano’s Stratocaster slashed sharp.  The Shameless Sycophants were there.  Audrey smiled.  Damn, they were good!  Way better than she’d expected.  Yeah, so they didn’t have a look.  Or maybe they did?  Something like Ferris Bueller (Max), Norman Bates (Sepp), and James Dean (Dano)?  And maybe they had a sound—jazz meets downtown meets out-there.  Sepp’s angry bark and Dano’s sarcastic growl were serviceable vocals but…maybe they could use a singer.  Still, they were awesome and Audrey the ice princess couldn’t help but sway her hips and bop to the beat. 

The Shameless Sycophants finished like they started, on fire.  Dano strangled his guitar for a last banshee scream and then leaned into the mike.  “I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition.”  He wondered how many people would get it, get where that came from.  Well, fuck ‘em if they don’t.

Soaked in sweat, Dano stepped off the stage.

“Dano, you were awesome!” Audrey threw her arms around him.

“Thanks babe,” Dano disengaged himself, “but right now I gotta clear my stuff for the next band.”

“Yeah.  Let’s talk when you’re done.”  Audrey had a mysterious twinkle in her eyes.

“Sure…meet you at the bar?”

“Somewhere quieter.  How about next door?”  Next door was At13, a coffee bar.

“See you in a couple…” Dano turned and jumped back on stage.

“By the way,” she called out after him, “I liked your homage to Lennon.”

That stumped Dano.  Audrey wasn’t a rock trivia junky.  Not by a long shot. “How’d you…?!”

Audrey smiled Cheshire cat and pointed to the chip sparkling on her temple.

Dano walked into At13.  Audrey was sitting at a table with a double espresso.  Her coat was draped on a chair next to her and her lumi minidress glowed in colours that sparkled like her hair.

“What would you like?” she asked, “it’s on me.”

“Well, in that case, Absinthe.”  Dano took off his gig bag and leather jacket and sat down.

“Great, I’ll have one too…” Audrey waved the waitress over.  “So what’d they say?”

“I dunno.  It takes at least a week before they let you know.”

“Don’t sweat it.  You nailed it.”

“You didn’t see the Spazms.”

“I caught the tail end.  That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

The waitress showed up.

“Two Absinthe on ice,” Audrey said.

“Sure.”  The waitress left.

Audrey regarded Dano for a moment.  “It feels like I just saw you yesterday.  I know it’s been a while, but don’t hate me—I think I chewed off more courses than I can swallow.”

“Hey, it’s okay, I get it.  You’re a type A.  But like I said, I hope you’re not losing touch with your creative side.”

“Honestly?  I don’t know…I’ve been stuck…no inspiration…nothing calls me, no idea how to get out of this funk…that is, until tonight!  I’m so glad I came to see you because suddenly it’s totally hit me!”

“Yeah?” Dano wasn’t sure where this was going, “what’s hit you?”

“Dano, we’ve always been great at bouncing shit off of each other, right?  Remember how we’d lie on my bedroom floor listening to music and talking about the colour of the notes?”

“Sure,” Dano nodded, his eyes twinkling at the memory, “we usually agreed, didn’t we?  But what’s that got to do with what totally hit you?”

“We feel music the same way, but we’re also, like, totally opposites…”

“Yeah…?  Spit it out, babe.”

“Okay, here it is.  If you really want a chance at the big time, I think you need to up your game.  I really do.  You guys are great, but no offense, you need a singer.”

“No offense taken, Audrey.  I pretty much agree with you.  It was our next step, find a good singer.

“Okay, good.  But you also need visuals.”

“And you have ideas?”

“Yup,” Audrey smiled, “me.”

“Audrey,” Dano quipped, “I’ve never heard you sing.”

“No silly, not the singer,” she punched Dano’s shoulder, “I’m the visual treatments.”

“But babe, we’re a gRazer band.”

“Yeah, exactly, that’s the point.  Switch meets gRazer.  It’s what hit me so clearly.”

The waitress came with the drinks and placed them on the table.  She scanned Audrey’s iris and credits with a tip were transferred.

“Thanks,” Audrey said, and the waitress left.

Dano looked skeptical.

“Dano, your music goes to totally fuKool places, so imagine where it will go if I do visuals and treat it.  It’ll be awesome!”

“Audrey, you sound like you downed a hit of dreamWater before the show.”

“Well, yeah, maybe I did.”  With a mischievous smile Audrey raised her glass and clinked Dano’s.   “Sometimes it’s what it takes to see things clearly.” 

“Babe,” Dano clinked Audrey’s glass, “I know we connect, but we’ve never really worked together.  Aren’t our Switch and gRazer artistic tendencies basically incompatible?  I mean, I don’t want to end up fighting with you all the time.”

“Dano, we don’t fight.  Well, okay, we do, but not seriously, you know, like was our friendship’s ever at stake?  So why would we start now?”

“Because we’ve never really worked together.  I mean, as Kipling said, East is East, West is West, and never shall the twain meet, right?”

“Yeah, so?  What’s that got to do with us?”

“Well, you know, opposites with no common ground?”

“Screw Kipling.  I bet he was an uptight rigid imperialist asshole anyway.”  For a moment Audrey’s eyes looked off into the distance as her chip glowed aquamarine.  “Here’s a better way to look at it,” she said as her eyes focused on Dano again, “Lao Tzu.  He said there’s an equilibrium between opposites, Yin and Yang.  He said that contradictory opposites are inseparable, you know, like the two sides of a coin, and they are the foundation of all existence, they define the dynamic harmony at the heart of all things.  Well, if he’s right, it means you and I will soar!”

“You got that from your chip, right?”

“Yeah, but who cares, as long as it works.”

“I dunno, maybe it takes dreamWater to see things that clearly.”  Dano downed his Absynthe.   “I think I’ll have another one.  Got to get to where you are, babe.”

 “If you want to be where I am….”  With a naughty smile Audrey reached into her coat’s pocket, “…just take this.”  She placed a tripTab on the table.  “I bet it’ll blow your mind.”

“Well, yeah, it’s a tripTab.”

“No, silly, working together.”