Bandfic: Snapshots from a Possible Future (35-36)
Title: Snapshots from a Possible Future (35-36)
Author: tigs
...cont. from the previous post.
35. Four Shows (III)
The problem is, Patrick's started thinking in notes again.
Well, okay, it's maybe not exactly a problem in a scream and panic and stress sort of way, but for nearly half of Patrick's life now, when he's thought in notes, it's been for his band. The first band that he thinks of as *his*, anyway. Rhythms and flourishes particular to Andy's style, lines that allow for Joe's epic spinnage, Pete playing his bass on top of his head, behind his back, licking the neck.
The notes he's thinking now, though, they aren't for Pete, Joe, or Andy. No, now he's thinking of the way Frank likes to fall to the stage, play on his back; of the way Adam's confidence is increasing, the way he's starting to move out of his zone. He's thinking of the way Spencer just *pounds* on his drums, his whole body working.
And it shouldn't be scary, right? It's not, not in an 'ooh, I'm so scared!' way, but the thing is, while Patrick's never had a problem writing or producing for other artists, Pete, Joe and Andy have always (always) been his first thought. And now, instead of consciously taking two mental steps up the energetic playing scale to get from Joe to Frank, or two steps down to get from Pete to Adam, well. Now it's only one, or maybe half a step, and when Patrick comes up with a riff that he thinks is particularly awesome, one that will have Frank ping-ponging across the stage (if it's large enough), well.
He actually thinks of Frank first. Not Joe.
And that's maybe the scariest realization of all.
Especially since he still hasn't mentioned to anyone, not even Pete, that he's even writing again. Especially when it's keeping him up late at night, too late, and he's waking up tired still, with the melodies from the night before running through his head.
So, one week to the day since Pete left, a week and a half before their next show-down in Riverside again, at the same place they had their charity concert after party-and when Patrick lets Frank, Spencer, and Adam into his house for their scheduled practice, the first thing Spencer says to him is, "So, you've decided sleeping is for the weak?"
Patrick laughs, but he knows that he's got circles under his eyes, that he's a day or two overdue for a shave. The house looks exactly the same as the last time everyone came over, though: namely, there are no pieces of staff paper lying around, covered in ink-smudged notes. Patrick's acoustic is safely hanging in the guitar rack in his basement.
"Fuck yeah," Patrick says. "Who needs sleep, right?"
Adam's the one to start hum-singing the Barenaked Ladies' song, and Spencer chimes in with the words: "Who needs sleep? Well, you're never gonna get it. Who needs sleep? Tell me what's that for."
Patrick flips him off, and the kid opens his mouth, probably to say something that will devolve into twenty minutes of good-natured ribbing, but then Spencer says, "Yeah, so maybe instead of arguing about this-when the answer is obvious, sleep is one of the great things in life and should be appreciated as such-we should actually decide what sort of show we're going to be putting on next week?"
They've talked about other theme nights: 60s, 70s, the Beatles, the Stones, the greatest hits from the pop princesses of the last decade.
"I heard a song the other day that was totally, like, a lost Pretty. Odd. song," Adam said. "Clairebelle-you know, Gary's new folk project?-she had it on repeat during her lunch break, for inspiration or something? It was about a horse with no name, or some shit like that. Something about getting out of the rain, too. It was totally you, Smith."
"So, like, group inspirations?" Frank asks. He says it slowly, quite obviously weighing what else they'd end up playing. "So we'd have, like, the Beatles and the Descendents and, like, the early Chicago punk? What songs would you choose, Stump?"
And Patrick has songs. He could name lots of songs, right here, right now, but of course the only one he can think of is the unfinished one, stuck in the fucking top drawer of his desk. And for some reason, at this moment, he doesn't actually want to think about singing anything else. So he says, "Um, I was thinking. I was, um, thinking we could try something different?"
He's totally adlibbing here and he's sure that it probably shows, is probably totally fucking obvious, but then: "I mean, you keep getting stuck playing all of this softer stuff for us, right, so why don't we do a show where, I don't know, we play some of your influences. Yeah, like the Descendents, or Thursday, or… I don’t know, who else?"
"You want to scream?" Frank asks, an eyebrow raised, because Patrick's voice is quite obviously not made for screaming. Frank's, however, is, and so Patrick just shakes his head.
"Do you know," he says after a beat, maybe too long to be truly believed, but no less true for that, "I haven't had a chance to just play guitar since I was 17? This is all about us having fun, right? And I know you like to front-every once in awhile at least, right? And for once, I think, I just want to fucking *play*."
And, okay, yeah. This is totally off the top of his head, a thought he'd only entertained briefly in the past, on days when he was in a mood, capital M, and the last thing he wanted to do was get up on stage and sing, or sometimes when he watched a guitarist totally lose themselves in a song the way that a singer just can't.
He's almost sure they're going to laugh, say no. Pete would have laughed, said no, because for all that Pete knows him better (still) than almost anyone on the planet, he's also a true believer in Patrick's voice, and Patrick's need to be at the microphone. At least for Fall Out Boy.
This, however, is quite obviously not Fall Out Boy, and that has never been more obvious than this moment, actually, when Frank starts grinning, looking more than a little excited. Spencer cracks his knuckles and Adam's eyes are wide, but not in a way that bespeaks disagreement.
"Seriously?" Frank asks, and Patrick looks to Spencer and Adam for verbal confirmation.
"Yeah," Adam says, and Spencer nods his agreement.
"That could be fun," Spencer continues, his voice rising at the end, making it sound almost like a question. Except it's not-or at least Patrick doesn't think it is. He thinks that it's more that Spencer can tell that Patrick's motives are not entirely pure, and he's trying to figure out why. After a moment that only seems long, though, he turns to Frank, and Patrick figures that for now, at least, Spencer has decided to let it go.
*
Show three:
Okay, so it's not that Frank hasn't been really fucking excited for every single show they've done thus far, but, okay, he's *really* fucking excited right now. Like, *really* fucking excited.
And Patrick's brain-traitorous thing that it is-takes that in. What they've been practicing: quick notes, loud. Harder, faster. The way Frank is fucking bouncing as he steps up to the mic and says, "Fuck, look at all of you out there. Fucking awesome, dudes." Then, "Well, if you know anything about us, about our band, you'll know that we like to fucking mix things up. With, like, a blender and shit, right? And I know that some of you were probably looking forward to hearing Patrick scream his voice fucking raw, so I'm sorry to disappoint, 'cause I'm the one who's going to be doing the screaming tonight."
There are yells from the crowd at that and Frank continues, "That's what I'm talking about. That is what I'm fucking talking about." Then, "Count us in, Smith." And just like that it's starting.
And oh, it feels fucking weird, right? Because Patrick is used to being center stage, and yet he's not. He's stuck on the right side of the stage, just playing, occasionally (maybe, if he feels like it) doing backing vocals.
They start with a classic, an intro that Patrick nearly loses himself in, and by the time Frank gets to the first repetition of the title, the kids at the front of the crowd are screaming along: "Rise above! We're gonna rise above!" It's a short song, shorter than what Patrick's used to playing, but then every song on their list is. The tempo, however, is faster, and Patrick's sweating by the time they reach the last verse.
From there, with barely a breath in between, it's straight into The Misfit's 'Where Eagles Dare'. Adam starts them out, playing a single chord on the piano, one that slowly grows in volume, overwhelming the room, and then Spencer, Frank, and Patrick start in, all together, all in unison.
Patrick's fingers are moving as fast as he can make them go, but when he turns towards Spencer, in the back corner at his drums, well, the sticks are moving so fast Patrick can't really see anything but a blur. Spencer's biting at his lip, and for the first time since they've been playing together, he's got a tie tied over his head, pulling his lengthening bangs away from his face, and Patrick understands why, as his whole body is bending, jerking with the force with which he's hitting the drums.
Not as many in their audience are as familiar with this song as they were with the first-a fact which Patrick knows Frank will decry later-but the volume of the crowd increases by a factor of ten when Frank reaches the line, "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch, you better think about it, baby." For the second part of the chorus, Patrick actually steps up to his microphone to join in, and sees Adam doing so on the other side of the stage. "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch."
They take a break after they wrap that song up with an extended, free-styled ending, long enough for Frank to get a drink of water, for Patrick, Spencer, and Adam to begin to catch their breaths. From there, it's into a series of three songs by groups Frank refers to as the new kids on the scene, despite the fact that most of the *really* new groups in the hardcore punk scene refer to them as the elder statesmen.
Patrick doesn't so much know the words to any of those songs, but the tempos were easy enough to pick up during practice, his notes contrasting well with what Frank's playing, Adam. Midway through song number two, Adam makes his way over to Patrick's side and plays at him-not for the five notes or so that Patrick's used to, before he inevitably has to turn away, back to his mic, but for longer, a whole stanza, two.
Adam's bangs are damp with sweat, catching in his eyelashes, but Patrick's pretty sure that the kid doesn't notice; his eyes are closed, his mouth open as he breathes the words that Frank is shouting, and Patrick would smile, but the music pulls him under again.
From there they move into Minor Threat's "In My Eyes". Patrick, Frank, and Adam spend about thirty seconds flailing around the stage, guitars, heads, and hands moving in unison before Frank has to make it back to his microphone, and Jesus, Patrick thinks, he's going to be really fucking sore tomorrow. Because this is a way that he hasn't played in fucking years, not since he was a teenager with dreams of being in a hardcore band, something that somehow, joining the group with the guy from Arma Angelus, had never turned into.
"You tell me that I make no difference," Frank screams. "At least I'm fucking trying. What the fuck have you done?"
They take a quick breather after that song, then play a few more of Frank's favorites from recent years, and then finally, finally, Frank steps up to the mic and says, "This'll be our last song for the night, so I guess this is where I say thank you for letting some of us indulge our roots tonight. You all fucking *rock*."
He starts playing, just a few notes, just to the point where Patrick and Adam and Spencer should be joining in, and then he stops again. "Oh, and we decided, finally, to let Patrick sing tonight, since he's probably the one you all came out to hear, right? But this is one of my favorite bands; these guys really helped *my* band get it's start and, well. Fuckin' yeah. One, two, three, four." He starts in again, not breaking off again this time, and for the first time that night, really, Patrick finds himself stepping up to his mic with the intention of staying there.
"Five-four-three-two-one," Patrick sings. "Let's start this fire, burn this town from inside out."
Compared to the rest of the songs they've been playing tonight, it's a soft song, although far heavier than anything Patrick played with Fall Out Boy. And this is what he wasn't expecting: for it to actually feel, well, *right* to be standing at the mic again, stuck there, hearing Frank in his ear, singing the back up vocals. He turns partway through the song, just enough to see Frank looking at Spencer, grinning, and whether it's at Patrick or the whole night, Patrick doesn't know, but part of him is pretty sure that he should be mildly offended. Or something.
Instead he just turns to look at Adam, finds the kid looking back at him, and he rolls his eyes, laughing through the next few words of the verse, and, well. Even if Frank and Spencer *are* laughing at him, he can't really complain. This is where he belongs, after all.
*
So, Patrick tries not to work on the song. He really, really does.
The problem he has with songs, though, is that once he starts them, he finds it really fucking hard to, you know, stop. He always faced the exact same thing back when he and Pete were working together: once he got the hook he had to keep going with it, for better or for worse, or else it would always be there in the back of his head, a what if?
But this is not 'back when' and it's not 'the old days', and his relationship with this band is not the same relationship that he had with Fall Out Boy and they’re still getting used to each other, to the sorts of shows they’re doing, and that does not include Patrick writing songs for them.
So, the day after, after he gets back from Riverside at something like three o’clock in the morning, after he falls into bed and wakes up at nine to a phone call from Pete, a, "Dude. You fucks are really having a good time aren't you?" After Patrick laughs, then winces, because it's been a long time since he screamed his throat raw like he had the night before.
Just, *after*, he takes a look at the staff paper sitting out on the dining room table, ink smudged as the side of his hand rubbed across it while he was writing. He looks and he runs his finger over it one more time, and then he puts it in a drawer and mentally throws away the key. Because that-any songs of his-are not who Reason # 437 are. Or will be. Of that, he’s sure.
*
It works for about 48 hours.
Until he wakes up at 5 o’clock on Wednesday morning, the music, the fourth line of the third verse running through his head, the word he’d been trying to reconcile into the established beat suddenly changed to one that *works*, and before he can think better of it, he’s rummaging in the drawer of his nightstand, pulling out a notebook, writing it down, jotting down something about notation. And-
And he’s tired enough, see, and he’s too much a creature of habit, because it’s like a key is turned in his brain, everything that he’d been trying to write, everything that he’d been resisting, suddenly flowing, and he can’t stop. *Fuck*, he doesn’t *want* to fucking *stop*.
He doesn’t stop.
He’s finished the song by seven, notes transcribed onto staff paper, words scrawled in the spaces between the lines.
He reads it over, hums it.
He brushes his thumb over the corner of the paper, smoothing it out, and says, “Fuck.”
Set List:
1) Rise Above-Black Flag
2) Where Eagles Dare-The Misfits
3) In My Eyes-Minor Threat
4) Counting 5-4-3-2-1-Thursday
36. Four Shows (IV)
Patrick makes a resolution. It is a firm resolution, an important one. Namely, he resolves not to mention his song to anyone, not Pete or Frank or Spencer or Adam, because mentioning it would lead to playing it, which would lead to admitting that his brain was thinking in Spencer’s beats, Frank and Adam’s riffs. It would mean acknowledging that he wants to make this into more than they’d originally agreed to making it into, making it even more for real instead of for fun for real.
Basically, see, Patrick’s reasoning goes something like this: He likes the status quo.
Also, if he’s learned anything about himself in the last 8 months, it’s that he can be remarkably good at self-delusion when he wants to be, and if there has ever been a time to consciously embrace that fact, it is now.
So, he doesn’t mention the song.
He doesn’t mention it that night, when Frank and Spencer and Adam come over to his house for their officially official practice for their next show, three weeks away. He doesn’t say a word about it while they’re weighing the merits of Diva Night-“Fuck, Stump!” Frank says, “How could you not want to believe in life after love? Can’t you just fucking *picture* it?”-versus a 70s theme night-“Disco,” Adam says, and the look on his face is so amusingly rapturous that Frank makes a cooing noise, like that’s the most precious thing he’s ever heard. Which causes AJ to jump him, which leads to Patrick saying, “Hey, fuck. Roll away from the drums, you fucks. *Away from the drums.*”
He doesn’t mention it to Pete when they talk on the phone the next night, as he listens to tales of the antics of Pete’s newest baby band, one of Ross’s finds of course, and had he mentioned the ukulele? Because they had a fucking ukulele player, okay? Pete’d *had* to sign them just for that. And, okay, Patrick might have had more of a problem not mentioning the song except that Patrick remembers listening to those kids’ demo. He remembers the ukulele. He says, “Fuck, I know, right?”
He doesn’t mention it that weekend, when he drives down to Riverside to eat dinner with Frank and Jamia and Karen at Eduardo’s Mexican place. They talk about how Eduardo’s sons are setting up the stage by the front window again.
“We started a trend,” Frank says. “He’s started doing, like, open mic nights. Guitars and tacos, man. Fucking awesome, right?”
One week after he finishes the song, though, his resolve not to mention it fails.
He’s talking with Joe of all people on the phone, what the fuck, talking about Diva Night, about Whitney and Cher and Mariah, when Joe, the bastard, asks, “So what, you’d rather sing about, fuck, pieces of Ms. Spears than, like, your own shit? What the fuck, dude?”
And Patrick says, “It’s not like I haven’t been wr-“ It’s a natural defense and he breaks off quickly, but Joe knows him as well as anyone else in this world and he’s not stupid. He knows how to fill in the blanks on his own, the fucker.
“That’s not-“ Patrick starts, tries, because he has to say something. Because he can totally play it off, right? He’s been writing for the bands he works in the studio with, sure. And yeah, he’d sure as hell rather sing about pieces of Ms. Spears than some of the shit they come up with, right? Ha, ha, fuck.
Joe interrupts him before he can get much farther than that, though, and fuck him, he’s totally fucking laughing. A-fucking-lot. Then he says, “Dude, Pete and I totally had a bet going, which of us could get you to admit to it first.”
“Fuck you,” Patrick says weakly, resigned, because he knows that there’s nothing that he can do about it now. Joe will tell Pete-if Pete isn’t already in the room listening, the fuckwad-and then Pete will call Frank or Spencer and maybe Rolling Stone, fucking fuck, and wow is his resolution ever fucked.
“Ah, lunchbox, that’s no way to talk to your bestest buddy, now is it?”
He’s still laughing, though, so Patrick doesn’t feel too badly about hanging up on him.
*
Indeed, word travels fast, because when Spencer shows up at Patrick’s door that night, Frank and Adam just a few steps behind, he doesn’t offer one of his usual greetings: a ‘hello’ or a ‘what the fuck is up’ or a ‘Brendon told me that if you didn’t send me back to Vegas in 24 hours, he was going to fly out here and kick your ass.’ Instead he says, “So, I hear there’s a new song?”
Patrick nods.
They sit down in his living room, and Patrick’s debating telling them all that it’s nothing, that he was just fucking around, that it’s not really their sound-because they don’t even *have* a fucking sound, right? But somehow the words just aren’t coming. And while he expects Frank’s cackle of glee, he’s not expecting the look that Frank gives Adam, part ‘I told you so’ and part encouragement. Adam pushes his bangs away from his face, and that’s when Patrick notices the ink stains on his knuckles.
“As long as we’re ‘fessing up,” Frank says, which makes Spencer snort.
“Fuck off, Smith,” Frank says, then continues. “The kid and I have been fooling around a bit with this idea of his for a week or so. We’ve mainly been fucking around with the words, but he’s got some interesting ideas about how the notes should go together, you know?”
“Just a little something,” Adam says. “Just-“
“Shut up,” Frank continues. “You know it’s awesome. Then, to Patrick, “We were going to take it slowly. Ease you into the idea and shit. Smith here told us that we shouldn’t worry-“
“Like it wasn’t totally obvious you’d started writing again,” Spencer says, rolling his eyes. “What with the bags under your eyes and all, and the fact that you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“-but we didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Jesus,” Patrick says, and thinks that he should be flipping the fuck out. Because he’d started to the last time he’d thought about CDs and writing and singing their own stuff, right after he’d finally admitted they were a band. Because they’d all been totally fine just being a cover band, because they had a good thing going. Because apparently his band thinks that they can still scare him off, when he’s worrying that they aren’t going to want to move beyond the status quo.
“Fuck,” he says, and then he laughs, because- Well, maybe he resigned himself to this moment when he admitted that they were, in fact, a band. Or maybe he’s just not letting himself be surprised by anything with regards to this whole thing anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, the little thrill of excitement that they’re all apparently (unintentionally) on the same page, that tingle that he can feel building up in his fingers, brain, means that he’s ready to move out of denial, onto the next step.
*
But, as much as Patrick would like to pay attention to their two-two!-in progress songs (and they do pay attention to them, some) they have a show the next week, scheduled and advertised as Diva Night. And apparently the venue, some little place down in Ventura, is most of the way to being *sold out*.
The thing is: it seemed like a fucking awesome idea when they originally started bouncing ideas around. It even seemed like a good idea when they first started practicing, singing about your love and my love, you fuck.
“Gerard,” Frank had said at the time, “would fucking *kill* to be in on this show, you know?”
It starts to feel like a really fucking *bad* idea about three seconds before they’re supposed to actually start playing, though, once they’re actually on stage, the lights out. Once he can actually hear the breathing of the people out in the audience, feel their anticipation, because *seriously*, what the fuck do they think that they’re doing? They’re going to get fucking *laughed off of the stage*, Jesus. But then the light is coming up, and ha, he’s stepping up to the mic, and Spencer’s tapping out a steady beat behind him.
“Ye-ah, ye-ah, yeah.” He sings it a cappella, no backing, and then, as soon as he steps away from the microphone, Spencer brings his sticks down on the drums, hitting them as hard as they can. He starts a heavier beat than the original version of the song calls for, but that’s pretty much what the entire night is about: punk takes on diva pop songs. Going all out.
“Always been told that I’ve got too much pride,” Patrick sings. “Too independent to have you by my side.” They speed the song up when they hit the first chorus, and Patrick lets his voice climb, crescendo with the guitars.
“Show me love,” he sings. “Show me life. Baby, show me what it’s all about.” They throw in a few guitar solos, Frank nearly bending over backwards on the tiny stage, letting his fingers fly. He doesn’t quite fall down, but it’s close, and Patrick catches Spencer rolling his eyes as Frank fakes like he’s going to fall, then twists around so that he’s standing back upright. Off to Patrick’s left, Adam plays the piano with that much more force.
They trail off at the end and Frank takes his place at the microphone, saying, “So how does one intro Diva Night? There’s really nothing to say is there?” He listens to a few catcalls from the audience, then says, “Okay, well maybe there’s a little bit to say. It has not been our grand mission in life to play old school Robyn, or Tina, or Whitney, or Mariah, but way back when, a few months ago, we were sort of joking around, and someone-was it you, Smith?-threw out the idea, and we all thought, fuck, that might actually be sort of fun. So, here we are. Embracing our inner divas. Even if some of our inner divas still wear trucker caps, what the fuck, Stump.”
Because Patrick is still wearing his hat. His hoodie is a shiny green metallic material, though, because during their dinner at Eduardo’s two and a half weeks before, Jamia had said, “You will not be a diva if you don’t sparkle, Stump,” and Frank had said, “Listen to my wife, she knows all.”
“This is as shiny as I get,” Patrick says into the mic, making the crowd laugh, and then, because the last thing he wants to do is actually *talk about this*, he makes a gesture at Spencer, who starts counting them into the next song.
He lets one round of drum beats go through, then he sings, “Bum bum be-dum bum bum be-dum bum.” By the time he finishes the first round, some members of the crowd are already singing along, and in the dim lights, he can see kids in gold lamé dresses dancing along with the beat, waving feather boas in the air.
Frank is dancing, too, up on the tips of his toes, bouncing his head along with the beat. He’s singing along with what words he knows, looking like he’s having a fucking blast-of course, it’s not the first time he’s played Rihanna on stage; he and Patrick are even there. Spencer’s having a good time, too, Patrick can tell; he keeps throwing drum flourishes into the beat, pushing them forward faster, faster. And when he looks at Adam, he sees the kid almost prowling back towards Spencer, his head moving in time with the beat.
“It’s a thief in the night,” Patrick sings, “to come and grab you. It can creep up inside you and consume you. A disease of the mind, it can control you. It’s too close for comfort.”
From there, they move into-well, okay, it’s an oldie-but the lighting guys start the disco ball, flashing neon lights off of it, which makes the audience scream. Again, they speed it up, adding guitar riffs in places where no riffs should probably go. Frank and Adam stalk around the stage, though, following each other, playing their guitars at each other, and somehow always ending up at some mic or another when the chorus comes around: “What’s love got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”
There’s a pause when they come to the end, as Frank stands up on tip toes to reach Spencer’s mic so that he can say, “Some of you may choose to cover your ears for this next one, or run screaming from the building in horror. Just… enjoy this in the spirit that it was intended, okay? Which is that we’re out to have a fucking awesome time tonight. And you all *know* we couldn’t do Diva Night without this chick, right?”
“Just be fucking thankful it’s not ‘My Heart Will Go On’,” Spencer says, like this one totally wasn’t his idea to begin with. “Right?”
“Fuck!” someone in the audience shouts. Patrick can hear laughter, though, and a few “woo!”s. And see, ha, of all of the songs they’re doing tonight, this is the one that Patrick actually wants to end up on YouTube just so that he can get the outraged phone call from Pete, the one where he says things like, “What the fucking fuckity fuck, Stump?” and “Didn’t I train you better this?” and “Where the fuck did I go wrong. I must have gone wrong *somewhere*.”
Frank had clapped his hands with glee, though, when Spencer had first suggested it, and they’d all spent the next half hour singing off-key Celine Dion lyrics at each other, and really, what’s the point of singing the divas if you don’t have a good fucking time with it?
Then, in unison, Frank starts playing his guitar in a way that would not be out of place in a Kenny G song, and Adam turns up the synthesizer on the keyboard, and Spencer starts using a brush on his cymbal, and Patrick sings, in his most soulful voice, “A new day has- A new day has-“
The laughter this time is louder, some shouts, some screams, and it’s with more confidence that Patrick starts in on the first verse. “I was waiting for so long. For a miracle to come.” They play it softly, soft rock-like, until they hit the chorus, and then Frank hits chords and Adam abandons the piano for his bass, and Spencer drops the brush to the floor, picking up his sticks again. Patrick lets an edge creep into his voice a bit as he sings the words: “Let the rain come down and wash away my tears.” By the time they actually get to the title, the beat is heavy enough that there could be head banging, and Frank, Patrick sees, is doing so, and then, as he reaches the end of the chorus, he practically growls: “A new day has come.”
After that, they head straight into the dance remixes. Whitney first, and Patrick sings, “If your love is my love, and my love is your love,” and the lights are going and people are dancing and Adam’s coming up to play back to back with Patrick, and Patrick just lets his voice go.
Frank and Spencer keep playing for several stanzas after the song is over, giving Patrick a chance to move away from the microphone, back to where Spencer is. He takes a drink, a deep breath, and lets himself grin widely at Spencer. Then he starts playing his own guitar as he takes the few steps back to the front of the stage, already starting to play, leading the transition into the next song.
The strobes are going again, matching their beats, and Patrick sings, “Baby, I stay in love with you.” He repeats the words a few times, then moves into the first verse. “Dying inside, because I can’t stand it. Make up, break up, can’t take this madness.”
From there they move into an Anya song, Patrick singing, “True love like thunder, echoing through me like the beating of my heart,” the crowd singing along, arms in the air, and it’s midway through that song that Patrick sees the silver feather boa flying through the air, glinting in the flashing lights. He doesn’t pick it up until the song is over, until they’re taking their breather, and then he bends down, picks it up, wraps it around his neck with a flourish.
Frank takes that moment to step up to the microphone, and say, “Hey now, that’s not fucking fair. We are all divas on this stage. Why are *you* the only one to get a boa?”
“Maybe someone would be kind enough to toss you one?” Patrick asks, and oh, he’s breathing hard. Maybe Frank knew that. Maybe that’s the true reason for the mini-break. As soon as the words leave his mouth, though, he sees several boas flying through the air, and Frank quickly scoops them up. He tosses an orange one to Spencer, a purple one to Adam, keeps the green one for himself.
He leans back towards his mic. “Have I told you all tonight what a fucking awesome crowd you are? Because you are fucking fucking *fucking* awesome, holy fuck.”
He might say more, except Spencer chooses that moment to start playing his drums, drawing them into the next song. He starts out with light taps on his snare, then moves into cymbals as Patrick sings, “Cherish, cherish.”
Pretty much the entire crowd is singing along by the time Patrick gets to sing, “I cherish the thought of always having you here by my side. Oh, baby, I cherish the joy you keep bringing into my life. I’m always singing it. Cherish the strength. You got the power to make me feel good. Oh baby, I perish the thought of ever leaving. I never would.”
From there, they move into the last song. Or, well, the last two songs. It’s more of a medley, because they were evenly split on which one they wanted to play. So they went with the easy answer: both.
The great thing about these songs is: there are actual guitar parts. They barely have to punk the things up at all. They *do*, but they wouldn’t *have* to if they didn’t want to. So, Patrick sings, “Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, I really don’t think you’re strong enough.” They get through two verses, two choruses, before moving into song number two, the one that they felt it was best to end on.
They replace most of the intro with a transition of their own making, and then-hard to believe that it’s almost over already-Patrick sings, “If I could turn back time. If I could find a way, I’d take back those words that hurt you. And you’d stay. If I could reach the stars, I’d give them all to you. Then you’d love me, love me, like you used to do.”
Patrick slows it down at the end, savoring each word, and the audience is singing along with him, and fuck, he actually pretty sure that he doesn’t want it to end. But end it must, so they finish with a power chord, struck poses, feather boa’s swinging through the air, and fuck, it’s suddenly loud. Patrick can hear the laughter, the rising voices, the jubilant chatter that fills the venue after a show that the audience has enjoyed just as much as the performers.
The lights are starting to come up of course, of course, because this is where they’d told the lighting guys that they were going to stop. Patrick is thrumming with energy, though, and Frank is still bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and Spencer is tossing his sticks in the air like he’s *waiting* for something, and maybe he is, because he raises an eyebrow at Patrick, an almost challenge, a, ‘so?’ Then he turns the look at Frank, and before Patrick has a chance to do more than register the look, to rub his hand through his hair in a way that means, ‘really?’, Adam is sharing that same glance with Spencer, is nodding and stepping up to his mic. He taps it with the tip of his finger until it squeals. Frank hisses loudly, then laughs, saying, “Way to go, kid.”
Adam flips Frank off, then clears his throat. Patrick sees him take a quick look in Patrick’s direction, but then he turns forward again, staunchly facing the crowd.
“’Scuse me,” he says. “Sorry. Fuck. Um. We actually aren’t done yet. There’s, um, a song that we’ve been working on-“ The longer he talks, even with just these few words, the paler he looks, and so Patrick isn’t at all surprised with Frank steps up to his own mic and says, “What the kid’s trying to say-right, AJ?-is that we have one more song we’d like to play for you all tonight. We weren’t planning on doing this-so be warned, it’s going to be fucking *rough*--but you guys are such a fucking awesome crowd-I mean, you gave us fucking *boas*--that we think you deserve some sort of reward. Or, well, we hope it’s a reward. Because did I mention the rough?” He steps away from his microphone, then back again after just a moment. “Don’t bother trying to sing along. You aren’t going to know this one. Hell, we barely know this one.” A breath, then “Go ahead and count us in, Stump, a’ight?”
The house lights are still on, and yeah, okay, Patrick is suddenly remembering that he doesn’t actually like being able to see his audience, because, well, he can see them *all*. Girls, guys, men, women, all clustered together, staring at him. He thinks, what if they hate it? He thinks, what if they were only here for the crazy covers? He thinks, maybe we weren’t meant to be more than a glorified cover band?
He says, “One, two, three, four-“ and Spencer starts in on the intro, eight beats, then Frank and Adam are joining in, and before he can think about it anymore, Patrick starts to sing about closed doors and open windows, flashes of light reflecting off of mirrors and the way it all goes around again, again. It’s midway through the second stanza that he truly looks at the crowd for the first time and then he wishes that he hadn’t because fuck, they *are* all staring at him, lips trying to move along with the words, and for a moment, he feels like he used to, when he was just a punk kid standing on a stage, wondering how the hell he ended up as the singer instead of the drummer, what the fuck, but then he sees AJ doing a spin out of the corner of his eye, Frank dancing along right next to him. He can hear Spencer, steady and there. And then they’re done.
Done.
There’s a moment of silence as the crowd seems to process what they’ve just heard, and then there are yells, shouts, clapping hands. Frank is grabbing at Patrick’s wrist and pulling him into a bow, and then Spencer is joining them, encouraging them off of the stage, back to the storage area-slash-dressing room.
Adam is the first one to speak. “I think they liked it,” he says. His grin belies his lazy tone, though.
“Well why the fuck wouldn’t they have?” Frank asks. “We’re fucking awesome.”
“Fuck yeah,” Spencer says. Then he grins at Patrick, raising that damn eyebrow of his again.
“Fuck yeah,” Patrick says.
*
It only takes half an hour for Pete to call. Patrick is still driving home and he debates not answering the phone, letting Pete stew, but then he thinks better of it, puts the phone on speaker.
“Hi,” he says. He’s grinning, anticipating what Pete is going to say.
Which is: “You fuck.” He doesn’t sound like he’s amused, though. He actually sounds a little bit pissed. More than a little bit. “You play a *new fucking song* without giving me a heads up whatsoever? You *know* I would have been in the first fucking *row*, Jesus Christ, Stump.”
“I know,” Patrick says, and his euphoria fades, just a little. “Fuck, I know, Pete. And if I’d know we were going to play it, I would have told you. You would have been the first one I told. Just-it was a spur of the moment thing. I fucking promise. We were just in the moment and we didn’t want it to be over and-“
“The new song just popped out,” Pete says. He sounds dry, almost disbelieving, but then he laughs. “Of course it did, because your new songs, the ones you hardly know, *still* sound better than a fuck load of what’s on the radio stations these days.”
It didn’t, Patrick knows it didn’t. They had an extra syllable in stanza eighteen, and he’d totally fucked over the rhythm line on the fourth repeat of the chorus, and he’d forgotten the last word of the second line of the fourth verse, but it could have gone a lot worse.
“Oh, stop it,” Pete says, finally amused. “It sounded awesome and you know it. It’s already gotten 20 hits on YouTube. Granted, 15 of those were me and Joe, unable to believe that our fucking *brother* would debut new music without running it by us first, but, you know. People are going to ooh and ah.” Then he laughs out loud, a wheezing sound. “You realize that there’s no turning back from this, Stump. I’m sending out contracts to you four tomorrow, because there’s no way I’m letting anyone else release your CD-and don’t even fucking tell me there’s not going to be one, because I believe we’ve been through this argument before in terms of, you know, you being in the fucking band, and you writing music, and all that shit."
Patrick doesn’t try to protest. There will be a CD. It may still seem slightly unbelievable to him, but honestly, he’d be more surprised now if they *didn’t* release one at some point.
There’s a pause then, and for a moment Patrick thinks that Pete has just been struck speechless by his easy capitulation.
Then Pete laughs again, and says, “Now onto the important matters of business. Patrick Stump, I am ashamed. I don’t know where I went wrong in raising you. Because seriously? Fucking ‘A New Day Has Come’? Really?”
Patrick smiles.
“You’d better fucking believe it,” he says. “Too bad I didn’t have the boa then, right?”
“Fuck,” Pete says, and yeah, Patrick thinks, that about sums it up.
Set List:
1) Show Me Love-Robyn
2) Disturbia-Rihanna
3) What’s Love Got To Do With It?-Tina Turner
4) A New Day Has Come-Celine Dion
5) My Love is Your Love-Whitney Houston
6) I Stay in Love With You-Mariah Carey
7) Cherish-Madona
8) Believe-Cher
9) Turn Back Time-Cher
Continued.
Author: tigs
...cont. from the previous post.
35. Four Shows (III)
The problem is, Patrick's started thinking in notes again.
Well, okay, it's maybe not exactly a problem in a scream and panic and stress sort of way, but for nearly half of Patrick's life now, when he's thought in notes, it's been for his band. The first band that he thinks of as *his*, anyway. Rhythms and flourishes particular to Andy's style, lines that allow for Joe's epic spinnage, Pete playing his bass on top of his head, behind his back, licking the neck.
The notes he's thinking now, though, they aren't for Pete, Joe, or Andy. No, now he's thinking of the way Frank likes to fall to the stage, play on his back; of the way Adam's confidence is increasing, the way he's starting to move out of his zone. He's thinking of the way Spencer just *pounds* on his drums, his whole body working.
And it shouldn't be scary, right? It's not, not in an 'ooh, I'm so scared!' way, but the thing is, while Patrick's never had a problem writing or producing for other artists, Pete, Joe and Andy have always (always) been his first thought. And now, instead of consciously taking two mental steps up the energetic playing scale to get from Joe to Frank, or two steps down to get from Pete to Adam, well. Now it's only one, or maybe half a step, and when Patrick comes up with a riff that he thinks is particularly awesome, one that will have Frank ping-ponging across the stage (if it's large enough), well.
He actually thinks of Frank first. Not Joe.
And that's maybe the scariest realization of all.
Especially since he still hasn't mentioned to anyone, not even Pete, that he's even writing again. Especially when it's keeping him up late at night, too late, and he's waking up tired still, with the melodies from the night before running through his head.
So, one week to the day since Pete left, a week and a half before their next show-down in Riverside again, at the same place they had their charity concert after party-and when Patrick lets Frank, Spencer, and Adam into his house for their scheduled practice, the first thing Spencer says to him is, "So, you've decided sleeping is for the weak?"
Patrick laughs, but he knows that he's got circles under his eyes, that he's a day or two overdue for a shave. The house looks exactly the same as the last time everyone came over, though: namely, there are no pieces of staff paper lying around, covered in ink-smudged notes. Patrick's acoustic is safely hanging in the guitar rack in his basement.
"Fuck yeah," Patrick says. "Who needs sleep, right?"
Adam's the one to start hum-singing the Barenaked Ladies' song, and Spencer chimes in with the words: "Who needs sleep? Well, you're never gonna get it. Who needs sleep? Tell me what's that for."
Patrick flips him off, and the kid opens his mouth, probably to say something that will devolve into twenty minutes of good-natured ribbing, but then Spencer says, "Yeah, so maybe instead of arguing about this-when the answer is obvious, sleep is one of the great things in life and should be appreciated as such-we should actually decide what sort of show we're going to be putting on next week?"
They've talked about other theme nights: 60s, 70s, the Beatles, the Stones, the greatest hits from the pop princesses of the last decade.
"I heard a song the other day that was totally, like, a lost Pretty. Odd. song," Adam said. "Clairebelle-you know, Gary's new folk project?-she had it on repeat during her lunch break, for inspiration or something? It was about a horse with no name, or some shit like that. Something about getting out of the rain, too. It was totally you, Smith."
"So, like, group inspirations?" Frank asks. He says it slowly, quite obviously weighing what else they'd end up playing. "So we'd have, like, the Beatles and the Descendents and, like, the early Chicago punk? What songs would you choose, Stump?"
And Patrick has songs. He could name lots of songs, right here, right now, but of course the only one he can think of is the unfinished one, stuck in the fucking top drawer of his desk. And for some reason, at this moment, he doesn't actually want to think about singing anything else. So he says, "Um, I was thinking. I was, um, thinking we could try something different?"
He's totally adlibbing here and he's sure that it probably shows, is probably totally fucking obvious, but then: "I mean, you keep getting stuck playing all of this softer stuff for us, right, so why don't we do a show where, I don't know, we play some of your influences. Yeah, like the Descendents, or Thursday, or… I don’t know, who else?"
"You want to scream?" Frank asks, an eyebrow raised, because Patrick's voice is quite obviously not made for screaming. Frank's, however, is, and so Patrick just shakes his head.
"Do you know," he says after a beat, maybe too long to be truly believed, but no less true for that, "I haven't had a chance to just play guitar since I was 17? This is all about us having fun, right? And I know you like to front-every once in awhile at least, right? And for once, I think, I just want to fucking *play*."
And, okay, yeah. This is totally off the top of his head, a thought he'd only entertained briefly in the past, on days when he was in a mood, capital M, and the last thing he wanted to do was get up on stage and sing, or sometimes when he watched a guitarist totally lose themselves in a song the way that a singer just can't.
He's almost sure they're going to laugh, say no. Pete would have laughed, said no, because for all that Pete knows him better (still) than almost anyone on the planet, he's also a true believer in Patrick's voice, and Patrick's need to be at the microphone. At least for Fall Out Boy.
This, however, is quite obviously not Fall Out Boy, and that has never been more obvious than this moment, actually, when Frank starts grinning, looking more than a little excited. Spencer cracks his knuckles and Adam's eyes are wide, but not in a way that bespeaks disagreement.
"Seriously?" Frank asks, and Patrick looks to Spencer and Adam for verbal confirmation.
"Yeah," Adam says, and Spencer nods his agreement.
"That could be fun," Spencer continues, his voice rising at the end, making it sound almost like a question. Except it's not-or at least Patrick doesn't think it is. He thinks that it's more that Spencer can tell that Patrick's motives are not entirely pure, and he's trying to figure out why. After a moment that only seems long, though, he turns to Frank, and Patrick figures that for now, at least, Spencer has decided to let it go.
*
Show three:
Okay, so it's not that Frank hasn't been really fucking excited for every single show they've done thus far, but, okay, he's *really* fucking excited right now. Like, *really* fucking excited.
And Patrick's brain-traitorous thing that it is-takes that in. What they've been practicing: quick notes, loud. Harder, faster. The way Frank is fucking bouncing as he steps up to the mic and says, "Fuck, look at all of you out there. Fucking awesome, dudes." Then, "Well, if you know anything about us, about our band, you'll know that we like to fucking mix things up. With, like, a blender and shit, right? And I know that some of you were probably looking forward to hearing Patrick scream his voice fucking raw, so I'm sorry to disappoint, 'cause I'm the one who's going to be doing the screaming tonight."
There are yells from the crowd at that and Frank continues, "That's what I'm talking about. That is what I'm fucking talking about." Then, "Count us in, Smith." And just like that it's starting.
And oh, it feels fucking weird, right? Because Patrick is used to being center stage, and yet he's not. He's stuck on the right side of the stage, just playing, occasionally (maybe, if he feels like it) doing backing vocals.
They start with a classic, an intro that Patrick nearly loses himself in, and by the time Frank gets to the first repetition of the title, the kids at the front of the crowd are screaming along: "Rise above! We're gonna rise above!" It's a short song, shorter than what Patrick's used to playing, but then every song on their list is. The tempo, however, is faster, and Patrick's sweating by the time they reach the last verse.
From there, with barely a breath in between, it's straight into The Misfit's 'Where Eagles Dare'. Adam starts them out, playing a single chord on the piano, one that slowly grows in volume, overwhelming the room, and then Spencer, Frank, and Patrick start in, all together, all in unison.
Patrick's fingers are moving as fast as he can make them go, but when he turns towards Spencer, in the back corner at his drums, well, the sticks are moving so fast Patrick can't really see anything but a blur. Spencer's biting at his lip, and for the first time since they've been playing together, he's got a tie tied over his head, pulling his lengthening bangs away from his face, and Patrick understands why, as his whole body is bending, jerking with the force with which he's hitting the drums.
Not as many in their audience are as familiar with this song as they were with the first-a fact which Patrick knows Frank will decry later-but the volume of the crowd increases by a factor of ten when Frank reaches the line, "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch, you better think about it, baby." For the second part of the chorus, Patrick actually steps up to his microphone to join in, and sees Adam doing so on the other side of the stage. "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch."
They take a break after they wrap that song up with an extended, free-styled ending, long enough for Frank to get a drink of water, for Patrick, Spencer, and Adam to begin to catch their breaths. From there, it's into a series of three songs by groups Frank refers to as the new kids on the scene, despite the fact that most of the *really* new groups in the hardcore punk scene refer to them as the elder statesmen.
Patrick doesn't so much know the words to any of those songs, but the tempos were easy enough to pick up during practice, his notes contrasting well with what Frank's playing, Adam. Midway through song number two, Adam makes his way over to Patrick's side and plays at him-not for the five notes or so that Patrick's used to, before he inevitably has to turn away, back to his mic, but for longer, a whole stanza, two.
Adam's bangs are damp with sweat, catching in his eyelashes, but Patrick's pretty sure that the kid doesn't notice; his eyes are closed, his mouth open as he breathes the words that Frank is shouting, and Patrick would smile, but the music pulls him under again.
From there they move into Minor Threat's "In My Eyes". Patrick, Frank, and Adam spend about thirty seconds flailing around the stage, guitars, heads, and hands moving in unison before Frank has to make it back to his microphone, and Jesus, Patrick thinks, he's going to be really fucking sore tomorrow. Because this is a way that he hasn't played in fucking years, not since he was a teenager with dreams of being in a hardcore band, something that somehow, joining the group with the guy from Arma Angelus, had never turned into.
"You tell me that I make no difference," Frank screams. "At least I'm fucking trying. What the fuck have you done?"
They take a quick breather after that song, then play a few more of Frank's favorites from recent years, and then finally, finally, Frank steps up to the mic and says, "This'll be our last song for the night, so I guess this is where I say thank you for letting some of us indulge our roots tonight. You all fucking *rock*."
He starts playing, just a few notes, just to the point where Patrick and Adam and Spencer should be joining in, and then he stops again. "Oh, and we decided, finally, to let Patrick sing tonight, since he's probably the one you all came out to hear, right? But this is one of my favorite bands; these guys really helped *my* band get it's start and, well. Fuckin' yeah. One, two, three, four." He starts in again, not breaking off again this time, and for the first time that night, really, Patrick finds himself stepping up to his mic with the intention of staying there.
"Five-four-three-two-one," Patrick sings. "Let's start this fire, burn this town from inside out."
Compared to the rest of the songs they've been playing tonight, it's a soft song, although far heavier than anything Patrick played with Fall Out Boy. And this is what he wasn't expecting: for it to actually feel, well, *right* to be standing at the mic again, stuck there, hearing Frank in his ear, singing the back up vocals. He turns partway through the song, just enough to see Frank looking at Spencer, grinning, and whether it's at Patrick or the whole night, Patrick doesn't know, but part of him is pretty sure that he should be mildly offended. Or something.
Instead he just turns to look at Adam, finds the kid looking back at him, and he rolls his eyes, laughing through the next few words of the verse, and, well. Even if Frank and Spencer *are* laughing at him, he can't really complain. This is where he belongs, after all.
*
So, Patrick tries not to work on the song. He really, really does.
The problem he has with songs, though, is that once he starts them, he finds it really fucking hard to, you know, stop. He always faced the exact same thing back when he and Pete were working together: once he got the hook he had to keep going with it, for better or for worse, or else it would always be there in the back of his head, a what if?
But this is not 'back when' and it's not 'the old days', and his relationship with this band is not the same relationship that he had with Fall Out Boy and they’re still getting used to each other, to the sorts of shows they’re doing, and that does not include Patrick writing songs for them.
So, the day after, after he gets back from Riverside at something like three o’clock in the morning, after he falls into bed and wakes up at nine to a phone call from Pete, a, "Dude. You fucks are really having a good time aren't you?" After Patrick laughs, then winces, because it's been a long time since he screamed his throat raw like he had the night before.
Just, *after*, he takes a look at the staff paper sitting out on the dining room table, ink smudged as the side of his hand rubbed across it while he was writing. He looks and he runs his finger over it one more time, and then he puts it in a drawer and mentally throws away the key. Because that-any songs of his-are not who Reason # 437 are. Or will be. Of that, he’s sure.
*
It works for about 48 hours.
Until he wakes up at 5 o’clock on Wednesday morning, the music, the fourth line of the third verse running through his head, the word he’d been trying to reconcile into the established beat suddenly changed to one that *works*, and before he can think better of it, he’s rummaging in the drawer of his nightstand, pulling out a notebook, writing it down, jotting down something about notation. And-
And he’s tired enough, see, and he’s too much a creature of habit, because it’s like a key is turned in his brain, everything that he’d been trying to write, everything that he’d been resisting, suddenly flowing, and he can’t stop. *Fuck*, he doesn’t *want* to fucking *stop*.
He doesn’t stop.
He’s finished the song by seven, notes transcribed onto staff paper, words scrawled in the spaces between the lines.
He reads it over, hums it.
He brushes his thumb over the corner of the paper, smoothing it out, and says, “Fuck.”
Set List:
1) Rise Above-Black Flag
2) Where Eagles Dare-The Misfits
3) In My Eyes-Minor Threat
4) Counting 5-4-3-2-1-Thursday
36. Four Shows (IV)
Patrick makes a resolution. It is a firm resolution, an important one. Namely, he resolves not to mention his song to anyone, not Pete or Frank or Spencer or Adam, because mentioning it would lead to playing it, which would lead to admitting that his brain was thinking in Spencer’s beats, Frank and Adam’s riffs. It would mean acknowledging that he wants to make this into more than they’d originally agreed to making it into, making it even more for real instead of for fun for real.
Basically, see, Patrick’s reasoning goes something like this: He likes the status quo.
Also, if he’s learned anything about himself in the last 8 months, it’s that he can be remarkably good at self-delusion when he wants to be, and if there has ever been a time to consciously embrace that fact, it is now.
So, he doesn’t mention the song.
He doesn’t mention it that night, when Frank and Spencer and Adam come over to his house for their officially official practice for their next show, three weeks away. He doesn’t say a word about it while they’re weighing the merits of Diva Night-“Fuck, Stump!” Frank says, “How could you not want to believe in life after love? Can’t you just fucking *picture* it?”-versus a 70s theme night-“Disco,” Adam says, and the look on his face is so amusingly rapturous that Frank makes a cooing noise, like that’s the most precious thing he’s ever heard. Which causes AJ to jump him, which leads to Patrick saying, “Hey, fuck. Roll away from the drums, you fucks. *Away from the drums.*”
He doesn’t mention it to Pete when they talk on the phone the next night, as he listens to tales of the antics of Pete’s newest baby band, one of Ross’s finds of course, and had he mentioned the ukulele? Because they had a fucking ukulele player, okay? Pete’d *had* to sign them just for that. And, okay, Patrick might have had more of a problem not mentioning the song except that Patrick remembers listening to those kids’ demo. He remembers the ukulele. He says, “Fuck, I know, right?”
He doesn’t mention it that weekend, when he drives down to Riverside to eat dinner with Frank and Jamia and Karen at Eduardo’s Mexican place. They talk about how Eduardo’s sons are setting up the stage by the front window again.
“We started a trend,” Frank says. “He’s started doing, like, open mic nights. Guitars and tacos, man. Fucking awesome, right?”
One week after he finishes the song, though, his resolve not to mention it fails.
He’s talking with Joe of all people on the phone, what the fuck, talking about Diva Night, about Whitney and Cher and Mariah, when Joe, the bastard, asks, “So what, you’d rather sing about, fuck, pieces of Ms. Spears than, like, your own shit? What the fuck, dude?”
And Patrick says, “It’s not like I haven’t been wr-“ It’s a natural defense and he breaks off quickly, but Joe knows him as well as anyone else in this world and he’s not stupid. He knows how to fill in the blanks on his own, the fucker.
“That’s not-“ Patrick starts, tries, because he has to say something. Because he can totally play it off, right? He’s been writing for the bands he works in the studio with, sure. And yeah, he’d sure as hell rather sing about pieces of Ms. Spears than some of the shit they come up with, right? Ha, ha, fuck.
Joe interrupts him before he can get much farther than that, though, and fuck him, he’s totally fucking laughing. A-fucking-lot. Then he says, “Dude, Pete and I totally had a bet going, which of us could get you to admit to it first.”
“Fuck you,” Patrick says weakly, resigned, because he knows that there’s nothing that he can do about it now. Joe will tell Pete-if Pete isn’t already in the room listening, the fuckwad-and then Pete will call Frank or Spencer and maybe Rolling Stone, fucking fuck, and wow is his resolution ever fucked.
“Ah, lunchbox, that’s no way to talk to your bestest buddy, now is it?”
He’s still laughing, though, so Patrick doesn’t feel too badly about hanging up on him.
*
Indeed, word travels fast, because when Spencer shows up at Patrick’s door that night, Frank and Adam just a few steps behind, he doesn’t offer one of his usual greetings: a ‘hello’ or a ‘what the fuck is up’ or a ‘Brendon told me that if you didn’t send me back to Vegas in 24 hours, he was going to fly out here and kick your ass.’ Instead he says, “So, I hear there’s a new song?”
Patrick nods.
They sit down in his living room, and Patrick’s debating telling them all that it’s nothing, that he was just fucking around, that it’s not really their sound-because they don’t even *have* a fucking sound, right? But somehow the words just aren’t coming. And while he expects Frank’s cackle of glee, he’s not expecting the look that Frank gives Adam, part ‘I told you so’ and part encouragement. Adam pushes his bangs away from his face, and that’s when Patrick notices the ink stains on his knuckles.
“As long as we’re ‘fessing up,” Frank says, which makes Spencer snort.
“Fuck off, Smith,” Frank says, then continues. “The kid and I have been fooling around a bit with this idea of his for a week or so. We’ve mainly been fucking around with the words, but he’s got some interesting ideas about how the notes should go together, you know?”
“Just a little something,” Adam says. “Just-“
“Shut up,” Frank continues. “You know it’s awesome. Then, to Patrick, “We were going to take it slowly. Ease you into the idea and shit. Smith here told us that we shouldn’t worry-“
“Like it wasn’t totally obvious you’d started writing again,” Spencer says, rolling his eyes. “What with the bags under your eyes and all, and the fact that you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“-but we didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Jesus,” Patrick says, and thinks that he should be flipping the fuck out. Because he’d started to the last time he’d thought about CDs and writing and singing their own stuff, right after he’d finally admitted they were a band. Because they’d all been totally fine just being a cover band, because they had a good thing going. Because apparently his band thinks that they can still scare him off, when he’s worrying that they aren’t going to want to move beyond the status quo.
“Fuck,” he says, and then he laughs, because- Well, maybe he resigned himself to this moment when he admitted that they were, in fact, a band. Or maybe he’s just not letting himself be surprised by anything with regards to this whole thing anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, the little thrill of excitement that they’re all apparently (unintentionally) on the same page, that tingle that he can feel building up in his fingers, brain, means that he’s ready to move out of denial, onto the next step.
*
But, as much as Patrick would like to pay attention to their two-two!-in progress songs (and they do pay attention to them, some) they have a show the next week, scheduled and advertised as Diva Night. And apparently the venue, some little place down in Ventura, is most of the way to being *sold out*.
The thing is: it seemed like a fucking awesome idea when they originally started bouncing ideas around. It even seemed like a good idea when they first started practicing, singing about your love and my love, you fuck.
“Gerard,” Frank had said at the time, “would fucking *kill* to be in on this show, you know?”
It starts to feel like a really fucking *bad* idea about three seconds before they’re supposed to actually start playing, though, once they’re actually on stage, the lights out. Once he can actually hear the breathing of the people out in the audience, feel their anticipation, because *seriously*, what the fuck do they think that they’re doing? They’re going to get fucking *laughed off of the stage*, Jesus. But then the light is coming up, and ha, he’s stepping up to the mic, and Spencer’s tapping out a steady beat behind him.
“Ye-ah, ye-ah, yeah.” He sings it a cappella, no backing, and then, as soon as he steps away from the microphone, Spencer brings his sticks down on the drums, hitting them as hard as they can. He starts a heavier beat than the original version of the song calls for, but that’s pretty much what the entire night is about: punk takes on diva pop songs. Going all out.
“Always been told that I’ve got too much pride,” Patrick sings. “Too independent to have you by my side.” They speed the song up when they hit the first chorus, and Patrick lets his voice climb, crescendo with the guitars.
“Show me love,” he sings. “Show me life. Baby, show me what it’s all about.” They throw in a few guitar solos, Frank nearly bending over backwards on the tiny stage, letting his fingers fly. He doesn’t quite fall down, but it’s close, and Patrick catches Spencer rolling his eyes as Frank fakes like he’s going to fall, then twists around so that he’s standing back upright. Off to Patrick’s left, Adam plays the piano with that much more force.
They trail off at the end and Frank takes his place at the microphone, saying, “So how does one intro Diva Night? There’s really nothing to say is there?” He listens to a few catcalls from the audience, then says, “Okay, well maybe there’s a little bit to say. It has not been our grand mission in life to play old school Robyn, or Tina, or Whitney, or Mariah, but way back when, a few months ago, we were sort of joking around, and someone-was it you, Smith?-threw out the idea, and we all thought, fuck, that might actually be sort of fun. So, here we are. Embracing our inner divas. Even if some of our inner divas still wear trucker caps, what the fuck, Stump.”
Because Patrick is still wearing his hat. His hoodie is a shiny green metallic material, though, because during their dinner at Eduardo’s two and a half weeks before, Jamia had said, “You will not be a diva if you don’t sparkle, Stump,” and Frank had said, “Listen to my wife, she knows all.”
“This is as shiny as I get,” Patrick says into the mic, making the crowd laugh, and then, because the last thing he wants to do is actually *talk about this*, he makes a gesture at Spencer, who starts counting them into the next song.
He lets one round of drum beats go through, then he sings, “Bum bum be-dum bum bum be-dum bum.” By the time he finishes the first round, some members of the crowd are already singing along, and in the dim lights, he can see kids in gold lamé dresses dancing along with the beat, waving feather boas in the air.
Frank is dancing, too, up on the tips of his toes, bouncing his head along with the beat. He’s singing along with what words he knows, looking like he’s having a fucking blast-of course, it’s not the first time he’s played Rihanna on stage; he and Patrick are even there. Spencer’s having a good time, too, Patrick can tell; he keeps throwing drum flourishes into the beat, pushing them forward faster, faster. And when he looks at Adam, he sees the kid almost prowling back towards Spencer, his head moving in time with the beat.
“It’s a thief in the night,” Patrick sings, “to come and grab you. It can creep up inside you and consume you. A disease of the mind, it can control you. It’s too close for comfort.”
From there, they move into-well, okay, it’s an oldie-but the lighting guys start the disco ball, flashing neon lights off of it, which makes the audience scream. Again, they speed it up, adding guitar riffs in places where no riffs should probably go. Frank and Adam stalk around the stage, though, following each other, playing their guitars at each other, and somehow always ending up at some mic or another when the chorus comes around: “What’s love got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”
There’s a pause when they come to the end, as Frank stands up on tip toes to reach Spencer’s mic so that he can say, “Some of you may choose to cover your ears for this next one, or run screaming from the building in horror. Just… enjoy this in the spirit that it was intended, okay? Which is that we’re out to have a fucking awesome time tonight. And you all *know* we couldn’t do Diva Night without this chick, right?”
“Just be fucking thankful it’s not ‘My Heart Will Go On’,” Spencer says, like this one totally wasn’t his idea to begin with. “Right?”
“Fuck!” someone in the audience shouts. Patrick can hear laughter, though, and a few “woo!”s. And see, ha, of all of the songs they’re doing tonight, this is the one that Patrick actually wants to end up on YouTube just so that he can get the outraged phone call from Pete, the one where he says things like, “What the fucking fuckity fuck, Stump?” and “Didn’t I train you better this?” and “Where the fuck did I go wrong. I must have gone wrong *somewhere*.”
Frank had clapped his hands with glee, though, when Spencer had first suggested it, and they’d all spent the next half hour singing off-key Celine Dion lyrics at each other, and really, what’s the point of singing the divas if you don’t have a good fucking time with it?
Then, in unison, Frank starts playing his guitar in a way that would not be out of place in a Kenny G song, and Adam turns up the synthesizer on the keyboard, and Spencer starts using a brush on his cymbal, and Patrick sings, in his most soulful voice, “A new day has- A new day has-“
The laughter this time is louder, some shouts, some screams, and it’s with more confidence that Patrick starts in on the first verse. “I was waiting for so long. For a miracle to come.” They play it softly, soft rock-like, until they hit the chorus, and then Frank hits chords and Adam abandons the piano for his bass, and Spencer drops the brush to the floor, picking up his sticks again. Patrick lets an edge creep into his voice a bit as he sings the words: “Let the rain come down and wash away my tears.” By the time they actually get to the title, the beat is heavy enough that there could be head banging, and Frank, Patrick sees, is doing so, and then, as he reaches the end of the chorus, he practically growls: “A new day has come.”
After that, they head straight into the dance remixes. Whitney first, and Patrick sings, “If your love is my love, and my love is your love,” and the lights are going and people are dancing and Adam’s coming up to play back to back with Patrick, and Patrick just lets his voice go.
Frank and Spencer keep playing for several stanzas after the song is over, giving Patrick a chance to move away from the microphone, back to where Spencer is. He takes a drink, a deep breath, and lets himself grin widely at Spencer. Then he starts playing his own guitar as he takes the few steps back to the front of the stage, already starting to play, leading the transition into the next song.
The strobes are going again, matching their beats, and Patrick sings, “Baby, I stay in love with you.” He repeats the words a few times, then moves into the first verse. “Dying inside, because I can’t stand it. Make up, break up, can’t take this madness.”
From there they move into an Anya song, Patrick singing, “True love like thunder, echoing through me like the beating of my heart,” the crowd singing along, arms in the air, and it’s midway through that song that Patrick sees the silver feather boa flying through the air, glinting in the flashing lights. He doesn’t pick it up until the song is over, until they’re taking their breather, and then he bends down, picks it up, wraps it around his neck with a flourish.
Frank takes that moment to step up to the microphone, and say, “Hey now, that’s not fucking fair. We are all divas on this stage. Why are *you* the only one to get a boa?”
“Maybe someone would be kind enough to toss you one?” Patrick asks, and oh, he’s breathing hard. Maybe Frank knew that. Maybe that’s the true reason for the mini-break. As soon as the words leave his mouth, though, he sees several boas flying through the air, and Frank quickly scoops them up. He tosses an orange one to Spencer, a purple one to Adam, keeps the green one for himself.
He leans back towards his mic. “Have I told you all tonight what a fucking awesome crowd you are? Because you are fucking fucking *fucking* awesome, holy fuck.”
He might say more, except Spencer chooses that moment to start playing his drums, drawing them into the next song. He starts out with light taps on his snare, then moves into cymbals as Patrick sings, “Cherish, cherish.”
Pretty much the entire crowd is singing along by the time Patrick gets to sing, “I cherish the thought of always having you here by my side. Oh, baby, I cherish the joy you keep bringing into my life. I’m always singing it. Cherish the strength. You got the power to make me feel good. Oh baby, I perish the thought of ever leaving. I never would.”
From there, they move into the last song. Or, well, the last two songs. It’s more of a medley, because they were evenly split on which one they wanted to play. So they went with the easy answer: both.
The great thing about these songs is: there are actual guitar parts. They barely have to punk the things up at all. They *do*, but they wouldn’t *have* to if they didn’t want to. So, Patrick sings, “Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, I really don’t think you’re strong enough.” They get through two verses, two choruses, before moving into song number two, the one that they felt it was best to end on.
They replace most of the intro with a transition of their own making, and then-hard to believe that it’s almost over already-Patrick sings, “If I could turn back time. If I could find a way, I’d take back those words that hurt you. And you’d stay. If I could reach the stars, I’d give them all to you. Then you’d love me, love me, like you used to do.”
Patrick slows it down at the end, savoring each word, and the audience is singing along with him, and fuck, he actually pretty sure that he doesn’t want it to end. But end it must, so they finish with a power chord, struck poses, feather boa’s swinging through the air, and fuck, it’s suddenly loud. Patrick can hear the laughter, the rising voices, the jubilant chatter that fills the venue after a show that the audience has enjoyed just as much as the performers.
The lights are starting to come up of course, of course, because this is where they’d told the lighting guys that they were going to stop. Patrick is thrumming with energy, though, and Frank is still bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and Spencer is tossing his sticks in the air like he’s *waiting* for something, and maybe he is, because he raises an eyebrow at Patrick, an almost challenge, a, ‘so?’ Then he turns the look at Frank, and before Patrick has a chance to do more than register the look, to rub his hand through his hair in a way that means, ‘really?’, Adam is sharing that same glance with Spencer, is nodding and stepping up to his mic. He taps it with the tip of his finger until it squeals. Frank hisses loudly, then laughs, saying, “Way to go, kid.”
Adam flips Frank off, then clears his throat. Patrick sees him take a quick look in Patrick’s direction, but then he turns forward again, staunchly facing the crowd.
“’Scuse me,” he says. “Sorry. Fuck. Um. We actually aren’t done yet. There’s, um, a song that we’ve been working on-“ The longer he talks, even with just these few words, the paler he looks, and so Patrick isn’t at all surprised with Frank steps up to his own mic and says, “What the kid’s trying to say-right, AJ?-is that we have one more song we’d like to play for you all tonight. We weren’t planning on doing this-so be warned, it’s going to be fucking *rough*--but you guys are such a fucking awesome crowd-I mean, you gave us fucking *boas*--that we think you deserve some sort of reward. Or, well, we hope it’s a reward. Because did I mention the rough?” He steps away from his microphone, then back again after just a moment. “Don’t bother trying to sing along. You aren’t going to know this one. Hell, we barely know this one.” A breath, then “Go ahead and count us in, Stump, a’ight?”
The house lights are still on, and yeah, okay, Patrick is suddenly remembering that he doesn’t actually like being able to see his audience, because, well, he can see them *all*. Girls, guys, men, women, all clustered together, staring at him. He thinks, what if they hate it? He thinks, what if they were only here for the crazy covers? He thinks, maybe we weren’t meant to be more than a glorified cover band?
He says, “One, two, three, four-“ and Spencer starts in on the intro, eight beats, then Frank and Adam are joining in, and before he can think about it anymore, Patrick starts to sing about closed doors and open windows, flashes of light reflecting off of mirrors and the way it all goes around again, again. It’s midway through the second stanza that he truly looks at the crowd for the first time and then he wishes that he hadn’t because fuck, they *are* all staring at him, lips trying to move along with the words, and for a moment, he feels like he used to, when he was just a punk kid standing on a stage, wondering how the hell he ended up as the singer instead of the drummer, what the fuck, but then he sees AJ doing a spin out of the corner of his eye, Frank dancing along right next to him. He can hear Spencer, steady and there. And then they’re done.
Done.
There’s a moment of silence as the crowd seems to process what they’ve just heard, and then there are yells, shouts, clapping hands. Frank is grabbing at Patrick’s wrist and pulling him into a bow, and then Spencer is joining them, encouraging them off of the stage, back to the storage area-slash-dressing room.
Adam is the first one to speak. “I think they liked it,” he says. His grin belies his lazy tone, though.
“Well why the fuck wouldn’t they have?” Frank asks. “We’re fucking awesome.”
“Fuck yeah,” Spencer says. Then he grins at Patrick, raising that damn eyebrow of his again.
“Fuck yeah,” Patrick says.
*
It only takes half an hour for Pete to call. Patrick is still driving home and he debates not answering the phone, letting Pete stew, but then he thinks better of it, puts the phone on speaker.
“Hi,” he says. He’s grinning, anticipating what Pete is going to say.
Which is: “You fuck.” He doesn’t sound like he’s amused, though. He actually sounds a little bit pissed. More than a little bit. “You play a *new fucking song* without giving me a heads up whatsoever? You *know* I would have been in the first fucking *row*, Jesus Christ, Stump.”
“I know,” Patrick says, and his euphoria fades, just a little. “Fuck, I know, Pete. And if I’d know we were going to play it, I would have told you. You would have been the first one I told. Just-it was a spur of the moment thing. I fucking promise. We were just in the moment and we didn’t want it to be over and-“
“The new song just popped out,” Pete says. He sounds dry, almost disbelieving, but then he laughs. “Of course it did, because your new songs, the ones you hardly know, *still* sound better than a fuck load of what’s on the radio stations these days.”
It didn’t, Patrick knows it didn’t. They had an extra syllable in stanza eighteen, and he’d totally fucked over the rhythm line on the fourth repeat of the chorus, and he’d forgotten the last word of the second line of the fourth verse, but it could have gone a lot worse.
“Oh, stop it,” Pete says, finally amused. “It sounded awesome and you know it. It’s already gotten 20 hits on YouTube. Granted, 15 of those were me and Joe, unable to believe that our fucking *brother* would debut new music without running it by us first, but, you know. People are going to ooh and ah.” Then he laughs out loud, a wheezing sound. “You realize that there’s no turning back from this, Stump. I’m sending out contracts to you four tomorrow, because there’s no way I’m letting anyone else release your CD-and don’t even fucking tell me there’s not going to be one, because I believe we’ve been through this argument before in terms of, you know, you being in the fucking band, and you writing music, and all that shit."
Patrick doesn’t try to protest. There will be a CD. It may still seem slightly unbelievable to him, but honestly, he’d be more surprised now if they *didn’t* release one at some point.
There’s a pause then, and for a moment Patrick thinks that Pete has just been struck speechless by his easy capitulation.
Then Pete laughs again, and says, “Now onto the important matters of business. Patrick Stump, I am ashamed. I don’t know where I went wrong in raising you. Because seriously? Fucking ‘A New Day Has Come’? Really?”
Patrick smiles.
“You’d better fucking believe it,” he says. “Too bad I didn’t have the boa then, right?”
“Fuck,” Pete says, and yeah, Patrick thinks, that about sums it up.
Set List:
1) Show Me Love-Robyn
2) Disturbia-Rihanna
3) What’s Love Got To Do With It?-Tina Turner
4) A New Day Has Come-Celine Dion
5) My Love is Your Love-Whitney Houston
6) I Stay in Love With You-Mariah Carey
7) Cherish-Madona
8) Believe-Cher
9) Turn Back Time-Cher
Continued.