THEN
On March 22, 1964, the day after the Beatles’ She Loves You hit number one on the charts, Boots and the Echoes were in the Midwest, looking for gas.
“Change the name,” said Sparks from the backseat of the smoke-vomiting van, hitting the headrest to stress the point. “I’m tired of being asked to play The Tennessee Waltz, particularly since I’m from Boston.”
“I thought you were from Providence,” said Smarts from the front, unconsciously beginning to tap out a three-four rhythm on the window.
“Technically I am, but for emphasis I moved,” growled Sparks, who did not want the conversation to get waylaid over geography.
“Providence is a nice town, too, though,” continued Smarts, either ignoring or not yet catching his bandmate’s venomous drift.
“You’re right, but I don’t know anyone named Boots from either place!,” Sparks yelled abruptly, bringing the conversation back to its original direction.
“Alright, boys, settle down,” said Boots from the passenger side in the front seat. “I thought we all understood this.”
“That was before your name was giving us redneck status,” Sparks said, ready to continue the escalating fight.
Boots turned around to glare directly at his lead guitar player. “My name had us in the charts,” he said.
Sparks stared silently out the window with mixed emotions. Boots had a point; he usually did. A River Named Joe, penned by the fledgling team of Klondike/Freemont, had the previous week dipped briefly into the charts...the country charts. It had hit number 240 with a bullet, but that ammunition was from a Colt .45.
“We’re a rock and roll band, dammit! We’re from New York!” Sparks shrieked, causing bits of paper and other travel-weary fragments spread throughout the van to flutter, shift position, and settle again.
“Why saddle us with labels?,” asked Lips from the driver’s seat, secretly pleased with his subtly provocative choice of verb. “Who says we have to play only one kind of music?”
“Boots is my name, and it stays that way,” said the owner of the moniker.
“But people hear it, and think you’re from Texas, and hear the song, and think we all play the fiddle,” Sparks said, determined to have his way this time.
“I actually took violin lessons when I was a boy,” interjected Smarts, whose ability to veer between complete sincerity and utter sarcasm left most, including himself, confused at times as to his intended meaning.
“What’s in a name?,” Lips tried again, as the car moved into the passing lane, “A nose by any other name would smell your feet.”
“I think that’s rose, as sweet,” said Boots, who in his disappointment at the tenor of the developing situation uncharacteristically missed his friend’s wordplay.
“Where?,” asked Smarts, looking out his window for the woman he assumed was being described, “I don’t see anybody.”
“How’d you like to see stars?,” grumbled Sparks, who in reality was quite fond of his band’s drummer but irritated by everything at the present moment.
“You can’t see stars in the daytime,” responded Smarts.
This exchange served to send all four bandmates to their respective windows and thoughts, as the buildings and landscape of the nameless town raced by like so many garbled judgments.
Boots was nonplussed by the preceding encounter, but he’d heard variations on the theme before, and decided not to make too much of it.
Despite the vehemence with which Sparks’ expressed his feelings, Boots somehow knew that the current argument fell into the “mildly disturbing but worth paying attention to” category, which itself occupied a place between the lowest ranking “able to be tuned out with no fear of important consequences” and, at the top, “note carefully every nuance or your life could shift in dramatic, unalterable ways,” with a wide array of sub-categories scattered throughout.
Still, he was unwavering in his belief in himself and his identity, inner and outer, as represented by his name. He found it hard to believe that his compatriots were unable to recognize the significance of it all, to see that there was only one possible interpretation that led to only one possible direction. They were just tired, Boots thought.
But, in a way, Sparks was right, if for the wrong reasons. There of course was, and would be, confusion about Boots’ name and its inferred allusion to country music. But he savored the ambiguity; the band embodied the spirit of all music, he liked to think.
There was no question, however, that things were changing; it was about fucking time, too.
At the tender age of 25, Boots cared less about categories than he did commitment, and A River Named Joe was a good, simple song, a song to be proud of, but a revolution was taking place, and it had wondrous long hair, mesmerizing English accents and irresistible melodies that penetrated to his deepest, most secret places.
It wasn’t, for Boots, a sexual thing per se (except perhaps, he considered, on the level of aural sex), but he understood why girls were ripping out their vocal chords trying to get their attention and falling down into dead faints at the mere sight of them. Hell, he’d thought they were from another planet when he first heard them.
And it was a place he definitely wanted to visit.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Why didn’t I think of that, Boots wondered with a mixture of admiration and longing, gripping the armrest with the sheer emotion of the moment. I don’t want to hold your hands, but I’d sure love a quick peek inside those brains, he thought.
“Gas ho!,” howled Lips, as he swerved to the left, towards a looming Esso station, causing Boots to lose his train of thought while the others almost lost their lunch.
# # #
There’s no place like home…around here, thought Boots, as he wondered what Rita was up to at that particular moment and struggled to keep from tripping the annoying stage manager down the rickety stairs in front of them.
“That’s the dressing room down there,” said the large, shabbily dressed man, whose translucent skin cast a greenish glow in the dim light that pervaded the place (or was that his actual color?). “It’s really the basement, but we call it the dressing room whenever you types of fellas are in town.”
What a lovely gesture, thought Boots, who was now literally restraining his leg from kicking out in front of him. I can’t wait to talk to the Captain.
“Is there a light we can turn on?,” asked Sparks, who had just succeeded in jabbing his hand through a large lump of crumbling wallpaper as he struggled to keep his balance. “Or is that extra?”
“The switch is directly in front of us,” said the green man, reaching out his arm towards the wall.
The band heard the reluctant crackle of electricity, and as their eyes adjusted to the dull light they saw immediately before them an unsteady blue staircase, its banister swaying from infirmity and neglect. In fact, age was the predominant motif for their entire surroundings.
At the bottom of the stairs stood an elderly man in brown work clothes clinging to a mop and, from the look of his wildly unkempt hair, quite possibly his sanity.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a super, man,” said Lips, peering down to the bottom of the staircase.
GreenMan snorted, whether from amusement or some internal disquiet, it was not readily apparent.
“That’s Greco,” he said, pointing down towards the brown-clothed man, who at that moment proceeded forward into an unseen hallway, or room, or abyss. “He’s a fixture of the place.”
“Does he work any better than these?,” asked Smarts, who was holding a metal plate filled with buttons that had moments earlier been attached to the wall.
“Those really shouldn’t come off,” said GreenMan, snatching the object from Smarts, who was not quite sure whether he was being admonished or advised.
“Okay guys, let’s get to the bottom of this,” Boots said, anxious to get on with the proceedings at hand, consequences be damned.
The band and GreenMan followed Boots down the staircase, which creaked and complained but held fast under their respective physical and emotional weights. At the foot of the stairs lay a carpet of mottled yellow; it was hard to determine how much of it was inherent design and how much haphazard filth.
The walls stretching down the corridor were a dense black. As Boots peered at them more closely he realized what he actually was looking at were white surfaces, almost entirely covered with writing, the scrawl so thick and so profuse as to convey the impression of its own color scheme.
Boots continued on, and found not a single, focused narrative, but instead a plethora of messages that varied as widely as the hieroglyphics of which they were made.
“Frankie Sucks,” read the first one that Boots could focus on. Like much inspired graffiti, this one worked on many levels, he reflected: Was the Frankie in question mean spirited, or was the author simply not a fan of Frank Sinatra? He walked on.
“Blind Fulton McFarland Is Neither Blind Nor Named Fulton” read the next, more intriguing bulletin. Tattletale, thought Boots.
“My kingdom for a pen!,” yelled Lips, always frustrated by a missed opportunity to make his mark; in this case, literally.
“I got one, but good luck findin’ a space to write somethin’,” said Smarts.
“What the fuck is all this?,” asked Sparks, increasingly impatient with the current situation and not a little spooked by the words directly above his head: “Turn Back, If You Can See How To.” Did this person need more courage, or more wattage, or both?
“Calm down, everybody,” said GreenMan, as though able to read the band’s thoughts. “The dressing room is a couple of feet ahead and to the left.”
“That’s great,” said Lips, “but what gives with the wall scrawl?”
“That’s a pretty good name for this mess,” GreenMan said, stopping in his place behind the rest of the band. “When I first discovered it a couple years ago it wasn’t nearly as much but I was mighty pissed. I mean, you treat people right, and what do they do? Deface your property. I wanted to sue somebody. And then a news guy from the local station came to see an act, stumbled down here looking for the loo, and the next thing I know I’m on the TV posing next to the goddamn thing.”
“Did they leave any lights behind?,” asked Sparks.
“After that,” continued GreenMan, ignoring what he considered to be the good-natured but unhelpful jibing he now was used to from the band, “people have just been adding stuff almost every day, and it keeps on growing. I thought about repainting it, but the last folks in here starting talking about its “potential historical value,” and I figured they just might have something there. So now it’s kind of ritual like, I figure.”
“Well, we would be happy to oblige ourselves,” said Lips, still absent-mindedly patting his pockets in the hopes that some form of writing utensil would make itself known to him.
“After the show, boys,” said GreenMan. “You’ve got to earn the right to have your place on the WallScrawl.”
“But I’m the one that just gave it that name,” said Lips indignantly. “It seems unfair to make us wait.”
“Don’t it, though?,” said GreenMan, who began to walk forward once again, forcing those in front of him to proceed apace down the darkened hallway.
###
Upon reaching their destination, the band found that the dressing room was indeed something to sneeze at; in fact, it couldn’t be helped. As soon as they entered the small, dark (in keeping with the rest of the design) and gloomy space, Boots, Lips, Smarts and Sparks began to choke and gag violently, causing the malnourished air to bend and weave with the force of a tidal wave.
At the same time, GreenMan, himself seemingly impervious to the dust storm, suddenly flicked on a light switch. Their eyes used to the faint glow of the hallway, the band now became temporarily blinded in addition to being unable to breathe, and found themselves for the next several minutes alternately shielding their eyes, grasping their throats, gasping for air and wondering what the penalty for murder was in this particular part of the country.
“C’mon, boys, it’s not that bad,” said GreenMan, who actually was beginning to wonder if he should run upstairs to the auditorium and yell out, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?,’ although he knew full well there wasn’t. “Sit down and get a hold of yourselves.”
“You better hope we don’t get a hold of you!,” yelled Lips, although in his present condition it sounded like he was speaking in a foreign language fashioned from grunts, strange breathy inhalations, and the oddly placed consonant.
At that moment, as GreenMan was about to step forward and ask Lips if them was fightin’ words, and if he or any of his friends cared to do anything about it, which course of events could very well have altered the band’s history-to-come in significant ways, a momentous roar arose from above the ceiling.
“The natives are getting restless, the little buggers,” said GreenMan, who found himself secretly relieved that his destiny was not to be beaten to a pulp by four members of a band who had not yet even distinguished themselves by signing the WallScrawl.
“Our public!,” said Lips, whose enthusiastic tone belied his relief at avoiding the humiliation of getting the crap beaten out of him by a spiteful ignoramus in the middle of nowhere.
“Isn’t it about time for us to go on?,” sputtered Boots as he stumbled to a faded couch and sat down, raising even more dust into the already active air. “Where is the makeup girl, and where are our instruments?”
“Your instruments are backstage, and there ain’t no makeup girl,” said GreenMan.
“Then why, God damn it, did you drag us down to this goddam poor excuse for a dressing room?,” asked Sparks.
“Thought you’d like to see it,” GreenMan said with a sneer as he turned and quickly walked out into the hall, back the way they came.
###
“I don’t like that guy,” Smarts whispered to Boots moments later as they stood backstage, peering into the darkness in front of them, trying to get their bearings and recover their ability to breathe normally. “I don’t think he has our best interests at heart.”
“You have a gift for understatement,” said Boots, who was beginning to see the outlines of Smarts’ drums, Lips’ and Sparks’ and his guitars waiting patiently for them on stage.
“And I unwrap it frequently, don’t I,” said Smarts, in what for him was an uncharacteristically straightforward manner.
“Yeah,” said Boots, increasingly distracted by the high-pitched tone of the crowd, which remained invisible behind the curtain.
“They can’t wait to see us!,” said Lips as he approached the edge of the stage. “And it sounds like they’re all women, too!”
At that moment, as Lips’ thoughts veered between the pure pleasure of making music and the less pure but equally pleasurable contemplation of sex with a young, legally acceptable redhead, a small object of indeterminate character came winging through the curtain and bounced noisily off Smarts’ ride cymbal, causing the still hidden crowd to emit another variation on its continuous commotion.
“What the fuck was that?,” asked Sparks as he joined his bandmates, fresh from his trip to the men’s room and the ingestion of one of his favorite black “uppers.” “I thought you’d started without me.”
“I told you, there’s no controlling them once they smell fresh blood,” said GreenMan, who moved closer to the band from where he had been listening to their conversation a little further upstage.
“What exactly does that mean?,” asked Boots.
“My cymbals!,” yelled Smarts as he made a dash for the stage and the drum platform, his protective instincts toward the instruments of his livelihood outweighing the very real thought that his life might be in danger. “I’ll kill them if they did anything to my kit!”
Boots, Lips and Sparks tried to grab him, but Smarts was too fast and determined. He sprinted the short distance to the drums and the mysterious object, which lay on the floor next to bass drum.
“Don’t touch it!,” Boots shouted, trying to focus in on the still dim stage, feeling protective, vulnerable, angry and winded all at once.
“IT’S A MOTHERFUCKING LOLLIPOP!!,” Smarts shrieked, the force of which sent him once again into paroxysms of choking. This sound, in turn, made the crowd whoop in renewed screams of cacophonous delight.
“Who are these people?,” Boots demanded, “and why are they eating, or better yet, throwing, lollipops?”
“Kids will be kids,” said GreenMan, backing away slightly from the united front the band had formed.
“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Lips said. “But how many fucking kids are out there?”
“They’re all kids,” Greenman whispered.
“They’re all kids?,” Boots yelled.
“They’re all kids!,” confirmed Sparks, who had edged his way to the front of the stage and was now peering through a slit in the curtain. “And they’re all over the place!”
“Why are they all kids?,” Boots asked Greenman, whose earlier statements were now beginning to make more sense.
“Because they haven’t grown up yet?,” said GreenMan, who hoped a little humor would alleviate what was shaping up as a very tense situation.
“That does it,” said Boots, who grabbed GreenMan’s shirtfront and started to pull him forward.
“Hold on!,” GreenMan shrieked. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Is that right?,” said Lips, who was prepared now to join his partner in whatever physical violence ensued, consequences be damned. “We show up prepared to give a concert to a roomful of adults, and we find ourselves confronted with a snarling pack of unruly juvenile delinquents toting lethal lollipops? I’d say we’re the suckers!”
“Now, wait just a minute,” GreenMan said, freeing himself from Boots’ grip with a jerk of his body. “You fellas signed a contract.”
“We signed a contract to play a concert, not with toys!,” Boots said, trying to grab GreenMan’s shirt again, an action made almost impossible by the fact that he was holding most of the front of that garment in his hand.
“That’s not entirely accurate, young badgers,” said GreenMan, whose by now constant feinting motions, to avoid any physical damage to himself, and any more damage to his shirt, or what was left of it, gave him the appearance of an as yet unidentified tree blowing in the wind. “Your manager put his John Hancock plain as day on the bottom of the piece of paper I sent him return receipt mail.”
Boots, who was not surprised, and indeed rather expected, to find The Captain’s unpredictable hand in the present commotion, said, “And what, may I ask, did that particular action commit us to do?”
“Leave the rest of my clothes alone, and I’ll tell you,” demanded GreenMan, who wriggled away from his attacker to address Boots and the rest of the band, including Smarts, who had returned from the inspection of his drum kit, still clutching the offending lollipop.
“The reason you are here, and that the auditorium is filled with a loud, unruly bunch of unsupervised children, is that today marks the second annual Music and Lifestyles In Action Jamboree and Food Festival. Virtually all the adults in town are about a mile from here, participating in an event entitled “Bake, Ladle and Roll: Cooking for Today’s Contemporary Household,” stuffing their faces with the likes of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, hot biscuits and peach cobbler, and listening to the sweet sounds of Jimmy Young and his Brash Brass. You gentlemen, on the other hand, have been hired to take the community’s progeny through an afternoon’s demonstration on the subject of “Today’s Youth and the Radio Dial: The Devil’s Music or God’s Little Joke?”
“Oh my fucking God,” said all four band members simultaneously, in an invocation that combined such feeling and power that GreenMan crossed himself without quite realizing what he was doing.
“Demonstration?,” said Boots, wondering what exactly that term meant.
“The Devil’s music?,” said Sparks, wondering what exactly that term meant.
“No adults?,” said Smarts, wondering exactly what that term meant.
“Bake, Ladle and Roll?,” said Lips, understanding the term perfectly and wishing he had thought of it.
“That’s about the size of it,” said GreenMan, who wondered if he had an extra shirt in his office.
“What about supervision?,” asked Boots.
“You guys are fully capable of taking care of yourselves,” Greenman said.
“Not us, you idiot,” said Boots, “who is looking after these kids?”
“The community has, not for the first time, left the hope of their future in my hands for the afternoon,” said GreenMan, concurrently taking offense and a few steps backward.
At the same time, for no immediately apparent reason, a new roar arose from the crowd.
“I’m going to start taking the gear outside to the van; fuck whatever contract the Captain signed,” announced Sparks, his natural cantankerousness increased by the effect of the drug he’d ingested moments earlier.
“How’d you like to face a major lawsuit?,” asked GreenMan, his natural tendency to avoid confrontation deflected by the fact that the law was on his side.
“How’d you like to face my fist?,” asked Sparks, who while prepared to follow through, both physically and spiritually, also realized that this was the second time today that he had threatened someone with bodily harm, once drug-free and once aided by chemicals. His lucidity rapidly disappearing, he still was able to wonder what this said about his true character, and to consider the possibility that the future would not necessarily be so bright for a one-handed guitarist.
“Violence isn’t golden, boys,” said Lips, stepping in to the fray, placing himself between Sparks and GreenMan, proud of his role as peacemaker. “It never solved anything.”
“Actually, it might very well solve our present situation,” said Sparks, the adrenalin in his veins now beginning to pump as furiously as a crazed biker revving his hog’s engine. “Just let me at ‘em.”
The crowd, once again, alleviated what was shaping up as a very tense situation by beginning to chant “We Want To Hear The Echoes, We Want To Hear The Echoes.” That this sentiment reflected less their heartfelt desire than the fact that Smarts had bravely taken it upon himself to walk on the stage in front of the curtain and encourage the loud request mattered not with regard to the outcome of the situation; all concerned would live to see another day, limbs and binding contracts intact.
“What exactly do we have to do to fulfill our contractual obligation and at the same time not get too close to anyone under the age of consent,” asked Boots, pretty much now resigned to the fact that he and the band were good and stuck in the present situation.
“Play a few recognizable songs, show the little fuckers how your instruments work, and get the hell out,” GreenMan said, walking to the side of the stage in order to open the curtain. “And don’t swear.”
“If we decide to go through with this, do we get to sign the WallScrawl?,” asked Lips, who figured the band might as well let the world know they had been there, no matter how murky that announcement might be.
“Right after we talk to that manager of yours and make sure I get paid,” GreenMan said.
“What do you mean, you get paid,” said Boots, who was beginning to marvel at the many unexpected ways it was possible for his host to offend them. “We’re the ones who are getting paid; we show up, play, and you give us money.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Greenman. “The arrangement in this case is you show up, play, and your manager gives me money. We’d never heard of you, and the deal was we give you exposure, you give us cash.”
“We’re not on Candid Camera or something, are we?,” asked Sparks, who began peering intently at GreenMan, searching for any resemblance to Allen Funt. “Because that would explain a lot of this bullshit, if we were on Candid Camera, you know.”
“No, this is not television,” GreenMan said. “I’m a businessman, and this here’s business.”
“It’s funny business, but you’ll get paid my good man, and I use the term loosely,” said Lips, who was trying to defuse the situation, as ridiculous as it appeared to be. “Now let’s get on with it.”
“Now you’re talking,” said GreenMan, who remained poised by the curtain rope at the side of the stage. “Knock ‘em dead.”
“With pleasure,” said Boots, as he walked over to his amplifier, strapped on his guitar and adopted a stance of such intensity that for a moment GreenMan was unsure whether it would be notes or bullets that surged forth from the instrument.
The rest of the Echoes followed reluctantly, but they, too, seeing that Boots really did mean business, strapped on or sat down behind their respective instruments. Once plugged in and positioned for action, Boots nodded to Greenman, who in turn gave a firm tug to the rope and sent the curtain flying upward, revealing, at last, the full measure of what they all were dealing with.
Children of all ages, sizes, shapes, temperaments, economic backgrounds, ethnic persuasions, religious denominations and lung capacities surged forward as a unit, as though the first official sighting of the band had triggered a button marked “explode.”
Boots, who had planned on the normal pre-concert formalities of tuning up and introducing the band, instead yelled out, “let’s make some noise, boys,” thereby originating one of the premier catch phrases for which he was to become known, and whose genesis, but for its later forgery onto the WallScrawl, would have been lost forever to history.
Believing that a recognizable tune would help to keep things in control, and feeling more than a bit discomfited by the unnaturalness of his present surroundings, Boots began to strum and sing It’s My Party, a song that had been a number one hit for Lesley Gore some nine months earlier, which he in fact did not like very much at all, and which up to that very moment he was not even aware he knew how to play.
“What the hell are you doing,” yelled Lips over the increasingly hostile din, struggling to find corresponding bass notes anywhere near the chords Boots was now playing in rapid succession. “We don’t know this fucking song!”
“I can’t really explain it myself,” screamed Boots, who realized that not only was he playing the song but was singing it, and, despite his confusion, not doing too bad a job.
“You sound just like my mother!,” yelled an adolescent voice from somewhere in the middle of the auditorium, quickly deflating Boots’ temporary feeling of accomplishment.
“Is Lesley coming to pick you up?,” responded Smarts from behind his drum kit, which comment was luckily drowned out by the guitars and general commotion of the crowd.
“I draw the line at this poor excuse for adolescent angst!,” said Sparks, who stopped trying to play the song and simply stood there on the stage, glowering at the audience, most of whom were already returning the sentiment.
Lips, observing Sparks’ decision to make a statement by remaining silent, also quieted his bass, suddenly leaving only Boots’ rhythm guitar and Smarts’ drums sounding out.
A small, round, sticky-looking object whizzed by the vicinity of Boots’ left ear. “Alright now, everybody join in!,” he yelled, hoping that a spontaneous sing along would prompt his bandmates to rejoin the song and regain some type of order.
Much to Boots’ amazement, some children in the back of the auditorium (the meek shall inherit the cheap seats, he thought to himself), actually began to sing with him as he struggled along, which caused Lips and Sparks to join in again, albeit reluctantly.
No sooner had this happened, however, when another contingent, older, less cooperative and somewhere in the middle of the spacious auditorium, began to yell, loudly, “We want Elvis! We want Elvis!”
Sparks, who, due to the now full effect of the large black capsule he’d devoured an hour earlier and by this time was feeling no pain and not much of anything else either, was thrilled and, even for him, abnormally emboldened by this turn of events. As much as he did not want to be playing a Lesley Gore number, he truly had come to fear the moment when Boots would call for A River Named Joe, which, as he had made clear innumerable times, he did not consider appropriate music for a rock and roll band, and certainly not one with himself in it, to be playing.
As a result, he stopped playing once again, grabbed his microphone, and put together an interior monologue -- perhaps influenced by the chant of the crowd, growing louder by the minute -- which emerged as the following loud, elemental exclamation, “I Beg Of You, It’s Now Or Never, I Want You, I Need You, I Love You, Don’t Be Cruel, Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear, Surrender, Rock-A-Hula Baby!,” the delivery of which, followed as it was by a tumult of enormous proportions, caused the walls, Boots was sure, to sway just a bit.
As the band members looked frantically around at each other, attempting to communicate in a silent but urgent manner their rising panic, as well as their likelihood for survival should they begin actually to play any of the song titles Sparks had expectorated, a group of long-haired youths, boys and girls sitting close to the front, started chanting, “The Beatles Forever! The Beatles Forever!”
An intelligent group, a remarkable group, Boots thought to himself, a description meant not only for the creators of the new sounds from Liverpool but the young listeners whose outburst described so simply and directly what was clearly taking shape in Boots’ own heart and ears.
This strongly vocalized sentiment, however, quickly caused a split in the volatile crowd, with the earlier Elvis ensemble not only renewing but redoubling their efforts in an attempt to drown out the group now singing paeans to their British heroes.
Boots, not altogether disheartened by this recent turn of events, also began to discern what he was sure he recognized as the potential for violence, or at least the sound of smashing lollipops, and he did something that only a few minutes earlier he wouldn’t have believed possible of himself: he looked to the wings, and GreenMan, for help.
That particular gentleman, however, was currently hungrily contemplating a plate overflowing with home cooked food, far from the site of the Echoes’ present troubles, having left immediately after raising the curtain, assuring himself that the situation actually was well-in-hand and that he was better off socializing with his adult brethren.
As a result, Boots’ emphatic stares were being met by nothing but empty space, and the few young individuals who were currently teaching themselves Curtain Pulling 101.
“I’ve got the feeling we’re never going to get out of Kansas,” said Lips, who in reality was not sure what state they were actually in, but knew it was somewhere in the vicinity of pandemonium.
“Maybe we should play A River Named Joe,” said Boots, igniting Spark’s worst fears, which in turn led the guitarist to trip over his guitar wire, causing his amplifier to crash down on to the stage, and an ominous movement from the crowd in that very direction.
Just then, as the situation was fast reaching some sort of irreversible climax, a figure of such a mysterious nature strode onto the stage from the left wing that the crowd and the band instantaneously stopped what they were doing and turned their complete attention to it.
Silence reigned as Greco, none other than the workman whom the band had glimpsed briefly near the WallScrawl, approached center stage, now dressed and made up in a half-Elvis, half-Beatle costume, completely split down the length of his body. He turned left, and he was the King, from his slick pompadour to his sneer to his highly buffed blue suede shoes; he turned right, and he was an amalgam of Beatle, all moptop hair, winning smile, collarless jacket and leather boots.
No one in the auditorium had any reference point for this amazingly unexpected, and, to this day not terribly common, sight. The Echoes were thunderstruck by this bizarre turn of events, and at first could do nothing but stare.
“You don’t see many of these nowadays, do you,” thought Lips.
As Greco revolved around the stage, and the kids attempted to parse the phenomenon with their limited cultural vocabulary, Boots decided it was time for the band to take matters into their own hands.
“We’re going now!,” he shouted to the rest of the band, as he picked up his guitar and started towards the door. “This gig is over!”
“But what about the equipment?,” said Smarts, who even as he said it was climbing down from his drum kit, sure of the decision.
“We’ll make the Captain buy us new ones!,” said Sparks, who had seldom been happier to get out of anywhere.
“The WallScrawl!,” said Lips. “We didn’t get to sign the WallScrawl!” “You go back and do it, and we’ll wait for you in the next town,” said Boots, on his way to the door, pushing kids of various sizes out of his way.
Looking back longingly, but running vigorously ahead, Lips said, simply, “yeah, yeah, yeah,” and picked up the pace.
###
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