Fetish: the band

Story, continued...  

But the kids in the band, they came from the wrong side of the tracks. Same old story. Growing up was as hard as East-side concrete and just as broken up. It's not so surprising, then, that their vision of success had a certain glossy look, a certain junk-light shine. In the clubs where they hung out, it seemed everyone was marked up by razor highs and lightnin' kisses. Everyone was all cranked up on virus and blue radio jive.

Tom Skully was a local boy, just kinda fell into it, looked like he came from a bad place made the street look comfortable by comparison. Plus, he could perform . . . he burned: like, whatever room he was in was too cold for him, so he had to heat it up, all by himself. Turns out, getting famous was just one way to feed the chemical flames of an obsession that seemed to have no beginning, no end.

Billy, the band's guitarist, is Tom's long time childhood friend. He's selfish, talented, ambitious, and sometimes just plain mean. He wants to get it all and no responsibility please. On the other hand, Victor, the video geek, plays keys but gets way too busy with his plan to document the sub-atomic image of invisible culture virus before it destroys the American brain. Hey, you figure it out, nobody else can! Hairless Larry, the drummer, is hooked on conspiracy theory. Look out his eyes and you'll see the world from the point of view of a surveillance camera mounted in the corner of a convenience store, or in the lobby of a downtown hotel, or on the grounds of a Beverly Hills mansion. Well, you get the idea . . . The bass player, Lisa, once you get underneath the tattoos and the multi-coloured hair, is a very nice and sane person.  Hey, one out of five ain't bad. My name is David Blue, I manage the band.

I never could quite get used to living in L.A. Too hot. It never rains. Plus everyone acts like they're in a movie. Steven, the head at Mainline Records is always doing some sort of Godfather shtick, and talk about a fetish for control. Guy had a remote could even change the weather. Kind of guy couldn't part with his dog, got killed in a golf cart accident. Had him stuffed. Little glass eyes looking at you all the time. His assistant Lana, a classic Hollywood vampire, doesn't waste any time moving in on handsome Billy -- sucks him dry in a few months before moving on to the next kill. Lana's also got a friend named Nicki. She's a photographer. Nicki's camera is at once an instrument of sexual seduction and a lethal weapon. That camera of hers was bound to cause someone a lot of grief. Not to mention her boyfriend Jack, the security guy.

The band had promise all right, even had a few hit songs. Most of them you'll hear on the fetish album, "Neurotic Erotica." In under a year we made the cover of Rolling Stone. Suddenly, everywhere we looked all we could see was ourselves. On the covers of magazines, on the TV, radio, newspapers. For a while there we were hangin' out in Lady Luck's whorehouse, pickin' winners every time. Then one day, something broke out of the mirror and spilled it's guts. The sickness had gotten out. Our machine kept breakin' down and the dream we were busy dreamin' suddenly looked kind of tattered and worn down. Tom was way over the top, gettin' tired out just from working the needle so much. It didn't help at all that his old man had showed up like a bad penny, wouldn't give him any peace. Victor was out on the street gettin' skinny. Billy didn't know whether he was comin' or goin'. On my side, I was startin' to understand that the telephone was in reality an instrument of torture. Seemed like only Lisa could keep her head on straight -- bought herself a T-shirt had the words spread across her breasts: "Three Dimensional Woman." I liked looking at her.

Anyhow, what's done is done: when a certain thing comes to it's term, don't matter what you want to do, something new gotta happen. Something appears, something disappears. Something begins and something ends. A snake may be able to shed it's skin, but that don't mean it can live forever.

Drop Dead Scene is a tragi-comedy enacted on the scummy side of L.A., that is to say in the darkly glittering back-rooms of our media-saturated brains. On the drop dead scene, there is only one unchanging principle -- excess -- excessive amounts of food, money, technology, fame, sex and power. And just like in all the trickster stories of old, it is excess that shows us where the boundaries of human behaviour lie and what it means when they are violated.

Get up on stage & take a look,  
see all the faces
lit up from the inside,
lit up by the light of alcohol,
light of sex, got that glossy look,
& the junk-light shines
up through the skin . . .
& everybody's marked up
by razor highs, lightnin' kisses,
eyes bruised by bad telephone vibes,
legs ajitter under the table,
all cranked up on virus
& blue radio jive . . .