Live Indefinitely - Part One

And now it’s time for our next story. This one I’m going to split into a few parts because it’s rather long and I don’t wanna put off any potential readers with a massive wall of text... And also doing it in a few bits lets me have a bit of a guilt free break from actually writing while I just sorta storyboard it and make sure it all makes sense. Obviously that part takes longer if the story itself is longer. I’m not sure yet exactly how many parts it will consist of, I originally only meant to split it in half but I ended up writing far more than I originally anticipated and I do generally feel like around 3000 words is your limit to expect people to read on a blog in one sitting. Finally the only people who proof read this in any way is myself and you people so if you see any obvious errors please let me know. I do my best to clean this stuff up before I put it here but inevitably a few mistakes always get through. Anyways, the introduction is out the way now I hope you enjoy reading. Thanks for continued support.

Live Indefinitely (Part one)

The lights in the dingy pub went down, that was the assumption of most people there in any case. Perhaps they had all simply broken at exactly the same time coincidentally just as the band came on stage; that was a strong possibility. The lead singer of the band looked round at his audience with a sneer and the drummer tapped his symbols four times before the lead guitarist started the riff and the small crowd of people standing in the pub started moving to ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. The band on stage however was not called Oasis and the year was not 1994. The band on stage was called ‘The Champagne Supernovas’ and the year was 2011. Leon Adams sat behind the other three at his drum-kit bashing out the same old rhythm he bashed out every night with considerable distaste. He was now 29 years old and had been playing in the band for five years now, it was probably the longest assignment he had ever committed to and his dislike for Oasis coupled with the fact that his “just passing through” job had become his full time occupation had led to a jaded and unhappy period of his life emerging. He often thought that playing in an Oasis tribute band was the worst job that anybody could have ever because although he didn’t mind the later material, nobody else ever seemed to want to hear it. So night after night they would bash out the obvious songs, the greatest hits and the chart busters. Back when he first joined he could occasionally persuade the others to knock out a rendition of ‘Sunday Morning Call’, ‘My Big Mouth’ or ‘The Meaning Of Soul’ but this experimental edge was dropped once audiences everywhere frowned and muttered things like “I didn’t know they played their own stuff too”. So night after night it was back to ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Rock & Roll Star’, and ‘Champagne Supernova’. What started out monotonous was quickly becoming a living nightmare. On top of Leon’s personal boredom of the same old setlists every night he also disliked the fans, the young lads who knocked back 4 pints of Carling in 20 minutes before raucously singing along and calling everybody within sight a cunt, staggering out at the end of the night and invariably starting fights. He also disliked the venues they played, shitty little bars and pubs without any proper technical support and if the people there weren’t drinking lots and getting involved in inappropriate ways they would be ignoring the band completely, he hated the band name as well.
He often thought that Jimmy Paulson (their lead singer for almost every song) could not have come up with a less imaginative name for an Oasis tribute band. However the thing that bugged Leon the most was the reviews the band received. Every time they played a show that was under review the feedback would come back to them with 3 stars maximum, if it happened to be a 1 or a 2 star review well then they were used to it. The criticism would mention the band’s lack of diversity in their setlist which was annoying enough but the fact of the matter was that the band were appalling. The renditions were just drab because Jimmy was the only one there who really cared and he couldn’t sing. Jimmy was 32 with no qualifications, he could not carry a tune and knew just about the bare minimum guitar to stumble through the rhythm section of well rehearsed songs. He lived with his parents and when he wasn’t whining the lyrics to ‘Roll With It’ to 40 uninterested over 60s he sold dope out of their house while they were at work. Michael was a new lead guitarist and had been there for less than a year, he had already confided in Leon that he was leaving the band soon so he was already mentally written off and Dan was the bassist. Dan was what Leon considered a ‘sad case’. He had been in the band since its inception with Jimmy and his promising bass guitar skills were being wasted through apathy and being drowned out by Jimmy’s horrible vocals. All in all, The Champagne Supernovas were a pathetic bunch, and Leon wanted out. The band finished their uninspired set with ‘Live Forever’, and walked off the stage and straight back into the main floor of the pub. None of the punters gave them a second look nor said anything to them. Jimmy did not 
notice this; he had been plastered since before the sound-check.

Leon awoke in his small flat the next morning with a considerable hangover. He prised his sticky eyes open and swallowed a few times wondering if the taste in his mouth was that very specific taste before one throws up, or if it was just cider. He sat up on his double bed and licked his dry, cracked lips for a few seconds and took a few deep breaths. He picked his phone up from the side of the bed to look at the time and he was greeted with “1 new message” which he proceeded to open and read “Will pick you up at 9:15. Be ready. Mum. Xx”. The first thing he noted about the text was that his mother had signed it, he had told her time and again “It tells me who’s sent it mum, you don’t need to write who it’s from”. The second thing he noticed was that she had said she would be picking him up at 9:15, and the time was 9:01 now. He would have jumped straight out of bed if he had possessed the resolve but he knew in his state he would just fall straight over so he compromised by shuffling faster than he usually would along the corridor and into the bathroom. He had completely forgotten that today was the day his sister, Laura was getting married. Married to some bell-end that Leon didn’t think much of, but then again it was probably just that this fella was a cop. Leon didn’t trust policemen despite the fact that he was now a completely law abiding citizen, he still harboured a distinct resentment for officers of the law from his youth where he’d spent a night locked in a jail cell for one small joint, been patronised, pushed around and generally treated like shit by the boys in blue. But he knew his sister loved Ken (there’s another reason he disliked him, who’s called Ken anymore? Especially a 35 year old man) and despite the age gap of ten years, that meant a lot to him. Even if his skin did crawl every time he heard Ken call her his “songbird”. He still felt genuine compassion for Laura. In his experience a lot of older brothers who were slightly more rebellious had a strong dislike in their childhood for any younger sibling; especially if that younger sibling happened to be more of an academic or a generally less naughty or manageable child... But Leon had never really felt these jealous feelings, not for very long at a time anyway. He knew that he was not an academic; he knew he was always the one who was first being kept in at playtimes, then being given detentions and then spending nights in prison cells for actual reasons. Laura did not behave like him and he could not begrudge her that, he admired her dignity and her intellect and only through strong love of her could he admire her so very much without feeling jealousy. He was also of course, fiercely protective over her. It was for all of these reasons that Leon tried to get along with Ken and had consented to put on a suit and come to their wedding, smile throughout it and congratulate his sister, meet Ken’s friends and family and listen to their bad jokes and phrases which were almost as terrible as his own family's. “I’m not losing a daughter but gaining a son” they would probably say while he made himself smile and chuckle along.

For a sluggish pace he was going at light-speed, his mother was an entire 90 seconds late which would have been a serious cause for worry and alarm if he had not been so grateful for the overtime, by the time she was beeping her car outside his flat he had just managed to be showered, get dressed, force down a piece of toast and clean his teeth. He thought this show of dedication would be enough to appease his mother but her disapproving eye roamed him up and down as he sat in the back seat and she peered at him from the front seat. “For goodness sake don’t smoke that cigarette in here” she barked as he began to roll one on his lap “and comb your hair” she snapped as she passed him a hairbrush. “Hello mum... ‘Lo dad” he muttered to his father in the driver’s seat. His dad gave him a sort of backwards nod without turning around to look at him and the car started up down the road. Leon made a few swipes at his hair and then resumed his cigarette rolling. The journey was uncomfortable but mercifully not too long, Leon got out of the car in the church yard and lit his roll-up and stood morosely smoking it. His father gave him an appraising look as he stepped out the car after him, shook his head and said “For god’s sake Leon, you look like Pete fucking Doherty” and walked away muttering. As everybody sat down in the church pews Leon looked over at the groom’s side and noted that the majority of the congregation were beefy looking blokes, all clearly coppers off duty. “It’s a good thing I’m not Pete Doherty really” he thought to himself as he fidgeted. Ken stepped forward and then the guy in the robes said some things and eventually Laura appeared and walked down while everybody made a massive amount of fuss over how beautiful she looked. Although he was happy for her, he still found it difficult to make a particularly big deal out of a wedding, he had never liked them although he was not sure why, possibly just too much family together in one place. The speeches and the vows were brief and before Leon had really registered what was going on they were walking back out and everybody was standing up, the bit that came next he had more mixed feelings on. Of course a reception is a reception and nobody can be too miserable with a bar and a big lunch to enjoy but at the same time this was when people would be talking to him. He didn’t mind too much chatting to old relatives, aunts, uncles and grandparents were boring enough he supposed but they were easy, manageable. It was having the hefty ex rugby playing policemen that he was keen to avoid and with that in mind he got back into his mother’s car and sat back, nervously rolling another cigarette. Leon’s parents talked spiritedly about how proud they were of their beautiful daughter and how lovely the service was, while Leon himself was ignored for the duration of the drive.

At the hotel Leon glowed with happiness for the first time all day when he discovered his small card had been placed on the main table and made a mental note to thank Laura for this inclusion. A waiter came around and everybody within site took a glass of buck’s fizz and almost everybody there seemed to take it completely in their stride. Nobody was yet sitting down and everybody was just generally loitering around talking to each other and Leon’s pride bubble was already diminishing with mild anxiousness that he looked silly; standing there talking to nobody. He had only just decided to make a conscious effort to try and relax and that things could definitely get worse, when things suddenly did. A large muscular man who was that strange mix of trollishly ugly but yet probably attractive due to his seeming oafishness strolled over to him and did not so much offer his large hand to Leon as push it straight into his. “Leon yeah? My name’s Dennis. Ken’s mentioned you to me” he stated at Leon. There was an uncomfortable silence that was filled by an awkward chuckle, and “You play in an Oasis tribute act right?  Good band, good band.” He boomed in an approving way but which somehow carried a note of snideness. “Yeah, good band.... Wonderwall, that’s a good one. That er, Supernova one, yeah I like that. Oh and that ‘anger’ one too. Yeah, good songs.” Leon didn’t really know what to say but forced out “So you’re a policeman?” “Yes.” Leon sipped his drink and nodded his head trying to look interested and think of something to say. “Catch many bad guys?” he asked in a voice he tried to make sound casually interested “A few” “I got arrested once” he piped up without thinking. He wasn’t sure why he had said it but it just seemed to have popped into his head at which point his brain had recognised it was vaguely related and decided to throw it out there. The silence hung thickly between them as Leon tried to stop himself going red and say something clever “I didn’t really do much wrong, well I mean I did ‘cos I was smoking drugs so they were right to arrest me, they were a bit heavy-handed though, but I spose they’ve got to be, you’ve got to be I mean, not that you arrested me I mean, this was a long time ago and you’re not that old...” Dennis watched him with a frown “So... do you have any qualifications or anything son?” Glad of the subject change, Leon replied rather quickly “Not really just a few A-levels, all low grades though. Probably due to the drugs eh?” he laughed confidently but when Dennis’s face remained stony he stopped laughing and his fist which had been halfway on the way to giving Dennis an awkward punch on the shoulder lingered in the air in a terrible no-man’s land of social awkwardness. “I was just joking... About the drugs... Not about being arrested, that did happen... about them ruining my exams. I never used to smoke that much, I mean I still don’t”... The silence that followed was the loudest yet and after a few seconds Dennis just frowned even deeper and muttered “maybe it’s time you grew up son.” Clapped him half-heartedly on the shoulder and walked off.

Several nights later Leon was sat again behind a drum-kit, tapping his symbols and listlessly drumming the beat to ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ As the song came to an end there was a definite sound of booing coming from the audience, which surprised him because he was not used to hearing anything near what might be construed as “passion” from the people they played for. As they began their second song he heard Jimmy burble “fuck off lad” into the microphone and once the song had ended, there it was again, but louder. In the end the band were cut short after only 5 songs, something that had never happened to them before. Michael and Dan sighed dispiritedly and Dan asked morosely “Where did it all go wrong?” The pair of them shouldered their guitars and walked out the door, only minutes later Jimmy was thrown out for conducting pushing matches with some of the hecklers. Leon didn’t feel like leaving however, he was fairly sure that the drunk punters hadn’t clocked him as the drummer from the band and he was safe to stay there for a little longer with a beer. He took a chair near the back of the room and watched as the final act of the night came on, it was a singer songwriter with nothing more than an acoustic guitar. He sat down on the seat to some fairly muted applause and smiling impishly he quipped into the now quiet pub “Rock ‘n Roll stars my arse, why is Oasis soup so popular?” he shouted in an encouraging way and predictably several people shouted back “Because you getta roll with it!!” and the entire body of people inside the building seemed to be shaking with laughter. Leon just sat there sipping his pint of Timothy Taylor and wondering if he should join in with the laughter. Much to his annoyance the guitarist was actually pretty good and went down very well, his set only lasted 30 minutes however and by the time it was over the last orders bell had gone and people were filing out the pub. By the end of the show there was only a few people left so when Leon stepped out into the cold night air thinking about flagging down a taxi there was only him and a few others there. “Were you with those bellends butchering classic brit-pop?” the ugliest of the small group asked Leon aggressively. He was short but stocky, bald and was wearing a tight leather coat. The two had quickly become nose to nose and he didn’t really know how to answer. “No, no I wasn’t”. He lied, but from behind the thug in his face came a woman’s voice of “fucking liar yes you was you was hitting the drums” his stomach dropped. “Well” asked the thuggish man, “was you hitting the drums?” Leon shrugged “We call it ‘playing’. Not hitting”. The group all made a loud “oo”ing noise which he might have found funny if the situation hadn’t been quite so serious “Think you’re funny dickhead? How’s this for hitting? D’you Know What I Mean?” and the small fellow smashed Leon hard in the ribs, pulled back his fist and struck him twice in the face. “Roll with that” he spat. “Prick”. And the group walked away laughing.

End of Part One.