WyzWmn's World©

the sound: Rush –In the Mood, Rush – Finding My Way, Rush – Anthem, Rush – Fly By Night, Rush – Limelight, Rush – Tom Sawyer, Rush – Driven, Rush – Working Man, Rush – Natural Science, Rush – A Farewell to Kings, Rush – Circumstances, Rush – XYZ, Rush – 2112, Rush – Far Cry

A waitress appears and Robert announces as we’ll have “the usual” while she slides clean ashtrays around the table.

“how the hell does he know what my usual is?” I think when she returns with several bottles of Jack followed by a young man bearing a large tray of jugs of mix.

“it’s like our own private Jack Daniels party” I mutter, which is closely followed by the thought, “what…haven’t they ever heard of vodka? er gin maybe? what if I was in a mind for tequila? Or beer?”

I pull my face away from the table and look up at the band…and then look again. I turn to Robert…”Hey!..I know them…you know what? I’ve worked with them….they’re Canadian!” I holler to be heard over the music.

Robert ignores me and leans across me to begin a conversation with the Executioner.

“Fine then”…I think and then settled back to remember the last time I’d had this band play in my bar. We’d just changed booking agents, and I’d been terrified that it’d been a mistake. I mean, I like my rock n roll the same as the next girl but these guys were just plain loud and metallic and loud and holy crap! did I mention loud?

Mike had laughed at me and called me an old woman…”yer so hung up on hillbilly blues and R n B that you’ve obviously got all yer taste in yer mouth” he’d teased “expand yer horizon’s Baby, you gotta go with the flow.”

I smiled as I remembered.

The bar had been packed…standing room only and I was beginning to worry about what would happen if the fire marshal had shown up. Mike always said he’d take care of it so Big D and I had just opened bottles of beer till I had blisters on my hand from the caps.

At that point I had a good team of women working the floor and a couple of them could stack those stubby bottles 2 trays high, which meant they’d hit the floor with 24 bottles at once. So, in the end, we’d made money.

Some of these waitresses had been working with me for years and we’d worked out a kind of cross between code and sign language for ordering so I didn’t have to hear them…but even with my earplugs in my head hurt. Course it didn’t help that the bar was located right behind and slightly to the left of the stage.

That band…they were so damn loud that I couldn’t hear myself think. I hated the racket, there didn’t seem to be anything I could find that resembled a melody and now that I was sober all of the time that metal crap just didn’t seem to fit into my head.

Anyway their version of rock n roll was a new and very contained a heavy bass that was quite a different experience from the kind of cover bands I was used to. So much so that at one point I’d just lost all patience with the noise and slipped into the storeroom behind the bar and threw the main power switch off.

As that big old bar room sunk into darkness there was what seemed like a full minute but was likely just a moment of complete and utter silence. And then the crowd started screaming and whistling. By the time the room settled into the kind of darkness that only a room without windows and lights can Mike had stepped into the storeroom with me and threw the breaker back on.

He looked down and me and shook his head smiling. “There’s 300 people out there that wanna party Baby, what’s up with you?”

“I guess I just thought it would be nice to hear myself think for a minute er two” I suggested as he pulled me into his arms.

“Well there’s that…but truly you can hear yerself think all day tomorrow woman…tonight’s for making the dough” he’d murmured into my hair.

“Fine then…wrong again” I’d barked…contrary bitch that I am. I’d shoved him away and stomped outta the storeroom and back to the bar.

He’d leaned over and rubbed my back as he came out of the store room, “you are a fine judge of words but yer lacking in the musical taste Baby…you are gonna end up costing us if ya don’t lay offa this band…they are good, and if they are lucky they’ll make it big time some day.”

“ya? Well I’m paying them…so if I wanna shut them off I will!” was my retort.

Six months later we knew 2 things….one being that the reason I’d been so cranky that night was because I was already pregnant, and 2 being that the band had won their first Juno Award for “Most Promising Band” (a fact that Mike had laughed and teased me unmercifully about.)

The band on the stage before me was Rush.

the sound: Nina Simone – Feeling Good, Billlie Holliday – Lover Man, Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan – Stormy Monday, Janis Joplin – Summertime, Shirley Bassey – If You Go Away, Leonard Cohen – Isle of Wright, Eric Clapton – Lonely Stranger

We pass the bouncers and the gate and I am surprised by the fact that even though they’ve taken the time to confirm the house rules with us…they’ve not done anything about any of the near visible “tools of destruction” that these people are carrying. I’m more than certain all of them have boot knives, and possibly neck sheaths, but I’m also positive that more than one of them is packing a handgun.

So why bother with the rules?

We come up against an iron door that reminds me faintly of a bank vault and the man sitting on the stool beside the door is avidly chewing the end off of a large smoking cigar. He’s got shoulder length hair, a finely cropped mutton chop and beard and is wearing a red plaid shirt and jeans. It’s not till he hops down off of the bar stool that I realize he’s a dwarf.

“want in do ya?” he cajoles…he kinda cackles and pokes at a couple of the people standing before him with a cane. Not the kind of cane for walking, the kind that people use for show and maybe for fighting.

“enough with the games Barry” Robert announces from behind us and Barry apologizes with “oh…..uhhhhhhh…..didn’t see you there Robert” as he hustles and grunts to swing the door open wide, but no one tries to assist him.

As Barry pushes the door open the noise rolls over us like a physical entity. Rock n Roll and lots of it, people and lots of them.

We enter through the door single file and head up a flight of well worn wooden stairs clearly designed to create a bottle neck upon arrival.

When we reach the next level I am astounded by size and capacity of the room. There are bars offering alcohol liberally dotted around the inside of this warehouse. There are areas that look like a barroom set up with chairs and tables containing ashtrays and a cheap candle center piece. There are 3 distinct living room type areas were there are people sitting and laying on couches, there are people sitting on motorcycles, and there are people sitting on the floor and there’s literally 2 dozen pool tables.

As my gaze slowly moves to the end of the room there’s a full sized theatre stage with a rock and roll band in full swing. I glance up to see a balcony of sorts, there’s more pinball games than I have ever seen at one time in one place and there’s a bunch of those new fangled PackMan table games And there’s people, likely close to 200 give er take. Above that on the next tier there are doors…hundreds of them, like the 2nd floor walk way of Motel 6 and it occurs to me that there’s more than booze and games available here.

Robert sidles up to me, “Welcome to the Dump” he quietly announces and then takes my hand to lead me through the room, his gaggle of followers trailing along behind us.

We arrive at possibly the largest booth I have ever seen in my life and as the big red head called Snot hammers his hand on the table the dozen or so people sitting in it hasten abandon it. Rosie clears the glasses, jugs and overfull ashtrays from the table as Robert gestures for me to slide in towards the center.

In no time at all I find myself sitting between Robert and a man I vaguely remember being named the Executioner. The booth is a large wide oval shape with the back being just high enough for all these tall guys to lean back and prop their arms on. Me? I can just barely peer over the back while seated and I realize that this booth is located about mid room in one of the bar areas facing the stage.

I look about to consider this is likely one of the best seats in the house as far as the bands are concerned. But what happened to the age old biker’s rule of sitting with your back to a wall? I feel strangely unprotected in spite of sitting at a table with more than a dozen people ranging from 6 ft to 6 ft 6.