The big concert got underway at nightfall.
This was supposed to be the highlight of the weekend. The high
school band played the theme music from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Star
Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. Every now and then
little kids came out on stage dressed like characters from each movie
and did a little dance. I had to admit, it was kind of cute.
As the grand finale, the band performed an original
composition called “Challenge of the Stars.” The band teacher
introduced my brother as “the pride of Eastville, our future
astronaut.” He stood up and took a bow. Then the lights
went down and a golden spotlight began to shine down on him. He
started playing his drums in his usual bombastic style while the rest
of the band slowly joined in section by section until they were all
roaring away only a little off key.
The crowd loved it, of course, and they cheered
wildly when the music began to fade away much the same way as it
began. The lights began to dim except for the golden spotlight on
Curt. He was pounding the drums with a wild fury. He had
quite a command of his drums, much like he did the football field,
hockey rink, and baseball diamond whenever he played. I felt
really proud of him. It was too bad Mom and Dad weren’t there to
see him in action. I’m sure they’d forget all about finding that
joint in the tote bag.
Curt was pounding away on his kettle drums when the
golden spotlight shining down on him suddenly went out. The whole
stage was completely dark, and he had to stop playing. A loud
murmur rose from the audience. Wait
a minute, I thought to myself. Is this what Casey and his friends had
been planning? If it was, it was pretty lame. There
had to be a better way of causing trouble than just knocking out the
power to the lights.
Just then an old farm tractor could be heard coming
down the street. Everybody turned around to see an old man in a
tuxedo and sunglasses driving the tractor into the park with a large
covered wagon in tow. He stopped the tractor behind the audience
and shut it off, then jumped off the driver’s seat and ran behind the
wagon. Although it was dark out, I could see that the wagon was
covered with a black cloth and seemed to have something very large on
it. While the audience buzzed with confusion, smoke began to pour
out of the bottom of the wagon and an ominous, mechanical voice began
to roar from behind the black curtain:
“CHILDREN OF THE EARTH....PREPARE TO BE ROCKED! FOR
YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS THE FIRST COMING OF THE GODS OF
METAL…KATZENJAMMER!!!”
The black cloth fell away while a chunky electric
bass guitar began to play. At each corner of the wagon was a
metal lighting rig. At the back was a stack of amplifiers.
Bright red lights that spelled out KATZENJAMMER began to pulsate from
above the speakers. A drummer began to pound out a thunderous
beat and an electric guitar riff began to swoop around the sky before
swooping down to ground level. Flashpots exploded at each side of
the stage, causing the audience to gasp. Then the lights came on
to reveal Casey Winslow and his friends decked out in black leather
with their instruments in hand.
Casey and Jeremy both had electric guitars and
Doobie Brother was playing bass. A. J. was on keyboards. I
didn’t recognize the drummer, who had curly red hair and a red
bandana. They were all wearing mirror sunglasses. Since I
was sitting toward the back of the audience during the high school
band’s performance, I was now front row center and had the best view of
anyone. I looked back at the rest of the audience; their mouths
were hanging open in amazement at what was taking place before
them. Like an army of zombies, they slowly stood up, turned their
chairs around, and sat back down to watch the show. The high
school band just stood there with their instruments in their hands like
deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
Jeremy stepped toward the microphone and began to
sing:
“Young, dumb, and chewing gum
You know we like ’em that way
Teen czars with electric guitars
The earth quakes whenever we play!
Crazy, drunk, stoned and stupid
Victims of a life of excess
We wreck cars and smash our guitars
We’d like to get you out of that dress!
Don’t tell us you’re saving it for marriage
We only want to borrow it a while
We’re gonna take away that look of disgust
And replace it with a satisfied smile!”
The rest of the band sang the chorus:
“Gods of Metal, foot on the pedal
A hundred million miles from home
We raped the earth for all it was worth
And left it with a mouthful of foam!”
Jeremy strummed his angular, black guitar and sang
the next verses:
“Rock hard and rock all night
That’s the motto by which we live
Teen czars with electric guitars
There’s only so much shit you can give!
Don’t bother locking up your daughters
We’ll pick the lock with a switchblade knife
And if you’ve got the nerve to hide ’em away
We’re gonna have our way with your wife!”
After the rest of the band sang a second chorus,
Casey ripped into a guitar solo that seemed to defy the laws of
physics. His fingers flew up and down the frets in a blur,
dazzling the audience with his skill. A. J. wailed on his
keyboard like the Phantom of the Opera while Jeremy and Doobie Brother
moved in unison. The crowd began to cheer when they took a stab
at “Challenge of the Stars” for a
teaser. With A. J.’s recreation of a symphony orchestra on the
synthesizer, they blew the doors off the high school band’s
rendition. I looked back and saw Curt shaking his head in
disbelief. Apparently he was wrong about Casey and his gang of
stoners not knowing how to play their instruments. They played as
if they were born with them!
The song came to an end with a blast of fireworks
that pumped the audience right up. They were cheering wildly for
more. Jeremy came up to the microphone and said, “Thank you! We
call ourselves Katzenjammer, the Gods of Metal...and we bid you
goodnight!”
The crowd gave them a standing ovation. For a
few hundred people, they were pretty loud! They kept on cheering for
more until Casey finally came up to the microphone and yelled out, “GO
HOME! THAT’S THE ONLY SONG WE KNOW!”
Eventually the black cloth was pulled back up,
hiding the stage from view. The noise from the audience began to
die down as they realized that the band wasn’t kidding. My ears
were still ringing when the old man in the tuxedo got back on the
tractor, started it up, and began to drive it away. Curt and his
wingnuts came marching past me.
“The nerve of those dirtballs,” Curt fumed.
“They named their band after my girlfriend!”
Kathy Katzenjammer came by with a smile on her
face. I took it to mean she was flattered. Curt was burning
with jealousy and stared at the mobile stage like a man plotting
revenge. “I’m gonna get those guys!”
Everybody else was talking about how good they
were. Even the other kids in the high school band were excited
about it. As for me, I was totally blown away. I had never
seen anything like it. Casey Winslow was without a doubt the
coolest human being I had ever seen in my entire life. He didn’t
just play rock and roll, he was rock and roll!
Curt looked back at me with a scowl. “Wipe
that goofy smile off your face and let’s go home!”
I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest. There was
something really weird going on inside me. I wouldn’t dare admit
this to Curt, but I think I was falling in love.
It was a funny feeling, not what I expected at
all. I always used to think that if I ever fell in love, it would
turn me into a mindless, blithering idiot who couldn’t think of
anything else but the person I was in love with. It wasn’t like
that at all. I still had all my senses about me and was thinking
coherently enough to get into the car with Curt and his friends and go
home. Of course, I forgot my bike at the park and had to make
Curt go back and get it, but other than that, there was nothing out of
the ordinary about what I was feeling.
