The Dive – Thread 3 (Back Stage)

[brian_campo]

The Fraying Nerves had another twenty minutes or so until their set, so a couple of the band members hung out behind the stage, a little off to the side, where they could see the crowd. Maddy sat down on a guitar case and picked at her fingernail polish. Brian noted that the case wasn’t hers, but didn’t care enough to point it out and start an argument, because he was pretty sure the brunette had PMS. He flexed his fingers and sat over a low wall that separated the crowd from the staging area, swinging his feet.


[Thread: Open to anyone]

Comments

[brian_campo]

Brian tugged gently at a lock of Valerie’s hair, and then he joined the other guys in hauling their gear onto the stage. There was a traffic jam at the ramp, two bands going in opposite directions. Brian sucked his stomach into his ribcage to squeeze past a guitarist. On stage it was oppressively hot. The combined body heat of the audience and overhead lighting turned it into a sauna. Brian wiped forehead sweat onto his sleeve and fanned his shirt away from his stomach. He set up his Oberheim`5 and helped check the mic levels for Madeleine, who made the last-minute announcement that she had to pee and jumped off the stage. “Yeah, that tends to happen when you drink a two-liter of Mountain Dew,” he muttered and adjusted the height of the mic stand.

Brian looked out into the audience. The faces stretched and tilted for an instant, and then straightened back out. He wondered if Valerie was feeling it yet.

“I’m here!” She grabbed her bass and kicked an empty beer can out of her way.

He put on his headphones and waited for Seth to kick things off. The lights lowered into a blue haze and his fingers found a comfortable resting position on the keys. Out of the corner of Brian’s eye, he tried to spot Valerie’s head of blonde hair. If his self-medicated arms didn’t already feel like two pieces of licorice, he would have started fidgeting with the levels.

‘Oh shit. What if she hates it? Please, Valerie. Be too nice to say it.’ He shook his head to purge that line of thinking just as things got going. The music was a moody blend of dark wave and punk, and the set lasted through six songs of varying tempos.