Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll Part 3
Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll was the foundation of Brock’s soul. But he thought about fucking Crystal last night and not Jenn, he couldn’t remember how it happened. He felt a weird and kind of bad about it, he didn’t like the feeling, but then remembered their set last night. “Ah well, fuck it, we fucking rocked this shit hole last night! He said with a laugh and they all clinked their beers. “Fucking rights we did dude!” Spike said”
They hung out at the party pad for most of the day, it belonged to some guy they called Mugsy, Brock didn’t even know his real name. Mugsy was a big fan of all things metal so he loved having the “band” over at his place.
Up until now Brock still just thought of the four of them as friends playing together. But after last night he was starting to think of them as an actual fucking band. They could play an hour long show of solid tunes, probably an hour and half. That’s as long as most headliners at big shows would play.
He was lounging on the couch in Mugsy’s living room thinking of this when he said “Hey we gotta think of a name for the band” to the rest of the guys who were scattered around the room drinking and smoking. “Something badass, like Motley Crue, damn I wish that wasn’t taken” he said only half jokingly.
How about “Shit Faced” Austin said before downing the rest of his beer and heading to the kitchen for another one “anyone else need a cold one?” he said as he left the room.
“I like Shit Faced,” Brock said laughing. “It does describe our usual state of being quite well,” he added. “Ya, I’ll take one” he yelled out to Austin.
“It’s pretty hardcore” Lance said as he sat on a stool by the drums noodling on his guitar. “It might turn some people off”
“Fuck em” Brock said “if they don’t like it they be pussies” he added laughing.
“Ya, fuck the pussies” Spike chimed in from his semi comatose state lying on the floor.
“Ya, let’s go with Shit Faced for now” Austin said as he walked back in the room and handed Brock a cold beer. “It’s got balls”
“It’s settled then we are now officially “Shit Faced” Brock said, cracking a beer and holding it aloft. The other three did the same “Shit Faced it is” Lance said.
And they all started chanting “Shit Faced…Shit Faced” as they got shit faced.
It was only fitting that they were all getting pretty shit faced when they came up with the name.
After that party they all started taking the band much more seriously, well as much as four 17 year old fuck ups could take anything seriously. They lived and breathed their music. It’s all they talked about, nothing else really mattered. They all had longish hair but they made a pact not to cut their hair again until it was rockstar hair.
They were rehearsing three nights a week and most of every weekend. School became less and less important to them. It was all about the band.
Their parents got on their case’s about school, they were always telling them they had to get good grades and go to college or they were going to throw their lives away.
The last thing any of them thought about was going to college. None of them ever wanted to get a “real” job. The only thing they wanted to do was be rockstars!
Brock’s parents were constantly on his case about what he was going to do after he graduated high school, which was now only a few months away. His parents were more on his case than any of the other three mainly because Brock’s older brother Dylan had quit school after grade 10.
Even though Dylan was working construction and had moved out of the house shortly after quitting school, his parents thought he was throwing his life away and was a failure. Dylan was two years older than Brock, Brock thought he was a badass. He was more into drugs and getting fucked up than Brock was, he actually got Brock into drugs. Even though he and Astin took it from there and did every new drug together.
On Brock’s first day of Junior high at only 11 years old, when Dylan and Brock had walked to the bus stop together Dylan pulled out a joint and said “we’re gonna smoke this joint” He didn’t even ask Brock if he wanted to he just told him they were going to, Brock knew if he didn’t his brother would kick his ass, at that time Dylan was much bigger than Brock, so Brock smoked the joint, he didn’t even really get high, but he felt like a baddass.
Brock knew that Dylan was kind of a fuck up, but he still looked up to him because Dylan didn’t give a fuck what people thought about him. He was such a badass, he often wore t-shirts in the middle of the winter, without a jacket, and it didn’t even seem to bother him. He smoked Export A greems, the strongest smokes he could find, he smoke almost two packs a day.
Brock admired that about him, because Brock always, deep down, cared about what people thought of him, he could never just let go like Dylan could.
Brock’s parents were always sitting him down, usually at the kitchen table, and giving him lectures about how he was going to end up like his brother, a failure. “Dylan’s not a failure, he’s got a job, he’s living on his own ” Brock would say.
“Ya but he could have been so much more if he had stayed in school and got an education” His father would say. His parents were so insistent on getting an education, going to college, Brock figured it was because they didn’t go.
Brock’s dad quit school at 16 and lied about his age and joined the navy, he was in the Korean war as a teenager, he was a tough son of a bitch and he wanted one of his sons to go to college and Brock was his last hope.
“What do you want to do with your life? ” he would always ask Brock ,time and time again, eventually during these lectures. The answer was always the same “I want to be a rockstar ” he would say. “You’ll never be a rockstar” his parents would argue “you know how many people try to make it in the music business?”
“They all end up throwing their lives away, strung out on drugs or working shit jobs for no money” they would argue. They would get really carried away, yelling and threatening to take Brock’s guitar away and not let him go to his friends to jam.
“You just try it” Brock countered, “and I’ll be out of here so fast, you’ll never see me again” and he meant it, and he knew, and they knew it too, he meant it, the last thing they wanted was both of their sons to be high school dropouts, so they never went through with their threats of taking his guitar or not allowing him to play with his friends.
These lecture/arguments would inevitably end with his parents shaking their heads and telling him to go to his room, which he gladly did, and plugged in his guitar and cranked the shit out of it…
”fuck them” he thought “they just don’t fucking understand shit, I don’t want to work my whole life for some asshole boss and be a nobody. I want everyone to know who I am, I want to rock the world!”
He didn’t know why exactly, but he craved acceptance and he knew being on a stage with thousands of people screaming in appreciation for the music he was playing was the ultimate acceptance. It’s what he dreamed about, to do anything else in life seemed a waste of time, a waste of life.
His parents thought he was throwing his life away, he thought if he didn’t follow his dream he would be throwing his life away, he couldn’t understand how they didn’t see that.
“So the variety show is coming up in a few weeks, we gonna play in it?” Spike asked as they sat around smoking a joint after a jam session. He was talking about the annual variety show at the high school. Students could basically sign up to do anything from skits, singing to tap dancing if they wanted to.
“Shit that’s right,” Brock said. “Fuck we should definitely go in it and play a set, we’ll rock the fuck out of that place!”
“Ya, they’ll probably suspend us for being too heavy dude” Austin added laughing as he took a hit of the joint.
“What songs should we do?” Lance asked “they’ll probably only let us do two or three”
“Let’s not tell them what songs we’re gonna do” Brock suggested “You know if we tell them we are going to do songs by motley crue, AC/DC or Judas Priest they probably won’t let us do the ones we want” He said.
They decided to do AC/DC’s Hells Bells, Metallica’s Seek and Destroy and Motley Crue’s Looks that Kill.
They started to prepare for the show, playing those songs over and over and getting everything down tight.
When the night finally came they knew they were ready.
They were all behind the curtains on stage in the school gym. The place was packed with students and parents, they were all a little nervous as all of their parents were there. Brock’s were in the 4th row.
He had no idea how they would react to seeing him on stage ripping out heavy tunes when he knew they didn’t really approve of his dream of being a musician/rockstar.
Oh well, fuck it, he thought, they were probably more worried about what the other parents would think of them, if their kid, was some kind of freak, who was into heavy metal. This kind of fired him up even more to rock the hell out of these songs.
Spike started the intro to Hell’s Bell’s on an improvised gong they had borrowed from the music department and Lance came in with the hypnotic heavy opening riff before the curtains were open, Brock gave the nod to the two kids who would open the curtains when he and Austin kicked in on the rhythm guitar and bass, so when when the curtains opened there was a wall of sound as the four of them rocked out the classic AC/DC tune.
Brock looked out at the crowd, the gym was packed, it probably held about 400 he figured. Most of the students were rocking to the tune banging their heads and some even held up the devil horns.
He could see that most of the parents didn’t really know what to think. He saw his parents and to his surprise they actually seemed somewhat impressed.
Maybe they were so used to hearing him play this in his room with the amp cranked they couldn’t believe he could really play it in front of a bunch of people, at least that’s what he decided to think.
Brock walked up to the center mic stand and started singing the opening lines
I’m a, rolling thunder, the pouring rain
I’m comin on like a hurricane
White lightnin’s flashin, across the sky
You’re only young, but you’re gonna die
He was watching the audience as he sang, everyone was digging it, they sounded awesome. They were rocking the hell out of it! When it was time for the guitar solo Brock went over to Austin and they banged their heads together, as Lance walked up to the front of the stage, and ripped out Angus’s solo.
When Brock sang the last “Hells Bells’ ‘ and when they all ended the song with the last three notes the place erupted! The four of them looked at the audience and looked at each other and smiled, what a fucking rush!
Even the parents were standing up clapping, Brock looked at his parents and they were too, it kind of blew him away, maybe actually seeing him perform legitimized everything he had been telling them about how this was his dream. He hoped so.
“Thank you, you guys rock!” Brock screamed into the mic after what seemed like a few minutes but was probably, in reality, only a few seconds. “We’re glad you liked that one, we’d like to do another one for you”
That was Lances que to start the intro to Seek and Destroy. As soon as he started playing it everyone went nuts, Brock couldn’t believe he was playing Metallica’s Seek and Destroy in front of his parents…too fucking cool!
They rocked Seek and Destroy, it was so fucking heavy, during the song they would look at each other and they could barely contain themselves from fucking up they were so jacked,
“so this is what it’s like to be a fucking rockstar” Brock thought to himself as he would look out at the audience singing along or banging their heads “this is fucking awesome he thought, it’s got to be the greatest feeling in the fucking world”
They ended with Looks that Kill, because Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil album had just been released about six months earlier, and Looks was the first single, and it was by far the most popular of the three songs they played, although not by much, that’s why they played it last.
Everyone was singing along and nobody sat down through the whole fucking song! At the end all four of them came out to the front of the stage and put their arms over each other’s shoulders and took a bow, the crowd went nuts. It was the best feeling any of them had ever known or felt in their lives!
“Holy shit, that was intense!” Austin yelped as the curtain closed in front of them with the audience still cheering and giving them a standing ovation.
“You got that fucking right bro” Brock agreed “That was the fucking best thing ever!” He was tingling all over, they all were!
They jumped up and down slapping high fives and just basically going crazy with euphoria from the high of playing in front of a packed high school gym full of everyone they knew.
They all kind of knew they had just done something incredible, something that would last forever. No matter what happened in their lives after high school, they would always have this night.
They had one more group hug before they had to clear off the stage to make way for some other students setting up the stage for a some skit or some shit, they were all still buzzing, It didn’t seem real.
After the show they all went out and met their family’s and friends. Brock walked up to his parents not sure what to expect. His mother was almost crying, she hugged Brock and told him she was so proud of him and how great he was.
Which blew Brocks mind, she said she would never give him a hard time about playing his music and if that’s what he wanted to do with his life he should just go ahead and do it.
Wow, Brock never thought he’d ever hear that from his mother. This night was crazy. He looked at his dad and tried to read his expression. The old man looked hard at his boy for a moment, before grabbing him up in a bear hug and slapping him on the back “that was pretty good boy, I couldn’t understand a word of it but it was pretty damn good” he smiled at his son. “And judging by the reaction of this place other people like it too, I guess you might be able to do something with this music stuff after all.”
Brock knew that was about as good as it got for an endorsement from his father. “Thanks guys, thanks for coming, it really meant alot” Brock said, at a bit of a loss for words, getting this open acceptance for his music from his parents kind of left him a little speechless and blown away.
“Me and the guys are going to go to a party, I think half the schools going to be there” He said. “Well you go and enjoy yourself, we’ll see you when you get home” His mother said.
The guys played more parties as the school year wound down. Before they knew it there were only two weeks of school left. Two weeks of high school left and they would be free! They talked about it all the time, especially after playing a set at a party as they got drunk and stoned.
None of them had any plans to do anything but try to make it as a band, they had no idea how they were going to “make it” but that’s what they were going to do.
Brock had made up with Jennifer after their initial fight after that first time he woke up with blondie. It didn’t mean he had all of a sudden become monogamous or anything, he still couldn’t resist a pretty face and a hot bod after a set if Jenifer wasn’t around.
He told himself it was ok because they were still in high school, they were too young to be all serious and exclusive. And anyway Jennifer didn’t seem like she was going anywhere, but university. But she was obviously head over heels in love with him, so he didn’t have anything to worry about.
Finally the big day came. Graduation day. Brock thought it would feel surreal to be finally leaving high school, something he, and every other kid, had been dreaming about since they started school all those years ago.
But as he walked across the stage and accepted his diploma, looking out at his beaming mother and proud father, it didn’t really seem like all that big of a deal.
As he and Austin, Lance and Spike threw their grad hats in the air the only thought running through his mind was “finally, now I can get on with my life, now the real fun begins!”
After graduating Brock wanted to really start letting his hair grow long. His hair was already shoulder length but he wanted it to be much longer, and bigger! He wanted it to be outrageous, he wanted to be outrageous! He wanted to shock people when they saw him onstage. He wanted his image and the image of the band to be larger than life, almost superhero like.
Some of the other guys didn’t quite feel exactly the same way as Brock on the image of the band.
But they went along with his ideas because he was just so intensely into everything about the band. He didn’t want to do anything else but practice and write songs and work on their image.
The other guys started dating girls and wanted to spend more and more time with them. Brock was still seeing Jennifer but even she knew Brock’s real love was the band and his music.
Brock kept talking about how they should move to Los Angeles as it was the center of the universe for all things metal, especially glam/hair metal which they all loved the most of all the genres of metal.
But moving to Los Angeles from a small town in Canada seemed like moving to the moon! You couldn’t get any further from LA than where they were in bumfuck Canada. But Brock didn’t care, it was all he thought about, all he dreamed about.
The biggest obstacle to moving to LA or even Toronto was money. They all just graduated high school and they didn’t have any money. They all had summer jobs and the plan was to save as much as they could and at the end of the summer take off, to at least Toronto, and try and break into the music biz.
None of them had any Idea really how to do that. But that was the plan.
Brock, and to a lesser extent the other guys, were doing more drugs and drinking than ever. Any chance they got to get fucked up they took it. Getting high and playing music were the only things they were really interested in.
Brock loved getting high and putting his headphones on and playing his guitar for hours. He felt free, with the music enveloping his soul, it allowed him to escape his small town rural life, even if it was only for a few hours. He knew deep down it was more than just a dream.
Ok, I have the whole outline of the plot of the book laid out in point form.
But I have to actually write it now, I had written this much for years. But I am jacked to keep writing it.
But I won’t be able to drop this much material every day. I will try and drop new material once a week.
It’s just to much fun to do anything else. I will still put up other dumb shit, but my main focus will be the book.
Thank you all for reading this long as spiel. Please comment if you like even if it’s critical it will really help as I flesh out the outline I have, there are twists and turns that get me jacked to think about writing.
I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to share it with anyone and everyone you want.
All right, peace out bitches!!