Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

305 BALL OF CONFUSION

BALL OF CONFUSION

An hour to go until dawn, and the edges of the sky were just starting to lighten when we got into our rooms. We got the last rooms the place had left. Marty stayed in the bus and I think if Carynne had not admonished him strongly, he might have sleptoutside the bus to keep away marauders.

Curiously enough, Chris and Bart had already decided to room together. I did not question this. It was probably better that someone kept an eye on Chris anyway, and Bart was always a level-headed peacemaker. Also Bart had known him longer than any of the rest of us. While I'd been holed up with Ziggy in a bunk, Chris and Bart had gotten talking. So be it.

Me and Ziggy and Colin, we all got in a room together, and Courtney and Carynne got one. Carynne flat out ordered everyone to get a minimum of five hours sleep, preferably six, with our roll-out time set for eleven in the morning.

In the morning, the graffiti looked even more garish. I think Christian and Bart only got maybe an hour or two of sleep because they had stayed up talking all night. We all looked pretty strung out, I guess. We were the largest, quietest group eating at Denny's.

In other words, we were all in absolutely tip top shape when we arrived at the venue to meet Digger. He didn't even get through half of a hello to me before Carynne, god bless her, dragged him into the production office and shut the door.

They didn't come out for forty five minutes–maybe an hour. I went back to the bus and took an actual nap. When I rejoined the waking world, I had missed the big father-daughter reunion, but I had a feeling I'd hear all about it from each side.

I'd also missed Digger's first meeting with the Shithead Brothers. I had no idea how much of the way things were that day had to do with him and how much with the graffiti incident itself. Everyone seemed very, very serious. Maybe focusing on our jobs was the only way to get through it. Even all the techs and venue employees seemed to pick up the vibe. And of course security, but those guys are always like that.

I wasn't clued in about our own security until after soundcheck. Digger introduced a pair of new hires, Antonio Reyes and Dirk Ericson. Antonio had a hispanic name but a black face and an imposing presence. Turned out he was from Staten Island and used to bounce at some of the clubs I used to haunt when I was underage, but I didn't find that out right away. Dirk was as blond as Antonio was black, the kind of guy you'd cast in the role of an assassin nicknamed the Ice Man.

Especially when they stood together, they projected an aura of Do Not Fuck With. I approved.

I finally sat down with Digger by the catering spread while Megaton was on the stage. The venue was the Bayfront Auditorium, and here the bay was hard to miss. The building was basically built on the end of a long concrete pier, a whole street really that ran out into the bay for a whole block and then ended in a square, concrete island that held the auditorium and the space for trucks around it, and nothing else.

It was not a huge place, I think the capacity was more like three thousand instead of the ten thousand we'd gotten used to, and it was built back in the fifties and not really renovated much. So we were actually sitting at a back door that was propped open to the view off the water. Normally you wouldn't just prop open a door to the outside that went right into a band's green room, but here, you could. I was eating rolled up baloney, because it tastes better when it's in a roll shape than when it's flat. (Doesn't it?)

Digger was drinking a beer and filling me in. "So I've talked to almost everyone since I've been here."

"And?"

"And I'm pretty sure it was one of their people who did it, but I don't think even they know who. The buses were sitting out there for two whole days and one night pretty much unattended, so it's hard to pin down."