Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

317 TELL THAT GIRL TO SHUT UP

TELL THAT GIRL TO SHUT UP

At one point I broke a string, right at the end of a song, at the end of "Wonderland" actually, and it took a little longer to swap to the backup guitar than usual, because I'd picked up some of the stuffed bears and cats and whatever that people were throwing at me and tucked them in the strap, and somehow that didn't interact well with my shirt and my eyepatch as I tried to get it off... because I tried to lift it over my head instead of undoing the peg strap, thinking that would be better. It wasn't. Drugs make me really stupid sometimes.

Anyway, it didn't take that long for Colin to right me and send me back out with a new guitar, but during the brief break, Ziggy vamped for the audience a little. "That was a love song, you know, have you seen the video?" Loud cheers from the crowd. "Love makes us strong. Love is what gets us through day after day, even when accidents happen." More cheers. "By the way, don't play with fireworks, kids." Laughter. "Love makes everything right."

I wondered if he'd heard what I said to Jonathan. I wondered if he saw. I was too high to worry about it just then.

"Sommmmme people don't believe in love, though," he said, sort of taunting the crowd. No, not taunting, but leading them on, like a preacher. "Sommmmmmme people believe in hate. Booo." The crowd booed with him. "Don't you hate people like that!" Surprised laughter, cheers, applause, as he released them with a punch line.

None of them knew what he was talking about. But I did. I half wondered if he was going to go further and say too much. But we continued the encore then.

I remembered to stay on time. Two encores, we stuck to the planned songs, but Ziggy did crack out a fabulous Edith Piaf quote in the middle.

If I haven't said it in a while, let me repeat it here: Ziggy can really sing. It isn't just the quality of his voice, and it isn't just that he makes things work musically. It's... it's something that is more about personality. I guess it's kind of like how someone who is a good actor can read a page from the phone book and make it sound good, but give a script to your average person and when they read it, it comes out wooden and flat-sounding.

Ziggy and I came offstage and into the shower and you'd think in our druggy state that shenanigans might have occurred but they didn't. For one thing, we were trying too hard to stay focused on getting it done, not getting Ziggy's bandages wet, and getting out on time. For another, we weren't alone. We were in this giant locker-room shower, big enough for a whole team to shower at the same time, I suppose. So it was me and Ziggy and Bart and Colin (who was helping with the bandages and keeping us focused) all at the same time.

Christian got in after we got out. I put on dry clothes, and ate something, and felt marginally less impaired by the drugs then, and so I went to find Jonathan to say goodbye.

I didn't find him right away. What I did find was my sister having an argument with Dave in the parking lot. It had rained, and the sidewalk was all slick, and the trees around the campus were waving in the wind. The clouds moving under the lights from the campus looked like something from a movie. (Okay, maybe the drugs were still pretty strong.)

"You don't know what you're talking about," Dave was saying.

"The hell I don't." Courtney was wearing a big white shirt I recognized as Ziggy's, over one of our tour T-shirts and jeans. Her hair was pinned up on top of her head, all tucked in and neat. "Jesus never said a word about gays anywhere in the Bible. What he did say was 'Do not judge, or you too will be judged.' Matthew, seven one."

Holy crap, my sister was quoting Bible verses.

Dave was wearing a black leather jacket and it creaked as he crossed his arms. "God created Adam and Eve, a woman for a companion to man."