Best Man

Caroline sat back in her seat in the sound booth at KROQ, and to say she was happy about being there would be an utter lie. She wanted to stay in the Bay area to be with Giselle who was still trying to come to terms with her miscarriage and to simply be home in case she, herself, went into labor early. But, no. Reprise Records said she was obligated to promoting with her band and yada, yada, yada.

She made no effort to be smiley during the interview, alongside Nef and Dave, who seemed to be just as miffed about the label's declaration, but they were more talkative for the two morning show personalities, Kevin and Bean. After all, if they acted like assholes, it would be bad promotion.

"So, you're pregnant; ready to pop," Kevin gestured to Caroline. "The sign of a true rocker. Saying to hell with laying in bed with a carton of Cherry Garcia in your last weeks."

Well...okay. Now Dave and Nef had reason to speak their mind and justify being assholes. The DJs had asked for it. Literally.

"Yeah, she'd rather be more or less told she has to be here when she could be taking it easy for both her child and herself," Dave muttered, leaning back slightly as he adjusted the headphones on his head.

Caroline, who was sitting between both her band members, looked up at her ex-boyfriend and then back at Kevin. "Like you said, I'm ready to pop. I'm due at the end of the month, so if I get stressed at all during this interview, make sure you have a pot of warm water and some towels on hand."

"Planning on giving birth right here in the studio?" Bean inquired impishly.

With a deadpan expression, Caroline cast her eyes upon the second DJ. "You think I'm joking? I'm gonna be honest, I didn't want to be here, but because our album just so happens to be coming out tomorrow, just about two weeks before I'm scheduled to give birth. But...that's not to say we're not anxious about this feat. We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this album, went through some changes on the inside and out, and had a few personal setbacks that halted recording here and there..." she trailed as Nef picked up where she was leaving off.

"We're proud of this album. We went from four of us to three, and not to say anything against Nick leaving the band, but three seems to be a better number. We work better this way now. We're more close knit now and I think that comes across musically in each and every song."

The negative vibes Caroline was feeling seemed to disappear from her person, along with Nef, but Dave, being the more aggressive 'character' in the trio, began to sulk and spoke only when spoken to.

"You worked with a few different musicians as well on this album, because you were picking up the bass...how did that all go for you?" Kevin inquired; the question directed more at Caroline than the guys.

Caroline shrugged, grabbing the bottle of water in front of her; ready to take a sip when she was done talking. "It was a challenge. At first we were stressing out; trying to figure out what the fuck we were going to do with---"

"You can't say that," Bean exclaimed with a laugh.

"What?"

Dave nudged her arm slightly. "You just dropped the F-bomb."

Caroline's lips formed an O as her eyes widened and she then winced apologetically. "Oh, damn. My bad. I didn't even notice."

"Well, it's not like that hasn't happened before or like no one's ever heard it before," Dave quipped.

"Point and match, but...back on, well...point..." Kevin nodded, looking back at Caroline. "As you were saying before the F-bomb?"

Caroline smirked a little after taking a quick swig of water. "Well, I was just saying that we weren't sure what we were gonna do in regard to the album; if we'd audition a new bassist or just have guest bassists for each and every song...and it became so stressful that it got to the point where I was just like, you know...I don't play an instrument. I mean, I can play the keyboard if forced to, or strum a guitar, but I wanted to be more than just the pretty face...the frontwoman. The singer."

Both DJs nodded as she spoke while Dave reached his left arm around Caroline's chair and rested it behind her back; almost as if he was pulling the cheesy 'yawn and stretch' move so commonly used by adolescent boys in a movie theater, but minus the yawn and the subtle reach for the breast.

"So there was that obstacle; finding yourself and discovering there was more to you than just a voice and a pretty face..." Kevin muttered philosophically with a nod of his head.

"Sorta," Caroline shrugged. "We did a lot of growing on this album. Not just musically, but in other aspects. This second time around, we knew what to expect during the recording process, plus we're really starting to come into our own. Our lives are finding some solid ground and we have a clearer picture of what it is we want and how we want to maintain the stability in going about getting it..."

Bean sat back and whistled. "Wow, that was deep."

Caroline shrugged again; perpetuating the idea that she was the speaker of eloquent words when in reality she'd simply been bitten by a bug of inspiration where this interview was concerned. After all, only five minutes before she was bordering mindlessness and bitterness.

"I dunno..." she trailed, drawing circles with her index finger on the surface before her. "When the lives of those you care about so damn much are put up on the proverbial auction block for the dealer of fate to deliberate over, your own life takes a backseat and you realize things about yourself. That's what this album is. Holding on to what you have in this moment, and those moments that you have lost your grip on. Not those moments yet to come, because they might not."

Nef looked to his right at Caroline and smiled. "What she said," he said with a laugh.

"It's about having faith in your love for the people around you, trust in their motives, peace in their decisions, and glory in your own."

"Sounds almost spiritual," Bean commented.

"Well, it was a bit of a spiritual journey," Dave spoke solemnly. "I don't mean to bring it up, because it was a difficult time, but because he's not just Caroline's husband but also a real good friend of Nef's and mine, Mike---"

"Mike Dirnt of Green Day," Bean interrupted, to which Dave flashed a mild look of contempt.

"Yes, Mike," he bit out as nicely as possible. "Because he's an important person in each of our lives, when he had his health scare last year, it catapulted all of us into realizing that, yes...there are certain parts of this lifestyle that we should live up to; rocking out, being larger than life, I suppose. But not to take it to the extreme. Life is fragile and we are not larger than life. We are nothing more than a blip on the radar screen. One hundred years from now, people won't care that we lived or not. So, pushing ourselves to the breaking point will do us no good. We have nothing to prove, and no one to prove ourselves to but ourselves. The moment we believe there is, we die."

"Figuratively, right?" Kevin questioned.

"Possibly."



"Well, that went well," Nef jested as the trio walked side by side out of KROQ and into the limo at the side of the building awaiting to take them to their next location; NBC Studios in Burbank to tape a performance on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in order to promote their album, Gone Are The Days.

Because of the size of Caroline's stomach, they had a guest bassist; a guy named Robbie Waldeck who they actually knew from back home in Buffalo and had moved to LA with his band which was still struggling in the underground club scene at the moment.

They played the title song from the album; Caroline dressed in the same black skirt she'd worn the day the air conditioning at home broke and Tre went swimming with her, but with a black tee that said 'My Other Lover Is Johnny Depp' on it with silver letters. A pair of flat, black leather boots that came to her knees, she swayed around as she sang her heart out; not minding one iota that her stomach looked like a peach watermelon playing peek-a-boo.

Last year's come and gone
Like the sudden end of an antique song
And this year's no different
The darling buds of May are blooming
Gone are the days when we were fooling
Around the circle, never-ending
Never broken

Summer trails the snow
As the sun glows hot as worn-out coal
But summer never lasts
The darling buds of May start dying
Gone are the days when we weren't lying
To ourselves that we'd be breathing
Here forever

So this is our swan song
A ballad for whoever wants to hold it in their heart
So take it and keep it
And pass it down from child to child to make it their own art

The first two verses along with the chorus had the audience hook, line and sinker. And when they went into the following verses and repeated the chorus a few more times, it reinstilled The Sinners as the fresh band that would take music into the next decade. Reinstilling that this band from Buffalo that had broke into the music scene three years earlier had not lost their luster but in fact withdrawn to throw on a spit shine and reemerge like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.