Lukey Kid

Time wasn’t really as big of a deal as we thought it would be. Since we already knew what the heck we were going to do when we went into the studio and therefore didn’t waste time fiddling with seemingly useless things that would only waste time, recording didn’t take all day at first. (Until we started doing the finishing touches, though, which was a completely different story.)

Usually, we got out of the studio at around four or five at night, picked up dinner, then went back to the hotel and goofed around. It was a little boring night after night, getting used to that monotony, but I guess it was better than all of us arguing over stupid things and causing problems. Thankfully, we lived well together. Which was good, considering how we dreamed of touring the world together, and knowing that we could put up with each other in a hotel room, it made it easier.

One day, though, right in the middle of re-recording the guitar track on “Melody” since Soria thought it sounded off, Olli jumped into the middle of it all and flopped down on the couch between Brendan and me.

His hair fell in his face and he blew it out of the way, bored.

“Um…hello,” Soria said, getting interrupted from her riff to acknowledge his random appearance.

“Yo,” he smiled real cheesy.

Joey, sitting at the mixing board and taking his eyes off of his phone, said to Olli, “Dude. What up? You could’a given us a warning before freaking us out.”

Instead of answering his question for real, Olli clapped his hands together, leaned forward, and bounced in his seat, causing the couch to vibrate. “Ooh! Ooh! I has an idea. And I wanted to ask you guys about it.”

“Shoot,” Soria said, propping her arm up on her guitar and holding her head.

“Wellll, I have a show tomorrow at the bowling alley and I think it’d be cool if you guys showed up as a guest. It’d be cool! ‘Cause you guys’d be a special guest, and you’d pop out onstage, like BAM, and totally shock everyone, and they’ll be all ‘Oh no, I haven’t prepared myself for this level of awesomeness!’ and then -” he droned, telling the plan with rainbows practically shooting from his fingers.

Joey cut him off, almost slapping a hand over the talkative teen’s mouth. “Yeah, yeah, we get it.”
Olli didn’t look phased by the spiteful way he said it.

“So…what do you guys think?” he insisted, still bouncing.

Brendan, Soria, and I exchanged a shrug and a “why not” expression. (Ren was doing the rhythm guitar over again in another room.)

“It’d be cool,” Brendan said.

“Yeah. I don’t know if your fans’ll be into us, but hey, we could give it a shot,” Soria reasoned.

Olli waved his hand. “Oh, fiddlesticks. I shoved you down my fans’ throats when I kept doing FlySpace bulletins about you. They’ll love it.”

“Well, that explains all of the t-shirt orders coming from south Florida of all places,” Joey said aimlessly.

That day, we finished up recording as always and didn’t really put that much thought into the gig with Olli. All we knew was that we had to keep it under wraps and not tell anyone, since it was Olli’s show first of all, and he had this epic plan of us coming onstage with him in the middle of one of his songs and doing a little set.

So we didn’t really know what to expect, like a lot of things thrown at us as a band. I had no doubt that his fanbase was made of teenage girls and probably-gay guys, while we were used to dealing with older teens and a random bunch of other people. Teenage girls weren’t something I knew like the back of my hand.

The audience ended up being the least of our worries. I’ll tell you why in a second.

- - -

The Rock N’ Bowl bowling alley was a neat little place situated not too far from the studio. Actually, it wasn’t little – it was pretty big, seeing as how there was a small stage set up in the lobby by the actual bowling lanes. You ever heard of the Fireside Bowl in Illinois? It was a lot like that.

It was real retro-looking on the outside with neon lights hanging from the top balcony. It looked like it was built in the 70s or 80s and they didn’t ever have to revamp or rebuild any part of it, which I thought was pretty cool. Just by looking at it, I could tell that it was the kind of place where kids hung out and spent their weekends. Maybe it was the fact that teenagers were starting to gather around the entrance when we arrived, but yeah.

Plaster Caster had to sneak in the back since we were just a special guest and we couldn’t let anybody see us. Well, Olli really insisted upon that, since we didn’t honestly see much of a point. He made Joey drive the car we had to rent around to the back entrance and we had to take a few trips to subtly set up for our little set, which caused a little more trouble than it was worth.

Since the show started at five in the evening, things felt early when Olli started his show. It wasn’t really a loud set since the alley wasn’t really big and people would flip out if he did a full-fledged concert in such a tiny space, but he did have his backup band – he calls ‘em The Goons – playing his songs while he played his guitar. Both of The Goons looked like teenage dudes with swoopy hair like him, just as enthusiastic. Heck, I wasn’t much of a fan of Olli’s music, but the guy was so passionate about what he played that it was completely admirable. He’d interact with his band even if they seemed a lot shyer than he was, and the smile written on his mug was miles wide.

Anyway, the alley was crammed with scene beans by the time five o’ clock came around, and once everything was set up, he exploded right into “Ocean Eyes Led to my Demise.” Instantly, people began jumping around and rocking their heads to the music, mouthing out the words and singing along. And I did kind of look up to how well he was able to get the crowd so captivated.

He skated through his songs “Belly Up” and “I’m Doing This For You, Mom.” Sure, he had three EPs and an album under his belt, but combined, he only had about twenty-three songs – which, for four albums, seemed kind of skimpy to me. I mean, my philosophy was always to go big or go home – release a full album or nothing at all. But hey, he was doing what he wanted and he couldn’t fit in twenty-three songs into this set even if he tried.

After singing “Baby, I’m a Stupid Jerk!” he stopped, signaled to his band to get off the stage, and the lights behind him went dim. Brendan, Soria, Ren and I shuffled on the platform behind him and plugged in our guitars; Brendan set up his drums quietly. Meanwhile, Olli kept the crowd entertained with a little bit of banter.

“Hey you guys,” he said between panted breaths. He was covered in sweat. “We’re off to a good start. This is good. This is great. This crowd is hella awesome.”

The audience cheered, mainly littered with girlish screams from the teens.

“But I think I need something different to spice things up today. Just me doing a set? That’s a total bore-snore and I know you guys don’t wanna hear me whine about my poopy love life,” he joked, snorting as he breathed in sharply for air.

A few girls laughed in the audience, the cheers as strong as ever.

Suddenly Olli jerked around and started flailing his arms like he was trying to play some sort of messed-up air guitar. “Lucky, I haaaave a little help – from my friends!”

People laughed. I kind of did too, but I didn’t quite understand why.

“That was my Joe Cocker impression. Pretty good, huh? But you guys probably don’t even know who he is. He played the air guitar like a beast, man,” Olli continued, adjusting the settings on his keyboard while speaking. “But for rizzles, I has a surprise for all of you and it involves a brand stinkin’ new band that just got signed to Not Listening records!” He held up his arms with a big cheesy grin, fanning the flames of the crowd.

Suddenly the lights turned on, shining down on the four of us and generally being super hot. A sweat broke out on my forehead. Now I knew why Olli was drenched in the stuff and half the kids had sticky sweaty hair.

“I’m in the company of Plaster Caster, the super duper cool band all the way from Claymore! And they’re our super special guest for tonight!” he cheered, waving his arms all around again, but not in another failed impression. “I’mma let ‘em do a few songs ‘cause they’re in the middle of recording their first album. It’s gonna be super rad and you all need to buy it the second it comes out!”

Olli trotted away, going backstage, but first he patted Ren’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Ren laughed and continued forward, taking the microphone from the stand and pumping his arms to rile up the crowd some more. He wasn’t as good as Olli was at it, but he still improved a lot from the shy kid whose voice cracked every time he spoke into the mic.

“Y’all having fun tonight?” he cheered, letting a Southern slang slip. (That’s what you get for living in north Florida for all your life.) When they responded with more positive chants, he smiled back at us and said, “Awesome. Well, as you probably already know, we’re Plaster Caster and we’re gonna do a song called ‘Don’t Coast.’”

The melancholy melody ripped through the speakers as we broke into the song that reminded me of eighth grade. Soria wrote it when Brendan and Joey were going through losing their brother David, and even though I don’t think that’s what it’s about, for some reason it always made me think of him. “Don’t Coast” was the last song we played as official eighth graders, so that might be it, too.

When that song was over, we jumped into “Time” and halfway into the first verse, we had almost all of Olli’s fans’ heads bobbing along with our music. Even though it was one of our weaker songs lyrically (Soria said it had something to do with being too caught up in chaos to really revise anything or think it through), it was one of the catchier ones musically. It had one heck of a hook.

Things got crazy right near the bridge of “Common Sense,” though. That’s when the feedback in Soria’s amp started acting up and she had to casually walk across the stage to get it to stop. However, even though her guitar quit acting up for a few seconds, it got really bad and started squealing even louder than the song. Fans put their hands over their ears to block out the piercing screech, and Ren looked back at us in the middle of singing “And you didn’t help at all,” trailing off quietly with a look of confusion.

Brendan stopped playing. I stopped playing, and so did Soria and Ren, but the feedback still raged on, carrying through the entire bowling alley.

Out of nowhere, though, Soria’s amp started sparking real bad like a malfunctioning firework. She jumped back and almost landed on Ren, and while the audience screamed at the accidental pyrotechnics, the entire thing just exploded. There’s no other word to describe it. It went from sparks to flames in a second, and that’s when all heck broke loose once and for all.

Olli jumped onstage and yelled into the microphone for everybody to get out as quick as possible. They followed his orders and started filing out the front doors and fire exits, and what was pretty awesome was that within around two or three minutes, the entire crowd was evacuated. What wasn’t awesome was that the fire had spread across the entire stage, drenching Brendan’s drum kit in flames. Still, to make this whole thing a good-bad-good sandwich, me, Soria, and Ren managed to pry our guitars out before the fire got to them.

So everybody in the bowling alley was gathered outside of the entrance when the musical acts got there, waiting for some sign of good news. Olli’s band was in one piece, and so was Plaster Caster (plus Joey). One of the dudes behind the front counter was able to call the fire department while managing to put out most of the flames with the fire extinguisher, which was tough since it was an electrical fire.

The firemen came and got rid of what was left of the fire, digging out the charred remains of the amp Soria was using, which actually belonged to the bassist of Olli’s band, some guy named Joshie.

“Aww, man,” he said when he found out his amp was damaged beyond all repair.

And it took a while to cheer Brendan up after he learned that the only salvageable things from his drum kit were his cymbals. He was real mad at first, yelling at the fireman for no apparent reason and just generally being angry about it, but then he walked across the parking lot and paced around in circles in the grass, blowing off steam and madly muttering swear words to himself.

Joey went over there and talked to him for a while. Surprisingly, no fists flew – a rarity when two Veins brothers speak when one of them is ticked off. They walked back without a word and I smiled over at Brendan.

“Sorry, dude,” I coughed. It wouldn’t be the end of the world for him. He had a whole other drum set parked in the studio, a brand new one Rai let him use and keep. The one that just got burned was the one he started playing in fifth grade – he needed a new one anyway.

He sort of scowled at me, but shook it off. “I hate technology.”

It took a second for me to get it.

Thankfully, and I mean this with every ounce of my being, nobody got hurt. Nobody in either band was injured, none of the staff on duty there got a scratch on them, and nobody in the crowd was hurt in any way. The fire was confined to the stage area and was able to be contained, and even though the alley would have to pay for the damage done, it all turned out relatively well.

Plus, after that whole ordeal, a lot of the crowd had left, either shaken or exhausted already, even though it was hardly after seven. And Olli felt awful about the fire and how the show had to be cut early, so he yelled at the remaining people if they wanted to hear us do an acoustic set – Plaster Caster and Olli Lolli.

They said yeah, and then there we were, sitting on the back bench of our rented SUV with acoustic guitars in our hands, singing songs with smiles on our faces. It was like playing the full-band way except there was hardly any sweat and everything just sounded more raw and natural – just the way I like it. And since the people that were left were pretty sparse compared to the ones who came in the first place, it felt so much more intimate.

We even had some full-fledged banter conversations with a few of the people who were left. There were a few young teens there, though most of them were in their early twenties. And they were girls, too – pretty girls. And a few gay guys. But that didn’t matter, since when we played, we were unified, as cheesy as that sounds.

It wasn’t often we did acoustic shows. When we did, for some reason I liked them better even if I wasn’t able to feel the thundering bass in my heart. They reminded me that things weren’t always better with the volume all the way up. Sometimes it was better to go hushed for a moment and pick up on the quieter things.