Nicky and Ricky, they’d rehearse all right. They weren’t as into it as Tim and me. But they were down to get good enough to find some gigs. Get paid in six packs. Get laid after.

We scored some basement parties. A few gigs out in some cornfields with generators and kegs and no one listening to a note we were playing because they were all smokin’ pot or feelin’ each other up.

Then we scored that girl Heidi’s party.

You know, for the life of me, I can’t remember her last name. I know she was the middle of five hot sisters. Everyone in school knew about Heidi and her hot sisters.

And it’s weird, man. That I still don’t know. [laughs] I should grab a yearbook, except I don’t have any yearbooks. Burned all of mine.

Figure you know why.

You’d think Heidi whoever-she-was would come forward and say it was her. It was her party where it came together.

Though she and her sisters probably got that house cleaned up and her parents never knew.

Her dad was a cop, a cop with five hot daughters. [chuckles] Got my girls now and they’re beautiful so I know what kind of hell that guy lived.

But everyone knew about Heidi and her hot sisters and everyone wanted in Heidi or her hot sisters’ pants and everyone was scared as shit to try anything with Heidi or any of her sisters because her dad would fuck you up.

So, maybe even now, years later, that guy was such a hardass, they do not want their dad to know Heidi threw a rager while they were out of town.

What I do know is that I’d turned seventeen and the band was closing in on being nearly a year old and I thought that meant something.

Bands don’t last long. You seen The Commitments? [laughs] That’s every band’s story right there, man. One way or another.

One lives.

And a hundred die and the deaths are always ugly.

I also know that the band’s shit was coming together, we’d been at it so long, we’d gone from being bad to being alright.

And I remember that, right before that gig, Ricky had painted this kickass logo on his bass drum that dulled the sound of that motherfucker, but we didn’t care.

We were the Zeniths and that logo with the back of that long-haired dude with his ripped arms opened wide and the stars all around, like he’s got the heavens under his command.

Man, that logo was the shit.

Someone got hold of that drum kit, you know. I lost track of it, but someone got hold of it and knew what it was. Sold it. Made twenty-five thousand at some auction.

Can you believe that shit?

[Shakes head]

Crazy.

[Clears throat]