Chapter Text
The problem with playing arenas is that, from the stage, every arena looks basically the same. Metal frameworky bits, lots of lights overhead, big screaming crowd of people, not much else to see. The people tend to scream pretty much the same stuff every night, too. It's all, “Woooo, Blackbeard!” and “Yeahhh, Blackbeard!” and “Play Stop Or I'll Make You Eat Your Toe!”
Over and over, all around the world, ad infinitum. If Blackbeard wasn’t a solo act, he would’ve broken up by now.
Ed misses the stuff that makes rock real. The passion. The rabble-rousing.
He’s got a couple of days between tours, and for once, just once , he wants to start a night without knowing how it'll end.
Spanish Jackie's is the best bar in the area, if by “best” you mean “most likely place in which to witness a fistfight and then turn your head and see another, different fistfight.” Ed played there once or twice, back when he could do a show without everyone in the audience demanding the same ten songs. Apparently the titular Spanish Jackie has just married her eighteenth husband, who now pours the drinks and who, according to Yelp, is known for not asking a lot of awkward questions. Like “How are you?” or “Are you sure you want another round?”
Spanish Jackie's is the obvious choice, really. It has nothing to do with the TikTok thing.
(The TikTok thing is this: a short video, posted by user @sprigghassprung. The camera starts off pointed at a stained ceiling, then gradually focuses on a blond middle-aged man standing at a microphone in one corner of an extremely grubby-looking bar, the kind of place Ed wouldn’t have played even twenty-five years ago, back when he didn’t have money to spare.
The man, who is definitely overdressed in a well-tailored teal suit, waves his hands with all the enthusiasm of a full-time magician. “Honored friends,” he announces with a smile, “at this very moment, you are lucky to witness the inaugural performance of our soon-to-be legendary ensemble.” He extends one hand to indicate the band behind him, which is made up of a drummer, a bassist, three different guitarists, a clarinetist, a saxophonist, and… is that a mandolin player? “When you demand an encore tonight at the end of our set, ask for...” And here he pauses deliciously before, in perfect unison, every single person in the band yells out a different name.
Like, dramatically different.
Ed doesn’t catch too many: from lipreading, he can tell that the frontman says something like, “The Gentleman Rocker and His Radical Crew,” the clarinetist seems to be speaking German or Swedish or something, and on Ed's tenth viewing he realizes the guy with the mandolin just says “CATS.”
The camera flips around to a brown-haired man who raises his eyebrows and says, “Whatever we're calling this ... playing next Thursday, 8 PM, at Spanish Jackie's,” and then he flips the camera back to the stage area, as the would-be Gentleman Rocker takes a seat at a keyboard and turns to reprimand the others: “Come on guys, we practiced thi—”
That’s where the video cuts out.
5.7K views, which doesn't sound like a lot, especially considering probably half of them were from Ed. When you've been in the business as long as he has, you don't see a lot of genuinely surprising things.
The amount of chaos in that video—
The delight on the frontman's face as he introduced his motley band—
Who wears a professionally tailored suit to play a hole-in-the-wall like that? The guy had a pocket square, for crying out loud.)
Spanish Jackie's looks just how Ed remembers it from much, much earlier in his career.
A small crowd of fans swarms him when he first walks in, but his manager, Izzy, just sort of stares at them until they step aside.
The unnamed band— the overly named band?— is just taking the stage. The frontman bounds up to the microphone, wearing a different but equally expensive-looking and out of place suit.
“People!” he cries, raising his hands. “It is my pleasure to introduce our little musical collaboration, which this week, on a rotational basis, we're calling Karl's Krooners.” He shoots a pointed look at his drummer, a bearded white guy, who smacks the cymbal a few times as if in celebration.
“That's Mr. Buttons on the drums,” the frontman continues, “and Oluwande on bass, with Jim on lead guitar and knives, as well as Pete and Roach on lead guitar also! Filling out the crew, we have The Swede on clarinet, Frenchie on mandolin, and Wee John rocking the sax! And I'm Stede Bonnet, I’ll be your pianist here for the evening!” With a flourish, he takes a seat at the keyboard. It's a different keyboard from last time, much smaller. It may very well be a child's toy.
“Nobody's even named Karl,” Ed muses, enraptured.
“This is such bullshit,” mutters Izzy. “Can we go?”
Ed waves this aside.
The frontman— Stede Bonnet— hammers out a riff on the keyboard. He's a little limited in his range of notes because, again, child's toy.
“Now then, we're all familiar with The Mariner's Revenge Song,” he begins, which Ed personally thinks is making a lot of assumptions about Stede's very drunk and very rough-looking audience and their knowledge of the Decemberists, “but have you considered... the song from the whale's perspective? Tonight, we present, The Mariner's Revenge Song, featuring an aquatic mammalian addendum from our friend The Swede!”
And here, the alarmingly blond clarinetist puts down his clarinet and sort of honks what could be whalesong, if a whale were to sing jazz-style scat.
Stede Bonnet raises his eyebrows, as if daring the onlookers not to be impressed.
Ed claps wildly.
The Mariner's Revenge Song, as performed by Karl's Krooners, includes crowd participation, more fire than you’d expect, and a lot of puppets. It is also twenty-seven minutes long. This is partly because of the lengthy whalesong portion, partly because it was a long song in the first place, and partly because Stede has every single one of his many band members take a solo, including all three lead guitarists.
Halfway through the final saxophone solo, a small cluster of tourists stumble loudly into the bar. “Boo!” yells one in a white baseball hat. “Boo, this is pansy bullshit!”
Onstage, Stede purses his lips. “Now, now, we're the ones with the microphone tonight,” he intones, sounding for all the world like an exasperated kindergarten teacher. “Let's remember that rock 'n roll is about cooperation—”
“Rock 'n roll is about you suck!” shouts another tourist.
Stede stands up from his toy piano. “Wee John practiced his part all week,” he says sternly into the microphone. “So what you're going to do, right, is you're going to listen to Wee John play, and while you do that, you're going to, to shut your mouths and—” He breaks off when a flying bottle hits him square in the head. As he topples to the ground, he takes the mic stand with him.
Ed winces.
From the floor, Stede can be heard mumbling into the microphone, “The show... must go on...” He rubs his forehead, swallows, and then, still prone and clearly in pain, he announces, “Knife... solo!”
“Uh, you might want to clear out of the way!” yells the bassist, Oluwande if Ed remembers correctly. Jim slides their guitar around to their back and, as the rest of the band resumes playing, Jim begins hurling knives into the bar's dartboard on the other side of the room, each one striking close to the center and each one hitting its target to the rhythm of the song.
Meanwhile, Stede fights his way back to his feet. Half the bar cheers; the other half boos. Stede bows with a wobbly flourish, and the song finally rattles to an end.
“Fuck yeah!” Ed shouts, clapping hard. The drunk tourists start to try to catch his eye and then, uncharacteristically, seem to think better of it.
“Are you—you're serious,” says Izzy.
After grabbing a cup of ice from whatever-his-name-is at the bar, Ed circles around to the back of the stage where Stede is sitting and presses the cold glass to Stede's injured forehead.
“Thanks,” says Stede, his eyes sliding closed.
“No problem,” says Ed.
Stede's eyes open again. “Wait, who are you?”
Ed hasn't heard those words, in that particular order, aimed at him in years. He finds he rather enjoys the novelty.
“I'm Ed,” says Ed. “And that was punk as fuck, mate.”
“That is, of course, the goal,” says Stede, blinking in what’s probably continued pain. “Punk as...”
“Name one fucking punk song,” says Izzy from over Ed's shoulder. “I dare you. Name a single punk song.”
“That's Izzy,” Ed says.
Stede twists so that more of the cold glass comes in contact with his skin. He cracks an eye open to meet Izzy’s glare.
“Well, Iggy,” says Stede slowly, “afraid if I’m being honest, that sounds a bit gatekeep-y, don’t you think?”
Ed laughs. Stede sags a little. “Hey,” says Ed, “shouldn’t someone take a look at your head?”
Stede seems to come back to himself in the passenger seat of Ed's car, on the return trip from the hospital.
“Doctor says you don't have a concussion,” Ed informs him. “Which is fuckin’ wild because that bottle hit you right in the middle of your skull. You were out, man.”
“I guess I'm a lucky guy,” says Stede. “Or maybe my band is a good luck charm?”
“All nine of them?” says Ed.
“Hmm, yes, that’s right.”
“Why are there nine people in your band?”
“Well, everyone worked so hard for their audition,” Stede explains, “I didn't have the heart to decline them.”
“Wait,” says Ed, “you let in every person who tried out?”
“Rock 'n roll is about inclusion,” Stede says solemnly. “And technically, there's ten of them.”
“What?”
“There’s also Lucius, the band documentarian.” Stede glances out the window. “He's there to record everything, in case we happen to make rock history. Hey, thanks for the ride, by the way. When we get back, would you like a crepe?”
“... A crepe,” Ed repeats.
“Roach makes them on a hot plate in the tour bus,” says Stede. “With nutella and a delightful lavender simple syrup. We had to pare down somewhat to make room, but they’re totally worth it.”
Ed continues driving for a moment, considering.
“What happened to your keyboard?” he asks at last.
“Hmm?” says Stede.
“It's so small.”
“Ah,” says Stede. “Yes. It's my daughter’s, actually. I gave it to her three Christmases ago. Her mother got her a horse.”
Huh. Ed's plans are about to become impossible, or at least extremely complicated.
“Married?” Ed asks, aiming for casual.
“Divorced,” Stede amends. “On account of irreconcileable differences.”
“Oh,” says Ed. Then, “Sorry?”
“Oh, don't be,” Stede says cheerfully. “The difference we couldn't ir...reconcile is that I'm gay. I mean, there were others, but in retrospect, I think that’s the one that really sunk the relationship.” He pauses. “Oh, the keyboard! I was going to explain. I swapped my old one with my daughter’s, with her permission of course, to make room for the hotplate and the crepe mini-fridge.”
Ed nods. He takes this all in.
“Sorry,” says Stede, “and please don't be offended, but who are you?”
Ed smiles. “I'm Ed. And, Stede, I think I'd like to audition to be in your band.”
“Oh, that would be lovely!” Stede says, clapping his hands together. “What do you play?”
“Lead guitar.”
“Well, what do you know,” Stede beams, “I believe we just might have an opening for a fourth lead guitarist.”