How did a legendary rock bar like Hellcat's look? Kind of run down, but with a big neon sign of a cartoon cat doing a gogo dance and a large, possibly real, Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter mounted on the roof over the girl-cat, WWII vintage stuff; the place had been a naval aviator bar once, before it became a rock and roll bar. 

It certainly smelled its age: a reek of beer, sweat and other things that couldn't be scrubbed out with bleach and brillo pads, not that anyone ever tried. But it had been rocking since the 1970's and it had a reputation; things happened there. It wasn't supposed to smell like tobacco, but Hellcat's management looked the other way when it came to smokers of all types. They only made a show of telling everyone to snuff it when an authority figure happened by and took offense. Otherwise, the place was understood to be 'at your own risk' when it came to lung cancer and second hand buzzes.

The lights were on, for the moment anyway, and the bars were doing a sedate business as the fans filed in; opening band? No big deal. They were here to see a couple other bands, notably Shamekiss, an established metal act that had a hit about seven years ago and therefore headlined. They had struggled, ever since, to put out another hit, and their subsequent albums were okay, but nothing too great. There was an act between these guys and Reckless Life, promoted by a guy named Martin Smythe, called Blue Ribbon Nitrous Oxide, and they had this slick, overdone look to them, matching instruments and a marquee banner; they actually took up more space on the stage than Shamekiss did. It left very little for Mark to work with to set their stuff up -- it was modest in comparison to the other acts. He managed to work with Manny's good will to get the equipment rented on an IOU, primarily in the form of speakers big enough to handle the size of the room, capacity about nine hundred. He was making sure the cables were out of the way, tucked under things and otherwise not a hazard to be tripped on, though it was also easy enough to get them out later; he tied a lot of them off with colored cord so he could keep track of what was what.

Still, he'd worked at the Power Sound long enough to know how to handle all the setup shit, with a little help from the other guys, though Cave stayed in the dressing room, if a piss-stained closet with decades of sharpie-grafitti could be called that, and worked on his anger management; Martin Smythe had come through affecting a Cockney accent and managed to piss the Texan right off by being patronizing—he’d started with his surprise that the band was doing their own setup, because it didn’t really have enough money to afford anyone reliable – they had a pothead named Johnny Melo, but they all called him Mellow Yellow; he was another Power Sound guy, but a little on the burnt-out side, and Mark couldn’t find him. So he, Ren and Stace got to work. 

Down below were the bored, arriving early birds that didn't think the opening band would be worth a shit, and up above, in the VIP area, were dudes that cared more about what was going on with their phones than some piddly-dink band that was opening for everyone else. The floor was well-lit so people could see where they were going and the stage wasn’t, though there were an array of lights overhead. Reckless Life got the basic lights, but nothing else, because everyone else had to get their arrangements as well

It was Reckless Life's first 'big' venue, and a lot of people working Hellcat’s were unimpressed, which is something they just had to live with. They were looked at as some sort of charity case, and had to prove otherwise. On the other hand, Cave and the rest of the band, but Cave primarily, rallied their fanbase of people who signed up on mailing lists and facebook and other social media platforms at the smaller concerts they done to come to the concert. To help bulk the fanbase up for Reckless life, because perception counted, they even pooled money, hard earned in their day jobs, to buy out a certain number of tickets and distributed them to friends (not, for the most part, family) so they had people there that were loyal to them. A surprising number of them were strippers and friends of the strippers, whom Stace had apparently met while he bartended at a titty bar; how he landed that job was a mystery to the band. How he lost it was easy; Stace had a mouth.

In any case, the setup finished and they were onto the sound tests and some heckling from down below, ignored from the dudes in the VIP section, not that Mark had any idea who they were nor cared; Reckless Life didn't have a record deal and didn't even have a promoter, but did its own EP that it paid out the nose for in studio time at a crappy place. It was early stuff and more raw than the current song lineup, that they'd been working on with the hope of marketing themselves to labels to be signed. BRNO, Martin Smythe's little project, were the ones the big guys were here for. And Smythe had been on stage berating them about how they shouldn't put up too much stuff, because they needed to clear off 'bloody fast' once the next band was ready to go. That's what set Cave off.

It was about that time when they finished the sound check, Mark only doing his in perfunctory fashion to make sure the tuning was right on a guitar he'd just picked up for himself, a Soloist Archtop, but with a wood pattern that was gloss black, with the whorls on the stained rosewood done in purple. The whole thing was a custom job that came to Manny's from an estate sale, and Mark decided to throw several paychecks worth of pocket money at it; unlike most of the band, he was financially responsible, if barely.

He had that thing tuned.

The lights went down and the band got lined up to go out, suddenly tense, coiled, ready to go, in that stupid, shitty little hallway. BRNO's guys were dickbags to their opening band, but Shamekiss' guys were giving them high fives and encouragement as they rolled out; 

"And here's Reckless Life!" Cheers from their friends, muted applause and 'who the fuck are they?' from the crowd.

He put his foot on the pedal and waited for Dalton to start the drum, which would be when he started his portion of the song's intro.

They'd picked their song well; a hard rocker called “Here Comes the Next” Lots of songs about bad romance seemed to be a trend, but this one had a different slant to it. Instead of lamenting love gone bad, the song took it for granted, even as it looked forward to the next fling, which would probably go a lot like the last one. Early on, Mark learned to write the lyrics to seethe a bit; Cave could deliver the sneer better than any frontman they'd seen live -- the dude was fucking talented, but a total queen about things, and they had, after years of looking for each other, a band that seemed to want to push themselves, spend all their spare time playing and write songs that veered off from the common formulae one heard on the radio. The sweat they put into writing the songs, with Mark driving it primarily and the others then adding to the concepts Mark put together, as he finally grew into confidence in his composition and lyricism, was considerable.

Suddenly, the crowd was paying attention; one of the reasons people came to the Hellcat was because there was a legend about some of the careers that started there -- Martin Smythe wanted that magic for BRNO, those guys in the same skinny jeans and headbands, rocking the ironic thick-framed glasses, but suddenly it was the bunch of guys in the motley array of clothing, from Cave's leather pants and white t-shirt with a yellow smiley face that had a bullet hole through the forehead, to Dalton on drums wearing a suit vest but no shirt under it and Ren rolling the bass with the wifebeater showing off his tattoos, to Stace with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he kept the rhythm guitar going. Mark had a button down shirt, white polka dot on dark blue, worn untucked, and jeans. But it didn't matter than they were ragged, because it fed into the impression of ferocity.

A stunned half minute into the music, the suits were watching the set and the people down below had already started surging forward to scream, throw beer and enjoy themselves as the music made an assault on their senses. Cave's howl and the snarl of the guitars, not shy about showing off some chops, the furious but measured drumming and the rolling bass all were a distinct change from the sort of rock that seemed to dominate lately, stuff that tried to strip down and avoided guitar solos. This had more Iggy Pop, more Alice in Chains to it; Cave wasn't some reedy-voiced beanpole lamenting love, he dished out a full-throated vocal, just as Mark was all too happy to make the guitar really wail, rather than holding it back because the current fashion was lackadaisical. 

The divergence was rewarded; the crowd was going wild. Somewhere, in the middle of being in the zone, as the music came effortlessly, locked in with the rest of the band and as he moved about stage, flourishing the guitar and throwing his long hair about with gusto, he realized that Julie was down there, because she swore she would be, and that meant, more than likely, that Bryce was down there too; he would have hated this-- heaving, sweating bodies, booze, pot smoke and all sorts of people with tattoos and piercings all around them, pressing in with no personal space. Or maybe she'd been smart and gave the free tickets to her female friends; though they were nearly as disapproving as Bryce was, they were a little more able to bear up loyally in the face of adversity. Sort of, they’d still think ill of the band no matter what. Mark was an object of derision by himself, but Reckless Life was some sort of poster for everything Kelsey and Selene thought was totally not cool.  Stace liked to call them the “Pucker Twins,” or "The California Conformity Patrol" even though those girls would be a little out of place in a bar like the Hellcat. Not as much as Bryce, though.

–

Halfway through the set, the texted messages of 'OMG hurry up and get here!” bore fruit and all the people that planned to hang out and come in later showed up earlier than expected and dove into the ground floor. By the end of it, Mark was out of a shirt, drenched with sweat and flushed with blood and adrenaline through his system as they finished their set to a packed house that was screaming their heads off at them – there were suits on the VIP section, that balcony that looked down on them, but it was hard to see them with the lights of the stage shining in their face.

When they got off, they had two receptions backstage; Martin Smythe looking a bit gobmacked along with his boys looking a bit glum, and Shamekiss' lead guitarist, Michael Stern thumping Mark on the back and screaming, “HOLY SHIT BRO!” and practically pouring the hard liquor down his throat. Shamekiss were, at least, happy for the sudden showing of the first opening act, traditionally the new guys that had a lot to learn.

“Where the hell did you guys come from, Jesus Christ!” yelled Otto Bock, their bassist, and that made the whole thing worthwhile, even as they trooped on and the back stage guys hauled equipment off. 

“BAR!” yelled Ren; as far as he was concerned, the party wasn't starting until they were at the bar trying to score chicks.  It also got them out of the way of the guys that had yet to start performing, as a courtesy. Other bands with bigger dressing rooms might party in the dressing room, but they had no such space in that little pissy-smelling closet they were using.

They managed to get through a tight backstage with lots of people and get to the bar. Ren was yelling for drinks, people were trying to get their attention, and Mark, not worrying about people trying to like pat him on the back or anywhere else, spotted Julie and yelled, “Julie! How was it down there?” He was flushed, his olive-tinted skin slick with sweat – it was baking hot onstage – and he'd lost his shirt, but he seemed to be totally okay with that and all the people pressing in, though he managed to make room, with the assistance of Ren's biceps, for Julie to slip in through.