Except from "Alpha Goose and The Satanic Murder", a working novel exploring gigging culture and amateur Rock and Roll

"Darla pulled the back door open and was smacked by a wall of noise and the unmistakable scent of weed and sweat. “The tell-tale smell of a solid venue,” she thought. A burly security guard inside held up a hand and leaned in close to her ear. Over the noise he yelled, “Bands only. Go around the front!”

“I’m with Flower Supply,” she yelled back, slightly annoyed at the man’s ignorant misogyny.

He nodded his head in understanding and waved her through. She rolled her eyes as she walked past and into the dark hallway. On her left, a tall yellow rectangle illuminated a door frame. Light and smoke flowed from the bottom of the door while the smell of weed reached its dank peak as she passed by. She continued onward and hung a right at the end of the corridor. She passed another security guard and took another right as the corridor opened brightly to stage left.

The elevated platform on which “Wild Stan and the Shakers” were riling up the packed house noticeably shook. From her perspective, the band filled the right half of her vision while to the left, the crowd roared as it pressed tightly against the stage on which the band played.

Tom, indeed the name of the bassist of the Shakers, was the closest band member to her. As he played his pentatonic scales, he stomped his feet wildly and danced a tight circle with his head turned upward, his whole body flowing from left to right and then left again. Across the stage, a guitar player placed his right converse upon the monitor as he swung his long black hair violently from side to side, ejecting sweat five feet in every direction. 

On the drums was Xola Okoro. Officially, they were Wild Stan and the Shakers, but if you were in the know, you were there to see Xola Okoro and the other guys. Xola was a fourteen year old African American drumming savant, and she could play the motherfucking drums. She was the youngest of an affluent Nigerian family that had moved to the bay when she was ten years old. When she told her parents that she wanted to learn to play the drums, they did some searching online for instructors and came across Wild Stan’s Craig’slist ad. The advertisement's title was listed as ‘“Seasoned drumming instructor for any skill level", which was only a mild lie. Stan was working as a music teacher at James Lick Middle School and was picking up side jobs teaching any and all instruments, a la carte . He had posted similar ads for guitar, bass, harmonica, trumpet, xylophone, harp, and piano, which he knew the least. 

It didn't take long for Stan to see what Xola was packing. Darla had always wondered what he must have said to Xola’s parents to allow their 12 year old daughter to play in a rock and roll band like his. “Must have been something pretty wild,” Darla had always joked. 

Two years later, though, her parents could be found standing near the back wall of every show, sipping bottom-shelf wine from plastic cups. 

Xola hit the drums like a Kamikaze in a dive. Reckless and emotive yet precise. She was as fast as they came. 

Wild Stan stood facing her on the stage, legs wide and biting his lip as he ripped power chords out of his Les Paul as if he was preparing to rip out its heart and throw the bloody entrails to the mob.

Something to Darla’s left suddenly caught her eye. A kid in a plain white t-shirt had jumped from the crowd to grab a low hanging rafter. He pulled his legs up to meet his hands while subsequential resisting a bouncer's futile attempts to pull him back down to earth. The crowd flowed, danced, and bounced heavily into one another. They swayed in a collective, cathartic angst that both seethed and rejoiced.

Darla watched as a courageous young woman stood front and center, pinned between the passion gale behind her and the hip high stage wall in front of her. She held her phone horizontally as she took a shaky video of her perspective of the band and shouted along to every bloody word."