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February 14, 2006

The Worst Night of My Life

Sunday, February 12, 2006, was the fourth anniversary of my Fletcher Award-winning rock opera, Girth McDürchstein’s ‘The Hedge.’ As mentioned on this blog, to celebrate, we put on a special staged performance at a venue called the Charnel House, on Chicago’s South Side.

In the 10 days preceding the show, the band got together to rehearse and stage with some of our “extended family”—the various musicians who helped us with the touring company of The Hedge back when we were touring the show heavily, from October 2002 to late 2004. These musicians included people like Sammy Shapiro, Wade Valencourt, Bob Prescott, and a few of the female singer/actors (Lita and Bebe, who brought a couple of their friends to help fill it out). Other than this, no original cast or pit member (not even the original production team!) could make it. Sad, but maybe foreshadowing what was to happen on Sunday night…

In the days that led to the performance, rehearsals didn’t go very well. The core of Abysmal Crucifix is distressed and exhausted from our recording schedule. This was one of the reasons I brought back the old players. Their gusto and vigor, I had hoped, would infect the others, and we’d have ourselves a bright, fun show.

As it turns out, they were even less enthusiastic about the performance than the core of the band. I will admit that things really didn’t end well with Bob Prescott or Sammy Shapiro when the tour ended. I was surprised they even came back, to be honest. It seems somebody in the band had promised them permanent positions with Abysmal, and they stuck with a rather difficult touring crew for years with that promise in their heads and hearts. However, when the tour ended, I cut them loose—we’re a five-member band. We don’t need infringement from a bunch of outsiders, no matter what Mikey may say about Margo’s drumming. I don’t want Abysmal Crucifix turning into the Beach Boys of the 1970s, with each member vying for creative control after Brian Wilson’s decline. I don’t want albums as tortured or eclectic as Sunflower or Holland. To quote Bruce Johnston’s only good song (ironically not written for the Beach Boys), “I write the songs.”

So with the lack of enthusiasm in the pit, and the gaggle of struggling actresses yammering incessantly while I was trying to direct, plus a group of sheepish nonactors—some engineers, a bartender, a few people we’ve met since we’ve come out here—cast in minor but pivotal roles for lack of anybody else who would perform on short notice, things seemed dire very quickly.

Within a few days, I had shaped everybody up. They listened to me, kept their eyes on me, and we started to get into the groove of the blocking (all based on notes I’ve kept from the original production) and the few snippets of dialogue. But the whole thing still seemed a tad lethargic. I kept demanding “energy!” with more and more pronouncement until, during Friday evening’s technical rehearsal, Lita spoke up:

“We don’t have any more fucking energy!” she wailed. “You’ve been rehearsing us nonstop for days. We don’t even get lunchbreaks!”

“You get lunchbreaks when you earn lunchbreaks,” I snapped back.

She, Bebe, and their “friends” struck sassy poses, hands on hips and frowns on faces. Shortly thereafter, the entire female chorus…simply walked out. The day before final dress, two days before the performance itself, and half our cast—gone! It was a challenge, though not insurmountable. I convinced several of the male nonactors to dress in drag for particular scenes. Oddly enough—I hadn’t conceived this in the writing; I suppose it was just a “happy accident”—the female chorus and the male chorus were never onstage at the same time, except during the “Guilt Trip” finale.

So that was one problem hastily solved. These men—real churlish “men’s men” types—didn’t seem enthusiastic about dressing up in, for example, cheerleading outfits. Not at first, anyway. I had been slowly teaching them each about acting, and they seemed to really understand the idea of “escaping” in a character, even a female character. It’s admirable how quickly they picked it up.

On Saturday’s two dress rehearsals—first in the morning, then the final in the evening (after a significant, well-earned break)—more problems arose. First, the pit essentially dissolved. Like I said, Bob and Sammy were already angry about not being made permanent band members. When Wade Valencourt caught wind of this, he became angry that not only had he never even received a false promise, but that his friends had and were betrayed by somebody in the band (I refuse to name names).

Still, none of them outright left until Jam—and while I love Jam, he, as the music director, can be a huge pain in the ass—took an opportunity to critique their competence. This launched Sam on a 10-minute rant about his guitar skill level, after which he and his already-miffed compatriots stalked away. With them gone, the tide turned as the balance shifted from mostly-outsiders to mostly-insiders. The few new musicians who had agreed to play for us, either frightened or angered at the perceived mistreatment of old friends, left us in the lurch.

This meant, playing in the pit, we had three people: Little Riffs Nicky, Jam, and Mikey (Margo had to be onstage, acting a triple role as the mother, girlfriend, and prostitute). Riffs is a great guitar player, but even he can’t single-handedly match the complexities of my guitar arrangements. I decided, as a last-ditch effort, to bring in the moderately skilled guitarist Carlos Ueberschaer (our longtime recording engineer), who would play an overcomplicated rhythm guitar part, while Riffs would trade off on rhythm and leads (depending on what was needed).

For drums, I called in a favor from one of my oldest, dearest friends. No, not Carl Davenport, Abysmal Crucifix’s original drummer (I called him, but he declined, then I became verbally abusive and he hung up)—DJ Koko, the woman who has rhythm literally in her blood (she was recently diagnosed with a rare disorder called “heart ultrhythmia,” or “a heart that beats in too steady a rhythm”). She hopped a plane from Miami and arrived only a few hours into the dress rehearsal.

This was not an ideal arrangement, but on the plus side, it was a group of close-knit friends, and their playing brought a much-needed vitality to the performance. Not to discredit Carlos or the members of the band, all of whom pulled their weight, but I credit the bulk of it to DJ Koko. Her luscious curves and endless gyrations while playing make her an ideal rhythm section—she is eminently watchable, even from the pit, and has an alarming energy level that could only be the byproduct of a rare blood disorder.

So with the band in good shape, it was time to concentrate on the actors. The men, in final dress, grew tired of the heavy make-up they had to apply and remove between most scenes. Since they were not actors to begin with and were, by and large, totally unprofessional, they launched what they called a “strike.” I have a better word for it—mutiny!

I told them to get the hell out, and as soon as they had left, I revealed my best-kept secret: a never-before-seen two-person version of The Hedge, with slightly reworked lyrics and totally different blocking, so that all it really required was myself and a woman. In this case, Margo, my wonderful wife, more than filled the shoes of the female. On top of which, she and I had been secretly rehearsing this version, as a contingency plan.

Unfortunately, by Sunday morning, things were amiss yet again. I’ll spare you the details of my marital life, but let’s just say a number of problems cropped up as a result of DJ Koko reentering my life. You see, in addition to being a great friend, she was also a great, great—let’s say “exceptional” lover. Of mine. And Margo was aware of this. And, once we were officially “together,” put a stop to it. And, unfortunately, men will be men. I hadn’t seen Ms. Koko in years—she concocted “Skullfucking Infants Estampie,” her remix of “A Star,” from a studio in Miami (using the rough tracks and various outtakes that I had mailed her) and sent the final copy to our studio in England—and, well, my sexual propensity toward well-endowed Latinas got the better of me.

I didn’t expect Margo to find us in the prop closet during a brief, musicians-only rehearsal of “Love Song,” and, well, she didn’t. At least, I thought she didn’t. It turns out, she had quietly witnessed more than enough to enrage her, and to my dismay, on Sunday morning, she herself quit the show, the band, and—worst of all—me. When I asked, “Who will fill your role?” she spat, “I think that whore you were with last night would be perfect.”

This got me thinking: Koko could, feasibly, program her extremely powerful drum-machine to perform the entire show without her direct supervision—if there were any problems, Jam knew enough to take care of it—and she could play the part. Assuming, of course, she could learn all the songs—with revised lyrics—and the blocking in only a few hours.

Long story short (too late, ha!), she couldn’t. She stumbled and stammered (both her tongue and her feet) and, worst of all, she can’t sing a lick. This, perhaps, explains why nearly everything she’s recorded has been an instrumental. On top of this, Jam really couldn’t handle both the keyboards and the drum machine, so on the four occasions in which the drum machine went awry, the problem was not fixed smoothly or quickly.

I’ve never been more embarrassed about a performance in my life—even my awful solo performance of The Hedge a few months ago was better than this turned out. The only fortunate thing about this—it didn’t seem like a good thing at the time, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise—is that almost nobody showed up. That’s right, the 2,000-seat capacity of the Charnel House, rented by me at great expense, packed in 238 people that night. Or, more accurately, 238 tickets were sold—by the curtain call, I saw only a few dozen still in their seats.

This entire idea was a disaster from day one. Not only has it ruined my friendships, my marriage, and strained relations with the band even further—our upcoming album, The Return, will be delayed indefinitely until we decide what to do about our drummer.

Written by Girth McDürchstein on February 14, 2006 11:52 PM
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