Crystal Passion Ch. 04

"Youdidget married to Mark," said Marianne probingly.

"That doesn't mean I gave up anything," said Crystal in reply. "And well you know that, Mum."

"I must say yours is a marriage like no other," said Marianne with a sigh. "Giuseppe and me, we thoughtwewere open-minded and free-thinking, but you and Mark...Well!"

"What more did this sadhu say, Crystal?" I probed further.

"Lots of weird stuff. Like my music would be enjoyed more in foreign lands rather than in the land of my birth. That my music wouldn't be accepted in my own country..."

"I don't think that's so true, dear," said Marianne. "But Idothink you're very brave not to compromise. But that's not an attitude likely to go down well in America. I'd be surprised if you ever got to be more popular here than in England."

"What else did he say?" I persisted.

"That I should focus on making music that came from within and which was meaningful to me. That one day such music from the soul would be appreciated by the many rather than just the few. But most of what this guy had to say was well-meaning gibberish. I think he was just grateful that we'd had sex together. I don't think these sadhus get much opportunity for that."

"I'm sure you're right, dear," said Marianne.

"Youarecoming to the gig tonight, aren't you?" Crystal asked her mother.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world. But let's hope the Philadelphians appreciate it more than that crowd in Manchester. If it hadn't been for what you and your band look like and dress, I don't think you'd have had any audience left at the end of the gig."

"Wewereplaying support," Crystal said. "And I don't think anyone there had ever heard our music before."

"I haven't heard your music anywhere on the radio over here, Chrissie dear," said Marianne. "It's not played on the Top 40 stations or the Country stations, and not all on the African-American radio stations. No one knows what to expect. Are you going to be the headline act tonight?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Do you have a support act?"

"I'm not sure. I think so."

"Well, Chrissie, let's hope that if there is one, they'll put the audience in the right mood for you, Simone and the rest of your all-woman ensemble."

Marianne's concerns about the support act were well-intentioned but in the event it was more their evening than ours. We'd never heard of Josh Jackson and his group the Shackamaxons. Who had outside of Philadelphia? And despite Mary Jane's supposedly being a folk club, there was virtually no folk in their songs which was rock music firmly in the Bruce Springsteen tradition. Josh Jackson's songs celebrated an American blue-collar culture whose concerns were meaningless to an all-woman band from Central London. But in Philadelphia his music was very popular indeed.

When we arrived at the club, we were delighted to see a queue gathered outside the venue even though it was very different from the kind of audience you'd normally expect at a Crystal Passion gig. Our music didn't often appeal to an audience of mostly young men dressed in a uniform of leather jackets, blue jeans and check shirts. Of course hardly anyone in the queue had heard of Crystal Passion. They were all there to see Josh Jackson who, in spite of not having yet finalised a record deal, was going to have no difficulty in selling records to his already devoted fans.

Although the music and its cultural references were alien to us (especially to those like me who weren't rock fans), Crystal seemed to really enjoy it. And Judy, despite her loyalty to the main event, echoed Crystal's favourable assessment.

"These dudes can play!" she exclaimed pointing at the lead guitarist who, like Josh Jackson on rhythm guitar, dressed pretty much the same as his audience.

"It's the lyrics I like best," said Crystal.

I focused my ear on what Josh Jackson was singing, but it was scarcely poetry and not at all as allusive or evocative as Crystal's lyrics.

"It's all about car washes, drug stores and Walmart," I said. "And the rhymes couldn't be more obvious. 'Blue jean' and 'you know what I mean'. 'Cadillac' and 'bivouac'. It's not gonna give Bob Dylan sleepless nights."

"No," admitted Crystal. "But look at the crowd. They know the words off by heart and it means everything to them. The songs aren't like the Beach Boys: all sunshine and sand. That last one was about a car factory closure."

"Was it?" I said, genuinely surprised as I thought it was just a conventional love song.

"And this one's about the Gulf War. George Bush isn't exactly flavour of the month here..."

"Good thing they got rid of him after just one term then," said Judy.

Nevertheless, despite Crystal's good opinion of Josh Jackson, the audience who'd been so enthusiastic and lively during his set were clearly rather less bothered about seeing us perform. Indeed, after Josh Jackson's second encore when the lights came up to his fans' obvious disappointment, the general flow of the crowd was towards the exit. And by the time we came on stage, there was probably only about a third as many people in the audience as there'd been before the interval and almost all of them were clutching bottles of beer.

It was a mix of subdued cheers and wolf-whistles that greeted the Crystal Passion band as we came on stage. And the latter was mostly because Crystal was dressed, as always, in absolutely nothing and Judy with a strap-on dildo and black stickers over the nipples of her otherwise bare breasts. The rest of us, including me, took no such risk, although my shaved head, tee-shirt and tight denim shorts might well have raised eyebrows in an audience more used to watching mainstream rock bands.

Crystal made an effort to give a performance that Josh Jackson fans might enjoy. She selected a repertoire of those songs most likely to appeal to Rock music devotees and she subtly changed the lyrics to refer to automobiles, side-walks and freeways rather than cars, pavements and motorways. The audience applauded her politely, but as the concert went on more than half of our already depleted audience either made its way towards the bar at the back of the club or left altogether. None of us were surprised when after the first song, a long-haired bearded guy, dressed much the same as Josh Jackson but somewhat older, sneaked onto the stage and whispered to Crystal in an obviously embarrassed way. This wasn't the first time in Crystal Passion's history we'd had an intervention like that so we knew exactly what instrumental riff to play while Crystal and Judy slipped off-stage to return more modestly attired. Judy came back dressed in a short leather skirt with a bikini top, whilst Crystal just slipped on an oversized tee-shirt that oddly enough celebrated the Franklin Institute, Benjamin Franklin Parkway: not that any of us had actually visited it.

This concert was scarcely a huge success although we were politely applauded by the fifty-odd young men and women who hung around to the end, drinking from bottles of beer and smoking innocuous cigarettes. We didn't earn an encore and didn't really expect one. Indeed, it was something of a relief to get off stage. I took on the duty to sell copies of our CDs to the audience after the gig, but I wasn't too surprised to have sold only three CDs and they were all copies ofPassing Passionwith its artistic portrayal of a clearly naked Crystal crouching by the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens. That CD was almost always guaranteed to sell more copies than the other albums whose covers showed no nudity whatsoever.

I wasn't the only one selling Crystal's records. Marianne turned up to the concert just as she'd promised and helped me sell records at the make-shift stall we set up by the small bar just outside the concert hall. It was probably more because of Marianne's selling skills than mine that we managed to sell any records at all. When the last guest had left and before she drove back to her friends in rural Pennsylvania, Marianne chatted about her new life in California and made me even more eager to travel there some time.

It was only as Marianne and Crystal were saying goodbye to one another that I remembered that I hadn't taken my equipment off the stage. I tried to get back into the concert hall, but the door was locked. Through its small smoked window I could see my Roland D-50 on stage along with the rest of my gear, but I couldn't see a way to get to it.

"Was that your synthesiser, honey?" asked the long-haired bearded guy who'd asked Crystal and Judy to cover themselves up.

I nodded. "Can you let me in to pick it up?" I asked.

"'Fraid not," he said regretfully. "I don't have the keys. I think Ben's the only guy with keys and he usually quits as soon as he can. Anyhow, he ain't round here no more, I can see that. Come back tomorrow and I'm sure old Red will let you in."

"Red?"

"Yeah, he looks after Mary Jane's during the day when it's more a bar than a club. You'll recognise Red. He's got red hair. That's why he's called Red. I reckon you can't miss him."

So there wasn't much I could do about it. As we'd be leaving the following day to drive the 300 miles North-East to Boston, I'd have to go to the bar about midday, which was when it opened. And that also meant I couldn't accompany the rest of the band on their planned tourist trip of the historic city of Philadelphia.

Unlike Judy or Crystal who were never concerned at all about what people might think of them, I always tried to look as inconspicuous as possible during the day in an unfamiliar city. Especially over here in America, where I was expecting gun-toting red-necks to be standing on every street corner, although Philadelphia seemed to be more a city of check shirts and trainers rather than Stetsons and Cuban heels. So, I covered my freshly shaved head with a woollen cap and dressed in jeans and tee-shirt just like almost every other woman in the city. I wasn't sure whether a tee-shirt celebrating Orbital would make sense in Pennsylvania, but at least it wouldn't antagonise anyone.

"Yeah, Red, that's me," said the ginger-haired and ginger-bearded barman at Mary Jane's when I approached the bar. His hair was shoulder-length and tied back, but more prominent than the colour of his hair was the huge paunch that flopped over the lip of the bar. "What d'you want?"

"I need to pick up some equipment I left behind on stage last night," I said.

"You've got a weird accent, honey," Red remarked. "You weren't one of them English dykes we had last night. Fucking awful they were, I'm told."

Shit! I didn't want trouble. "No, not me," I said. "I'm a friend of Josh and his band. I just gave them a loan of my keyboards."

"Josh Jackson!" said Red warmly. "He's one hell of a guy." He glanced around the bar and spotted another middle-aged man who was too bald to have long hair, but compensated as best he could with a luxuriant beard. "Hey, Bob. This chick's looking to pick up her gear. You wanna help her?"

"Yeah sure, Red," Bob replied as he accepted the keys thrown at him by Red. "Come on, hon," he said. "Let's pick up your electric piano. I saw it there this morning and I thought: there'll be someone missing it who'll be coming round for it tomorrow. These electric pianos ain't cheap, are they?"

"No," I said as I followed Bob through the doors to the club and into the eerily empty and echoing space inside.

"So, hon," said Bob while I gathered up the leads and packed away my Rolands in the cases I'd also left behind. "You weren't with them Limey rock chicks, were you?"

"No, not me," I said. "I'm a friend of Josh's. They borrowed my...er...electric piano last night."

"I didn't know Josh played piano," said Bob. "Still, I'm glad you ain't one of those rock chicks. I'm told a couple of them were goddamn butt naked. Can you believe it! Mary Jane's is a music venue, not some kinda strip joint. There's plenty of them down by the Delaware if that's what you want."

I followed Bob out of the venue and back to the bar where Bob returned the keys to Red.

"Hey, honey," said Red with a quizzical expression. "You sure you're with Josh and the Shackamaxons? They've played here plenty times and I ain't seen no chick with them. You sure you ain't with this English rock group, what's it called, Crystal Fashion? You look like you could be."

"Not me," I said. Even though I'd collected my Rolands and didn't need to curry any more favours, I'd dug a hole for myself and I had to stay there.

All of a sudden there was an awful shriek. I looked around startled, half-expecting to see some kind of wild monster.

"Fucking juke box!" Bob exclaimed. "Always starts up too loud. And it's some fucking heavy metal crap some kid's put on."

"I don't know what kids get out of that horse shit," agreed Red. "Though from what I've heard, this Crystal Fashion chick band's even worse!"