Crystal Passion Ch. 11

Nobody should approach me if they want a fair, balanced and informed opinion of Rock Hill, South Carolina. Most of what I discovered about the city was well after the Crystal Passion tour and what we saw was probably unrepresentative and, to be honest, not especially attractive. It was a town very much in the shadow of the somewhat larger city of Charlotte, 25 miles away and mostly only glimpsed at as we drove by on the relatively new Interstate 485 which also took us past Charlotte Douglas Airport from which we'd later fly home.

Mostly what we saw of Rock Hill were derelict mills and warehouses. We didn't visit the York County Museum, the White Home or the Botanical Gardens. The best that could be said about the hotel we were staying at was that it had once been much grander in the past, but nobody could mistake the Paradise Hotel for what it had named. The plumbing was dreadful. Every single tap dripped, especially the ones servicing the chipped enamel baths. And, other than malfunctioning air-conditioners, out-of-order escalators and sticky red carpets, the hotel's prime attraction was a huge lounge bar with a juke box so loud that it could be heard from every bedroom and which only played records by the Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash and the Eagles. But even those in our band who enjoyed this kind of Rock and Country music (which definitely didn't include me) wouldn't feel welcome in a bar where the women clientele were mostly there for business.

"Let's hope our gig doesn't get pulled after that drive," Andrea remarked when we collected the keys to our bedrooms.

"There are two gigs," said Crystal. "There's one tomorrow night and another on Friday. A cancellation would be very expensive. I'll check out the situation as soon as we've eaten." It was early evening and we'd not rested once on our long drive from the Virginia side of the North Carolina State Border where we'd stayed the night at a shabby motel on the Old Pipers Gap Road.

"Do we have any gigs after Rock Hill?" Olivia wondered.

"Not for over a week," Crystal answered. "There's one in Baltimore, Maryland, and then another in New York again. Brooklyn this time. And that'll be our last concert!"

"About fucking time!" snorted Jane. "This tour's been a nightmare from beginning to end."

"It's certainly not been the success I'd hoped for," Crystal conceded.

Judy, Tomiko and I all volunteered to bundle into the Chevy with Crystal and make a preliminary visit to the Penitence Club where we'd been booked to play. With a name like that the club could have been anything. Judy speculated that it was a BDSM fetish club with dungeons and chains, while I couldn't help wondering whether it wasn't somehow associated with a denomination of Evangelical Christians.

"It used to be called the Repentance," Crystal said, which didn't resolve our speculation at all.

But as it was, Judy's conjecture was the most accurate, although thankfully if it was being used as a fetish club it wasn't on the nights we were due to play.

"Am I thrilled to see you guys!" said the club's proprietor who was waiting for us in the Penitence Club's bar. He introduced himself as Skull, which was an appropriate name for such a painfully gaunt man whose cheeks were sunk to the bone and whose crooked teeth were too big for his mouth. He was clad in leather and denim with long lank hair and spikey stubble on his chin and cheeks. I couldn't tell how old Skull was, but despite his many tattoos and piercings he was probably in his forties or even older. "I was dreading you wouldn't make it."

"Why would you think that?" said Crystal in her sweetest voice. "We wouldn't dream of letting you down."

"Well, you can't have missed all the shit going round about you and your band, girls," Skull said. "It's fucking everywhere. It was even in The Herald, not to mention the fucking Rush Limbaugh Show and all the other asshole fascist radio talk shows. From all what they say, I can't wait to see you guys perform. Is it true you chicks have sex on stage together?"

"Not on stage so much," said Tomiko in the spirit of clarification.

"But you take your kit off, don't you? That's what The Herald says. We should be pulling in punters from Charlotte now your record got played on WRDX FM. And there was some shit about you chicks in The News & Observer. You guys have triggered a fucking storm. It's gonna be fucking amazing tomorrow. There'll be a line round the block to see you: sex or no sex."

"Definitely no sex," said Crystal.

"Don't let me stop you if you change your mind, girls," Skull continued. "You wanna see the posters I got made for you? They're fucking awesome!"

"Yes, why not?" said Judy, speaking up for a visibly apprehensive Crystal.

Skull unfolded a poster on a beer-stained table. I could see that even Crystal struggled to maintain her conciliatory smile while I was just too horrified to comment. The best that could be said for the poster is that it might have once been fashionable in the early days of punk rock.

"It's definitely something," said Judy Dildo, who was the only one who might have a partiality for the mock Gothic font in which most words were printed. The only other font used was ugly and angular as if someone had scratched the words on a concrete wall with a chisel and this was used to display the band's name as Cristal & the Passion. Under all this was a smudgy sepia image of a few nearly naked women wielding electric guitars and posturing with their mouths open and their tongues hanging out.

"Good, ain't it!" said Skull. "I got my mate Piles from the tattoo studio to put it together. We've plastered these posters all round Rock Hill. That and all the free publicity you chicks have got will really draw 'em in tomorrow."

"I dare say it will," said Crystal half-heartedly.

Not that Skull would have noticed a lack of enthusiasm. He was far too intent on admiring the poster laid out in front of us. "Fuck knows who these chicks are," he said, indicating the grainy images with the discreetly obscured nipples and crotch. "Fucking lookers, ain't they? I can't fucking wait to see you chicks strut your stuff."

"Not all of us take our clothes off," I remarked.

"Well, there's always one spoilsport, ain't there," Skull smirked. "But as long as there's something for the guys to look at, we'll be OK. You dig?"

"Yes, we understand," said Crystal. "We know exactly what you want."

"Damned right you do, girls," said Skull, proudly reviewing his poster which heralded in hard-to-read Gothic font that 'Teusday Nite was Girls Nite!!' and that we would be responsible for 'the Very Best Butt Naked Rock & Roll in Both the Carolinas'.

"Shall we just call off the gig?" I asked Crystal as soon as we'd left Skull behind and in the street outside the Penitence Club

"Call it off?" Crystal wondered, clearly taken aback. "Do you really think we should?"

"You saw the poster," I said. "We've met Skull. What the fuck does he think we are? The Sex Pistols?"

"Maybe..." Crystal said warily.

"For fuck sake, Crystal," I said, pressing home the argument. "The poster makes us look like a third-rate Punk Revival band. They couldn't even get the band's name right. And if you think I'm gonna get 'butt naked' for a crowd of grungy pervs... It's fucking insane! Let's just cut our losses and call it a day here and now."

"I dunno, Pebbles," cautioned Judy. "Come on, Crystal. What's the gig worth? How fucked are we if we don't do it?"

"Our funds aren't in the best state," Crystal admitted.

"Fuck, Crystal," I exclaimed. "Are you serious? We made a mess of things in Detroit and look at the shit that got thrown at us at the Sisterhood Festival. Are we going to erase the very last trace of our credibility in Hicksville, South Carolina?"

"What's the bottom line, Crystal?" chipped in Judy. "Do we have a choice?"

"We always have a choice," Crystal said cryptically.

"Fuck it!" Judy exclaimed. "I need a drink. Let's go to that bar over there and chat about it over a Budweiser or whatever other piss-poor beer they sell."

"I could do with a drink, too," chimed in Tomiko who was still stoned after having sampled Judy's Tijuana Hash.

Fortunately, there was an empty bench on the Mockingbird Bar terrace by the roadside so we didn't have to venture inside what was the kind of low-down disreputable bar that often gets featured in American films where the hero gets drunk and beaten up in a brawl. Judy Dildo wasn't fazed at all and happily strode inside, ignored the unsubtle stares and bought three beers and a mineral water. Maybe the men leaning on the counter thought Judy was a biker chick and that they'd better keep their distance in case there were also some male bikers around.

"I don't think doing the two gigs at the Penitence will harm our reputation any worse than it already is," said Judy as she handed out the drinks. "We need the cash just to afford to fly home. Let's face it, this tour's been a fucking disaster and we need every last dime we can get."

"Is that true?" I asked Crystal.

She nodded. "We're not in a good place, Pebbles."

"We'll give the fuckers what they want," said Judy. "Rock & Roll and naked women. No pussyfooting this time! The real deal."

"I'm not taking my clothes off again like we did in Detroit," I said.

"I'm not saying you had to," said Judy.

"I never joined Crystal's band to play fucking Rock Music," I continued. "I hate Rock. I hate Heavy Metal. I hate all that shit."

"I know you do, Pebbles," said Judy. "But it's just the one gig and you can program your synths to make whatever kind of sound you want. Think of it as us being like the Prodigy or the Chemical Brothers..."

"Anyone who doesn't want to perform at the Penitence doesn't have to, Pebbles," said Crystal diplomatically. "We can arrange the songs so we don't need keyboards. You don't have to come on stage with us."

"Fuck!" I exclaimed, knowing that I'd already lost the argument. I turned my head towards Tomiko. "Have you got any of that Tijuana shit on you?"

"Not out in the open, Pebbles," said Judy prudently. "Look me and Tomiko, we'll go to the loo—what they call the bathroom over here—and skin up a big one. But then we'll have to be fucking discreet when we smoke it."

"Yeah," I agreed, looking forward to the opportunity to be left alone with just Crystal. "Sounds like a plan."

However, I barely passed even two words with Crystal before we were interrupted, this time by two long-haired young men puffing on Marlboros and dressed in jeans and tee-shirts.

"Hey, gals, mind if we join you for a beer?" asked the one with blond hair.

"Well, as a matter of fact..." I began, fully intending to tell them to fuck off.

"Of course we don't mind," said Crystal sweetly. "We haven't had the chance to chat with the locals."

"Heck no, girls," said the other man. "You ain't from these parts, are you? I reckon I know your accents. You English or summat?"

"Yes, of course. My name's Crystal and this is my friend Pebbles."

"Like the fucking Flintstones," the blond-haired man exclaimed. "I'm Des and this here's Gus. We sound like some fucking TV Show too. Des and Gus!"

Crystal laughed good-humouredly and in the chat that followed, she mostly asked questions of the two men while I sullenly and silently puffed away on the Marlboro cigarette that Des offered me.

"We've just come out the pen," admitted Des in answer to Crystal's question. "Thievery and Burglary that's what we've done time for. Not for the first time neither."

"Those bastards have got it in for us," said Gus. "I'm out just ten days and I get sent back to York County before I can earn a single day's honest pay."

"Shit, Gus," said Des. "You ain't done an honest day's work in your entire life. If it ain't thieving, it's dealing meth, cracking joints or aggravated assault..."

"You ain't no saint, Des. You got caught fair and square. You lifted a whole bunch of shit from that house on West White Street..."

"I was desperate. I was gonna be evicted and all. I had to do somethin' to pay the rent. My missis was relying on me..."

"And now she's done gone left you, Des. Fine load of fucking good it did you. You're in as much shit as me now."

"What are you going to do now, Gus?" Crystal asked.

"Fuck knows. Rob a bank, I s'pose," said Gus. "You girls don't know what it's like being on the wrong side of society..."

"I don't know about that," said Crystal ruefully.

"Even if you did get in the shit," Gus continued, "you'd climb out of it OK. You got an education, I can tell from the highfalutin' way you speak; those long educated words I don't rightly know."

"That ain't the point, Gus," said Des. "This here girl's no criminal. She's like a fucking angel, 'scuse my French, ma'am. But you are a crook, Gus. You're one mean motherfucker. Me, I've done my time. I'm gonna go straight. I'm gonna get a job and get my missis and my boy back. I done wrong. I know that. And I'm truly sorry for what I did and the distress I caused those good folks on West White Street."

"I'm sure things will work out for you if you're sincere," said Crystal, who was spared the need to elaborate by the return of Judy and Tomiko who'd already smoked rather more than their fair share while in the lavatory. But Tomiko once again demonstrated her fantastical ability to roll the perfect joint, however stoned she was.

"Hey guys," said Tomiko in a voice whose poshness was well above and beyond any scale that Des and Gus had encountered before as she proffered them a lit spliff. "We`ve got plenty to go round."

"Not now," said Judy guardedly, knowing only too well how undiscriminating Tomiko could be with regards to sexual liaisons. "There are other things we've got to do this evening."

"Like what, sweetheart?" challenged Gus.

"Wouldn't you like to know, lover boy?" said Judy in an assertive voice that effectively killed the likelihood of anything between them resembling romance. "Just enjoy a World Class Tijuana toke while it's going free and don't fucking Bogart the joint, boys."

It was as apparent to me then as it has been subsequently to Polly Tarantella that the preparation for the Penitence Club gig was much more in Judy's control than it was Crystal's. On this occasion, Judy Dildo was effectively band leader while Crystal was relegated to chief song-writer and lead vocalist. She didn't have the spirit to resist Judy's coup d'état. In any case, Crystal had no alternative to offer. And this seizure of authority, more than any other, is what most riles Polly about Judy. She even speculates that had matters turned out differently, Crystal Passion would have been side-lined from her own band and that it would in effect become the Judy Dildo band. But bizarrely enough, Polly is about the only person who might have liked the Rock & Roll direction Judy might have taken the band. Nobody else in the band would have agreed to such a change, especially not me who, along with Jane and Jacquie, still dreamed of a future cutting white label twelves and DJing at Pacha and the Café del Mar. My sister, Andrea, had already said she was unhappy with the non-acoustic element of the Crystal Passion band and that she preferred it when Crystal had been a solo performer.

Crystal's biggest achievement was that she'd managed to hold together a band of so many disparate elements, a band that could include Andrea and me, Judy Dildo and the Harlot, and Olivia and Thelma. Such bands are very rare and don't normally last for long.

It was Judy who took the wheel of the Chevrolet on the drive back to the hotel (again displaying her legendary ability to never get wrecked however much dope she'd smoked), while in the back seat, next to Tomiko, Crystal sat silently with her face pressed against the window.

"Hey guys, look at that shit!" said Tomiko leaning a pointed finger over my shoulder and towards the wall of a dilapidated factory where one of Skull's posters was pasted. What made even Tomiko agitated wasn't so much the defaced poster, which looked no better in situ than it did in the Penitence Club's bar, but the nature of its defacement.

In England, when a poster is pasted up which shows something a little bit risqué any later defacement makes it rather more obscene than it was before. A picture of naked or semi-clad woman are embellished with crude sketches of erect penises and scrawled over with juvenile obscenities. But this defacement was of quite a different order. Across the poster and obscuring all trace of nudity was a strip of white paper of the type that normally announces a change to the planned event on which was printed in sans serif (rather than Gothic): 'Ban Indecency in Rock Hill'.

Another poster a few yards further along was pasted over with a similar strip of white paper with the same message but also with a spray-painted message probably not written by the original defacers. And this read quite simply: 'Kill All Dike Punks'. And another poster was similarly obscured by a white strip with the printed message: 'God Hates Lesbians'.

"Fuck!" exclaimed Judy Dildo, clearly impressed. "There's obviously someone here who doesn't like us."

"Or even women in general," Crystal commented.

Our growing fears about how we'd be received were further heightened when we later drove from the hotel to the Penitence Club. As was our usual routine, we arrived a few hours early to set up the equipment, do a sound check and familiarise ourselves with the venue. With so many of us and so much equipment, we had to travel in both the Chevrolet and the Volkswagen Camper, expecting just to park outside the Penitence, unload the equipment and park the car nearby. However, as the club had no car park, we had to park our vehicles a block or so away in the nearest available lot. There was no way the Camper Van could be described as discreet or unobtrusive adorned as it was in psychedelic colours and celebrating long-gone rock bands such as the Grateful Dead and the Doors. Although it would be eye-catching wherever it was parked, on this occasion the fading grandeur of Volkswagen's hippy icon was an unwelcome beacon to our presence in Rock Hill's streets that, however well lit by the bright sun, were manifestly squalid and grimy.

"Is it safe to leave the van here?" Andrea wondered, as she lifted out her violin case.

"It's no less safe than parking it at the Paradise Hotel," said Judy with a dismissive sniff.

"It's best the van is parked nearby if we need to make a swift getaway," remarked the more practically minded Bertha. "Not that it wouldn't be better if we were parked a lot nearer."

So, we all had to share the burden of Jane's drums, Tomiko's sound desk, my keyboards and Olivia's assortment of bongos, cymbals, tambourines and tympani along with whatever we would normally carry. As we walked across the near empty lot from the psychedelic Camper Van along Rock Hill's least celebrated streets, these instruments (especially my own) had never before seemed more heavy. And although we arrived earlier than we normally would, there were early signs of what would later be a somewhat larger crowd. There was already a straggle of young Americans hanging around the front entrance to the Penitence Club attired in the Grunge scruffiness now fashionable in the States nearly twenty years after it had been so in the UK. There was no surprise here, as our audiences were mostly much the same wherever we'd played, though in this case there was a marked lack of women. Clearly 'Girl's Nite' at the Penitence didn't mean that there'd be a greater presence of female fans.

What we weren't used to seeing—had never seen before—was a small group of exactly the sort of person you'd never associate with a Crystal Passion gig gathered together on the other side of the road from the venue behind placards that read 'God Hates Lesbians' and 'Rock Hill Says: Cristal & the Passions Go Home!' At this stage there were twice as many people camped opposite the venue as there were young men waiting to go inside. I wasn't in much of a position to get a close look at the protestors, but they looked no different to the great majority of people we'd seen so far in South Caroline or, indeed, anywhere else in America. Blue jeans, check shirts and mostly overweight. If they differed at all, it was that the men were more whiskered and that some of the women sported plaits and head-scarves. You certainly wouldn't guess they were radical Christian fundamentalists unless you happened to see them with a group of like-minded people.