Page 5 of Shame Me
Aprofessionalband.
Ours and another local band opened for Fully Automatic, a Colorado band that now had three albums out and had achieved worldwide fame. That alone packed the house to the rafters, but it was also inspiring to know that a local band had made it—reallymade it. They weren’t just selling their own independent CDs like we’d been talking about. They were signed with a real label, getting played on the radio, touring worldwide.
Seeing them told us we could do it, too. The energy that night was through the roof.
I’d gone to a couple of thrift stores the day after our last show, looking for cheap clothes to wear as the drummer. Encouraged by me, we’d started out with a group look that we’d lost after we moved to Denver. Everyone in the band wanted to do his own thing. But I wanted to be strategic and, if the guys weren’t interested, I’d do it myself. It was hard enough getting attention behind all the guys moving around stage, so I’d have to make sure my costume worked for me.
But I didn’t just want outrageous clothing. I wanted clothes that felt likeme—and that was hard, because I’d always been a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl. But during my thrifty shopping, I found plenty of great clothes for super cheap that, if I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t cry over spending the money. I bought a couple pairs of faded jeans and took my scissors to them, putting in a few rips and tears. Washing them a few times would only help the look. I also managed to find an old Papa Roach tour t-shirt, a black blouse covered in lace, a silver dress decorated with sequins, and a black leather jacket. I cut fringe into the t-shirt and immediately regretted it, because it didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, so I wound up cutting the fringe off. Then the shirt just looked stupid, so I cut more off the bottom, making it now show off my midriff and the toned upper arms I could display.
Good enough.
Then I tore the sleeves off the lacy black blouse and loved it lots more, as I’d discovered that the more skin I exposed, the cooler I felt onstage, and I needed that. The jacket I left as it was and I’d use it when it was cold, but I cut the sequined dress off at the waist. Eventually, it would fall apart because of that—and maybe sooner rather than later, considering I kept finding sequins all over my bedroom floor after that.
But thrifting was now going to be a major part of my life. Until I had seven complete outfits to wear to different shows, I would continue making purchases.
For the show that night at the Vertex, I wore my cutoff Papa Roach t-shirt and a pair of my ripped-up jeans. Because it was cold like a typical Colorado night in early winter, I also wore my new-to-me leather jacket, and the guys didn’t see my full outfit until we were preparing to go onstage.
“Cool shirt,” Braden said, looking at my exposed belly.
“Think I should get my navel pierced?”
He shook his head. “Nah. You look great without it.”
“Thanks.” But could I trust his opinion?
Fortunately, Cy leaned over to insert himself into our conversation. “Slutty girls pierce their bellybutton, Dani.”
“Shut up, dude. Dani doesn’t want to be a slutty girl.”
That was sweet of Braden, trying to defend my honor and all, but he really didn’t know what I wanted. Still, I was beginning to question myself.
“Thanks, but neither of you know what I want.” Even while I said it, I knew deep down that Ididwant to try out being slutty, but it warmed my heart that Braden was looking out for me. And admitting tomyselfthat I wanted to be loose and free sexually was hard enough. “Do slutty girls get tattoos?”
Cy had a ready answer. “Ever hear of a tramp stamp?”
Zack came in the room then, cutting our conversation short. “Ready to go, guys?”
Braden pumped his fist. “Hell, yeah.”
“Good, ‘cause we’ve never played to a crowd this fuckin’ big before. This is gonna be epic.”
As pissed as I still was at Zack as a friend right now, I had to admit that his management of the band had already far surpassed any expectations I had. Our piddly-ass band from small town Dalton, Colorado, was going to play to a sold-outcrowd with a huge well-known metal band. Could it get better for us from here, or would this be the peak of our success?
Rather than question the future, I had to enjoy the present.
And we all did. The Vertex might not have been a huge stadium, but it was the biggest place we’d played up till that point, and the crowd was full of crazy energy from start to finish. As much as we’d enjoyed our past shows, this one blew them all out of the water. We got applause, devil’s horns, singing along (once they figured out the lyrics Zack was screaming)—everything except moshing, and this venue, with its bolted-down chairs, couldn’t accommodate audience members crashing into each other. The best part was, when we were done, the cheering lasted longer than any applause we’d ever had.
We hadn’t made it yet, not by a long shot, but I felt like we’d finally made an impression on Denver.
We broke down our set fast, because the Vertex encouraged us to join the crowd after our show. The problem, as far as I could see, was that there didn’t seem to be any placeforus to hang in the audience. And by the time we made our way out there, the local punk band Clara’s Dolls had already begun playing. Zack quickly wandered deeper into the crowd and, had I not already been intoxicated by the music and pulled into the beat of the band, I would have yelled at him, asking if the rest of us were chopped liver.
God, he’d turned into such an asshole.
But instead of tracking him down and ragging him out, I hung back with Braden and Cy. Our second guitarist was now sporting a tall blue mohawk, looking like he belonged more to the band onstage than he did ours, but it looked good on him. I had to give him credit—he was trying new things, trying to figure out who he was. Hell, we all were, myself included. Maybe me most of all.
Tonight felt like ladies’ night onstage. It started with me on drums and then Clara’s Dolls had a woman on bass. I’d never felt so empowered. That woman held her own with her male bandmates, helping me forget that she and I were anomalies in hard rock, and so I really got into their first song. The music wasn’t my usual cup of tea, but it had a hard edge, full of rage and unbridled fury, and I could feel it. It was captivating in that it grabbed the audience and wouldn’t let go. That was power. And I’d been so into the song that I hadn’t realized until the end of it that Cy and Braden had moved more toward the middle of the crowd without me, and I wondered if maybe they’d found seats. It looked like where they’d moved to offered a better view for them, because they’d been behind a couple of tall guys. I was just at the edge, standing on my tiptoes so I could see over a woman in front of me.
But another guy was standing next to me on the left, cheering along with me and the rest of the audience to let the band know we’d enjoyed the hell out of their first song. As the vocalist waited for the applause to die down so he could talk into the mic, the guy next to me said, “Hey! You’re the drummer from Once Upon a Riot, aren’t you?”
