Free Oedipussy by Solomon Deep Page A

pre-show jitters.
    "Regardless of that, we gave it a lot, made some money, made a professional contact. It was awesome."
    "What do you think about us going back?" Steve asked.
    "It's a great idea - we could be The Caffeine Machine house band or something. Hell, we could practically hold practice there every week. If you count our jams in between songs, we basically had practice tonight, right?" Everyone chuckled. "The only thing that I think is a bit rough is being able to keep up that momentum about getting people to come out."
    "True." Kurt changed tone, "Which makes me want to say, and I can't speak for everyone, but I think you should keep the money since you invested the time and money on the tapes and posters and got that gig. It just seems right."
    "Yes," John and Steve replied simultaneously.
    "Come on, though, really?"
    "Just reinvest it in us or something. Use it to make more tapes and things."
    "That is reasonable. But dinner tonight is on The Dawn Ego."
    "You bet your ass, it is," John replied.
    And the food came and we ate, jokingly revisiting the moments, enthusiasms, and successes of the past twenty-four hours.
    When we finished, our plates were those of soldiers after the wars. We had shoveled food down our gullets to make up for the famine of the battlefield, and the stoneware was bone-clean.
    Ours was the battlefield of pop; the battlefield of taste, and rock, and everything that is good in this world against the forces of evil. It was the battlefield of corporate greed and tasteless sheep-feed they stuffed down our throats on the radio and television and the department stores selling boxes and boxes of faded dreams. In the face of living, the machine shoves these broken dreams of youth in big boxes at us for the money we willingly pump into their pockets. Nightmares. Once you bought the dream, it faded quicker than your years.
    I enthusiastically paid the waitress, and we clambered back to the van. Jenny stood on tiptoe next to me and whispered in my ear, "see you in bed," and walked back to her car. I felt carnal looking at her ass. It shook under a flannel shirt as she stepped into her driver's seat.
    It was nearing one in the morning. Our energy, enthusiasm, youth, and rock and roll remained coursing through our veins. I would never sleep again.
    Steve and I piled into the back of the van this time, and Johnny drove with Kurt up front. Everyone was parked at my house, and we would quickly unload the van as soon as we got home before everyone left to go back to their houses.
    He started up the van and began to pull out. The tape deck continued to play bootleg college radio station playlists featuring incredible bands whose sounds shook the foundations of regular radio. One moment, the young announcer mentioned Sonic Youth, and in the next breath he presented a song by Guided By Voices - or at least it seemed like a snippet of a song only moments long - incredible, hard, rocking, low-fi power grunge unlike anything I had ever heard.
    "Who are these guys, John?"
    "I have no idea. Don't you love it though? I love these tapes I get."
    "You should sell them or something. Or keep them. It is an incredible mix the college kids put together."
    "I know."
    We were driving on fifty, and ahead a pair of bounding high-beamed headlights bounced and bounced and bounced toward us in the opposite direction as we neared the bridge over Snake River Canyon.
    The song on the cassette stopped halfway through, and the hiss of the end of the tape, and a ka-chuck, and the hiss of the beginning.
    "They've got to put a CD player in this, soon," John said as we drove over the bridge.
    Snake River, I thought.
    The approaching vehicle was a Bronco, bouncing on an overcharged suspension. It seemed hastily attached, raising the truck almost too high for its bizarrely small wheels, and the headlights grew in the frame of our windshield.
    Snake River.
    The bronco moved quickly like a train toward us, staggering on the suspension, faster,