Q Road Case

Jeff Hijacks the Rockafellas Dude

One of the clubs the Q's used to rock was Rockafellas in Columbia, S.C.   The first time I worked the stage there Bob told me "We're bigger than the Beatles here!" Now Bob was the ultimate BS guy, real smooth and a slow talker to boot. I shrugged and continued to set up the band's exaggerated back line (a testament to their over-inflated ego's, to be sure; good thing that they had me to help keep them grounded.)  Sure enough, by show time the place was to the rafters with drunk frat-boys hollerin' for blood. The band delivered, as usual, and I duly noted that Bob did not lie. Some months later we were back at the 'Rock' and things were going according to Hoyle, meaning that we were to play two shows for one fee. Jeff figured that the band couldn't make up the difference on the Salad Bar at the club owner's dreadful Peddler Steak House (Jeff was a vegetarian, making road-kill a real adventure) so he called a 'Con-fab' between sets with the group and the club owner. Unbeknownst to me they were sand-bagging the poor slob by boycotting doing the second set unless they were paid commiserate to the door. Reasonable, to be sure, except that the crowd was becoming increasingly hostile due to the lack of live tunage that was supposed to have commenced long ago. I was stuck stage-side in that blazingly hot band box of a club with no way to communicate to the band or our sound-man that the natives were not only restless, but getting a pretty good bead on the only person that they could associate with the bands no-show. Before the group had entered the 'cone-of-silence' (AKA the band-wagon) to do battle with Scrooge, Jeff had left only these very helpful instructions; "Keep checking the wiring. Stall. Make it look good." Should'a known something was up, but I dutifully wanked with everything wankable for about an hour (seemed like three) until cries of "Hey, fatso! Get the band out here now and quit fucking around!" hastened my departure to the wings…which, unfortunately was unshielded exit space adjacent to the postage-stamp sized stage. Although I didn't take any off the brow, enough bottles found their mark near to me that I decided to see "what the fuck WAS up"! Finally SPQ's came to the stage door grinning and high-fiving each other. I informed them of my discomfort and that their fan-base was in danger of pulling a 'Ziggy', but nothing could penetrate the euphoria of the moment, having made Mr. Rockafella accede to their demands for more dough and Perrier. And they killed, of course. And "Hey! Fatso!" became my new handle, at least behind my back.

-Sean Bourne