With the Devo slot as ammunition and a few telephone numbers laid upon us by Kate of The B-52's, we duped some nightclubs in Manhattan into booking us during a week-long blizzard. We weren't what they expected but poured on enough fake charm to get the hook at only one disco of the New Wave persuasion. We got the same question I'd heard asked of the Allman Brothers in 1969: "Are you guys really fromthe South?" Our rental van got us home ten days later with $58. More importantly, we were a mean little rock band now, able to lie and say that we'd taken Manhattan as we set out to conquer our own region.

THE ROYAL ROAD
The process of driving around in circles and becoming an alcoholic. In increases a band's resolve or destroys it. As a result of relative affluence, young middle-class white people develop bizarre tics which can create tremendous tension in the confines of a small vehicle jammed to the roof with gear and threatening to throw every imaginable rod at any given moment. There's never enough money for food. You never know where you're going to spend the night. You drive eight hours, and you're still late for the gig, and some club owner with one bucktooth is screaming at you to throw the amplifiers up on stage and play. People in black leather make fun of your tie tack. The club manager is jacked on the white lady and doesn't recall anything about the guarantee. A tiny detail that you forgot to take care of suddenly blows up in your face like the Hindenburg.  I remember only the good things, like driving through Popeye's Fried Chicken and ordering a can of spinach.

Before the Royal Road, during the embryonic phase of the band, hometown supporters came to the gig and provided a cushion, allowing everyone in the group to overcome the panic of the first shows. Once the city limits appeared in the rearview mirror, however, the cushion disappeared. Traveling in the South required resourcefulness. Sure, there were towns like Tampa where the local radio promoted us as "a punk group from CBGB's in New York City!" We packed in a partisan crowd so starved for something new that it didn't matter we weren't Punk or New Wave, only different. The problem was in getting to the Tampas: that is, the gigs routed along the way to make the whole thing pay. Most of the joints were still mired in boogie. These places weren't exactly prosceniums flanked by Doric columns. The audiences were skeptical and not very interested in art songs with titles like "Walk Like a Chicken." They were more like potential pipe bombs which we had to disarm quickly to survive. It was frightening, but it was also fun and new.

Back to The Bible: In The Singing Entertainer, John Davidson writes, "You must take the audience on a well-planned journey, a journey on which the ride must be as enjoyable and fufilling as arriving at the destination." To be honest, most performances in which I've been involved have been more like mazes with the occasional sinkhole opening up in the pathway. Which brings us to entertainment. Like most jobs, entertainment is a learn-on-the-job situation. It's the only way to learn what works, and what doesn't work. You learn to improvise in order to get off the hot seat (equipment failures, broken guitar strings, Bad Head). You learn to handle the heckling jackass by inviting him onstage, sticking a microphone in his face, and introducing him as "Chuck."

At first you stand in one place because you're scared. Then you leap up and down because you're still scared and don't want to be anymore. Then you leap up and down because it signifies commitment to the massive energy and spontaneity of the music. Then you stalk the stagein order to demonstrate command. Then you go back to doing what you did in the first place--standing still--because it signifies even greater command. Then you do all of the above whenever you feel like it because you've finally learned not to care. The Tao of Performance: not caring is entertaining.

Above all, entertaining is a willingness to make a fool of oneself in public and enjoy it. It's not often while playing in front of a bunch of hopped-up kids that I ask, "What's the meaning of entertainment in America?" Ruminations interfere with the process which, when working smoothly, is like getting lost and found simultaneously.

Some exploding zeppelins include The Opening Act Situation and The Showcase. The Opening Act Situation mormally takes place on a bigger stage than one is used to performing upon. The length of the set is usually quite limited. Stage goons are there to insure that no one touches any of the headlining act's idiotic props. These constraints make improvisational flights-of-fancy almost impossible. The audience doesn't care about you. They're there to see the headlining act. The only sensible course is to take as little time between songs as possible. That way the yahoos and town scruff don't have enough time to scream the name of the headlining act ad nauseam while you labor in The Pit of Hell. And moving swiflty from song to song confuses the undecided part of the audience into thinking you might actually be good.

The Showcase, or the "Blowcase," is the occasion when the record company hacks fly in from The Coast to check out your act and maybe give you a recording contract. This means that everybody in the band goes out to buy new clothes and shows up at the gig looking like Napoleon during his scene with the pope. The elaborate new outfits make it impossible to strap the instruments on, much less perform. And it is a complete disaster. Later, the men from The Coast say you're a lot different from what they thought you would be just from listening to the tape, but please stay in touch.

More John Davidson: "A singing entertainer is a mirror for his audience. You must reflect both the time in which you are singing and the people who are listening." Here Davidson is not that far off the mark. Successful performers of any genre--hip or unhip--tend to reassure their audience through song and dress, and they allay the audience's insecurities: it's okay to have a certain haircut or sexual persuasion because the performer has one, too. This seems to be an important function of popular music. Unfortunately, many of us have never figured out quite what we're supposed to reassure the audience about, which has led to a monthly bank statement considerably thinner that John  Davidson's.