Rock All Night(10)

“Okay…”

“Press that button there… see the red blinking light? That means you’re on standby. Hit it again and you get a continuous red light, which means you’re recording. Then just hit that button to stop recording.”

“Thanks,” I said gratefully.

“Teach her to do her f*ckin’ job in the limo!” Miles said, herding everyone towards the door. “Let’s go, let’s go! Right!”





7




The elevator ride down was gross. Killian reeked of weed, Derek smelled like bourbon, and Riley just stank.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“God, it’s like ridin’ the underground in Paris in the summertime,” Miles muttered.

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

“Buncha Frogs without any deodorant, and they still smelled better’n you lot. Come on, out, out!” he yelled as the elevator door dinged open.

The walk through the lobby was fairly uneventful, but once we got out front, there were twenty paparazzi waiting, flashes going off. Derek smiled winningly for the cameras and hoisted up his bottle of scotch; Riley stuck out her tongue a là Miley Cyrus and flipped them off. Ryan, Killian, and Miles just ignored them.

The photographers probably got plenty of shots of me in the background, goggling at them like I had never seen a camera before.

Inside the black stretch limo, seating order was Killian, Derek, and me. Ryan sat opposite and facing me, and next to him were Riley and then Miles.

As I sat next to Derek, I was distinctly aware of his thigh pressing against mine. I was getting a little turned on being right next to him – and it was pissing me off.

Derek turned to me as the limo drove off. “So – having fun yet?”

“It’s interesting,” I admitted.

“Aaaah, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” He turned to the other members of the band. “Set list – anybody got any requests?”

Ryan – who was sitting across from me – pulled out a piece of paper and a pen from his jacket. “I’m assuming we’re keeping our own stuff in the same order?”

“Fine by me,” Derek said.

“Fine,” Killian agreed.

“I wanna do ‘Moby Dick!’” Riley shouted.

“NO,” Derek said.

I looked bewildered.

Ryan smiled. “We do our own songs in the same order every night, but every third song we throw in a cover. ‘Moby Dick’ is a Zeppelin tune that’s basically one big drum solo.”

“And everybody f*ckin’ hates it,” Derek said.

“No they don’t!” Riley complained.

“Everybody except you. NO.”

“My sisters are going to be there tonight – can we do something for them?” Ryan asked. “Maybe some Katy Perry?”

“Your sisters are here in LA?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah, I flew my family in, they all went to Disneyland and then they’re coming to see the show,” Ryan grinned, then turned to Derek. “So keep the antics on the clean side, okay?”

“I’ll try. How ‘bout ‘Roar’?”

“Cool,” Ryan nodded, and wrote it down. “I’ll put it after… ‘If There’s A Next Time.’”

“Fine,” Killian agreed.

“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida!” Riley shouted.

I looked at Ryan.

“Another epic drum solo,” he explained.

“NO,” Derek snapped.

They went back and forth, suggesting songs, with Derek clearly in control of the final selection. In the end, they settled on about seven songs, and let Riley have ‘Hot For Teacher’ by Van Halen.

“We have to give her one big drum solo song per show or she’s impossible to live with,” Ryan said.

“Don’t you start in on me, Ry,” she threatened, and leapt up and gave him a good-natured noogie. He laughed and pushed her away.

“I know how you two formed the band,” I said to Ryan and Derek, then looked over at Killian. “And I’ve heard the story about how they met you. Was it true?”

“More or less,” he smiled as his fingers plinked over his guitar strings.

“But… how did you join the band?” I asked Riley.

“They promised me they’d give me a really hot blonde from Rolling Stone,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.

Derek kicked her. Riley kicked him back, and within seconds it had turned into them trying to stomp each other as fast as they could, boots flailing at each other across the short interior of the limo.

“CHILDREN, CHILDREN!” Miles screamed. “DON’T MAKE ME STOP THIS CAR!”

Derek and Riley settled down and glared at each other, exactly like feuding siblings.

“I’ll answer this one,” Ryan said. “You got your recorder turned on?”

I pressed the button twice and got the solid red light. “Okay.”





8




“So, the summer after you… met us,” Ryan said, hesitating the tiniest bit, “we found a local drummer and guitarist. They weren’t very good – nobody good wanted to play with us. They all wanted to play with the more established bands in Athens, and we were pretty young. So we settled. But the guitarist and drummer we got were good enough. I started going to UGA in August, and in September we started booking frat party gigs.”