Page 33 of Love on the Main Stage
“Yeah, I got you. Do the chorus.” Clarice grabbed her acoustic guitar and strummed along.
“AJ, get this!” Alicia called.
“Got you,” he buzzed.
Barry picked up the sticks and hammered out a quiet, steady rhythm.
With a beat, I began again with more melody. More comfortable, I settled into the way I thought I heard my first verse. And then, I let Clarice take over to play through the bit before the chorus. She came up with something I never would have considered.
“I like it,” I said as she played through it again.
I picked up the chorus, fully comfortable with the words.
You sit in your ivory tower.
Far away and out of reach, but in between your thighs, I make you paint in new colors.
A fact no one can know
“Oh fuck!” Alicia hooted. “That is… dirty.”
“It is… not what I expected,” Barry admitted.
“I could… tone it down?” I winced.
“Nah. Keep it,” Alicia said.
“The label will hate it, though. That’s a little bit of anger coming through. I can tone it down.”
“It’s not anger. It’s raging against societal norms,” Clarice observed. “Which the whole album has a theme of—feeling things because you can’t control everything and hating that loss of control.”
“But it’s gay as fuck.”
“Mar, you are gay as fuck!” Barry laughed. “Don’t censor yourself.”
“Given the request for me to grow my hair out to look more ‘feminine’ from December plus the fun comment that they liked the ‘new look’ yesterday, I don’t think that’s what they’re looking for.”
I hated the demand that I lean into femme with my whole arse. It wasn’t me. If male rockstars could be androgynous, why couldn’t I? They didn’t know what to do with an aging female songwriter cum reluctant popstar.
“You get one song. Okay. We get one controversial B-side, don’t we? A deep cut that only super fans will demand at every fucking show,” Barry said.
“I like it. I say we work on it,” Alicia said. “Let’s get banned in Ireland!”
I snickered.
“Uh, guys,” AJ buzzed. “I think we should do it at Miragelite.”
“As if!” Alicia laughed. “You have high aspirations.”
“No, I don’t. We’re going to go do the bit of press in Trondheim with the doc crew and then I just got you in as a replacement band. Someone got cancelled.”
Miragelite. That was the biggest stage. A band knew they made it when they got invited. It was big like Glastonbury, but more glamorous. I never played a venue like that. My palms grew clammy thinking about it one moment, and then a shiver down my spine made my heart swell. My little band with our weird ass name was about to play the world’s best festival. Still, I wouldn’t acttooexcited. I was sure we were playing on a side stage somewhere during midday.
“Oh, brilliant,” I sighed. “My Scandinavian ass sweating in Palm Springs on a little stage in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Mary, can you ever just be happy?” Barry groaned.
“You’ll be doing it on the main stage in the evening,” AJ confirmed. “When I said they had a cancellation, I mean it was one of the big acts.”
