Ron on the phone either and this was something outside his experience to deal with.
“Mate, it’ll be fine. We do these things all the time.” The network’s producer had shifty eyes and Jake couldn’t get them to shift and fix on him.
“This wasn’t the deal.”
“Look, mate. Sure you can pull your people, but if you do that you void your contract and well, we can’t take responsibility for what might happen.”
The subtext was clear. Pull the band out, the network would stand back from the issue and still get footage for the evening news, and who knew what the fans would do when they heard Ice Queen wigged out and reneged on performing.
Jake needed to get to Rand. He couldn’t make this decision alone. Had there been the original hundred or so people in the crowd it wouldn’t have been a problem, but with probably ten times that number here now, he could see no way to get to the stage. They tried shouting down the phone and then they reverted to text messages.
Jake typed, 2 dangerous. Want out.
Rand replied with, Agree. How?
Jake had no immediate response. He knew the network officials were enjoying every minute of this delay. He’d already had a shouted conversation with the security chief who was equally worried, and said the band’s main exit route was now blocked by people who’d pushed through a barricade. They could clear them, but it would be a drama.
No way out. Safer to go ahead.
Rand came back with, Fuck.
And Jake reluctantly gave the network the green light.
It took another ten minutes for the show’s shaggy haired host to appear on stage where he proceeded to further excite the now wildly over-enthusiastic crowd, and another five minutes before Ice Queen came out and took their places.
As Rand started a welcome patter, Jake saw two police cars and a wagon pull up on the street. The grins on the faces of the network people told him they thought this was an excellent idea.
When they started playing, Jake knew Rand had changed the set list. He’d taken out the songs that tended to get people hyped-up and replaced them with a more laid back selection. The network was unhappy, and Jake had his first moment of satisfaction since they’d arrived.
The changed set list had an effect but not the one Rand had hoped for. He’d thought it might keep things from getting too rough, but the opposite happened. A portion of the crowd, the hardcore fans, started chanting, “Darker Deep, Darker Deep” and the volume of the chant swelled until it threatened to overwhelm the amplified sounds of the guitars, keyboard and drums.
Rand vacillated between giving them what they wanted and trying to find some other way to bring the heat and emotion down. He and Stu had a quick huddle, and with a nod to Rie, How and Roley they launched into Darker Deep. The audience went wild, singing along, screaming, dancing and pushing forward. Two people fell out of the fig tree, a school girl fainted in the front row and had to be lifted up onto the stage by security so she wouldn’t be crushed, and a fight broke out somewhere in the middle of the mix.
While all this was going down he wondered vaguely if he was singing the right words. But when the fighting spread, he simply stopped playing and signalled the others to do the same. The song came to a jumbled, chaotic end. He breathed into his mic, “Hey, we want peace not war. We can’t keep playing if you people are going to beat the crap out of each other.”
His comment scored a variety of responses, hisses, boos and cheers but made no dent on the increasing circle of fighting. The TV show host bounced back out on stage and tried to settle the crowd down, but he had a freaked out expression on his face and about as much authority as a blue budgerigar, so his voice just added to the din.
Rand saw the coppers move. In seconds, an officer was ordering the network to shut the show down. That was good. This had gone too far. He unhooked his guitar. The guy with the mic was babbling about staying calm and moving to the exits. But a large mass of fans weren’t moving. He eyeballed Stu, who grinned back; the bastard was enjoying this. Rand wasn’t. His usual performance anxiety had curdled in his gut, now real fear gripped his chest. This