The opposite end of the alley consisted of leather, metal spikes, and Ricky Pigsty and his Rat Farm. My end of the alley was filled with Flammable Lads. This would be my second gig drumming with these boys, granted we made it out of the arena in one piece. The Pit Stain was the number one place to get your band recognized, but if you wanted to play there, you had to earn the stage. In fact, you had to earn your right to earn your right to play there. Last night we had to thrash this lowly punk band from downstate just to get a shot at the Rat Farm, who was currently headlining at the Pit Stain.
Seems counter-productive, doesn’t it? Risking serious injury to play a gig. Most kids didn’t make it out of the alley in one piece. Some of those kids find a way to drag however many pieces they get broken into on stage and still play a show. Tell me. If that’s not punk I don’t know what is.
Rules are short and simple. One big weapon on each side. All blunt instruments, no stabbing weapons, no guns. Don’t kill anybody. Last band standing plays that night.
“You ready?” Ricky Pigsty shouts across the alley to us.
“Betchur ass!” our singer, Jimmy Crow, sends back.
That’s enough to signal the beginning of the fight. We don’t need any fancy countdown or anything like that. Rat Farm vs. Flammable Lads is a go.
Mud is our bass player, and also, the biggest kid in our band. Even though he plays bass, for his weapon he chose an old acoustic guitar that he bought in a pawn shop earlier in the day.
The person wielding a weapon from the Rat Farm is a dude named Caroline, which I haven’t decided is a cool name for a dude yet or not. He is determined to break any misconceptions his name might have, and is charging Mud head on with a pretty solid looking billy club.
I think that it’s lame when everyone goes after the person in the opposite band that plays the same instrument as themselves. Jimmy and Ricky, the singers, were already on top of each other, so I did my best to go after Rat Farm’s bass player, Benny Jockstrap.
Our guitar player, Bart, has it out for Rat Farm’s drummer anyway, and needs no other motivation to bee-line straight for him.
Rat Farm is a band that is heavy into Bod Mods, which actually works out in our favor several times during the fight.
Ricky has a large bull ring going right through his septum, which only made it about twenty seconds into the fight before Jimmy decided to rip it right out.
Caroline’s eye actually popped out during one fight, and he got it replaced with a new one that is actually like a little snow globe. Him and Mud actually bashed on each other pretty good before Mud got a good hit directly into Caroline’s face with the acoustic. The eye broke into two little neat pieces. The first piece popped out and fell to the ground, and best as I can tell, the second just kind of sunk into Caroline’s head. All the fake snow, whatever it was made of was trickling into and out of an empty socket.
Not to say Rat Farm didn’t get their shots in. Benny got me good up against a dumpster. It didn’t hurt that he was a good fifty pounds heavier than me. Once I hit the ground he started throwing kicks my way, and stupid me, threw my hand out to stop him. With my fingers outstretched directly towards his kick, when the boot connected, it snapped a few of them in the wrong direction, probably breaking them in a few places.
Bart and the drummer had each other on the ground, trying to lock up a choke hold. Once Mud had finished with Caroline, he came to Bart’s rescue. Mud simply picked the kid up off the ground by his arms and let Bart go to town on the kid.
Benny was still throwing kicks at me, and I didn’t really catch most of what Ricky and Jimmy were up to, especially after I caught a boot to the teeth. When I wasn’t so dizzy after that, I did my best to look up and spit a nasty spray of teeth particles and blood into Benny’s face. I got just enough time to get back on my feet and throw the most serious knee I have ever thrown right into Benny’s baby makers, which was more than enough for me to catch a breath. Right as I was about to go back to work on Benny he caught Mud’s guitar in the back of his head and hit the dirt.
Ricky and Jimmy were doing a number on each other’s faces. They were totally skipping any types of body shots and only working each other over above the neck. Both of them began swelling in their eyes, and soon couldn’t even see what they were doing. Bart and Mud intervened and actually picked Ricky up and physically threw him in the dumpster.
Ricky didn’t know what had happened until a few minutes after all this had occurred, and actually took a swipe at me before we calmed him down. For better or worse, we had won and would get to play the Pit Stain tonight.
One of the co-owners of the club was actually a retired field medic from the army. If you caught him early enough, that is, before he started drinking too much, he could usually fix you up pretty good before you had to go on. Ricky didn’t think much of getting fixed up before we played.
“I don’t need my eyes to sing.”
I thought I should at least get some of my fingers splinted up, and at the very least, have my hand taped around a stick so that I couldn’t drop it or anything.
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