Live and Fabulous! (24 page)

“Not much chance of bumping into her here,” I say, looking around us. We all look at one another, trying to weigh up how much trouble we'll be in for officially 100 percent losing our “grown-up,” but somehow we're distracted by the antics of Zander Parr. The singer has decided to finish the Flaming Doozies' final number by whipping off his clothes, one item at a time, chanting “La! La! La!” to a tune that sounds suspiciously like “Baa Baa, Black Sheep,” while the rest of the band struggle to keep up with him, resorting to pure improvisation.

“Zander! Zander! Zander!” chants the crowd, egging him on.

Just as Zander begins removing his underpants, which I'm sorry to say are a rather saggy, mottled pair of beige Y-fronts that have certainly seen numerous world tours, a posse of flustered security guards rush onto the stage to try to remove him.

“Thank you, Astlebury and goooooood-byeeeeee!” Zander yells in his cute Dutch accent as the microphone is forcefully removed from his person and someone in a headset places a clipboard over his delicate nether regions. “This is the best day of my life!” he yells. “I'm Zander Parr and I am as ne-kked as zee day I was born! Good night! Have a good flight home!”

The crowd goes absolutely nuts as he's carried off stage.

“Aggghhh!
That was so much better than on TV! It's so wild when you can actually see the fireworks!” laughs Claude.

“And smell Zander's singed underpants,” I laugh.

“Hey, and Final Warning are on next,” reminds Fleur. “It's their first British gig for two years.”

“Yeah, that's going to be huge,” says Claude. “We were so lucky to get tickets for this!”

And then there's a bit of an awkward silence as the LBD all know exactly whose total favorite band Final Warning is. Let's not even go there.

“Two ... two ... two ... testing ... two ... two ... okay?” repeats a roadie on stage, sound-checking CeCe Dunston's microphone. “Can you hear that? Two?”

Or doing more normal Jimi activities, like retrieving a wide array of boogers from his nose, then smearing them on stuff? Or staring at pictures of women with massive moshee-moshees in
Maxim?
Or finding the hilarious hidden extras on his
Dude, I Sooo Blew Up Your Mom II! DVD?

Suddenly a firm hand cups my waist, almost sweeping me entirely off my feet!

“Ooooh,” I say.

“Fancy seeing you here!” says a familiar, rather deep voice.

I turn around with a gasp.

“Oh my God! Joel, hello!” I smile as the hazel-eyed hottie stands before me, surrounded by his motley crew. “It's you!”

As I give Joel a small friendly hug, Claudette Cassiera is letting out a big not-playing-it-cool-at-all whoop.

“Damon! You're here!” Claude laughs, then whispering more to him, “I didn't think you'd remember.”

“You were pretty specific!” whispers Damon back, giving Claude a sloppy peck on the forehead. Fleur, Nico, Franny and I all pretend not to notice. “You said you'd be near the front on the right for Final Warning.”

“Ronnie! Fleur!” cheeps Claude, turning to us. “Look, it's the lads again! Fancy these guys finding us again ...”

Fleur and I swap “Does this bird think we fell off a Christmas tree?” glances and begin laughing. Soon Fleur's roundly abusing a slightly green Franny about his vomit-regurgitation antics, and Nico is off at the bar getting us drinks, while up on stage, there's a flurry of movement as hairy roadies tape track-running orders to the amps at the front of the stage, and fiddle about, tuning up guitars.

“Er, incidentally, Ronnie,” Joel says to me, looking slightly bashful. “Can I point out that I'm not stalking you?”

“Er, yeah, whatever,” I say cheekily. “Tell it to the judge, Stalky McStalkerson.”

“I'm not!” laughs Joel. “It's just that Damon wanted to ...” We look across at Claude and Damon, who appear to be having a
play fight,
of all things. “... oh, you know.”

“Yeah, I'm only winding you up!” I giggle.

“Good,” he says, half smiling, poking me in the stomach gently. “ 'Cos, I mean, who'd walk out of their way to see you anyhow?”

“Precisely,” I agree. “Perish the thought.”

But then the emcee cuts in, telling us to make some noise for the one, the only, the legendary FINAL WARNING!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

The next few hours prove to be the most incredible ever.

First, Final Warning crash through a fabulous set, playing all of their most famous songs accompanied by a totally tone-deaf crowd singing along enthusiastically. During one song, lead singer CeCe Dunston, with his trademark floppy, curly black hair and big blue-bottle dark glasses, divides the 50,000-strong audience up into two sections, making both sections battle to be the noisiest! I almost lose my voice yelling. Then CeCe pulls an amazingly lucky girlie out of the front rows onto the stage and serenades her with a raunchy song about her peachy bum! She isn't offended, of course; in fact she pulls out a pen and asks him to sign the washing instruction label in her panties.

By now, the sky is clear, the sun is blazing down and a soothing breeze is breathing gently through the fields, cooling us all down wonderfully. It's so cool that we met up with the lads. They're a brilliant laugh as well as top eye candy to boot. And just to make matters more amazing, between songs, the verily lovely Joel and I have been giggling and gossiping about life (okay and having a bit of a flirt too!). I've been uncovering some pretty impressive “boy data” on my new friend. Stuff such as he's taking A-levels in physics, chemistry and math next summer (wow?!) and he lives with his mum in a small town called Charlton-Jessop approximately ninety-seven miles from the Fantastic Voyage. I've also uncovered that the scruffy yellow van with the graffiti isn't Joel's, it belongs to Franny (which makes much more sense), and also that Joel drives a black Volkswagen Polo. Hey, but most impressive of all, Joel's biggest ambition is to be a
surgeon.
Oh, and not just any old everyday surgeon ... a brain surgeon!? Apparently, according to Joel, that takes about ten whole years!

Yes, Joel knows what he wants to do with his life for the next ten years!

I haven't even planned the rest of this summer!

(Jimi wrote “cosmic spaceman” as his ambition on his last career advice questionnaire.)

And if all that isn't enough, Joel also works at Charlton-Jessop's municipal pool on Saturdays as a lifeguard! Gulp! I can only surmise from this information that beneath Joel's combats and T-shirt nestles one of those toned, smooth lifeguard bods that totally distracts the LBD during Blackwell swimming lessons when we're supposed to be rescuing bricks from the bottom of the pool, dressed in pajamas.

My mother would soooo love Joel.

She'd be sizing him up for a bridegroom's top hat the millisecond she set her beady eyes on him. He's totally the type of guy I suppose I should be going out with.

After Final Warning stagger exhaustedly off stage, the Losers, an Australian four-piece band with two boys and two girls, replace them. The Losers play lots of synth, string and flute lullaby-style songs, which seems to lull the audience into a catatonically calm state. Some of the Losers's songs are so sad, they actually make you want to weep, especially when Jocasta Jemini, the minuscule, rather depressed-looking lead singer, plays her flute and sings lyrics about being “lost at sea” and “dying of a broken heart.” Some people wave lighters backward and forward during the most maudlin songs; some seriously, as they love Jocasta, others sarcastically, as they think she's a miserable old trout. Oh, and some people just throw plastic bottles at her. I've figured by now that some people just throw plastic bottles whatever the occasion. By the time the Losers finish, then run off stage, then run back on and play all of their biggest hits, then finish properly, the sun has set and the air feels much crisper. It's almost 8 P.M. Where has the time gone? Everyone in our gang is in high spirits, especially Fleur, who's utterly determined that for the next act, Color Me Wonderful, we should all move farther into the center of the crowd, then push to the front, against the stage barrier, where the rowdiest action always is.

“Oh, come on!” Fleur scoffs. “Stop being such wet farts! This band always has the most amazing laser show! We have to get right to the front, so we can really dance!”

Franny and Nico agree immediately. Joel, Claude and I aren't so sure. It looks pretty rough down there to me. I've already seen kids who've fainted or been crushed being pulled over the barrier by security guards. Saying that, I know that Fleur will go anyway. Then I'm going to miss out on one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

So I agree to go.

“You sure, Ronnie?” asks Joel.

“Yeah, let's do it!” I say, sounding reckless. Fleur lets out a little victorious squeak.

We begin weaving our way through the excited crowds in the direction of the front barriers, Damon with his arm around Claude's shoulder, Franny and Nico forging ahead, clearing our path, Fleur in her black miniskirt drawing wolf whistles and appreciative glances at her henna tattoo as she tiptoes through the bodies. Joel bringing up the rear, being rather protective of me, which is sweet, but feels a bit odd. Soon we're about ten rows from the front, as far as we can possibly go, as by now there's no more room to move. We're all squashed against each other's backs, guarding our spaces territorially. Right then, Joel lifts me up by the waist and turns me around to see the view behind us ...

There must be about 100,000 faces spanning as far as the eye can possibly see.

Unbelievable.

I feel a little woozy ...

And then the stage lights plunge to darkness and the audience erupts, whooping excitedly as the familiar opening bars of Color Me Wonderful's “Swamp Song” explode through the speakers, saturating the air with a cacophony of noise, making all the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up. I seem unable to stop smiling. All around us, people are dancing, jumping and crashing into each other in a nonnegotiable frenzy.

“Er, thank you kindly,” remarks Lester Ossiah, the meek, one-man music machine during a quieter interlude in the track, the crowd quieting to hear him speak. “I wasn't sure if anyone would turn up,” he adds dryly. Everybody laughs and cheers.

A few meters away, the irrepressible Fleur, who's been dancing and cheering wildly with the demeanor of a chick possessed for the last ten minutes, has now persuaded some poor, gullible bloke nearby to allow her to climb up on his shoulders, where she jiggles and joggles and waves frantically at Lester Ossiah, blowing him kisses. Eventually the timid star notices the flurry of hands and blonde hair in front of him and blows her a kiss back! Amazingly, Fleur's elated face fills the huge video screens on either side of the stage. She looks like she's going to cry with total happiness.

Incredibly, Lester then makes “Swamp Song” blend effortlessly into his worldwide number one hit “Looking Glass,” an infectious tune that's been used on tons of film soundtracks, sports car ads and video games.
Gahhhh!
I love that tune! The crowd seems to be surging forward more strongly now, there's hardly any room to breathe and the security guards are yelling at us to move backward. This is beginning to get quite scary ... especially as Fleur has now propelled herself off the guy she was perched on, making her fledgling crowd-surfing attempt.

“Oh my God! Claude! Look at Fleur!” I scream, pointing upward.

“Weeeeeeeee-hah!” squeals Fleur. “I'm flyyyyyyyying!”

“Fleur, get down! You'll hurt yourself!” shouts Claude pointlessly as Fleur travels about on a sea of hands above our heads, supported by numerous partied-out individuals who I don't place a hell of a lot of trust in.

My heart is in my mouth. I'm jealous, but I wish she'd get down.

Thankfully, after a few minutes, Fleur descends gracefully back to Earth, kindly positioned on both feet by a hulking guy with a kindly face and a nose ring who looks like an amiable bull.

“Wooooo-hooo! Rock 'n' roll, baby!” yells Fleur, throwing both hands in the air in devil horn signs. “That was sooooo fantastic! Did you see me?! Agggh! I want to go again!”

Claude and I roll our eyes, relieved our daft mate's back in one piece. However, right that instant another faster, louder track known worldwide as “Dead Zone” bursts to life and we're dismayed to see Fleur tapping bull guy on his sweaty shoulder, flirtatiously requesting a leg up.