In your room
By Terrence Oblong
- 301 reads
“Shit, you’ll never believe it,” said Tony, “The lead singer of Dr Phibes and the House of Wax Equations shot himself ten years ago.”
“Bloody hell,” said Banjo, “Why d’e do that?”
“Something to do with drugs and a ten-year prison sentence for hacking his mother to death with an axe.”
There was a silence. The two men remembered some of the jokes they’d cracked about the band’s name and the horror film it was named after. The words ‘mad axe murderer’ had definitely featured somewhere in their banter.
“You gonna break it to Mr Thompson?”
Tony nodded. Banjo wasn’t good at that sort of thing. 24 hours ago neither of them had ever heard of Dr Phibes, so neither of them really cared that the lead singer was dead. But with Banjo, this showed. Tony could put across genuine-sounding sympathy as he explained to the client that the band would be unable to perform due to unforeseen personal circumstances, but was there another act you might be interested in?
“Mr Thompson? It’s Tony from In Your Room.”
Mr Thompson was in tears at the news, repeating to Tony the story of how he and his wife had met backstage at a Dr Phibes gig and how romantic it would be to have the band perform at their 25th wedding anniversary party.
The call lasted thirty minutes in total, but Tony got the result he was after.
“He wants the Frank and Walters,” he said to Banjo when he’d finally managed to put the phone down, “Are the Frank and Walters still going? I hope they’re not dead.”
But Banjo wasn’t listening, he was on another call, a new client by the sound of things, so Tony went to his computer and googled ‘The Frank and Walters’.
It was a strange business they’d ended up running. Tony and Banjo had started out as a look-a-like agency. They were friends with Jake the J, who looked the living spit of Michael Jackson circa Off the Wall. Jake put them in touch with an Elton John, a David Bowie and a Cyndi Lauper, enough to start a fledgling agency, which slowly grew to over a hundred acts, from Shakin’ Stevens to Pepsi and Shirley.
Then something weird happened. One day Tony took a call from a client. “Can you get me Calvin Party?”
“Calvin Party? I’m afraid we specialise in chart acts, there isn’t sufficient interest in indie look-a-likes.
“Not a look-a-like, the band. It’s my husband’s 50th birthday coming up and they were his favourite band. If you can get them to perform for a private party …”
Tony was about to say that this really wasn’t the service the business provided when she continued, “then we’d pay them £50,000 for a one-off gig.”
“Fifty thousand?”
“It must be the full line-up mind, not the lead singer and a new band. We’re frankly not interested in new material, it’s never as good as the old stuff, is it?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Let me take your details.”
Tony did some research, tracked down the band’s former agent and through him found a number of someone who knew the number of the lead singer. The band, it turned out, had split several years ago and hardly spoke to each other these days.
But for £50,000.
“Fuck, we were lucky to get fifty quid for a gig,” the lead singer said when Tony called him, “He’s not mistaken us for the Beatles has he?”
The band took the gig, and Tony and Banjo took a 15% cut of the fee. £7,5000 for a few hours work.
Seeing an opportunity, they set up a new business, called it In Your Room, and spent the money they’d made from Calvin Party marketing themselves as an agency that could bring the bands of your youth to play for you live in your living room.
It was a high-cost service. Tony reasoned that the only way to get bands to forget old grudges and to retrieve drummers who had migrated to the Maldives, was to wave a big, fat cheque. But bloody hell, there was a market. It turns out that the skanky, wanky indie kids who’d begrudgingly shelled out 50p to see Crispy Ambulance at the youth centre, had grown up to become flush professionals, sitting on a pile of loot they didn’t know what to do with, and who thought nothing of spending £45,000 to get 3D to play ‘Nearer’ and ‘Dance to Believe’ live for them and their nearest and dearest, in the comfort of their own home basement dancehall.
It had been an education, not just in how the ‘squeezed middle’ really live, but a musical education. It turns out that hidden under the charts of the 80s and early 90s, were a thousand gruesome, grumpy, guitar bands, each with their own cult following, none of whom made more than the most meagre of incomes in their heyday, but who were now, in the eyes of their small clique of followers, worth umpteen thousands per gig.
Banjo finished his call. “He’s happy to book the Frank and Walters,” Tony told him. “I’ve looked them up, they still do the occasional gig, but without their bassist. Should be fairly simple to get the full line-up …”
Banjo interrupted. “Never mind that, never mind that. I’ve just taken a call from a client who’s willing to pay £20 million,” he paused to let the words £20 million do their business, “If we can get Michael Jackson to play at his 40th wedding anniversary.”
There was another pause, while Tony tried to put together an answer.
“Banjo, I hate to tell you this, but Michael Jackson’s dead. I know I made that mistake with the Dr Phibes guy, but his death wasn’t front page news for six months.”
“Yeah, I know he’s dead, I’m not stupid, but think about it. £20 million, and no act to pay, it’s all profit.”
“Yes, I can see how the ‘no act to pay’ is an advantage in that sense, but in another sense it’s also a disadvantage, isn’t it? The whole ‘corpses don’t dance and sing’ thing.”
“Don’t be stupid. We just use Jake the J.”
“Jakey? Are you nuts? He’s in his late 40s now.”
“Michael was in his 50s when he died.”
“Yeah, but is Jakey even still doing it? Hell, why am I having this conversation, it won’t work. Someone at that party is going to know that Michael Jackson is dead. It’s the most famous death since JF Kennedy.”
“Twenty million.”
Twenty million. That was basically a thousand Shop Assistants, two thousand Kitchens of Distinction. It was enough money to retire on. He’d never again have to enthuse about Wire or Tiny Too to a more-money-than sense banker in Surrey who wanted to do something special for his retirement party.
“Well, there’s no harm in giving Jakey a call I suppose. See if he’s still doing it.”
It took a lot of persuading, two million pounds persuading to be precise. Jakey was not keen, foresaw every possible problem, not least of which that this was almost certainly fraud, and that they could spend serious time at her Majesty’s pleasure if they were caught, not to mention the fact they were 100% certain to be caught.
But eventually he was on board. Jakey was still doing the Michael Jackson thing and was still pretty good. It turns out that a lifetime spent moonwalking prevents middle aged spread. Which just left the small problem about Jakey still being alive and the real Michael …
It didn’t matter. The three conspirators had thrown caution and reason to the wind.
Planning for the gig went ahead. It was a small, private function, just close family and a few friends. It would be held at the client’s house, a mansion somewhere in the Devon countryside. Tony tried looking on googlemap, but the postcode didn’t officially exist. They were clearly rich enough to sidestep any aspect of reality that didn’t appeal to them. Maybe this would work, maybe they were so used to getting their own way they wouldn’t balk at having the apparent power to bring dead stars back to life. Somewhere in the back of Tony’s brain he found himself wondering ‘I wonder if they like Elvis too?’
The three of them were flown down by helicopter the night before the gig and stayed in a hotel more luxurious than Tony had believed possible. Guests were provided with not one, but two complementary silk dressing gowns each, assumedly in case there was an accident with the first dressing gown.
A limousine was due to collect them that afternoon and drive them to the house. There would be two cars, one for Tony and Banjo and one for the star.
Tony was nervous, Banjo was nervous, but they’d taken chances throughout their lives. At midday Tony knocked on Jakey’s door, to invite him to partake in luncheon.
There was no reply.
He tried phoning him, there was no answer. He went to the receptionist, to ask to be let into the room, but instead she handed him a note. It was from Jakey. He’d bottled it at the last minute. ‘There’s no way we’ll get away with this’, his note said. ‘Don’t contact me again.’
‘Fuck’, Calvin Party once sang, ‘is the most beautiful word in the world’. A lot of beauty came out of Tony’s mouth that afternoon I can tell you.
But they were professionals, they found a solution. They rang round all the look-a-like agencies they could find in the area and managed to locate a Michael Jackson who was available that night, though he was booked that afternoon, so there’d be no chance to meet with him in advance. They gave detailed instructions that he was to act as if he were the real thing, only answer to the name Michael, and were assured that he could do everything Michael could do, talk the talk and walk the moonwalk.
“Michael’s coming separately,” Tony told the client, “He always arrives on his own, as the star, rather than as part of a fleet.” This was nonsense, of course. By the time he died the real Michael Jackson came complete with an entourage of fifty or sixty people, including three personal pastry chefs, but it was a good enough lie for the client.
The party started. Tony and Banjo waited outside. It was going to be tight. Tony knew this, the afternoon gig meant that there was barely time for the stand-in Michael to get there. Any problems with traffic and they’d be screwed.
So, Tony was most relieved when he saw a limo approach a minute before the appointed time.
“Michael,” he started to say as he opened the door, but words suddenly failed him.
Out of the car stepped the living, spitting image of a ten-year-old Michael Jackson. It was uncanny.
The boy’s agent followed him out of the car. “You must be Tony,” she said, extending her hand.
“I was expecting, you know, an adult Michael. You never said he was a child.”
“Oh, don’t worry, he doesn’t just do ‘Ben’, he does the full repertoire. He even does the dance. Show the man, Michael.”
The young child started to moonwalk across the gravel. ‘How the hell am I going to get out of this?’ Tony wondered. But it was too late. The client had been informed that the limo had arrived and had rushed to join them. He stood watching the child as he danced across the gravel, the man’s gravity-dunked jaw a sign that he too is surprised by the extreme youthfulness of the middle-aged star.
Or maybe not.
The client suddenly grabbed the child in a big-bear-hug. “Michael, Michael, it’s my life’s dream. You dance like an angel.”
Forty-five people in the room, Tony counted, and not one of them seemed remotely surprised at the long-dead, fifty-plus singer appearing as his ten-year-old self. Maybe money does buy you anything you want, maybe the monied rich really are used to miracles every day. Maybe he should ask if they liked Elvis.
In the limo home Tony received an email, confirming that £20 million had been deposited in the In Your Room bank account.
“He’s paid up.”
Banjo just nodded. There were no words capable of capturing the enormity of what had just happened.
The limousine drove on in silence, into the night, into their new lives.
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This one is great, although
This one is great, although the ending somehow doesn't live up to the rest of it
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