For Bros About to Rock

Johnny V, as he was known on the mean streets of Royal Woods, Michigan, liked to vibe. Music was to him what music was to that dead guy from Weekend at Bernie's. You ever see that movie? Probably not, it's an old school comedy from, like, the nineties. It's about these dudes who...you know, Johnny couldn't remember. Something about them trying to hide a dead body, but it had a voodoo curse on it and every time it heard music, it got up and started dancing. Yeah, looking back from the enlightened year of 2021, it was hopelessly dumb, but the analogy was fitting, because just like poor, dead Bernie, Johnny gpt up and got down every time his ears peeped a fresh beat. It didn't matter if it was rap, country, pop, oldies, classical, or opera. Every genre has at least a couple good songs, even blueglass. Like...it was impossible for a style of music to not produce something cool eventually. Statistically impossible. It's like that saying, you know, put a bunch of monkeys in front of typewriters and one day they'll bang out Shakesphere.

In his twelve years of banging (headbanging, not gangbanging), Johnny had developed an appreciation for all types of tunes, from boogie-woogie bugleboy type stuff right up to modern day emo-fusion jazz. That last one wasn't a real genre as far as he knew, but it wouldn't surprise him if it was, since people are so obsessed with labeling and categorizing everything. It can't just be hard rock, oh no, you have to have fifty seven different flavors. Hardcore, softcore, metalcore, nightcore, afternooncore, screamo, emo, beemo, Larry, Curly, Moe. Johnny's favorite type of music was eighties hair metal.

First of all, yes, it is kind of extra for a black kid in 2021 to like Poison and Ratt, thank you for noticing. Second of all, he liked it because unlike most types of hard rock, it wasn't dark or negative. Slayer sang about blood, Anthrax sang about mental asylums, and Megadeth sang about war and destruction. You know what Motley Crue sang about? Having a good time. You know what Bon Jovi sang about? The power of love helping a young couple overcome their daily struggles. You know what Warrant sang about? Heaven. They sang about heaven, man. Meanwhile those Metalocalypse types were talking about how much they wanted to go to hell. From a lyrical standpoint, hair metal was superior because it was positive, uplifting, and touched on topics that everyday people can understand and relate to. It also had sick riffs, hot drum beats, and an awesome fashion sense. I mean, they wore perms and leather and leopard print everything. Tell me that isn't cool.

Third of all, Johnny liked what he liked, okay? What, do you expect him to be all about rap because he's a black guy? Seriously? Wow, ok, racist. But honestly, he hated it when people acted like he was a weirdo for liking old music. That was the biggest thing he got caught out on when it came to his musical tastes. The homies he knew were chill with him liking rock, the country boys were down with him being into rap, but the moment he mentioned liking a band from more than ten years ago, they all ganged up on him and thrashed him to within an inch of his life. They called him Grandpa, they called him boomer, they joked about him being a jive turkey. He'd walk into the lunch room and one of the homeboys would jump up, lean back, and strut over. Man, you lookin' dy-no-MITE.

Sigh.

If Johnny was a better fighter, he'd do to them what Big Van Vader did to Joe Thurman at Halloween Havoc 1992.

Break their backs.

He would break their frickin' backs.

But as much as he liked to boast and brag, he wasn't very good at throwing hands. He routinely beat Lincoln, but that was like saying you're good at football because you whooped a three year old.

It wasn't much of an accomplishment, is what he was saying.

One of Johnny's favorite hair bands was Aerosmith. Technically, they were around long before hair metal was a thing (and their pre-1980s stuff was killer too), but they became the biggest band in the world during the late eighties, and they did it with perms, Spandex, and heavy rotation on MTV. A lot of rock fans said that Aerosmith was a "chick band" because a lot of women liked them. Johnny didn't see why. Steven Tyler was not a handsome man. In his younger days, he was kinda meh, but by 1989, when Aerosmith was at its height, he was hideous. Ever see Peewee's Big Advenure? Remember when Large Marge morphed into that scary monster looking thing?

That was Steven Tyler.

Johnny's second favorite hair band was the legendary Smooch. Smooch was formed in Winfield, Kansas in 1977 and released their first album Road Rash in '79. At first, they were like a mix of AC/DC and KISS, but by 1985, they were basically Van Halen: Spandex, big hair, and jumping around the stage while playing keytars. Their last album with the original line-up (Phil on vocals, John on lead guitar, Mark on bass, Tim on rhythm, and Ritchie on drums) dropped in 1990. 1990 was a dark year for hair metal. Grunge came along and kicked into the gutter, and by 1992, all of the hair metal bands were basically dead and gone. Ritchie left to operate a crane at the landfill because that paid more than being in a band no one wanted to listen to, and Phil joined a Smooch cover band that played birthday parties and bar mitzvahs.

There was talk in the mid-2000s of getting the band back together for a tour of the 80s nostalgia circuit, but nothing ever materialized. Phil became an alcoholic and was in and out of rehab through the teens while John was convicted in 2014 of trying to hire someone to beat up a rival rocker and caught four years of probation which prohibited him from leaving the state of Iowa where he had been living since Smooch broke up in 1993.

In 2017, Tim died in a freak accident (he was practicing for an upcoming benefit show while taking a bath, and the guitar fell into the water) and after that, it looked like there would never be a reunion.

Then, in early 2020, Smooch announced a new album and a tour with Cliff Young of Acco filling in for Tim. Johnny was beyond stoked and decided as soon as he heard the news that he would be at one of their shows come hell or high water.

In February, the Pabstvirus hit and the world clammed up tighter than a gangbanger in custody. Concerts were cancelled or postponed, restaurants shuttered, and everyone stayed 5.9 feet away from each other lest they get infected with the Ick AKA Private Trips (so named because it wasn't strong enough to make that Captain rank). Johnny watched what may have been his last chance to see one of his favorite bands live go up in smoke, and cried. Literally cried.

But glory be to Glob, the Pabst was over and done with by the beginning to 2021 and everyone began crawling out of their holes to resume their mundane, workaday lives. Smooch's new album Hard to Kill hit stores right before Christmas and spawned two huge hits - the title track and Shot in the Arm. In January, they announced that their upcoming world tour would begin in L.A. in May and conclude in Melbourne, Australia in February 2022. Praying to every God under the sun from Yahweh to Eric Clapton, Johnny checked their dates, and nearly peed.

They would be playing in Detroit on June 28 with special guest Slaughter.

Freaking Slaughter!

Since he always had money on deck, Johnny bought his ticket right then and there, a good one in the front row. He also bought one for Lincoln since white hair would inevitably tag along. Lincoln wasn't as big into Smooch as Johnny was, but he still dug them.

That night, after dinner, Johnny went over to the house of Loud to make a souffle with Mr. L. Ever since their disastrous appearance on Chopped, where Johnny got them turned out with extreme prejudice, Johnny and Mr. Loud had been getting together every couple days to share in their love of cooking. Johnny was mixing the ingredients in a metal bowl when Luna walked n and opened the fridge. "Hey, guess what," Johnny said.

"'Sup?" Luna asked.

"I got tickets to see Smooch in Detroit."

Luna froze. "Dude, really?"

Like him, Luna liked good music. In fact, she was one of the only people he could talk to about all his favorite bands. Maggie, Lincoln's girl, knew some of them, and Lincoln himself liked a few, but Luna messed with hard rock, hair metal, oldies, eighties, punk, and old school heavy. She got every obscure musical reference he made and they could talk for hours about CCR, The Ramones, Johnny Rotten, Dokken, and Damn Yankees.

"Really," Johnny said and beamed proudly.

"When?" she asked.

"June 28th."

The next day, he got a text from Luna. Guess who just scored a ticket to Smooch.

Cool. We going together?

Duh!

Alright. Cool. You know what they say: The more the merrier.

Now all they had to do was wait.

And the waiting is the hardest part, to quote Tom Petty. For months, Johnny paced, tapped his foot, bit his nails, and willed time to speed up. It didn't help that the first half of 2021 was eerily calm. In March, President Biden pooped himself and wandered off, dazed and confused, during an important press conference, but otherwise, nothing interesting happened. Times flies when you're having fun, but when you have something to look forward to, it draaaaaaags. In April, Dad dragged him and Lincoln to a wrestling convention in Chicago. Theoretically, Johnny could have turned him down, but he needed to kill time. Dad was amped about meeting Cody Rhodes and even went so far as to put a temporary tattoo on his neck just like Cody's.

While Dad got in line to meet his idol, Johnny and Lincoln walked around the convention hall looking at all the old, broken down wrestlers of yesteryear. Marty Jannetty, one half of The Rockers tag team (with Shawn Michaels) roamed around asking people for money, and Zack Gowen, the one-legged wrestler who spent five minutes in WWE back in the day, posed for pictures with man-titted marks with beards on their necks. At one point, a fat, weasley-faced man with glasses and an overbite, walked in, and an angry mob instantly formed around him. "It's Bruce Mitchell!" someone cried. "Get him!" What followed was an out of shape dirt sheet writer fleeing in slow motion from a group of out of shape wrestling fans. Soon, winded and sweat-slathered bodies littered the floor and paramedics buzzed around, saving who they could.

An even fatter man sat at his booth in a Hoverround, eating cupcakes and signing autographs between mortgage pitches, and Buff Bagwell looked overweight and tired. Outside, a bald black man sat at a folding table by the dumpster with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. As soon as Johnny laid his eyes on him, he knew he and Lincoln had made a horrible mistake. "Oh, no," he said and threw up his hand to hide his face, "it's Virgil."

Virgil was an infamous hustler in the wrestling world. Way back, he served as The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiasie's bodyguard/manservant in the WWF before getting kicked out for being boring - seriously, he couldn't talk, he couldn't wrestle, his sucked. He landed in the WCW and the NWO let him hang around out of pity, but eventually got tired of him too. These days, broke and disrespected, Virgil rode the coattails of his past accomplishments and wandered the country, setting up his table in random places to sell junk that no one wanted. No, really, there were pictures of him hawking crap at bus stations and farmers' markets. Legend has it that he charges twenty-five dollars just to look at him.

Hopefully he didn't see them.

"Hey!" Virgil cried.

"Run!" Johnny yelled.

He and Lincoln bolted.

"Wait!" Virgil called after. "I just want a friend, that's all!"

Johnny and Lincoln barely escaped with their lives.

WrestleCon was lame but at least it got Johnny's mind off of Smooch for a little while.

Finally, at long last, the big day rolled around. It had rained heavily on the night of the 27th and when Johnny woke on the morning of the 28th, the light of the new sun sparkled on the wet grass. Johnny's stomach jumped into his throat when he realized what day it was, and he leapt out of bed with a joyous cry. Lincoln sat bolt upright in bed and looked around, bewilderment painted across his puffy face. "What? What is it?"

"It's Smooch Day!"

Lincoln regarded him with a blank stare...then flopped back against his pillow. "It's too early for this."

Too early for Smooch? Ha. Never.

Though Johnny had just endured an epic six month wait that felt more like six decades, the last few hours went b w. It was Saturday so he didn't even have school to occupy himself with. He looked up cat videos online, listened to his favorite Smooch songs on YouTube (and left annoying comments about how excited he was to see them), and made a round of Royal Woods with Lincoln to collect the money from their various vending machines. They stopped off at Ronnie Anne's place to drop off her pity-cut, then went by Maggie's house so that Lincoln could hold her hand and kiss her for a while. Johnny stood awkwardly on the sidewalk in front of her house and scuffed his feet while they oodled and canoodled. "Come on, Casanova," he finally snapped. "We gotta go. It's almost Smooch time."

Lincoln glanced at his phone, furrowed his brow, and looked at Johnny with the blackest expression of incredulity Johnny had ever seen...except from their granny. "Man, wait."

"Dude, we're burning daylight."

"The show isn't for six hours."

"We gotta leave in three."

Lincoln waved him off.

Johnny finally got him to wrap it up and they made it back to the house with only two hours and forty five minutes to spare. Whew. Talk about a close one.

At five-thirty, they kissed Mom and Dad goodbye and walked across the street to the Loud house. Luna was loading a cooler into the back of the van, and as they came up, it slipped and started to fall. They grabbed either side and helped her push it into the cargo hold. She slammed the door and dusted her hands off. "You guys ready?"

"Are we!" Johnny cried.

"Let's rock!"

All three of them threw up the devil horns.

The drive into Detroit was a long one. Johnny sat in the passenger seat and operated the radio and GPS, and Luna drove, hands at a carefully practiced ten and two. "I didn't know you had your license," Johnny said.

"Yeah, bro, I got it a few weeks ago," she said. "This is my first trip." She swallowed hard and for a second she looked afraid. "And my first time in heavy traffic."

Gulp.

Cars and Mac trucks blasted by on either side of them, rocking the van, and Luna took a series of deep breaths. "I'm just worried about the city, that's all." She bit her bottom lip. "Talk to me. Remember our first concert together?"

Johnny chuckled. Boy did he. It was 2019 and Luna won three VIP passes to see her idol Mick Swagger in Lansing. Luna had been to a few local shows before, but he family was broke and she couldn't afford HEADLINE EVENTS like Mick freaking Swagger, so she was super nervous. This is the big time, she said. I kinda need some, you know, back up.

Support, she meant, she needed moral support from her friends, and Johnny and Lincoln were all too happy to give it. Plus, come on, a free Mick Swagger show?

It was gonna rock.

Only Johnny didn't count on one thing.

The audience.

Okay, no offense anyone, but the crowd was lame as heck. It was evenly split between old people who had been fans of Mick Swagger since the seventies and so-hip-it-hurt hipsters in beanies, Buddy Holly glasses, and skinny jeans. When the show started, none of them moved, none of them danced; a few of the old timers swayed sedately in place, and the hipsters recorded on their phones. "This place is, like, Deadsville, Scoob," Johnny said. "We gotta liven it up."

He started dancing, and Luna snatched him up by his shirt. "Dude, stop, you're embarrassing me." She shot a worried look over her shoulder and blushed. A group of hipsters snickered and rolled their eyes. One of them may have called Johnny a spazz, but he couldn't hear over the music.

"It's a concert," Johnny said, pulling away, "you're supposed to dance and have fun."

"You gotta be cool."

Whatever.

Johnny tried to be cool, but, like poor, dead Bernie, the music animated him and he started jiving once more. Luna snapped at him again and again, and he took it, but he started getting tired of it. Finally, the last time she did it, he popped off. Be cool, she said. "Cool?" he demanded. "You're worried about what a bunch of neckbeards think." Here, he looked directly at the hipsters who'd been laughing at him. "You wouldn't know cool if it bit you in the aft end. You're lame. You're the least rock and roll person I know." He waved a dismissive hand. "I'm out."

With that, he and Lincoln rolled out and went somewhere else. Mick struck up Johnny's favorite song, and he started dancing again, not caring who laughed because they legit didn't matter. He caught a few glimpses of Luna through the crowd. She stood there with her shoulders slumped and her head down. One of the hipsters said something about "those dorks" and she sighed deeply.

A few of the oldsters around Johnny and Lincoln started making an effort to get down, and soon the entire section was jamming out. People made the devil horns sign, banged their head, and flopped off one another like fish doing The Sponge. "You go, funky little dude," someone called, and someone else slapped Johnny on the back.

Feeling like showing off, Johnny ripped his paper bag, laid it out on the floor, and started break dancing. Lincoln joined in and before long, the entire concert hall was rockin and rollin, even the lame butt hipsters. When Johnny was finished, Luna came up. "Look," she said and nervously rubbed the back of her neck, "you were right. It was lame of me to be like that. Being cool isn't about what people think of you, it's about being true to yourself. And I blew it."

Johnny clapped her on the arm. "It's cool. We all make mistakes. Now let's rock."

Luna shredded an air guitar, Lincoln played the air drums, and Johnny banged his head until his brain ached. Mick Swagger was so impressed wth their energy that he brought them onstage. After the show, he thanked them for "making my show bloody awesome. I haven't had a concert this fun in twenty-five years."

Presently, Luna laughed. "Yeah, man, that was a blast."

They were already at the civic center, a huge building surrounded by parking lot. Luna had been so caught up in memories that she forgot all about being nervous. They threaded their way through the rows for nearly half an hour before snagging a parking spot near the end of the aisle. They lined up in front of the box office and Johnny got the lay of the land. Like the Mick Swagger concert, the crowd was a combo of lame old people and lame young people. Why do the fans of everything I like suck? Johnny asked.

After handing over their tickets, they went into the concern hall proper. Their spots were along the metal barricades separating the crowd from the stage. Slaughter came out first and launched into Up All Night, Sleep All Day, and Johnny instantly started rocking out. A group of hipsters laughed at him. "What a dork."

Luna and Lincoln ignored them and joined in the fun.

They didn't get the whole audience moving and grooving this time, but that didn't matter. The point was to have fun, not to look cool or be the center of attention. If no one else wanted to dance and have a good time, fine, that was on them.

For his part, Johnny intended to enjoy every second of seeing Smooch live.

And that's exactly what he did.