Okay, Okay...

GW wants an excerpt from the novel, and since I have been planning on writing about my life as an aspiring New Wave superstar, I thought I would offer this snippet from the book where Grace, the main character, tells her new friend Stuart about her experience as a Sugar Pop:

“So, you were in a band, huh? What was your name?”

“Don’t tell me you never heard of the Sugar Pops!” Grace affected outrage.

“Sorry, can’t say that I have. Should I?”

“Nah. We used to play weekend gigs on the Thruway circuit every month or so. We were all in college, so we couldn’t go on the road all that much. And, well, it’s hard to get decent gigs in Manhattan. Lots of dives, too much competition for the good rooms. We did okay, though—five girls in short skirts, bopping and playing our own sixties-type pop songs, singing angelic harmonies. That was a good angle.”

“You played... let’s see. Bass.”

“Nope. Rhythm guitar. And I sang the high harmonies and arranged most of the vocals. I still have some demo tapes. That is, I think I do. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went south, too. You’re welcome to listen to them, if I can find them.”

“I’d love to hear them.” Stuart took his eyes off the road for a moment to study Grace. “You’re just full of surprises.”

“I am?” Grace was actually flirting.

“Well, I always thought of you as so serious, so studious. You don’t seem the type to run off to join the circus, if you know what I mean.”

“You’ve formed quite an opinion, for someone who never spoke to me before yesterday.”

“I’m sorry. I just meant that, oh, you seemed so intense back then. In high school. I don’t know.” Stuart was suddenly flustered, shy.

Grace decided to let him off the hook. “I never expected to join a band, either.” She smiled and shook her head. “I was serious. I had no idea what I was going to do when I went up to NYU, only that it was going to be something intellectual and New Yorky. Philosophy, maybe. I hooked up with Maeve and Sarah in an English class. One night we went to CBGB’s to see what all the fuss was about. Maeve was a huge Beatles fan, and she had a bunch of old dolly girl dresses and go-go boots, so we dressed up and headed out. It caused such a stir in this dive of a club that we started to go back every weekend. Pretty soon, we noticed a couple of other girls dressed kind of like us, Gretchen and Maggie. Gretchen’s boyfriend was in a band and he had an extra guitar. And Maggie was learning bass. We decided we had to be able to play as well as some of the guy bands, so I went to a pawn shop and bought a little three-quarter-neck Rickenbacker. Sarah told her parents that she needed extra money for books and bought a sparkly silver drum kit. Maeve decided she’d be the singer. Two weeks later, we were playing loft parties, doing Shirelles and Beatles covers and one or two originals. Then we started playing bars. East Village dives, basements mostly. Suddenly, we had a manager who booked those upstate weekends for us. He even got some record labels interested—well, quite a few, actually—but we never got to sign on anyone’s dotted line.”

“And what about school?”

“Oh, Sarah dropped out to practice full-time, but she never told her parents. Maeve and I became English majors. We were always reading, anyway. Might as well get credit for it. School didn’t seem all that important anymore, but my folks were shelling out the money, so I kept at it. Good thing, too. By the time Brandon showed up, the band was self-destructing—the stress of almost getting contract after contract was tearing us apart, and we only had about six good months left in us.

“The end was spectacular, though. Sarah’s dad was a Miami probate attorney, a very stern and humorless man. Her parents came to a conference in New York and decided to visit her. Now, although she hadn’t told them about dropping out, she had told them something about the band, and I guess her dad saw a poster for a gig while they were trying to find Sarah on campus. They showed up at the club, which was bad enough. But that particular night we’d decided not to wear our usual sixties gear. We advertised the gig as a pajama party and wore baby-dolls. Instead of our usual tights, we painted big splashy daisies on our legs, like they used to do on Laugh In. You should have seen Sarah’s parents! Her dad tried to get on stage and pull her right off the drums, but the bouncers tossed him out. The next thing you know, Sarah’s on her way back to Miami. Last we heard she’d married a doctor.

“We tried auditioning other drummers, and almost everyone who showed up was a better drummer than Sarah. To be honest, Sarah had always been kind of the weak link, although none of us could play as well as we could sing and write. But without Sarah, the chemistry was gone. We ended up sniping at each other—no one could agree on anything. Pretty soon we weren’t really speaking to each other. You know—the standard story.

“Gretchen and Maggie started another band with their boyfriends. Maeve dropped out and got a gig singing torch songs in a piano bar. I hung out with Brandon and finished my degree and started writing about the Village scene for teen magazines. Just a fluke, really—met an editor for Ingenue at a party and left with an assignment. Then Brandon decided his career would blossom if only he could get to San Francisco, and off we went."

So... that's the fictional account of a band very much like the Poptarts. And just as a teaser for the real thing... we really did appear at a gig wearing baby doll pajamas (although I think we wore tights rather than painted our legs a la Laugh-In). We only did one other gig where we didn't wear minis, and that was at this gig in Cleveland where for some reason we wore leotards, tights, and hot-pants: