Snippet #2422981

3 September 2013

Ain't life a kick sometimes.

This was far from Izzie Martinez's first tour. It was far from her first big tour. This here, this moment and place, walking into the hotel that was to be home for the first leg of the tour on the third of September, 2013, was far, far from the first time and place Izzie had gotten up on stage with a band with her guitar clutched uncertainly but closely in her hands, reminding herself helpfully of all the ways she could and probably would fuck it all up.

But this was still a first-- the first time her-- their band, Psychosis, a band that had not existed for longer than some of the people now in it had been alive, was on the bill of a fairly major tour. And sure-- so they weren't exactly the headliner. The majority of the folks coming to see the tour would not be there for Psychosis. A lot of them probably hadn't even heard of Psychosis until they'd seen the logo, almost identical to one Izzie and a certain other person had scribbled and argued over decades ago, on the posters advertising the tour. It probably didn't hurt that the shit was actually fucking legible, of course. I mean, for fuck sake, I like Misericordiam as much as I like the next shitty deathcore band turned decent death metal group, but does that logo even fucking say anything? I'm pretty sure somebody just fuckin' scrawled a bunch of lines in a vague pattern and decided 'fuck it, the first scribble looks kinda like an M' and called it a day.

Wait. Shit. She'd been going somewhere with all this... uh... oh yeah! Psychosis' first major tour. And Izzie was feelin' pretty optimistic. This was the best line up this iteration of Psychosis had ever had, and it'd had many over the scant few years since the very first motley amalgamation of musicians Izzie had brought together under the renewed moniker. She'd had plenty of good musicians since, but none like the ones currently striding into the lobby of the hotel alongside her. Not in a technical sense. Not in a musical sense. Not even in a personal sense: between you 'n me, she liked the three musicians walking alongside her a fair bit more than the lineups that had preceded them, not that it made much of a difference. It was purely about the music. Only ever really about the music. If the time they'd had to spend in the studio with Ted Marubini's dumb fuckin' power metal band had ever tested that reality, Izzie had been sure to eliminate all doubts.

Hmm. Maybe she shoulda fired somebody. That was always a good way of settin' a decidedly professional tone, wasn't it? She totally shoulda fired somebody. Alas-- that time was past. She couldn't really fire somebody in the middle of the tour, could she? Okay, so she technically could. She'd had it proven to her quite a number of times in the past that you could fire somebody in the middle of a tour. Then again, who could she fire? Cormac? No, she liked his jazzy little twist on death metal drumming too much to can him just yet. Craig? She really had no reason to fire him-- he had never really tried to assert himself too strongly in the context of the band, something Edei, for her part, probably coulda benefited from learning from. Then again, she also couldn't fire Edei, because, well... fuckin' Edei. She'd probably track Izzie down and stab her in the eye in her sleep with a used heroin syringe or some shit.

Well, that left Izzie herself, and.... well, for fuck sake, she couldn't exactly fire herself, could she? Wait. Her brow furrowed. She could actually think of a bunch of reasons she oughta fire herself. She'd shown up to gigs and practices drunk in the past, she was too combative for her taste, and, above all, she knew herself personally too damn well for comfort. ... shit. I gotta fire me. How the fuck am I supposed to work with me always up in my grill tryin' to get all personal and whatnot? Man, this is some shit. Why did I even let me in the band? I shoulda known from the very beginning I'd be trouble for me. But if I fire me, I'll probably be a big dick about it-- demand royalties for all Psychosis materiel I performed on 'n whatnot, givin' me a whole lotta shit. Fuckin' typical. Man, fuck me. What an asshat.

And then, with the entirety of her thought process, from reminiscing about her first tour to contemplating firing herself, having occupied about five seconds in total, Izzie Martinez pushed open the doors that led into the lobby of the hotel, leading her intrepid quartet to new horizons. Or some way profound shit like that.