Part 14: Bobby

Bobby Melrose usually spent OBM shows catching up on his other work. It was the same shit night after night, after all; if you’d seen it once (which Bobby, actually, hadn’t) you’d seen it a million times. Telling each city that you were so happy to be back, that it was your favorite place to play, that they were the most passionate fans - bullshit platitudes that even the brainless teens who attended OBM shows must have known were bullshit, on some level, but never stopped cheering at. A fourteen-song regular set - nine from the new album, five old ones; Xander’s version of a politician’s stump speech at about the two-thirds mark, what Bobby (more of a sports kid than a music kid, after all) called the seventh inning stretch; the whole encore, make-them-beg-for-it ritual, then one song chosen at random and finally, the band’s biggest hit to date: “Don’t Say Goodbye (It’s Only Goodnight).” Just short enough to leave them a little bit unsatisfied, which was the secret to getting them to buy merch on the way out.

Lately, Bobby’s “other work” was mostly phone conversations with Britttni, trying to convince her not to enter a rehab facility, or at least not yet. The party girl image was still working for her, but it wasn’t established solidly enough yet to support a stint in rehab. That could play well after a few years as a partier, but done too early it might seem desperate. You can’t have Hamlet run out and stab Polonius right at the beginning of the play; he’s got to stew in his misery a little bit first.

Shakespeare references were mostly lost on Britttni, though, who after all had spent her teen years training to be a pop star rather than going to school. Her refrain was just that she was spiraling down a drain, trying to fill the void in her life with hedonistic pleasures (she didn’t say hedonistic pleasures; she said “partying and stuff”) and it clearly wasn’t healthy.

Exactly, Bobby had tried to explain to her. You’ve got to fall before you can stand up; you’ve got to get wet before you can dry off. You can’t fill up a hole that you never dug, Britttni. No one’s going to care about your recovery if they never saw you get sick.

Maybe it was all because her father left when she was two, she had mused one night.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, Bobby had responded. Freudian analysis was passe, but she was nineteen and it was new to her.

Or that her mother put such pressure on her from such a young age to be thin and beautiful. That she was loved by half of the world and hated by the other half. That all the men in the industry saw her as an object, something they could control and use to make themselves rich rather than a person in her own right.

Brittni, this is all great stuff, but can we please save it for your comeback? You’re still in the first wave of your career. There’s a rhythm to these things, an order. Trust me, I’ve been in this business for a long time . . . so on and so forth.

Bobby Melrose had once read a book (well, part of a book) about a businessman in the 1800’s who rode ahead of groups of settlers heading west and sold guns to the Native American tribes, then rode back to the settlers, warned them that the Native Americans were armed, and sold them guns for self-defense. He considered this man a genius and would cite him as his inspiration, except that he couldn’t remember the dude's name.

He figured his own business was the same. He managed pop stars like Britttni, whose image sold very well to one brand of teenager, what he called Teen Group A. Then, under the auspices of a different label, he sold bands like Our Beautiful Misery to their mortal enemies, Teen Group B, as an alternative. 

He created his own demand. The differences were purely cosmetic. Both groups bought the same exact crap - the albums, the t-shirts, the buttons.

And for so long, Brittni and Xander had been his shining stars. His favorites; his pets. If he had been a teacher, he would have used their papers to correct the others. 

So Bobby had made a crucial mistake and forgotten what they were. Clients. He had almost begun to treat them like people, like equals.

And now they were going rogue.

Look at the interview Xander gave right after Hallowed Eve came out. He had hit all the right marks. He had mentioned incense and candles so they could start marketing the OBM-branded products; he had extolled the virtues of signing to a major label to stave off the claims of “sellout” before they began; he had even name-dropped Bobby himself, entirely on his own. He was a natural. He had this intuitive knack for being both self-aggrandizing and self-disparaging, which meant he would appeal to Teen Group B in all of their mercurial moods.

Compare that to the interview he had given for Black Carousel. Bobby hadn’t realized it at the time - his main takeaway had been, “Jesus Christ, he’s discovered semicolons” - but it was a mess. It was the canary in the coal mine. Looking at it now, in the wake of his conversation with Xander, he could see the subtle indications that Xander was trying to shatter the image of himself that they had constructed. He wanted to find the magic words that would un-idolize himself.

In time, he would learn it was impossible. Once you’ve been defined as a breath of fresh air, there’s no way to escape that designation. It is paradoxically the most trapping of all identities. Like if Jackson Pollack - after he was Jackson Pollack - actually just started throwing paint on the canvas at random, no one would have been able to tell the difference.

So Bobby knew he had to watch tonight’s show carefully, even if it meant ignoring a phone call slash grossly-underqualified therapy session with Britttni. Xander was the priority. The Dark Wave may have been coined by some pretentious journalist with a hard-on for alliteration, but it was a real force. Industry analysis predicted that within five years, there would be twice as many kids in Teen Group B as Teen Group A. And - crucially, deliciously - they would still think of themselves as a persecuted minority. That was a first principle to them, impervious to logic. The oasis could expand until there was no desert. Hell, if Christianity could still manage it . . . 

Plus, there was no end to the amount of shit they would buy. The candles and the incense had been a tremendous success, and they were planning to release OBM chains, safety pins, neck ties (somehow they thought wearing ties was subversive; Bobby had even seen some of the guys wearing three-piece suits), and even dog collars by the end of the year. 

One intern at the label had suggested branded razor blades, but it had been shot down by the legal division.

Though Xander Cross couldn’t quit being Xander Cross, he could quit making music. And despite what those who even Bobby Melrose would call “cynical” might say, the music was an essential part of all this. This wasn’t high school; you couldn’t sustain a “band” without actually releasing music regularly. Lulls were tolerated, and sometimes could help to generate buzz, but it was a delicate balance: wait one moment too long and you would find yourself unnecessary.

So for the first time since Our Beautiful Misery had become his clients (i. e., his property) three years ago, Bobby Melrose walked out onto the concert floor and braced himself to sit (a figure of speech, these kids didn’t sit for anything) through one of their shows.