We could have gone on playing for hours but after a couple more songs, we had to end the gig.
"Ok, guys," Rob began saying to the people in the audience, "this is the last song that you requested. Thank you so much for being here. We've had the best time, and we hope you've enjoyed yourselves as much as we have."
We played a U2 cover that everyone sang along to, giving us goosebumps, and then, we went into the pit to meet our growing fan base and engage with them. Everyone was super excited to be talking to us and for a long moment, we were surrounded by fans, which of course, was a real buzz. We signed a few autographs, shook hands with the boys, hugged the girls and took pictures with them.
Being the singer and frontman, Rob was, as always, getting the most female attention. He was literally surrounded by a bunch of giggling girls who wanted to touch him, hug him and even kiss him. He'd always seem to enjoy it but for the first time, I really focused all my attention on how he interacted with them. He was nothing but sweet but unlike Jordan and Damon who were single and looked pretty determined to make the most of their evening, Rob wasn't acting flirtatiously. He was being nice and respectful but he clearly wasn't trying to get some.
Jordan had been the first one to actually notice this. The past couple of months, he had joked about it several times, telling us that he suspected Rob to be - to quote him - more into dick than pussy. We would always laugh about it and he hadn't really said anything in front of Rob, not in a serious way anyway.
After interacting with the fans for a long moment, I went back up onto the stage to unplug our instruments. Shortly after, the music began playing and the pit became a dancefloor again.
For a few seconds I looked for Rob, unsurprisingly, when I spotted him, he was talking with a bloke and clearly they were into each other. It was the first time I actually noticed Rob being flirtatious with a guy and it was a bit unsettling. I'm sure it had happened plenty of times before but, unlike Jordan, I just hadn't seen it. The bloke had his hand on Rob's lower back, he was leaning close to him and talking into his ear flirtatiously. Rob obviously knew him. I didn't. They were both being subtle, but now that I knew, there was no doubt in my mind that he was gay and that Rob had probably had sex with him before.
Watching them, a wave of emotion came over me and completely destabilized me. I didn't want him to fuck around with anyone in that club. I wanted us to go back to his place and continue what we had started, and I fucking hoped he did too.
I wasn't sure how to make that happen though. I was supposed to take Rachel home and stay over at her place and I knew that if I did that, I'd have to have sex with her. For the first time, I wasn't looking forward to it. All I could think about was how to find an excuse, any excuse to go home with Rob instead of her, but at the same time, I felt really bad for wanting to do this. I couldn't help thinking that it was a pretty shitty thing to do to her and I seriously wondered what I was getting myself into.
I was about to join Rob on the dancefloor when I heard Dylan call my name.
"Mark," he said as I was zipping up my guitar case. "You're not gonna believe this. I was just at the bar, and someone working from BMG started chatting to me!"
I stood up in a flash, realizing right away what it meant. "For real?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Yeah. Said he wants to talk with us backstage," he answered, with excitement in his voice, his hands reaching behind his neck and his lips forming a broad smile.
"Holy fuck, man!" I said, grabbing his arm, obviously thrilled. "This is happening!"
"It is, isn't it!" he exclaimed, still smiling broadly.
"Where is he now? What'd he say to you exactly?" I asked him, talking a lot faster than usual.
"He's still at the bar," he replied as he spun around and looked across the dancefloor.
"What do we do?" I asked, a bit freaked out.
"I dunno," he responded, anxiety in his voice, "but we've gotta stay cool. Come with me, I'll introduce you!"
We walked over to the bar and he introduced himself to me.
"Hello, Scott Darcy, I'm part of the A&R team at BMG," he said as he extended his hand.
"Mark, Mark Emery," I answered, shaking his hand.
"That was a great performance you've just delivered!" he said to me. "Would you two mind getting your bandmates, so we can have a chat backstage?"
"Yeah, of course," I told him.
They were all dancing with a few admirers. We gathered them together to tell them that a guy from a record company wanted to talk to us. They reacted as enthusiastically as I did and we all went backstage to our dressing room. The guy briefly introduced himself again and shook hands with Rob, Jordan and Dylan.
"Did you come here to hear us play?" Damon asked.
"Sort of. I'm in Dublin for a few days," he said with a nod. "I'd heard of this new Irish band making a buzz on the internet that was playing tonight, so I got curious. Glad I did," he smiled. "you boys owned the stage. Were those your songs? Have you written them yourselves?" he asked as we all sat down.
"Yeah, we have," Jordan told him proudly.
"Well, I gotta admit, I'm quite impressed with the quality of your playing. How old are you?" he asked all of us.
"We're all eighteen," Dylan answered.
He just nodded and sort of stared at us for a moment.
"Damn!" he exclaimed loudly, "I fucking love when this happens! You," he said intensely, pointing his finger toward Rob, "you have something that I haven't seen in a young artiste in a while. There's something about you that draws people's attention. You're very charismatic. You have star quality young man, a pretty darn good voice and stage presence, let me tell you."
We all looked at Rob with raised eyebrows. I could tell that he was pleased to hear this. It was probably one of the nicest compliments he had ever received about his singing and performing abilities.
"That's a great advantage you've got here. You need someone like that in a band. And from what I've seen, you're all doing on quite well with your instruments. Despite your young age I was staggered during your performance, no mistakes, so much energy, passion, professionalism too...."
"Thanks," was all we could utter.
"You seem to have attracted quite a fan base already. I mean, you've sold out a venue tonight and the media don't even know you."
Yeah, we had, and we couldn't quite believe it ourselves.
"I'm so intrigued by the five of you," he said, still staring.
We didn't know how to respond. Thankfully, he asked us,
"What do you boys expect from this band you've formed? What motivates you?"
We looked at each other. Damon was the first one to answer,
"We just want to have fun, play music together, we just love it. I mean, we'd love to take it further but right now, we just enjoy playing together whenever we can. Tonight's actually the first time we performed in a place where people had to pay to see us play. We've only played in pubs before."
Rob added,
"Yeah, tonight, we thought it'd only be people coming to the club, to like dance, but as it turned out they were coming for us, " he said, amazed.
"They were!" he confirmed with a nod. "How long've you been playing together?"
Damon continued,
"We live on the same street, we go to the same school, we've been friends forever. We started playing when we were...," he looked at us, "thirteen, fourteen?"
We all nodded, it was around that age.
"That's astonishing! That you've got to this point already. Who writes the songs?"
They all turned to me.
"You?" he asked me.
I chuckled,
"Well, I don't do it all by myself ... but yeah, I guess I write with most of the melodies," I said self-consciously.
"That song you played near the end, "Politik", was it?" he asked. "It's an amazing tune, from start to finish. Absolutely brilliant! That should be released as a single, if you want my opinion. Did you write that song as well?" he asked me.
"He did," Jordan answered for me, punching my arm. "he pretty much writes all the songs. We just try to keep up with him."
"Astonishing!" he reapeated. "I can recognize talent when I see it and you all have a lot of it. You're gonna go far," he stated with confidence. "A great song writer, a great front man, great musicians, a growing fan base... you've got everything. You've got everything you need to sign a record deal."
We all looked at each other, totally thrilled.
"You wanna sign us?" Jordan asked, with the biggest grin on his face.
Rob and I were sitting next to each other. He turned to me and whispered, "Have I been living in some kind of parallel universe since yesterday where all of my dreams come true?"
I laughed and pushed him playfully with my shoulder. I shook my head no,
"It's real, all real!" I confirmed with a smile, he grinned at me and shook his head in amazement.
"Well, that's definitely something that ought to be considered." he answered Jordan.
He then asked us plenty of music-related questions. What type of music we were into, how many songs we'd written, how many gigs we'd played... We were very enthusiastic and he seemed to enjoy that. If anyone started talking to us about music, it was almost impossible to stop us. The atmosphere in the room was relaxed. We chatted with him for a long time until he clasped his hand together and announced,
"Right lads, let's get serious. You realise we don't invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in a group, no matter how talented they may be just after seeing them live once. I, but more specifically the people who might consider investing in you, need to know you better. We need to hear demos of your songs. We need to see if it's good enough to be marketed to a targeted audience. We want to know what motivates you, how hungry you are to make it, how well you get along. We don't want to invest money in a group that is going to give up after a few months because they can't stand each other anymore or because they get so big-headed right from the start that they start to live it up all the time and completely forget what their goals were in the first place. If you wanna make it, you need to throw yourselves one hundred percent into everything that you do. You need to work hard, it's a tough industry. It's not about just having fun. It requires commitment and dedication, because as soon as you stop working, it's over, someone else takes your place. Is this clear in your minds? Are you ready for this? Are you all ready to give up a normal adolescence and going to college, or living every man's life for this band? Do you think it's worth it? Because if you do make it, your lives can change dramatically and you will have to deal with it."
We all looked at each other. He sure had done a good job of describing the harsh reality but of course we still wanted it. I knew I did, I had faith in us.
"I'm even more ready than I was before I stepped into this room," Dylan said and we all agreed.
He seemed happy with that answer.
"Alright then! Well, here's my card," he said as he handed it to Rob.
"Can you tell me at what number I can reach you?"
"Sure," Rob answered and gave him a phone number.
"Alright. I'll call you so we can meet again. We have an office here in Dublin. Please, make a demo of these songs," he begged.
We stood up as he added, "Well, if you don't have any questions, I'll let you get back to the dancefloor."
We thanked him, chatted some more and he left. We all were extremely silent after he'd closed the door behind him.
Dylan spoke first,
