Page 13 - Effable Encounters

Krud
(Fantastic Transactions 1, 1990)

Vince Lazaretto picked his way carefully through the wreckage
littering every square foot of the warehouse floor. No unsatisfied
customers here, he muttered grimly under his breath. Krud concerts
didn’t come cheap; Vince uttered a silent prayer of thanks to the
Fates who had steered him away from promoting rock tours to
producing rock music for Squirt Records
Akron was the last stop on Krud’s triumphant sweep of North
America. Record, tape, and CD sales had soared wherever he
appeared—as had arrests for malicious mischief and destruction of
public and private property. Lazaretto had a delicate negotiation to
accomplish at this late hour; the A&R man’s hand-tooled leather
shoulder-bag contained two sets of sketches for Krud’s next album:
one submitted by the artist himself two weeks earlier, the other a
more recent product of Squirt’s stable of studio arrangers and
composers. Recording was scheduled to begin in Hollywood in three
days, and two rather different conceptions had to be reconciled.
Vince kicked aside the remnants of a flimsy folding chair blocking
his path to the star’s dressing room. The scattering debris clattered
against the rough concrete floor; an echo from the rafters of the
industrial-district structure bounced about the deserted enclosure.
The roadies would be back in the morning to dismantle Krud’s
elaborate stage and sound system, a dark hulking assemblage of
jointed girders, towering amplifiers, and miles of draped green and
purple bunting. The concert had ended an hour earlier, at midnight,
when the law enforced its curfew by pulling the plug on the band’s
power supply. All but the most ardently giggling groupies thereupon
slunk out into the street under the watchful eyes of Akron’s finest.
Now, as Vince expected, the star of the show was alone. A
limousine awaited him on a side street, its driver dozing at the wheel.
Krud’s bodyguard sat outside the impromptu greenroom, studying a
sadomasochistic comic book; he knew the recording executive by
sight, and reached back to rap on the door.
“Hey, Krud!” he shouted hoarsely. “You got a visitor that ain’t a
skirt. Should I let him in?”
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