I'm with the band

[thoughtsonyaoi]

ROCK STAR AU meme

From solo acts or rock bands to road crews and groupies, all have a note to play in the melody of fame. Legends are born. Dreams die. Who will write your song?

Comments

Steve | Stranger Things | OTA

[the_hair]

[Band manager? Roadie? Not a groupie just a fan? Weirdly popular concert pianist in his own right? Secret other thing? Hit me, I'll roll with it!]

[obeyyourdm]

[I'll be perpetually slow tagging, but would love something in the vein of band manager or roadie Steve...]

[the_hair]

[I'm good with slow, and either of those works depending on how far afield we want to go with the AU - Roadie = more closer to canon, in theory, and manager = more further into full AU territory, bc he'll never be a Charles Foster Offdensen, but he might get close. (And canon-Steve is v. much not a Business Guy™)]

[obeyyourdm]

[I mean, I can roll with either. But what if Steve's dad is a fatcat in some music label, and Steve gets handed off some token "local talent" band that no one in the label really cares makes it or not, just that they do the 'du jour' promos on back pages of music mags, a couple of early morning TV spots, and open for the actual big money signings until they fade into obscurity and the label finds fresh fodder. Steve has no idea what he's doing but he's determined to make it work, shame no one handed that memo to Corroded Coffin...]

[the_hair]

[Well now I'm wheezing laughing, because that is the kind of situation he would find himself in.
He'd get real good about schedules and riders real quick, and PR, probably. Theoretically.]

[obeyyourdm]

[Eddie and Gareth turn up to an early morning TV spot, clearly not slept and still under the influence of the night before, which is a real issue because the breakfast host had intended to play up the Gareth is the Baby of the group angle and now can't draw attention to the fact that he's underage. Eddie goes on a sweary tirade about Indiana laws and it turns out he has illegal tattoos. Host knows nothing about Metal which means Jeff is giving one word answers to all the dumb questions. And no one will tell the host what the name of the fourth member of the band is.

Good luck, Steve. PR the shit out of this dumpster fire. And then PR the hell out of Eddie Munson's dangerously tight pants]

[the_hair]

[Different name every time they refer to him, or titles like 'this guy', and would things get better or worse after taking them on a tri-state festival/county fair circuit?

Luckily Steve's his mother's kid as well and while he might not be as Well-Respected In The Community, he's good at putting a spin on things.

Usually. Maybe? He does his best.

But yeah, I'm game, throw me something, I'll roll with it. Or I can whack something together, just LMK]

[obeyyourdm]

[LMAO! I might need to remind myself if he has an official name, I call him Paul in my head but I'm pretty sure that's not right XD

I'll put something together and throw it your way. Tomorrow though, I need to go bed now - I have a ridiculously early appointment in the morning fml]

[the_hair]

[No worries, I'm gearing up to do Some Stuff right now, and will def. be around tomorrow.
I've been calling him Craig because of a dumb joke, but I've seen Paul before too, still no official name I'm aware of.]

[obeyyourdm]

Eddie got it. The moment he met the guy that was supposed to be the band's manager, he got the message loud and clear: The label wasn't going to take them seriously, they were just there to fill out the books and make the main acts look good. So why in hell's name would Eddie take the label seriously?

He kept his concerns to himself, he wasn't going to be the one to put a dampener on the high that the rest of Corroded Coffin was riding, and honestly, it probably didn't make that much of a difference. Eddie telling himself that he didn't give a shit looked a lot like Eddie having the best rock 'n' roll time of his life that he could carve out of however long they got in this weak and watery spotlight. And the band were here for that ride too.

It was almost a sobering thought, that maybe Eddie was the only one with an awareness of the fact that they were not being professional at all. But, how often do you get to be drunk on TV at 7am, and have the host not only not doing a spot about the state of youth culture today, but have them actually have to be smiling and talking nice to you at the same time? Just maybe, Eddie wasn't sadly as drunk as he was acting, but he was pretty sure Gareth wasn't acting at all.

Eddie had been timing it out: He was one "and now a word from our sponsors" away from climbing up on the cheery, well lit, fake breakfast bar of a desk they were all gathered around, and delivering a sermon from the Gospel of Munson. The lights were bright on the set, but Eddie could see Mr Harrington, said manager, younger than him, which was the first clue this signing was utter bullshit, twitching away in the dark of the wings. At least he could make him squirm and earn the money Daddy funneled towards him for doing this excuse for a babysitting job.

Eddie eyed up the height of the desk, compared to the swivel chair as the host gave the cue to cut to sponsor. Thirty seconds, then it was showtime. Don't fall. Or, do... It all worked, really.

[the_hair]

Steve, like the rest of the band, had no idea how much of a farce this all was.

Mostly because he'd been told this was His One Chance to Prove He Could Handle It, and it was a chance he'd jumped at without stopping to think that any and every other chance to prove himself that had been handed down by his father was always a setup for failure in one way or another. He might, eventually, figure out that it would always be a case of Lucy and the football, but that day wasn't today, because 'local boys going big' was, theoretically, the kind of thing he could handle.

He'd known them for not quite a month now, and knew that only ever referring to Paul by nicknames was a game for them, to see if anyone else ever actually addressed him by name, it was harmless enough, and honestly amused Steve to watch some morning presenter or afternoon host flail and have to check their notes, or not address any of them by the correct name.

But this... today was something else, he didn't know what was going on behind Eddie's eyes and while he was hoping it was just a hangover, he was pretty sure there was more to it than that, and while he hadn't called Barb in the PR office to make sure they were on standby to whip something up, he'd definitely thought about it.

Mostly he was hoping that whatever scheme was brewing wouldn't result in a call to legal, because one of the first questions he'd been asked was if he was their lawyer, and he'd mostly laughed it off, saying that they weren't big enough, yet, to have their own legal team, and please not do anything that would need them to have to bank on one of the label's lawyers, because they would not be getting one of the good ones.

He was torn between calling a halt preemptively and wanting to see what happened, because -he was learning- that right now, no press was bad press, and that even if they up and killed someone -which he was at least 95% sure they wouldn't- it would all come down to how and who broke the news first.

So, for the time being, he waited, nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but not going to shut it down just yet.