Rockin’ On!

by Dashie04

Chapter Two: I Wanna Rock!

After finishing the drinks Hooves had provided, Athen’s feeling a little woozy. Perhaps I shouldn’t have drunk that. He thinks, as he trots back home. He managed to get his drum kit dismantled and returned to his place. He falls asleep and excitedly waits for tomorrow.

~~~~~~~

”If you walk away, walk away, I will walk away, walk away, I will follow,” Chase sings with the drumset. The audience is roaring, but it’s not a roar of approval, it’s a roar of disappointment. They throw anything not nailed down at the aspiring band.

“You bucking suck!” One yells.

“You can’t play for shit!” Another one complains.

“We’ll head into our next song,” Chase adds, narrowly dodging a nightstand. “Unicorns, sweet Celestia, where do they even find these things?” He adds, before continuing on his normal conversation,”Fever, so if you’d all be so kind as to stop throwing things that should be too heavy for anypony at me, I’d like to start.”

Athen wheels out an electric drumset to play Fever on, before a renegade wine bottle crashes into his crash cymbal and short-circuits it. This doesn’t bode well, they soon get booed off the stage. Athen meets up with The All-Rounders and tries to start an idle conversation with them.

“Actually, if it weren’t for you, I’m sure we would’ve slayed that crowd.” Hooves says.

“But, I thought you had a crush on me!” Athen says, half-heartedly.

“Crush? Where’d you hear that?” Hooves replies.

“Yeah, Athen, I hate to do this, but my songs are obviously too good to be hated on, I’m hearby firing you from The All-Rounders.” Chase says.

~~~~~~~

Athen jolts awake, he takes a look at his phone, 1:00 AM.

“Just bucking great,” he mumbles,”a nightmare on the day of the show we’re supposed to perform.” He sighs dejectedly, he’s obviously not getting back to bed, so he picks up Fallout: Equestria, he always reads this to calm his nerves, it’s a coping mechanism, albeit a weird one. Before Athen realizes, it’s 7:00 AM.

Taking another look at his phone, it is now clearly 7:00. He gets behind his drumset and plays a few things, at 12:00 PM, he heads over to Chase’s house to get everything set up. Bringing along his drumset, he knocks on Chase’s door.

Chase lets him in, and he sees Proper and Hooves too, he lays out his drumset on the floor, and assembles it to match with what he wants.

“Hey, Athen,” he hears Proper say.

“Wha...?” Athen replies, he’s a bit tired.

“You look like you went to Tartarus and back, what the hell happened.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why?” Proper replies.

“I had a nightmare that we wouldn’t succeed at impressing anypony tonight at our gig.”

“Athen, you do know that’s just a nightmare right? It can’t hurt you, I for one think this band’s gonna be interstellar!” Hooves replies.

“Me too, after all, I’m writing the songs.” Chase says.

“Me three,” Proper replies.

“Thank you, this is upping my spirits, anyway with that being said, let’s get ready to practice, I wanna rock!” Athen shouts.

They practice both their songs, and after they’re done, Athen lounges on the couch and talks with The All-Rounders. Eventually, they have to go to their gig.

They arrive at the area around 5:00 and sees that a small crowd is gathering.

“Word of mouth does wonders,” Proper says.

“I think we’re starting soon,” Athen says, which is proven right by an announcer announcing The All-Rounder’s presence.

“Fillies and Gentlecolts, we have an aspiring variety act, believe it or not! Put your hooves together for The All-Rounders!”

They step out onto the stage, Athen gets behind his drumset, Hooves whips out her guitar, and Proper gets his bass. Chase steps up to the mic and coaxes the crowd into their first song.

“We’ve got a fun one here, we’ve only got two songs, we were given this on short notice, but here’s our first one. I Will Follow, ready, set, go!”

Hooves launches into her riff, and Athen plays on the drumset, Chase sings the lyrics, after the song ends, the audience gives a round of applause.

“Since we appear to have a captive audience, let’s start our next song, Fever!”

They play, and the audience roars in approval, Chase has to raise his voice to address the audience,”We’ve got a rather small audience today, 20 ponies at most, but I’m glad you enjoyed! That’s all we had, so we’ll see you again soon I hope!”

As they head backstage Hooves turns to Athen and says,”I’m so glad we haven’t released an album, they don’t know what it’s supposed to sound like, I bucked up plenty.”

“They seemed to like it though, we should plan another show soon,” Proper states.

Nodding in agreement, everypony returns home to start planning their next public appearance.

The next day

Athen calls Chase and asks if he’s come up with any ideas for the band’s next appearance.

“One, there’s a local open mic near the Natural History Museum, next week, two songs, we need two more songs for the performance.”

“That sounds great, we should probably convene at your house.”

Athen calls Hooves, and flies over to Proper’s house, it just had to snow today, making him have to fly, he opens the door, again seeing it isn’t locked. “Someday he’s gonna get robbed,” Athen mutters.

“Hello there!” Proper says.

“Chase wants a meeting at his house, I’ll be there in a little bit.”

Proper nods, and then he says,”I’ll be there,” then proceeds to leave the house.

Athen flies over to his house and dismantles his drumset, and hails a taxi, he requests to go to Chase’s house, and the taxicolt happily obliges.

He reassembles the drumset in Chase’s house and looks up.

“What took ya so long?” Hooves asks.

“You try carrying a drumset everywhere. Next meeting is a my house, I swear.”

“Nice, I’d love to go to your house,” Hooves says, in a suggestive tone.

“I’m just gonna quietly fly out of the room,” Athen says, and proceeds to do just that. Everypony laughs, and Athen comes in a few seconds later.

“What’s the game plan Chase?” Hooves asks.

“I plan to create two more songs,” Chase says simply.

“Neat, what’ll they be about?” Proper asks, leaning against a wall.

“The first one, you ever get sick and tired of ponies telling you to conform? How everypony says ‘We were born to follow’? Well, this first song is about how we weren’t born to follow. We’re The All-Rounders Celestia dammit, and we’re gonna do things our way!”

“Neat,” Hooves says unenthusiastically while absent-mindedly tossing one of Athen’s drumsticks into the air.

“You might like this one Hooves, it has a solo.”

“So did Fever, that solo was shit.”

“Ever heard Metallicolt?” Chase asks.

“Yeah, who hasn’t?”

“Well, we’re gonna do one of those solos, a solo harder than the verses by a fair margin.”

Hooves finally perks up,”That sounds awesome!”

As she gets her guitar, Athen takes a position behind his drumset. “I’m liking this song, what’s the lyric?”

“This one goes out to the colt who mines for miracles, this one goes out to the ponies in need...”

Hooves comes in,”Restart!’ She calls, Chase obliges.

They record ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’ and there was happiness. They would use this for the concert in a week.

“What’s the second song?” Proper asks, setting down his bass with his telekinesis.

“Obviously, we’re an aspiring rock band, we have several dreams, we want to follow them. This song’s for those dreams, and don’t worry Hooves, it’s plenty cool on guitar. I call this one, Dream On.”

“What’s the guitar and bassline sound like, I’ll improvise.”

Chase passes out the tabs for Dream On and Hooves starts playing.

“Everytime, I look in the mirror, all these lines on my face get clearer...”

After that was done, the aspiring band realized they’d got the songs for next time. Hooves offers to pass out more hard cider, but everypony kindly declines, they didn’t wanna break the law twice in one week. They’d simply wait for their next appearance.

One week later

Gathering in front of the Natural History Museum, Chase steps up to the mic and taps it with his hoof, it makes a crazy screeching noise and he cringes a bit. He then proceeds to speak into the mic,”Hello everypony, we’re the All-Rounders, and we’ve got a small little show for you, two songs, no more or less.”

“Our first song is an inspirational one, We Weren’t Born to Follow, alright, three, two, one.”

Hooves launches into the riff and everypony plays along. They get a small assortment of applause in the crowd.

“Next, our last song for today, Dream On, it’s another inspirational one.”

They play the song, and after they’re done they get some applause, The All-Rounders step down from the stage and Athen turns toward the aspiring band.”That was pretty good, but I think we need to work on our stage presence, we’e awfully stiff up there, if you watch other bands like Metallicolt, Marilyn Manson, or Alice Cooper, they have a stage presence, they’e actively creating a show. We need to do something like that. Anyways, we’e at the Natural History Museum, so why don’ we enjoy it?”

They head through the museum, and when they get done, they go back to Chase’s house.

“I feel so cheated, Athen you get to fly while we have to wear our hooves out more, I hate you,” Hooves jokes.

“It doesn’t matter, we’re here.” Athen says.

They head back into the house and get a couple of drinks when Chase walks into the kitchen with his phone in his hooves. He turns toward The All-Rounders and says,”We’ve got two options, option one, we do a small time tour in Manehatten, we’ll get fans, but little money, or we get a manager and go on a Equestrian-wide tour.”

“What’s the name of the manager?” Proper asks.

“He only goes by ‘Uncle Pony’.”

“That’s so dumb, let’s go on the small-time tour.” Hooves says.

“Done, and done, let’s do this!” Chase says.

*******

Next time: The All-Rounders go on a Manehatten tour, however, some unexpected difficulties arise, stay tuned.

Author's Note:

When you have nothing to read, you tend to write, and I’m no exception.

Also, I better watch Athen’s and Hooves’ romance, a romance tag seems a bit weird, although I could see how it would work... however, I suck at wrting romance.

Songs:
I Wanna Rock- Twisted Sister (chapter title)
We Weren’t Born to Follow- Bon Jovi
Dream On (Specifically a live version)- Aerosmith
I’m not claiming this fiction band made these songs, but Rock Band implies that your band made all the songs themselves, so that’s why.

Comments

[Dashie04]

9380702
What does this have to do with my story...?