Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

At last, the great concert got underway.

Next to Jackson and Daphne Harris, Iris sat alone on her blanket, elbows on her knees. She had worked too hard to make this event a reality, and she didn’t want to miss a note. The fluttery feeling of anticipation in her stomach during the morning had disappeared, replaced by a spreading warmth of amazed relief. She looked around to see the same excitement in the eyes of the other spectators.

Jackson and Daphne Harris held each other close, as they stared at the band on the raised stage.

Iris and many others had forsaken the closer seats in the repaired bleachers to sit on the grass. She felt the lumpy ground beneath her, but it didn’t matter. Sitting on the grass for a rock n’ roll concert seemed perfectly appropriate.

The first band got a laugh and a resounding cheer by opening with their rendition of Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty,” which they followed with other rock classics from the seventies, then a few folk songs that everyone knew. The murmur of the audience singing along as if in a trance sent shivers through Iris. The musicians used improvised musical instruments, and the songs didn’t sound much like what Iris remembered—but the sheer delight of music again was enough. The notes vibrated through the speedway’s metal loudspeakers, sounding tinny and muffled. Iris found it absolutely wonderful.

The crowd cheered, nearly loud enough to drown out the sound blasting from the improvised amplifiers the engineers had cobbled together. Iris couldn’t wait to see if they had indeed managed to build a working electric guitar. She knew the energy drain was stupendous, and they’d be lucky to finish the concert. But the wind kept blowing, the windmills kept turning, and the music kept blasting through the air.

The bands were a mishmash of musical talent that had arrived after hearing word of the proposed concert. Many of the musicians had played in bar bands around the Bay Area, working day jobs and performing on weekends. The only “professional” they counted among their number was the lead singer from Visual Purple, a late sixties alternative rock band, who had been stranded in San Jose during a rather unsuccessful attempt at a comeback tour. He had worked with the volunteer musicians, directing the others and getting upset when they spent more time tuning up than they did performing. But the singer’s rough voice wrapped itself around the lyrics of all the old classics, even two country & western hits, but he really began to shine when he managed to work in the few chart-scratching songs Visual Purple had released.

The musicians kept playing for an hour. Iris expected any moment for some fuse to blow, some component to fail, and the concert would be over. But the only pause occurred when the first band took a break to stand down while the second group came onstage.

The next lead singer had a softer, warbly voice—due in part from nervousness, Iris was sure. But the crowd received the music with full enthusiasm, almost growing too introspective with Crosby, Stills and Nash’s post-apocalyptic “Wooden Ships.”

Sitting on her blanket, Iris looked around at the crowd. Thousands and thousands had arrived, most from the local cities, but some had come all the way from the Monterey Peninsula to the south, others from Sacramento to the north. It seemed like a holy pilgrimage to them. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

She wished Todd could have been there to share it. Maybe seeing how the music affected all these people would get through his thick head and make him see what he was missing. Iris felt very isolated as she sat by herself, trying not to notice Jackson and Daphne Harris snuggling next to her….

As darkness fell, everyone grew silent, stunned, as the stadium lights came on, flooding the stage and the abandoned racetrack.

Powered by the windmills, the incandescent lights blazed with a warm white light that dazzled the viewers; the lights flickered, but they kept up. After a breathless pause, a spontaneous wave of people stood up and applauded, cheering. The lights and the music made them feel as if they had come home again.

Up in the tower, the kid Harley ran the lights, standing by the controls like the captain of a spaceship. He had begged Jackson Harris for the job, and Harris had given it to him. Iris had never seen Harley look so proud or so determined to do something right.

When the audience finally fell silent after seeing the electric lights, the lead singer from Visual Purple took the stage again, accompanied by two Livermore engineers who had each crafted an electric guitar. Hooked up to the amplifiers and the speedway loudspeakers, they began to play.

The first chords came out, gentle but with a biting memory that sent a liquid tingle down Iris’s spine. People struggled to their feet again as the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” echoed over the speakers; the crowd sang along but Iris felt a lump in her throat.

Many of the audience members sat back, sucking in a collective audible breath. As the darkness deepened, battered back and defeated by the brilliant stadium lights, the guitarists on stage played “Stairway to Heaven.”

In the bleachers, the crowd swayed and sang along with the lyrics they all knew by heart. On the grass, people got up and held hands, adding their voices in a swell of song that rang across the hills. Behind her, on one of the blankets, Iris heard two men arguing about what the lyrics really meant, but she ignored it—she had been hearing that discussion since her high school days.

To her left and down the slope, she noticed the teenaged couple from Oakland standing next to each other; the young father cradled the new baby in his arms, rocking it back and forth to the chorus. The young mother rubbed fingers across her boyfriend’s shoulder blades.

As the music and a flood of other memories poured into her, Iris felt tears brimming in her dark eyes. She had seen other people in the audience crying during the concert, but never as many as now. Many of their voices broke as they tried to sing along.

With barely a pause, the singer slid into “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles, which kept people standing and stunned, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Finally, continuing with the Beatles, he lightened the mood with the now-absurd song “Drive My Car.”

When the band finished, cheers pummelled them, and the singer turned to his two electric guitarists. “Are you ready to do what you came here for?”

Cranking up the volume, the trio, joined by the drummer and keyboardist, launched into the strangest mixture of music Iris could have imagined, Top 40, new rock, more folk songs, even a pair of Broadway showtunes. Everyone began moving, dancing, swaying, stomping. They seemed to care only that they were hearing music again, an icon of their lost civilization. Iris felt that the entire silent post-petroplague world must have been able to hear them.

The music continued late into the night. Iris was exhausted, but she never wanted it to stop. The people had shouted and chanted and sung until their voices were hoarse; they had clapped until their hands were sore. The magic in the air was intoxicating, and she felt in her heart that the dark ghosts from the previous violent concert at the Altamont must have been exorcised that day.

She saw Doog standing near the stage, his face tilted toward the stars in rapture, his round John Lennon glasses like shining coins in the stadium lights.

Iris looked around to see the hills glittering with a thousand yellow gems, tiny flames raised high. In another concert, the fans would be flicking their lighters, but this time they had brought candles, saving them until the very end in a gesture of their heartfelt appreciation.