Different Circles

At 3:00 PM, the lights went down and the stage went dark. A murmur of anticipation filtered through the small crowd that was gathered. The video screens came to life, showing still pictures of Celia from her childhood. There were shots of her as an infant, shots of her in Easter dresses going to church when she was five, shots of her sitting with her father at eight, a guitar in her hands while he sat next to her, instructing her on how to play it. Her mother’s voice, speaking softly in Spanish, began to play from the speakers while subtitles in English told the audience that she was talking about how her little girl had taken to music and singing from an early age, how she had picked up the basics of the guitar in the third grade, how she had sung in the church choir by the age of ten. Photos of these memories flashed continuously on the screens: Celia in the choir, Celia in the school band, Celia at home playing for her family. In each shot, Celia got a little older, until soon she was a young adolescent, her future adult beauty plainly apparent. At this point, Celia’s voice took over the narration, speaking with her Hispanic accent deliberately thickened. She told of being in a band with her family and friends, of playing clubs in Venezuela, and finally of the band being discovered and being invited to America to make records.

Though there were many pictures of Celia as part of La Diferencia in the slideshow, at no point was the name La Diferencia mentioned, nor were the names of any songs they had done. Nor would there be any La Dif material performed in this show. Aristocrat Records owned the rights to everything La Dif and they were understandably miffed about being left out of this touring contract. As such, KVA and National could show pictures from those days, but they could mention no band name, could cite no lyric, could sing no song without incurring the wrath of Aristocrat’s legal team.

The La Dif days came to an end, and then Celia told of hooking up with her friends Jake Kingsley (of Intemperance fame—they could say that) and the Archers, and Pauline Kingsley. Pictures of the five of them together—always with Celia in the shots—began to flash now. She told of the merger of talent that became KVA Records and how they scrimped and saved and begged and borrowed and finally put together Celia’s first solo CD.

Then the pictures went away. On the left screen, suddenly appeared the words: AND THE REST. On the right screen, were the words: IS HISTORY!

The stage lights suddenly came on. The band was on the stage, Celia at the front, in front of her microphone. She was holding her twelve-string acoustic—the one she had bought one fateful day in a Portland music store—in her hands. She was dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting shirt, her hair flowing around her shoulders. Miles was behind her and to the right. He began to play the opening melody for The Struggle, Celia’s first solo hit. The rest of the band chimed in behind him and Celia began to sing.

The small crowd cheered and quickly got into the spirit of the show. On the video screens, the views became an ever-changing stream of live shots of the bandmembers. Celia was featured the most, but they also showed Miles when he was playing the melody or the solo, Little Stevie when he was hitting the riffs, Coop when he was pounding out the beat. The producers knew their stuff, were experienced at this sort of production, and they changed the view back and forth with skill.

Jake looked over at Loraine during the guitar solo and saw her bobbing her head and tapping her feet to the beat. She was smiling happily. Soon, she started singing along. So did many of the others, including Jake himself.

In all, the concert lasted two hours and thirty minutes. There was a twenty-minute intermission after the first ninety-minute set. Celia performed eight of the ten songs from her new CD, scattering them throughout the performance so that no one got bored by hearing too much unfamiliar material in succession. She played all of her most popular songs, scattering them throughout as well, and ending the set with Playing Those Games, her most popular hard-rock number. The encores were Why?, Should We Believe?, and, finally, The End of the Journey, which was projected to be sitting in the number one position on the charts when the first date was actually played.

Celia thanked the audience for coming out to see her, her voice humble, her accent, once again, deliberately thickened. She and the band linked arms and took a bow. They then walked off the stage to surprisingly loud applause from the small crowd, and the house lights came up.

“That was incredible,” Meghan said to Jake, her eyes wide, a look of profound bliss on her face. “Is there any more? Is it really over?”