The two most prominent members of The Dynamite Chicks, singer Molly Mix and the amazon bass player Miranda Scholl, go to Amoeba Records to film a What’s in my Bag segment.

This story is featured in my collection of short stories entitled Short Songs, featuring characters from The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright series.

     Miranda was looking for a Lords of Acid album.
     All of the store’s records had been divided into a dizzying array of categories and subcategories. The Lords of Acid album could be in the industrial section, the EDM section, the punk section, the long row of records that were simply classified as “Alternative,” or they could be under another quite esoteric subcategory that she had not yet discovered.
     She found them under the generic rock and roll section.
     Miranda found their album Voodoo-U and snatched it out of the bin as if someone else might grab it before her if she was not fast enough.
     She looked around the store. There were no other customers in the store aside from her and Molly. They had let them into the Amoeba building before it was open to shoot a What’s in My Bag, one of their video shorts where they had musicians pick out music in their store and then talk about what they had selected on camera.
     Molly sided up to Miranda. “How much time d’ya think they’ll give us?”
     Miranda shrugged. “They do know we could be at this all day, right?”
     Molly rolled her eyes and looked around. “Hopefully they’re getting paid by the hour!”
     Molly wandered off while Miranda kept looking around the record bins. Glancing at the camera crew, they had already recorded their intros and took some candid shots of them looking around the aisles. It was not long before they decided they had enough shots of them looking through the store and left them to complete their search for music and videos.
     Miranda slinked around to the punk section, her long, unbound hair wavering behind her.
     Looking down into the record bins, she let her full and long wavy dyed-black hair fall around her face. Just enough light came through her curtain of hair for her to read the album titles. She grabbed a Fabulous Disaster album as she wondered whatever happened to that band.
     She found The Hammerbombs album Heartless Dreamboat, the Red Aunts album Drag, and the Messer Chups album The Incredible Crocotiger.
     Looking up, she saw Molly grabbing a few albums from the heavy metal section. She reflected on how well she had gotten to know Molly ever since they had both joined The Dynamite Chicks. She knew Molly’s gateway drug to harder music was the metal music she listened to as a tween and teenager, bands like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Motorhead.
     She had no doubt Molly was going down memory lane.
     Miranda returned to the industrial section. She found Neikka RPM and grabbed an Einsturzende Neubauten album.
     Floating by the Reggae section, she grabbed Toots and the Maytals and a Linton Kwesi Johnson album before returning to see what kind of music she may have missed from the punk section.
     Molly suddenly appeared by her side. “Check it out!”
     Miranda’s eyes became wide. “You found your old band’s album!”
     “They told me they can’t keep this in stock,” said Molly as she beamed at a copy of Bus Stop Hooker’s most successful LP.
     Molly handed the album to Miranda who looked at the cover art, a short-haired and buffed out woman stomping in heavy boots with steam coming out of her ears. “Dykes on the Rag.” Man, that’s like, one of my favorite songs by you guys.” She turned it over and read the song titles. “Out of Lube, Masochism Tango, Double Dong Blues… Didn’t you cover an L7 song on this?”
     “Stuck Here Again. Only we changed the lyrics and called it Stuck Her Again.”
     Molly was beaming as Miranda handed back the album. “I still have my old copy. Somehow it survived my junky warehouse days.”
     “You never told me that!”
     Miranda winked at Molly before darting off to another section and resumed looking through the albums. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the scratchy art of an old LP, an album cover she had not seen for more than fifteen years.
     She had known the trio of disaster areas that made up the Hubba Bubba Humpers. They were one of the crustiest sounding bands she had ever heard, playing a chaotic style of feedback punk on old and mangled instruments which only made them sound even more hellish and chaotic than they already were. They had a short-lived cult following made up of the dregs of the scene, those punks that were constantly getting loaded and starting fights, and were the kind of drunks, junkies, and tweakers that shocked and dismayed even the veteran music scenesters.
     She remembered a few of their shows. From what she had heard and witnessed, fights had broken out at all of their shows, brawls that were unusually drunk and excessively violent even by rock and roll club standards.
     They only lasted long enough to put out one record before completely self-destructing due to drug and alcohol fueled conflicts within the band, an event that took absolutely no one by surprise.
     Miranda suddenly flashed on a lost memory. Lee had been one of their biggest fans. She searched her hazy club day memories to try and recall if Lee had instigated any of the Hubba Bubba club brawls, which would not have surprised her in the least since Lee had always been violently wasted for their performances.
     She put the record into her bag and made her way to the next aisle as she wondered if she would even bother bringing up the Hubba Bubba Humpers during their post record search interview.
     Looking around the store, she saw Molly standing still, holding onto a record, staring at it with a reddening face.
     She looked as if she were about to weep.
     She walked right up to Molly, carefully positioning her six foot tall frame between Molly and the camera crew.
     “What’s up?” asked Miranda quietly.
     Molly tapped the record. “This… was one of Chaser’s favorite albums.”
     She was holding a Captain Beefheart album, the album Safe as Milk.
     Skye had told Miranda the story, how she found a drunk and drug-addled Molly Mix on the top of Miss Sloppy’s, a popular Oakland rave from years ago that took place in a large warehouse.
     Her wild off-the-hook girlfriend Chaser had perished in a skateboarding accident when, during a very drunken skateboarding run, had launched herself into a busy San Francisco intersection. Molly responded to the sudden death of her treasured hellcat girlfriend by going on a vicious drug and alcohol bender.
     Miranda knew Molly had come a long way, maintaining her sobriety with the help of Lee and Skye, and finding herself with her new girlfriend Gail.
     Miranda looked at the album in Molly’s hands. “Doesn’t look like something Chaser would listen to,” said Miranda, keeping her voice down.
     “She liked a lot of classic rock. She had some hippy in her.” Molly looked at Miranda with glassy eyes. “You remember her, don’t you?”
     “All too well.”
     Miranda did remember Chaser all too well. She had been a wild scene character who had gotten into enough fights and had enough torrid romances to make her one of the more memorable people from Miranda’s wild clubbing days. She was not quite at the chaos level of their friend Lee, back when she was known as the disaster area Scather, but Chaser still definitely stood out.
     “Hey, did you ever get together with Chaser?” asked Molly. “I know she hit on you a few times.”
     Miranda rolled her eyes in thought. “I… hate to say this, but I don’t remember. There are a few nights that are really blurry.” Miranda shrugged. “It’s possible.”
     “You would’ve remembered.”
     “Yeah?”
     Molly fixed her eyes on the album cover again. “Un-fucking believable in bed. She once made me climax so damn hard I thought I was gonna need a paramedic.”
     “Yikes!”
     Miranda saw the look on Molly’s face. Even though she had just made a flippant remark, she could see how deep her eyes had gotten.
     Miranda put a hand on her shoulder. “You gonna be okay?”
     Molly shivered. She shoved the album back into the bin. “I’ll be okay. This happens all the time. Too many goddamn things remind me of her.”
     “Like all those crazy punk dykes that worship you?”
     “Eh.” Molly turned her faraway eyes to Miranda. “Please don’t tell Gail.”
     “Not a word.” Miranda put her arm around Molly. “Always go for the crazies, don’tcha?” smiled Miranda.
     “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Molly as she quickly wiped away a tear.
     Miranda took back her arm and glanced back at the camera crew, making sure they hadn’t been recorded.
     Molly took off for the ska and reggae section while Miranda perused the standard rock and roll section.
     While Miranda was happy with the records she had picked out, she was thinking about the music she had not found, or at least did not have the time to look for. She kept her eye out for Niis, for Vial, for anything by The Negative Nancys, Scowl, and Die Spitz.
     The camera crew floated by and took a few more candid shots before they were asked if they wanted to show off their selections in the back room. Miranda looked to Molly who gave a thumbs up.
     “I feel funny doing this without Skye or Annie,” said Molly as they walked towards the back.
     “I know. I almost feel like tellin’ ‘em off, like tellin’ ’em we ain’t gonna do this without the rest of the band.”
     Molly rolled her eyes towards Miranda. “You know how much grief we’d get from Tandasil and Skye if we don’t go through with this.”
     Miranda let out a long sigh. “Yeah. Let’s go schmooze the media.”