I've always wanted to be a roadie for a rock band. Think of the perks: Heavy drinking, free shows, lots of sightseeing, and countless sexual favors, not to mention cool "all access" laminated passes.

As the years passed, I gradually realized my rock band roadie fantasy would probably never come true, but then Lloyd Miller, lead singer and bassist of The Deedle Deedle Dees said he'd let me roadie for the Brooklyn-based kids' band.

"When's the show?" I said, figuring I'd need some time to perfect my microphone cable winding skills.

"Sunday afternoon," he said.

"Where?"

"Temple Beth Elohim."

I know what you're thinking. Kids' band? Temple? A true roadie would run as soon as he heard those words. Well, a true roadie never says no, my friend. Especially, a guy like me, who has a wife and two kids and no time for a two-week rock road trip across the Midwest. This was the closest I was going to get to being a "road dawg."

Sunday. 1:00 p.m.

I show up at Lloyd's house in Carroll Gardens, but Lloyd isn't there. Then I hear a car horn, and see a red SUV pull up.

"Sorry I'm late," Lloyd says, getting out of the car. "My daughter had a massive bowel movement in church and I had to help my wife air-dry her pants."

Leading me into his basement apartment, Lloyd points to a checklist on a piece of paper (Bass amp, acoustic guitar, PA, mailing list, mixing board).

"You can start loading stuff into the car," he says.

I pick up a P.A. speaker and walk out of the basement. I shove it in the back of the SUV while Lloyd wrestles with his daughter's car seat.

I'm about to tell him I have two child car seats of my own when I stop myself. I'm a roadie today. Somewhere, not too far away, my kids are running around, but I'm about to get on the road. And, I'm already carrying heavy rock and roll equipment.

"Should I get a cup of coffee for the road?" I say.

"It's a short trip," Lloyd says.

1:15 p.m

Lloyd and I are finally on the road. We're talking about the band, and it turns out, they're a lot like The Ramones. They all have the same last name, Dee. There's Booker T. Dee, Innocent Dee, and Otto Van Dee. Lloyd's stage name is Ulysses S. Dee, after Ulysses S. Grant, who he feels a special affinity for.

"He was a complete failure before he became a general," he says. "And then he really found himself."

I wonder to myself who'd I'd be named after if I were a historical figure. I wonder if other rock band roadies have ever wondered this.

Lloyd double parks outside Innocent Dee's apartment. We've driven about an eighth of a mile, but I've thoroughly enjoyed my 1 minute and 48 seconds on the road. No one can take that away from me now.

1:19 p.m.

Innocent Dee, also known as Anand Mukherjee, hops in the SUV. Innocent is the guitarist. Being the roadie, I offer to take the back seat. I ask the band how their last show went.

"It was at a hospital for the criminally insane on Randall's island," Lloyd says.

I want to ask Lloyd why a kids' band would be booked at a hospital for the insane, and wonder if this says something about normal kids. Instead, I sit back and listen to Lloyd tell me about the show at the mental hospital and how they'd had to put their equipment on a conveyor belt before entering the building. Then they'd been escorted to a locked room, deep within other locked rooms. The sign on the door said "The Manhattan Club." Inside, heavily drugged inmates parted silently before The Deedle Dee Dees, who, it turned out, were not reason they had all shuffled into The Manhattan Club.

"The hot dogs and Snickers," Lloyd says. "Were the main attraction."

1:25 p.m.

I walk up to the drummer, Ely Levin's apartment, with the other Dees. Ely has injured his right ankle after rehearsing a Parliament Funkadelic song all night with his other band, which shows you what funk music can do to white guys. He seems relieved that I'll be giving him a hand. Outside, I ask him why he's holding a long wooden pole.

"I thought I'd use it for a cane," he says.

The road dawg in me wants to grab it and toss it away. Fuck the cane! He can lean on my shoulder if he wants!

"I guess I'm a little injury prone," Ely says, leaning over to rub his foot. "A few months ago, I tore some cartilage in my sleep."

"Ouch," I say.

Lloyd tells us that since Ely is injured, he'll have to take my place in the SUV. Anand offers to walk the rest of the way with me to Temple Beth Elohim. It isn't far.

After a few moments of trying to figure out what direction we're headed, Anand and I start walking. We pass the time by talking about his stage name, Innocent Dee, which he came up with after reading a book about Pope Innocent III. I'm wondering how many other rock musicians are named after popes when I hear the sickening scrape of steel against steel and see a No Parking sign snapping back and forth.

"Is that Lloyd's car?" I say.

"It is," Anand says, running across the street.

1:30 p.m.

Me and the other Dees are inspecting the damage to Lloyd's SUV.

"It's just a scratch," he says.

We start to unload the equipment and Lloyd shows me how to carry his upright bass.

"Grab this handle like this, and the other one like this."

"Like this?" I say, grabbing the handle.

"No," he says, putting his hands on his hips.

2:05 p.m.

In the middle of "loading in," to "the venue." I find myself momentarily transfixed by a poster on an easel inside the Temple lobby. The Hebrew Hammer, it says. The baddest Hebe this side of Tel Aviv.

2:12 p.m.

I haul the duffel bag containing Ely's drum hardware down a flight of stairs and open the door. It feels like I'm carrying twenty barbells on my shoulder.

"Is this is the way to the auditorium?" I say to a maintenance guy.

"No," he says. "It's upstairs."

"Well," I say cheerfully. "At least I'm getting some exercise."

"That's not exercise," he says. "If you walked up these stairs all day like I do every day, then that would be exercise."

A true roadie would tell this yob to fuck off, perhaps even in an English accent.

Instead, I thank him and trudge back up the stairs with Ely's amazingly heavy drum equipment. I feel like I'm carrying a corpse. Ely's waiting for me in the hallway, with his long wooden pole. He looks at me sadly and points to the wheels on one end of the duffel bag.

"It rolls," he says.

2:34 p.m.

I'm introduced to Chris, also known as Booker T. Dee. He's the pianist in the band. We shake hands and then there's an uncomfortable moment of silence. I break it by asking him what it's like to play piano in a kids' band.

"It's great," he says.

"Lots of groupies?" I say, kidding around.

"Lots of breastfeeding," he says.

"So what do you do when that happens?" I say, picturing Chris's eyes dancing across a row of breastfeeding mothers, searching for a safe place to come to rest.

"I stare," he says.

2:46 p.m.

The show's about to begin. The kids are sitting on the faded red rug in front of Lloyd. Others are sitting on their parents laps on the folding chairs. Ely's bad ankle is firmly in place behind his bass drum.

The organizer of the event is looking worried.

"I'm going to open the windows," she says. "Cause it's a little perfumey and yucky in here."

I don't say anything, because words like "perfumey" and "yucky" are not in a road dawg's vocabulary. Exasperated, she shakes her head and flies toward the windows. I watch her crank them open and take a seat by the stage.

"Wake up, wake up," a father next to me begs the son who has fallen asleep in his arms.

3:01 p.m.

We're ready for show time. We're going to blow them away. This chandeliered, parquet-floored room doesn't stand a chance against those PA speakers. I watch Lloyd step up to the microphone, one finger already hooked around the E string of his upright bass.

"Please let us know if it's too loud," he says to the audience.

3:09 p.m.

The Dees are cruising through "Henry Box Brown," a catchy song about a slave who mails himself to freedom. I stand ready as a three year old girl in a pink cardigan becomes fascinated by the mixing board, but her mother carries her away. A morose looking brown haired boy in a red sweater is watching Lloyd play his bass guitar. The song ends. The audience claps. The boy whispers something to Lloyd.

"What did you say?" Lloyd says, bringing his mic closer to the boy.

"Sometimes things do get worse," the boy says cryptically before turning away and walking back up the aisle.

3:31 p.m.

I'm clapping along to "Cesar Chavez," The Deedle Dee Dees excellent, socially conscious song about Chavez' 23-day hunger strike.

"He said no food for me," Lloyd sings.

"11, 12, 13," the kids sing.

I clap along as Lloyd counts all the days of Cesar Chavez' fast, thinking of the emaciated activist, too weak to even talk. Could he have ever known that one day an auditorium full of well-fed children would be running around in circles and merrily counting off the days of his hunger strike? And if he did, would he have shaved off a week?

3:35 p.m.

A woman puts her hand on my shoulder. I turn around, expecting that I'm about to be offered my first sexual favor. Instead, it's Beth, a friend of my wife's. She's there with her two kids.

"What are you doing here?" she says.

"I'm the band's "roadie," I says, putting quotes around "roadie" with my fingers to indicate mature, cynical detachment. This doesn't seem to help matters. I turn around and hear her whispering something to the mom next to her. Feeling an urge to clarify things, I turn around and smile at her.

"I should have called my wife," I say, as if the thought had just occurred to me. "Had her bring down the kids."

"That would have been a good idea," Beth says, looking at me warily. "It's a kids' concert, right?"

4:08 p.m.

The Dees are in the chorus of their last song, "Satchell Paige," ("1, 2, 3, 4, ball four"), but I'm momentarily distracted because a small child has become pinned under a stack of large plastic squares in a corner of the room. A mother is waving for help. Four other mothers have joined her before I even take two steps, quickly freeing the young boy. I think of the eleven people trampled to death at that Who concert in Cincinnati, and how fast public events can turn tragic. Then I realize a stack of large, multicolored plastic squares couldn't crush my little finger. Meanwhile, the little girl in the pink cardigan has taken advantage of my absence and is about to adjust the levels on the mixing board. Her mother snatches her away again, just in time.

4:09 p.m.

The show's over and I'm rolling Ely's duffel bag of drum hardware out of the auditorium. In the coat room across from me, a very well dressed, attractive young mother is surgically picking her nose under a fluorescent light. The funny thing is, when she sees me rolling the duffel bag toward her she doesn't stop. Finally, I know I'm a true roadie.

4:15 p.m.

I witness my first groupie interaction. As Chris shows me the correct way to wind a microphone cable, the three-year-old girl in the pink cardigan walks up and asks him his name.

"Booker T. Dee," he says, smiling at her.

"I'm Josephine," she says, starstruck. Then she runs away.

4:43 p.m.

After "loading out," I shake hands with the Dees and thank them. They're a terrific band (and their CD Freedom in a Box is available at CDbaby.com). It's been a short tour, one afternoon really, but I'd do another show with them in a heartbeat, even one at the hospital for the criminally insane. Who could pass up Snickers bars and hot dogs?

Matt Marinovich's work has appeared in Salon.com, Open City, Mississippi Review, Poets & Writers, and other magazines. His first novel, Strange Skies, is out now.

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