IF'N, good reader, you have drifted like flotsam into this document without first reading Part One, this will make no sense to you at all. You'll be lost. You'll founder. You'll flounder. You'll break into small bits. For crying out loud, CLICK HERE and read Part One. As always, we will wait for you right here. Okay?

As we last left our boy, his world has been rocked to its foundations. Or something. He abandons the leaf-raking concept and hurtles down the stairs to the basement (not actually TOUCHING the stairs. 'Cept the bottom one, of course. Ow.) He takes out his well-worn copy of Black Monk Time, turns on the computer, E-mails everyone he knows, and starts furiously typing out lyrics. In VERY LARGE TYPE. Too many things can go wrong here, and we're gonna MINIMIZE 'em. I know these songs backwards and forwards, after all, but....no harm in being overprepared.

Type.....panic.....shower.....vomit (Well, not really. But it helps the story, doesn't it?)......receive a return E-mail from Alex which indicates that yes, this is actually happening and I'm not in fact hallucinating. NOW it's time to over-intellectualize the situation. They're taking Gary to a high-priced throat specialist (the same one, it turns out, who ministers to Pavarotti--when he gets an entire cheese log stuck in his gullet or some such) in an effort to get him (Gary, not Pavarotti) up to snuff in time for the show. They may not need me after all. Or maybe for a song or two. They certainly want me to sing everything at the sound check, and frankly that'll be thrill enough for me right there. The true weirdness of this is almost incomprehensible: I've never HEARD the Monks play. Nor have most all of the small throng of people who will be standing right in front of me with their arms folded. All we have to go by is that record.....that screaming, blaring, honking, squealing yowl-from-hell of a record. Well, dammit, I'm gonna GIVE 'EM THE RECORD. I'm gonna give 'em every last larynx-rending yawp that lurches out of those grooves and then some. I remember thinking, like a fool, that I hope their sound isn't "gentler" than the record nowadays or I'll look like an idiot. Then, of course, I run the risk of looking like an idiot ANYWAY. And, what's worse: Gary's voice is so central, so vitally important to this music, that even if I do a positively stellar job the audience (sound-check OR show) may not take it too very well. I am setting myself up for possibly the worst moment of my life. Or........

Well, you get the idea. Suffice to say: they want Gary Burger. They are gonna get something as close to Gary Burger as I can muster up.

As I am driving to the Westbeth (takes about 45 minutes if no traffic) a much lighter thought pops into my head. Only a select few people have heard my Monks Xmas tape, including of course all the Monks. That tape is, plainly, why I got the call. Just a pointless, dopey idea I had while sitting in the house alone one Sunday night while Wendy was at work. But that's not even the weirdest part--the weirdest part is that, in terms of the "extended family" that will surely be present at the soundcheck, only one or two of THEM has heard it. I sent Will a copy ages ago, and he loved it. Sherrie has heard it. Dave's wife Irene has heard it. And that's about it. The Telegraph people just got their copies Wednesday night and probably haven't listened to it yet. And how about Jon Weiss? THIS must have been a true Fly-On-The-Wall Moment.....what must it have been like when Eddie (or whomever) called Jon, who has beaucoup dollars riding on The Monks playing tonight, and said, "Uh....Jon? Gary has laryngitis and he can't sing tonight. And none of the rest of us really think we can sing those tunes. But we got this GUY......" !!!!!!

So, I roll into a parking space literally right across the street from the door. Okay so far, then. I am wearing my Monks T-shirt and I have a reg'lar ol' black shirt to wear later, if need be. I also have a gig bag that Wendy has stuffed with all sorts of accoutrements.......everything from granola bars to a toothbrush. My lyric sheets are in my back pocket.

I open the front door and walk into the lobby. A few people are milling about, but nobody I recognize. I go straight through into the theatre space for the first time. It's a nice room. Wider than it is deep. Looks to me like it holds just under 1000 people WITH regulatory compliance, or about 1300 without. There's an L-shaped bar in the right rear corner as you look out from the stage.

Wait a minute---as you LOOK OUT FROM THE STAGE??????

This is what the entire day was like.....periods of cool, reflective calm punctuated by moments of sheer overload.

Sherrie and Will are standing near the bar. For the first of possibly a thousand times this weekend, Sherrie offers to shave the top of my head. I demur. Some small talk ensues. Everyone, I suddenly realize, is in the same state of mind I am in: trying not to panic. We discuss the contents of my bag. I show Sherrie the granola bar and the toothbrush. "I feel like I'm being sent away to Monk Camp," I offer. If there was any tension, it's now broken.

Eddie strolls in, all calm and sunny. Like this happens every day. Like he hasn't JUST NOW re-connected with these four other guys for the first time in 30 years. Like a tremendous reputation and legacy are not totally at stake, winner take all, loser go f*** off back to Nevada. It's hard to communicate the bizarre inner strength these guys have. The CENTER they have. All of 'em.

There will be a long wait......Gary is at the doctor with Jerod, getting his throat scraped. I remember what he said during our first phone conversation, over two years ago, when I injudiciously asked him, "Can you still sing like that?? Your voice is so much deeper than I expected." His answer, laughing: "That was a lot of cigarettes ago."

Roger wanders in and says hi--again, like nothing was unusual. Larry, always smiling, arranges his area on stage with precisely the meticulous attention to detail you'd expect. We talk for a few seconds. Larry would be perfectly cast as the Kindly Old Shoemaker in some sort of Dickensian Christmas story, it occurs to me. Then.....he turns the organ on and puts his fingers down on the keyboard and REEEEEEEE!!! SCRAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEWAAAAAAA GRKKKKKKKKKKK REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Remember when I said, "It doesn't get any better'n this?"

Will is standing nearby. Important to remember again: we've never SEEN the Monks. We've digested and re-digested the album note-by-note and backwards, and of course we've seen some badly-copied video from German TV back in the day. But we've never SEEN them. So what happens next is what I had assumed would happen when the show itself started--that unbelievable shock-of-recognition that you can't describe, you have to FEEL IT.

Eddie walks up on stage, and straps on his bass. The Larry Effect is replicated. For Eddie, only a short time earlier, had walked in in his black shirt and stylish black hat, exuding a truly incongruous air like nothing so much as Bing Crosby in Bells Of St. Mary's. Now he begins to play a few exploratory notes on the bass--BOOM! GROWWWWWWL! BWAAAAAAAAAAA........and I fancy the floor opens up and a crack appears that goes straight down to hell. Satan cowers in fear and hollers "Turn that down! It's too much!!"

Eddie 1, Satan 0.

Will and I just stare at each other in disbelief, then collapse in laughter. Kelley's next to us. He does the same.

When Eddie, satisfied, comes down off the stage, Will decides to wind him up a little. "You play like a girl."

Eddie, for a moment, looks CONCERNED. He actually is willing to believe that Will is telling him he was playing TOO PRETTY. Will now has to EXPLAIN HIS JOKE. He tells Eddie he's trying to get him angry. Monk Music needs to be ANGRY.

Eddie laughs it off. He has a pretty good idea how to make Monk Music.

Dave Day is truly a wildcard among wildcards in this organization. There are no Hidden Meanings in Dave. There are no Deep Dark Secrets lurking below his surface. There are no demons. Dave is just Dave. He can stand on stage with The Monks and bash the Banjo From Hell, and it's perfectly natural. Then he can go home to Renton, WA, and walk in to Earl Love's Love Connection Karaoke Bar and sing Elvis and Buddy Holly songs with Irene banging on the tambourine--and this ALSO is perfectly natural. I can easily picture Dave, in the same evening, sitting in with Megadeth and then going to an after-hours place and accompanying a big fat Hawaiian guy in a blue leisure suit singing "Feeeeelings, whoooaaa--ohhh-ohhhh..."

And joining in on the "Whoa-oh-ohs" as well.

Roger is stoic. He fiddles with the drum kit as though he were repairing a bicycle for his nephew. Then he plays. Twelve thousand years of African culture, squeezed tightly through a small Germanic Pinhole, come screaming at your head without warning. Then he leans forward, and quietly continues working on the kit.

Finally, Gary arrives with Jerod. Jerod is cracking at the seams. Gary is as calm as all the other Monks..........it's the REST of us that are losing our minds. It's been suggested earlier, via a phone call from Jerod, that Gary may be able to sing tonight. So I have hijacked Sherrie's cell phone, called Wendy, and told her to call the Frankel/Wooley Family......they have Sunday tickets but they're changing plans to come tonight instead, and I don't want 'em to come for nothing........("nothing." Ha! But you know what I mean.)

But Gary whispers to me that the show is mine tonight. There's no way he can do it, he thinks. "Just have fun out there," he grins.

So I call Wendy back, and say Bring 'Em Along. Among other things, Mike can use my camera and get some decent shots, one hopes.

More milling about. All five Monks are up on stage now, fiddling with their instruments. I'm standing out front, in awe like everybody else. Eddie calls me up on stage. There's considerably more fiddling.......specifically, Dave has two banjos, and the one he'd prefer to use is not cooperating. The banjos are not electrified....he's doing it the same way he did it 33 years ago, with a microphone stuck inside a cutout in the back. And the one he wants to use is being ornery. The sound man (also a "Dave") is fiddling with it, and also with the vocal monitors.......and nothing is cooperating with him. I quickly decide that I am In The Way, and I hop off the stage and stand with Kelley for the duration.

Everyone is now in the room. Alex is taking pictures. I give my camera to Will in the hope that he can document this truly insane event for me. It is precisely as I had pictured it.....a group of about fifteen to twenty-five people, milling about.......and suddenly they stop milling and form a line in front of the stage. A line that I should be standing in. Instead, I climb back up on the stage and take my place.

Eddie leans into his mic and says, "Check. Check."

Larry says, "Check. Check."

Roger says, "Check. Check."

I ain't no dummy. "Check. Check."

Dave says, "Havlicek." Of COURSE he does!

Gary whispers in my ear again, "Just have fun." Gary Burger---The Guitar Player From Hades---is suddenly reminiscent of your uncle teaching you how to fish.

No time to ruminate................Roger, Eddie, and Larry start that first song--you know which one--and there I am standing in the middle of it.......half expecting to have to dodge imaginary shards of sonic shrapnel. Everybody on stage is grinning except me. For my part, I think my teeth are falling out one at a time.

Suddenly I realize "my name's not Gary." Good lord...........what am I gonna do? Everything is riding, literally, on how well I deliver that FIRST LINE......and I can't. "Alright, my name's Mike....."? Bulls**t. "Alright, my name's Gary"? Sacrilege. The band won't mind, but the onlookers will truly kill me.

Apparently what I did was point at Gary's head (with the other hand still jammed in my pocket, where it was to remain) and yell at the top of my lungs, "ALRIGHT! HIS NAME'S GARY!!!!"

But I couldn't prove it to you. All I know is this: I was only about two words into the next line when I saw the entire line of onlookers break into tremendous grins, and several of them started jumping up and down like three-year-olds.

And then it just got easy. My bladder crawled back into my body, from whatever vantage point it had taken up on the floor, and......that's when I realized I WAS having fun. That didn't last, of course........it became clear to me very quickly that I hadn't done any SINGING yet, and I was just imitating a guy yelling his head off, and nothing had been proven. But at the end of the song, where Gary sails maniacally over the top of Dave and Eddie's background vocals, I just closed my eyes and let it rip. When I opened them again, the Line Of Onlookers were staring at the stage, unmoving, with their mouths open......like the audience in Springtime For Hitler.

I DONE it, Ma!

The next song, Oh How To Do Now, required considerably more actual singing. I really can't describe the feeling. It was like I had been split in half, and one half was paralyzed with fear while the other side was perfectly work-a-day tranquil. Those feelings did not alternate; they were both there the whole time.

It was strangely like singing along with the record in my car. Which I am wont to do. The first time that it really struck me just exactly what was happening.....was an odd time for it to happen.....I'm howling my way through the entire first verse just fine and dandy, with no ill effects. Then we get to "....make you mine....." and the music stops as Dave and (Gary) sing in harmony "......long long time....."..........and there I was, singing the part with Dave. THAT'S when it came home to me.

I remembered having stupidly told Gary earlier that I'd try to really sell the first song and then lay back on the others to save my voice for later. What a load of crap, that.

"Complication!"
"COMPLICATION!!!!"
"COMPLICATION!!!!!!!!!"

Yeah. Sure. I'll also lay back and take it easy when you turn me loose in a room full of Doubloons. Idiot. IDIOT!

Well, it went on from there. Whenever I wasn't needed, I jumped off the stage to spectate--since, oh irony, I wasn't gonna get to SEE THE MONKS, I'd better see 'em now--and of course to ask How'm I Doin'. Everybody seemed happy. I seem to remember jumping on and off the stage four or five times in all. By all evidence, I would appear to have spent most of the set either staring at the floor in disbelief or actually burying my completely overwhelmed face in my completely overwhelmed hands.

(Except at least this ONE time.)

Remember when I said, "It can't get any better'n this"?

Anyway, they played the entire one-hour set--and this, combined with the two-hour-late start, resulted in none of the other bands getting a proper soundcheck. There were a bunch of people standing just inside the doorway........people I later realized were members of the other bands, showing up dutifully for soundchecks that they never got. Just one more thing to weigh on my little mind. As for the rest of the set, it's all a blur......except for Cuckoo, which sticks out in my memory. In blissful ignorance, I launched into that insane falsetto part......and all the Monks whipped their heads around to look, and smiled approval. What I imagine is that Gary hadn't been singing that part in rehearsals. Well, I don't care. I'm gonna sling out something as close to the record as I can.

Well, it lasted forever and it only lasted a few seconds. I was terrified and I was perfectly calm. I know nothing......except everyone seems to have loved it. A couple of Monks (including Gary) tell me that the audience is actually going to get MORE for their money now than if none of this had happened. Gary's THERE, after all, and playing like a fire-breathing monster. And there's a guy up on stage singing like the guy on the record. Bonus!

Now I only need to convince 800 to 1000 angry skeptics. From New York.