Chapter 3: A shrimp in the river.
The backstage inside the bar was a huge room with two smaller rooms inside.
The backstage was the bar singer’s area.
Set up within the huge room were rows of dressing tables and wardrobes, and as well as six soft chairs, to accommodate the resident singers and the stage warmers. While the two smaller rooms had a sofa, a TV, a wine cabinet, and a private bathroom to accommodate contract singers and bands.
But between bar singers like him and the other singers, the difference was like heaven and earth.
When Lu Chen came in, there were already two resident singers inside, a man and a woman, the male singer was playing with his phone while the female singer was applying makeup, no one paid attention to Lu Chen as he entered.
Because within their small circle, Lu Chen’s position was the lowest.
“Good evening Brother Ye, Sister Sister Hong!”
Lu Chen greeted them both as usual, then he sat on his seat and set down his guitar case.
His table was on the corner most part of the room.
The male singer indifferently responded with an “En”, but the female singer stopped what she was doing and laughed, “Little Lu, you’re so late today, you must have been criticized by the boss right? He He!
Sister Hong was more than 30 years old and had already spent five years working at the bar, she was good at singing love songs and her voice was quite good, and even though her appearance was lacking, she still had a bit of fame in Houhai.
But compared with one of the pillars of the bar, the contract singer Najie, she was far inferior.
Nevertheless, she had been always condescending towards Lu Chen. She may have sounded concerned about Lu Chen, but hidden within her words were hints of mockery and teasing.
Yesterday’s Lu Chen would have probably been angry or depressed while being unable to fight back. But after experiencing three different lives within his dream, his attitude had already changed even though he wasn’t aware of it.
Lu Chen calmly laughed and said, “Thank you for your concern Sister Hong, I already apologized to the boss.”
Sister Hong was stunned and the words that she wanted to say got stuck in her throat.
She turned away with a “Humph!”, and no longer paid attention to Lu Chen as she went back to applying her make up.
At this time, the door suddenly opened and a man with long hair and a black jacket came inside.
“Brother Qin!”
Sister Hong and the male singer reacted quickly, immediately standing up and greeting the man with a smile.
Lu Chen was slower by a beat, but he also stood up, “Good evening Brother Qin!”
This jacket wearing man was Qin Hanyang and he was one of the best performers in the bar. He was the lead singer and the rhythm guitarist of a band named Torn, therefore he was the band’s life and soul, and even their boss, Chen Jianhao, acted polite to him.
The band had five members apart from Qin Hanyang. There was another lead guitarist, a bassist, a drummer and a keyboardist.
For a bar like the Nepenthes Bar, paying for a band like Torn wasn’t easy, but in return, the band raised the bar’s fame and popularity, so it was only natural that they became one of the main pillars of the bar.
Qin Hanyang had an indifferent expression as he nodded in reply.
He picked up a few manuscripts on top of a dressing table, returned to his room, and closed the door afterwards.
Sister Hong and the male singer both had slightly embarrassed expressions, the two of them knew that with Qin Hanyang’s qualifications, just one word from the latter could get them fired from the bar and even ostracized in Houhai.
Lu Chen laughed quietly in his heart. He and Qin Hanyang were worlds apart so he didn’t have any opinions about him and it didn’t matter how they treated each other, so it was definitely less embarrassing than being ignored after showing good intentions.
Within the bar, there was also a small river, and Lu Chen was only a small shrimp in that river.
Lu Chen sat down again and began to fix his messy hair.
The atmosphere amongst the bars in Houhai and Sanlitun were different. People with unkempt clothes and messy looks weren’t appreciated in Houhai, therefore his image was very important.
Outside the stage, they could already hear the voice of the host, the stage warmers had already started.
Lu Chen had to prepare quickly since he would be performing soon.
As for what to sing tonight, he already had an idea in mind.
When the host was telling jokes to liven up the atmosphere, the previous waiter in front of the bar secretly slipped inside the electronics room behind the backstage.
The electronics room was extremely small, it was filled with sound equipment, lighting equipment and computers, countless of wires crisscrossed over each other like a spider web while LED lights flashed everywhere.
Sitting in the middle of the “web” was a fat person who weighed at least more than 200 pounds. He was wearing headphones as he sat in front of a monitor, rocking his head to a song. On his workstation was a half-eaten hamburger.
“Brother Fatty, Brother Fatty!”
The waiter called two times but the other guy couldn’t hear him, so had to step forward and push him to get his attention.
The fatty suddenly opened his eyes, he couldn’t help but scowl when he saw the waiter, after taking off his headphones he irritatedly said, “Xiao Gao, aren’t you supposed to be working outside? What are you doing here, get out, get out!”
He was the master of the electronics room, within that small room, even Chen Jianhao would have to listen to him.
Xiao Gao obviously knew this, so he grinned happily and gave him a beer.
The fatty ungratefully accepted the beer, then he glanced at him and asked, “Say it little kid, since you’re bribing me, you want me to do something right? I’ll say this ahead of time, unless it’s only something trivial, it’s a big no!”
“It’s only something trivial…”
Xiao Gao was instantly excited, and he quickly whispered something in fatty’s ears.
After fatty finished listening, his expression became strange, he looked at the waiter again before saying, “You devious little kid, this is what you call trivial?”
Xiao Gao smiled, “It’s only small thing, I only want see Lu Chen unhappy, he’s so arrogant just because he’s a pretty boy, that’s why we need to teach him a lesson. We need to let him know that within Nepenthes Bar, just relying on his face isn’t good enough.”
“En…”
Fatty nodded his head pensively while stroking his fat chin. He said, “You have a point, you’re saying that he’s no good if he’s only handsome, so it’s better for him to go to Sanlitun, but if he comes back to Houhai as a young artist, I’ll still have to wipe his ass, this… Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse?”
Xiao Gao laughed evilly and said, “Yes, Yes, Brother Fatty is also too good for him.”
Xiao Gao’s expression suddenly changed. He pointed through the electronics room’s glass window and said, “Lu Chen’s going on stage!”
The electronics room and the stage were separated by a one way mirror. The people within the room could see the entire stage, but the people outside couldn’t peek inside.
The man going up the stage with a guitar, wasn’t it none other than Lu Chen?
“Brother Fatty, do it quickly!”
Xiao Gao’s eyes were fixed on Lu Chen, while his mouth anxiously urged Fatty.
“Don’t Panic!”
Fatty glanced at Xiao Ge and said, “I know what I’m doing, I don’t need you to tell me what to do!”
As he spoke, he reached out and turned off the sound control on the stage. The LED indicator for auto-tune immediately went out.
The bar singers in Houhai mostly sang live or to an accompaniment, so people with little skill weren’t hard to cover up. Since a singer’s voice could be adjusted in the electronics room, the voice could be adjusted and magically improved.
Professional tuners were disdained in bars, and Nepenthes Bar also couldn’t afford one. Therefore, the backstage audio mixers were completely managed by semi-professional audio tubes with quasi-professional digital equipment, so even a blind amateur could operate it without a problem.
Amongst the customers eating at the bar, there were many people that were familiar with the circles, but there were few who could tell what was going on behind the scenes.
Lu Chen’s level of performance was very common. The reason for his chance to make extra money, apart from his beautiful looks, was also because of Fatty’s audio tuning.
Fatty was unhappy that Lu Chen had never sent him any benefits, despite being as popular as a resident singer.
So now that he was being incited by Xiao Ge, his resentment surfaced, making him shut down the stage audio mixers temporarily.
As a result, Lu Chen’s voice and his playing wouldn’t be optimized at all and will directly come out instead from the hundred thousand JBL speakers.
He would be exposed!
Fatty laughed mischievously and he winked at Xiao Ge, “Are you excited about the show?”
Xiao Ge nodded, his fists were clenched with excitement —— Lu Chen, I want to see if you’ll still have the face to continue working here!
At the present, Lu Chen was unaware that someone was plotting against him.
Lu Chen sat on the chair. He embraced the guitar with his right hand while he adjusted the angle of the microphone with his left.
After 8 pm during weekends, more and more customers enter the bar, and now almost two thirds of the seats were already occupied. Many of them were regular customers.
After he was finished preparing, Lu Chen said into the microphone, “Thank you everyone for visiting Nepenthes. I will be the first to sing today and my first song will be Soaring Pigeon, I hope everyone will like it!”
A few sounds of applause came from the audience, some female customers who knew Lu Chen also whistled loudly.
“Little Lu I love you!”
“Many customers laughed and the atmosphere became active and lively.
Lu Chen embarrassedly waved to the audience, and then he prepared to start his performance.
“Brother Jianhao…”
Behind the counter of the bar, a beautiful woman was looking at Lu Chen on the stage, her eyes sparkling with light, “This little guy looks pretty good. He looks like a handsome model and he can perform. Let him come to my company.”
“Ha?”
Chen Jianhao was dumbfounded, he shook his head and said, “Little Lu’s hardware may be good, but he’s an extreme amateur. Being a stage warmer is already his limit, furthermore, he’s still relying on audio support from backstage, do you really want to take him?”
“Never mind then.”
The beautiful woman firmly said, “My small company can’t cultivate someone with no foundation.”
There were 3 kinds of people that were abundant in Beijing. First are the government officials, second are the wealthy people, and third were beautiful men and women. Attractive people could be found everywhere.
Even in the music field alone, Beijing had 3 major music schools and various musician training associations and countless numbers of fresh graduates come out each year, therefore why would they waste so much effort to cultivate someone with no foundation?
The beautiful woman had just spoken without thinking and was now no longer interested.
At this moment, Lu Chen strummed the guitar strings.