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didn’t already have one. And that, as we all know, was Flame’s Heat.”
    Briggs whispered, “Yeaaaa!” again.
    “Flame’s Heat consisted of Flame and Dave Bristol again, along with Brick Bentley on bass and Moe Jenkins on keyboards. Combinin’ the best of jazz-rock with the commercial sensibilities of mainstream pop, the first self-titled Flame’s Heat album went gold when it was released in 1983, again on Al Patton’s Liquid Metal Records.”
    “Remix, you sound like you’re reading off the press releases,” Suzanne muttered.
    “Quiet, girl!” the lad snapped.
    “Excuse me, but do you mean that Dave Bristol and Flame didn’t have much to do with each other during the solo years?” Briggs asked.
    “That’s right. They didn’t get along during those days. But they patched things up in time to form Flame’s Heat,” Remix said. “So anyways, throughout the rest of the eighties, Flame’s Heat challenged such acts as U2, R.E.M., and Michael Jackson for favored status on the charts. They were often described as a sort of Steely Dan Meets XTC—they could whip out cool riffs and catchy melodies, immaculately produced, but they could also rock. Hmpf. I guess I was too young to appreciate them back then.”
    Remix turned over his page of notes and continued.
    “Let’s see, in 1991, Flame was arrested for fightin’ in public. That was in LA, where that kind of thing happens all the time, don’t it? It turned out he had a shitload of coke on him and he got busted. He got off easy, though. That’s what money can do, I’m tellin’ ya. He had to pay a big fine and go into rehab. No jail time. He spent three months at a clinic in upstate New York but he went AWOL. He got picked up and spent three days in jail before his heavy hittin’ lawyers got him out. This time he went to another rehab joint and stayed nine months. He got out in late 1993 and Flame’s Heat went on a worldwide tour. There was a lot of exposure in the music press about how Flame looked good at the beginning but must have jumped off the wagon halfway through the Far East. By the end of the tour he was strung out again. He pretty much went into seclusion and the band released a couple of outtakes and B-sides albums in the interim. Finally, in 1998, Flame announced he was going back into rehab. We didn’t hear anything else from him until a couple of years later, when he reappeared on the scene to say that after six killer albums, Flame’s Heat was no more and he was devoting himself to making music for, ahem, Christ.”
    Remix looked upward and silently mouthed the word “Why?” He then went back to his notes.
    “He had a new girlfriend, Miss Brenda Twist, whom he met in rehab. She was another born-again fundamentalist, a member of the so-called Messengers. Flame was forty-eight. She was twenty-four. Flame and Brenda became the John and Yoko of the new millennium and did everything they could to promote the Messengers and Flame’s new music. Flame released his first religious album in 2002 and released a second one in 2006, neither of which has enjoyed the sales and popularity of his earlier work. And man, I can think of a million people that would probably want to kill that guy!”
    “I’ll say,” Briggs added.
    “Anyways, that’s the end of my report. You have heard ‘The Life and Times of Peter Flame’ by Remix.” He immediately reclined in his seat, one leg draped over an arm of the chair.
    “He has picked up an entirely different audience, though,” Suzanne said. “Hasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Berenger replied. “Don’t underestimate the popularity of Christian Rock. It may not make it on Billboard’s Top Ten, but it does very well. And Flame’s fans run the gamut of ages. Remember he started back in 1971. Hell, I was even a Flame fan back when he was with Hay Fever.”
    “Golly, I guess that makes you an old fart,” Remix said, chuckling.
    Berenger ignored him. “I think it’s important that we find out exactly