The Necromancer's Stone; The Party, part three

With a good night's sleep, which is to say one characterized by waking up only twice to write down some new idea or realization, under her, Thalia set off to take care of the next, and likely hardest, part of party planning; Entertainment.  For normal students, this would mean alcohol, maybe a friend who could DJ.  Thalia was not a normal student, nor did she know anyone who could DJ proficiently.  Alcohol would be unnecessary, the Hapsburg had its own bar, which Happock would of course make available to anyone who could provide the proper credentials.  And since she had no obligations, as a friend, to let anyone play, she figured she might as well go all out and get professionals.  The school string quartet would be on the list, no questions there.  She was hardly about to rent a ballroom and then not have at least one or two proper dances.  Besides, as a school string quartet they weren't really in a position to turn down a paying gig.
After that it was a bit more up in the air.  There were plenty of local bands, and Krove managed to maintain a fairly good musical community to support the more artistic sorts of musician; jazz, folk, blues.  But for a dance she needed something a bit more..popular.  If it had been up to her she'd have just let the string quartet play all night, maybe some karaoke if the mood struck her.  Sadly, most of the students wouldn't know how to properly dance, and the scale of the party wasn't conducive to karaoke.  She'd have to enlist an actual band, and she'd have to pick from one of the local bands to get anything popular.  There was no option left but to revisit the old folder closet for the 'local talent' section and see who she could get.

After several hours of pouring over the pages, seeing every half-wit who thought he could sing or rearrange three chords into a new and completely revolutionary way, she managed to narrow it down to three bands.
The first was a fairly stable, if not especially talented, band called 'Flare!'.  They played a rather flashy sort of hard rock, with plenty of magic-based pyrotechnics to accompany it.  The lead singer had tried for years to maintain a playboy persona, but it had fallen apart when he'd married his girlfriend of seven years.  It was remarkable it had taken that long for people to figure out that he really didn't have any interest in other girls.  It was unique in that rather than the usual four man band style (guitar, bass, singer, drummer), it had two bass players, and the singer picked up the guitar for songs that needed it.  Both of the bass were played by twins, sisters, and they managed to mesh very well.  The harmonized bass gave the band a very interesting sound, without actually detracting from their ability to cover the songs of others, it was one of their strongest traits actually.  They'd performed for Thalia in the past; she'd been the one to reveal the singer's feelings for his now-wife, the band's drummer.  The three of them had stayed in touch since and Thalia knew she could call on them whenever she needed to.
The second was a punk band.  Normally Thalia would hold that against them, but the amount of popularity they'd accumulated would make them a great headliner.  Obviously the real talent of the night would be the string quartet, but the popularity issue was always a key factor for these choices.  Even though it wasn't really her tastes, whe wasn't just catering to her own interests.  Of course, it was also handy that she had enough dirt on any given member of the band to coerce all of them into playing; she could get them to play for free if she wanted to.
The third was more of an indie, whatever that meant, pop-y type deal.  She found them individually obnoxious, self-righteous, and more than slightly elitist.  But their music was good.  In the end that was the important part.  She could probably blackmail them into performing, she had the dirt, but something gave her the feeling that they'd write their next big hit about her if she did.  If there was one thing she hated, it was being demonized in catchy lyrics; she'd done it before and there were still people who used them to describe her.  She'd rather pay them double than have to listen to people tell her how much she reminded them of that girl in that one song.  Considering their apparent success, she might have to do just that.
She wrote up a letter for Jenny, Chuck, and the rest of "Flare!', then set aside room on her schedule to go and take care of the other three.  Tomorrow would be a busy day.