Rock On (12 page)

You lurk in the same places; same corner offices, same executive washrooms. But instead of seven figures, you're grossing well into six. You haven't signed anyone, but maybe you have, like, an other-worldly hunch for picking hit singles for radio from an album of nine filler songs with two made-for-radio singles. You make your picks after the two songs have been tested to death by independent research firms whom the label pays to call random everyday people up on the telephone, play them a short section of the song, then ask them if they like it or not. The firm then tells you which one is statistically bound to be a hit. Sometimes they even use computer programs to analyze characteristics of the song. How long is the chorus? What's the chord progression? How long till we get to the chorus? How many beats per minute is the song recorded at? At any rate, when the research comes in telling you what song is statistically most likely bound to be a hit, you then pick that song as the first single to be serviced to radio stations. I may be missing something here, but am pretty sure that covers your day in your corner office. I know you're on the phone a lot, so there might be a little more to it.

Smaller office, sure. And you're using the regular old nonexecutive washroom, so you're not making small talk with influential cohorts while you urinate, a peculiar thrill that you've not yet come to know. You do anything from producing music videos to spending your days convincing VH1 and MTV to play the music video from the forthcoming album, even though something like 78 percent of MTV's programming is reality shows as opposed to music videos. You're probably kissing the two-hundred-grand
mark and you might even be a ways north of that. If you're not, well, at least you get to tell your friends that you took a six-figure gig since they're certainly giving you anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and seventy-five plus bonuses. If you're super savvy, you've got your own little business incorporated and you can make even more money by invoicing the company additional fees for creative and production services that are mutually regarded as above and beyond your day-to-day job. Yes, we see that you've got the newest Blackberry. Now. Put. It. Down.

You're basically on the same program as the Glorified Middle Manager, but the only catch is, you can't manage anyone, so you probably wouldn't survive in any other corporate environ. You may not survive in this one. While you can't manage others, you have this weird little way of keeping to yourself and creating things when told. And sometimes the things you create generate money for the company by way of increased sales. Advertising, maybe the random idea born in weekend isolation, maybe a way to market a band that won't do them in. Sometimes you write the copy for Holiday Gift Guides for the November issues of women's magazines that feature a paid advertisement/holiday gift guide about the best holiday records, which all happen to be issued by the company you're working for (surprise). And you write the guide in such a way that your bosses actually see a sales spike. Your low self-esteem tells you that the sales spike is seasonal and dependable, no matter who writes about the albums. Anyway, your talents are unremarkable enough to keep you largely anonymous at the upper reaches of the company, and enough of a justified expense to keep you well paid, which leads to the harder-working and way lesser-paid foot soldiers resenting you.
So your life is a charming mix of benign obscurity and walking around feeling the weight of stares that make you feel like a voodoo doll full of pins. The Glorified Foot Soldier is a lonely little soldier that way.

Who was there when, say, slow-jam diva Brandy needed new clothes brought to her hotel room in the snow storm? Or some gangster princess hip-hop starlet was freaking out because she thought her arms looked fat in the scenes where she's wearing a leather corset in her video? You! You're the real deal, because you actually
do
something. Truth is, you work harder than practically everyone above you and make way less. Understand these things:

1. You're connected to the culture that the company pays through the nose to try and understand, because you are a card-carrying member of that generation.

2. You're more connected to the word on the street and bands than almost everyone above you in the company, though they are being overpaid to act like they understand.

3. The older people working above you at the label are, in most cases, intimidated by you (see points one and two). Here's another thing you should be let in on: they know you are worth way more money and that they're getting you on the cheap, and they go to great lengths to never let you realize any of this. Whoops. Now I've done it. Cat's out of the bag. Well, since I gave away the big secret, maybe you should ask for a raise. Oh, I forgot, there's a line of three hundred people who, for some reason, are willing to do your job for less or even as an unpaid intern. Does this baffle you? This baffles me, too. Hang in there.

These days, between the hours of eleven
PM
and about two or three
AM
, I'm wide awake downloading music and scribbling notes like a gainfully employed, insomniac version of Dustin Hoffman in
Rainman
, or an overzealous and barely rehabilitated middle-aged delinquent trying to turn over a new leaf with night classes.

I'm seduced away from sleep by the idea that, between the new Apple laptop the company bought me and the high-speed wireless Internet access in the apartment, there's essentially a record store in every room. I've got another monkey on my back, sister. The only reason I even get around to falling asleep at all is because at a certain point I give in to a particularly dreamy section of a song blasting in my headphones and drift off to sleep in the living room. I defy you to listen to any of the huge, brooding, genius, beautiful, and haunting songs by Mogwai in AKG K240 headphones at three in the morning without next waking up tangled in headphone cords, in a panic because you're late for work. The scribbling of notes makes it somehow seem like I'm a go-getter adult man applying due diligence to his office job, and less like it's an addiction or disorder — my girlfriend is impressed, as opposed to concerned about my lack of self-control; not staring or judging . . .
admiring
. The notes
are observations about my new music consumption habits, sentences and thoughts at once embarrassing, ambitious, confused, disjointed, but strangely and surprisingly well-organized. And one night at around 3:40
AM
it hits me, I'm confronted with it, there's no denying it, no covering it up; I take the first step and admit it: I've got an idea. A what? Yes! An idea!

And this pile of notes, over a period of a month or two of staying up late downloading music, cooks down into a seven-or eight-page presentation. I give it to Vallerie, who sends it up to a copresident as well as a senior vice-something. The most groundbreaking, mind-blowing part of this idea is probably the way it speeds upward into the top reaches of the company at breakneck speed; a nosebleed-inducing ascent. I start thinking it's a sting operation; that they're going to get me into the conference room with the copresidents and then sue me for downloading music. I have already planned out a defense, telling them the truth: Larry, a VP in marketing, is the one that told me about Limewire and helped me install it on my work laptop. I didn't even want it at first, but he told me it was the most incredible thing. He told me how you can find files of anything and you don't have to go through the hassle of ripping CDs, and he was right! I only wanted to try it once, but I got hooked my first night using it! Almost instantly I was as excited about music as I was when I was nine, searching and downloading and sharing every night. And only weeks after Larry hooked me up with Limewire, Warner Music's legal department sent our entire staff an e-mail saying that the RIAA was going to start suing people, and that if any of us had any illegal downloading applications such as Limewire on our work or personal computers, we should uninstall them. I disregarded that e-mail. And now this! A sting. I knew something
was up. I've got the usual symptoms of your basic good old-fashioned jitters — some difficulty performing minor everyday tasks; physical coordination giving way occasionally to spasmodic movement and a stilted gait; auditory hallucinations; the edges of the lips and tips of the fingers turn a pale blue; heart and respiratory rates become arrhythmic while a high fever persists, loss of depth perception sets in, and a brittle crackling sound can be easily detected in the lungs without the use of a stethoscope.

“Did they call you about your idea?” This from Vallerie, popping her head into my office.

“His assistant, yeah. They're going to call me back. Set something. Up.”

“He's probably going to want you to walk everyone through it in their meeting next week!” she says.

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“Good.”

The day of the meeting rolls around quickly, like a blur. I'm starting to catch on to the fact that whenever something happens in a blur, it's almost always bad. When you trip and fall on your face, it happens in a blur. Heavy machinery on Midwestern farms claims limbs in a blur — wars, dubious recounts favoring the Bush administration, regrettable one-night stands in your twenties with unconventionally attractive community-college students usually battling depression and living like hobos, late-night checking-account debits that you wake up remembering — all of these things happen in a blur.

I walk next door, over to 75 Rockefeller Plaza. The address that was written at the very bottom of the records I would sit in front of the family stereo or my plastic record player
and listen to when I was a kid. That was what we all did back then: listen to the songs, stare at every picture of the band on the sleeve and cover while tracing every single line of small print, eventually moving past song titles, names of guys in the band, publishing credits, photo credits, and eventually down the little nine-point line of type that was this address. I push my way through the revolving door. Up the elevator, then out to wander down the hall to this conference room, distracted by wondering what it was like up here way back in the day.

I heard it was incredible and strange here at 75 Rock; that the Rolling Stones had been given an entire floor of offices as part of their deal back then. Can you imagine a floor governed by the Rolling Stones and their management? Smoke, drink, do whatever you want, or whatever the sexy six-foot-one-inch reprobate stripper/groupie person living in your office wants to do. Take a shot of Jack from the bottle on your desk, take a shot at the photocopy machine with whatever firearm is laying next to the bottle of Jack on your desk. That's the way I imagine it while I daydream my way down the hall toward this meeting. I wonder if Led Zeppelin ever wandered this hallway. Every corridor I walk down, every gold or platinum record on the wall, feels like walking through the background of one of those little tiny black-and-white photographs they used to have in the seventies rock magazines of my youth, like
Circus
and
Creem
. Those little snapshots of a rock star flanked by three guys in suits, and maybe one guy in a satin jacket with a band name or label's logo on it. It would look like the rock star was being hassled for back taxes by a cluster of IRS agents, save for the fact that everyone in the shot would be laughing and smiling; especially the guys in the suits.

Walking into the conference room, I see everyone except the copresident who invited me to this. A whole new group, a whole different department, really. These guys are from the A&R department (Artist and Repertoire), these are the people who scout out bands and sign them to contracts. The only person in the group whom I recognize somewhat is Angry New Media Chick and her sidekick guy. I've seen her around occasionally. I remember her from that day recording public service announcements with the Donnas. She's maybe late thirties and tired looking, makes a lot of money ushering record executives through the age of the Internet, and seems fueled mostly by resentment masked with stale congeniality. But more than anything, it's her hair that precedes her. It's crazy-person hair, no matter how you cut it. It is hair that says, “I'd much rather be sleeping late in an abandoned loft where I'm free to smoke menthol cigarettes in a second-hand terry-cloth bathrobe, sitting on a saggy couch, while I comment to nobody in particular about the people on a reality television show like they're my family.” Or maybe I'm projecting again.

Everyone sits at the conference table with a printout of my idea in front of them, looking a bit bored, somehow not quite as excited as I imagined them looking. I do my polite, professional office grin — a slight turning up of the corners of the mouth, combined with nod downward — while silently mouthing a combination of the words “hey” and “hello.” They kind of do the office-grin back, but not really.

There's a forty-two-inch high-definition plasma screen hanging on the wall to my right, and the screen is filled with more people. Whoa! Video connection to the conference room at the Los Angeles office. Slightly more tan than us, unless
maybe the tint or color setting is off, but clearly waiting just as plainly nonplussed. We all sit there looking at a picture of each other, bored on both coasts. Someone in the room asks me if this printout in front of each person is my idea, and I say yes, unable to take my eyes off the plasma-screen people. I do a little hello-nod to the people on screen, almost a secret one to see if maybe one person might catch it and respond. Nobody does. I barely raise my hand an inch or two off the table and do a tiny, hesitant and fast wave with three fingers to see if they'll notice. One guy on-screen who seems to be looking right at me suddenly looks down, but maybe this is coincidence though? Through the speakers in the ceiling, I can hear him shuffle the handout three thousand miles west of here. We all continue waiting silently on both coasts.