by Scotto Moore
I pinged the whole channel hi and said, “Hey, you guys must have all heard Beautiful Remorse by now, yeah?”
This was a running joke between the gang and me. Even though they all worked for a hot little music service, they still relied on their pet blogger to point them at the good stuff on their own site.
“Missed that one,” said Charlie, QA manager. “Is that filed under NONE MORE GOTH?”
“My boyfriend skipped work this morning to stay home and wait for track three,” said Lisa, ecommerce developer.
“So you heard tracks one and two?” I asked.
“Uh, no, he wouldn’t take his headphones off when I saw him last night, so I went home.”
Carlos at Bandcamp dot com finally arrived on the channel at the leisurely hour of eleven in the morning, and he quickly pinged me in a private chat.
“How do you do it?” he said. “Beautiful Remorse has had an account with us for like seventy-two hours, and they nearly crashed our entire site last night. And some asshole in marketing is already flipping me shit because he can’t find allurebient in the genre tree.”
“Who the fuck are they?” I asked, desperately trying to disguise my pleading impatience behind a veneer of pleading impatience.
“How should I know? You’re the hot-shit music blogger, aren’t you?”
“They came out of nowhere. They have no discoverable online presence except with you guys.”
“Interesting. I should let our PR team know.”
“Sure, but first you should find out who they are and tell me. Off the record, of course.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want a name, my friend. I want you to look up their account information and tell me who’s uploading that music.”
“Uh, sure, first just let me print out our privacy policy and wipe my ass with it in our general counsel’s office.”
“While you’re at it, be sure to let your IT department know that you’ve been sharing your VPN access with me for years.”
I will abbreviate our subsequent polite jocularity, which was summarily interrupted when Bhargava, content management supervisor, announced on the public channel, “Looks like Beautiful Remorse just dropped track three.”
Frantically I flipped into the browser tab where the Beautiful Remorse artist page remained open, beckoning me to untold future delights. But after stabbing the keyboard repeatedly to refresh the page, track three did not appear. Then I remembered—actual employees could hit an internal beta version of the site where content was frequently staged on its way to being published. The same system that let bands preview their tracks before they went live allowed employees to preview those tracks if they were paying attention. I flipped to the beta environment and found track three: “Undeniable Presence.” I almost kicked off playback immediately, but then a sudden thought jolted me—how could I listen to this track for the first time without Imogen?
I flipped over to Maxnet looking for her. Her autoresponder said, “Be right back, I’m at the beauty salon!” which usually meant she was on her back porch, smoking weed, ignoring the rest of the world with a religious dedication until she felt she was sufficiently baked to go back to operating a keyboard. I could text her. She’d told me I could always text her. I had her number. I could totally text her.
I decided not to text her. I could wait for her to get back online before I listened to this track.
But the gang on the Bandcamp channel didn’t wait. The channel got very, very silent for many minutes. Only Carlos at Bandcamp dot com remained active—he hadn’t listened to any of the tracks yet, and he was bewildered watching the behavior of everyone around him in their office.
“Shit’s getting very weird over here,” he said.
“This band is putting out very weird music,” I replied.
“Fuck that. I am sticking with Foghat.” Carlos at Bandcamp dot com never listened to any of the bands on his own service. Carlos at Bandcamp dot com actually kind of hated music.
A few minutes later, he texted me a photo that he’d taken of a screen in their account management system. Clear as day, I now had the username and email address of the person who was uploading tracks for Beautiful Remorse.
William and Mocha saw me active on Maxnet and I got a flurry of questions: “Don’t you have Bandcamp access? When is track three coming out? Are you going to share it with us before it’s released?”
“I’ll share it as soon as Imogen is back online,” I said. I could hear them rolling their eyes through their respective keyboards.
“You guys sound like you’re in a cult,” said Ricochet.
“Uh-huh. And what are you listening to this fine day?” I asked.
“Rhino just put out a box set—Best of Swedish Hair Metal from 1982, the Remixes.” He was serious too.
“Hey, you guys know any promoters or label reps named Airee Macpherson?” I asked, passing on the name I’d learned via Carlos at Bandcamp dot com. I hadn’t had time to properly Google her.
“Airee Macpherson is a singer, not a promoter,” said William. “She lives in Austin.”
“You’ve heard of her?”
“Pretty sure my entire last comment indicates that I’ve heard of her, hot shot.”
You could find Airee Macpherson on the internet. Not her band, Beautiful Remorse—at least, not outside of Bandcamp. But Airee had her own Tumblr, a collection of sarcastic images and what I assumed to be journal excerpts and cryptic quotations. Anyway—you know how sometimes a person’s online presence is so immediate and so distinct that you feel like you know exactly what that person looks like, even if they haven’t posted a single selfie? I had that experience—Airee Macpherson popped into my mind, fully formed, and holy god she was beautiful.
“Nothing holy,” she whispered. I screamed a little.
Imogen finally jumped online as I regained my composure—I wanted to say “my sanity” but let’s be clear, my sanity was in question on some level before any of this ever happened. She read back through the past half hour, then private messaged me: “You have early access to track three? You should have texted me!!”
I never text her. I’ve never texted her. I should have texted her. I didn’t text her. Anyway.
On the public channel, I said, “Track three incoming. Take a moment to prepare and then I’ll pipe the audio through the channel.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” Ricochet said. “I’ll be keeping you all on mute, in what I hope you interpret as indignant rage despite my known penchant for severe apathy.”
“This track is called ‘Undeniable Presence,’” I said. My hand was trembling as I kicked off playback.
I was obliterated, really. Just sort of crushed into atoms. And then without warning, something gathered me up in a deep, luscious embrace and reassembled me. I could feel it—I could feel her consoling me, sweeping away the emptiness, signaling the absolute fact of something greater than both of us just out of sight.
Imogen felt it too. And I could feel Imogen having the same realization as me—that the woman singing, Airee Macpherson, was the nexus of something remarkable and potent, something deeply soulful and magnetic, something anyone would desperately crave once they realized it was within reach.
The song was over much too quickly. Track two, “The Awakening,” had been a luxurious six minutes. Track three, “Undeniable Presence,” required only two and a half minutes to sear its mark into us. It took me a moment to clear my head. I checked the channel and no one was saying anything. I messaged Imogen but she wasn’t saying anything either.
I flipped back over to Airee Macpherson’s Tumblr, and without hesitation, I messaged her.
Your album is completely out of control. I write for a music site called Much Preferred Customers. Can I interview you?
By the time I got back from the fridge with a soda, she had already responded:
Yeah I heard of you. Been waiting for you to get in touch. We have a show tomorrow night in Austin. Can you m
ake it?
Track 04
My sheltered Portland skin was unaccustomed to the blazing orb of death that reigned over Austin when I arrived the next day. William from Maxnet met me at the airport. He was the first person from Maxnet I’d actually physically met, and we couldn’t decide if we should awkwardly hug or just kind of do that hipster standoffish nod-and-be-cool thing. Hugging seemed weird just on principle but he was letting me stay with him tonight so being standoffish seemed weird too. Finally we did one of those almost-air-hugs, where there was definitely physical contact but kind of like how your grandma hugs you where it’s really just kind of patting you gently to say, “That’s nice, kid, now get me a fucking Marlboro and get the fuck out of my way.”
“How’d you hear about this show?” William asked. “I checked the listings for Emo’s and it’s supposedly some tribute band tonight.”
“I scored an interview,” I said, almost sheepishly. William looked at me like I had just announced I was here to bomb the Capitol Building. Bloggers at my level score promos all the time, but we rarely score interviews.
We made small talk in his car as we headed into the city. He was a very genial guy, and naturally curious how I could drop everything and fly to Austin on a day’s notice, since for most people, music blogging doesn’t pay the bills. Doesn’t even pay bill, singular. I’m a visual designer who picks up gigs a few times a year that pay bank, and then I sit on my ass the rest of the year and do whatever. Similarly, I was curious what line of work allowed him to cut out in the middle of the day to pick me up in his swank luxury BMW equipped with fancy Harman Kardon car stereo. Turns out—coder. The subject sufficiently exhausted, we lapsed into a brief silence.
But we are music bloggers, and we do not abide silence.
William’s iPhone and his car stereo made sweet Bluetooth love, and suddenly music emerged. William’s beat was very specific: he was into minor exotica that only existed on original vinyl and was never reissued in any other format. So think of Esquivel, Martin Denny, or Les Baxter—and now imagine the glorious unexplored world of artists who weren’t as good as those guys, but also with vinyl pops and scratches faithfully preserved, delivered with highest sonic reproduction via high-end car stereo equipment. If you were to guess that he was baiting me, you’d be partially right; a polite man in his seat would have offered me a chance to put on a playlist, which I would have politely declined because he was after all the driver, which he could have politely declined because I was a visiting dignitary from Maxnet, and we could have been listening to decent fucking music at that point, so on that level, he was definitely baiting me. But then his own actual choice of music—wait, did I say “partially”? Because yeah that was 100 percent baiting me.
“Dare I ask what we’re listening to?” I dared to ask.
“Japanese vibraphone covers of Beach Boys deep cuts,” he replied.
“Interesting. The Beach Boys tunes I’m familiar with typically have melodies.”
“They’re definitely using a weird tuning system on this record.”
He delivered me to the front door of Emo’s with almost an hour to spare before my interview, and promised to be back for the show later that night. As his BMW rocketed off into the distance, I stood quietly on the nearly empty street, gaping at my surroundings. I had perhaps imagined some fancy tour bus would be parked out front with a glorious Beautiful Remorse logo in electric paint across the side. Instead, there was a van and a scooter parked nearby, and either vehicle could have belonged to anybody on the block. I checked on my phone—track four had not been released yet for some reason. I pulled out my headphones, and with immense self-control, did not play any of the other three Beautiful Remorse tracks, fearing the idea of having a seizure on the street more than I longed to hear the music again. But my eyes immediately began scanning down the street, and into the nearby alley. Maybe, I frantically schemed, I could find a park bench to lie down on, or an open-bed pickup truck I could climb into—
“Much Preferred Customers?” someone said from the doorway of Emo’s.
I spun and saw a waifish young woman with short, bright red hair peering down at me from the entrance. She wore a tank top with a screen print of Joan Jett in a tracksuit from her Runaways days. I immediately recognized her: Sierra Nelson, former drummer for Surrealist Sound System. I’d seen her and her old band play approximately infinity times back in Madison.
“Thought that was you,” she murmured.
“You recognize me?”
“Who else reviewed SSS every week in the Badger Herald?”
The answer, of course, was no one. I did that. That was me. She recognized me. Jesus! She must have joined (or formed!) Beautiful Remorse after Surrealist Sound System broke up.
“C’mon, Airee’s waiting for you,” she said, and she led me into the venue.
We headed through the auditorium, where several roadies were setting up. Maybe some of them were actual members of the band, given the suspicious manner in which they stared my direction. Or maybe they were staring at me because I was sticking close to their hot drummer Sierra. We didn’t stop to chat.
Sierra led me into the dressing room, and without any warning or ceremony, I was suddenly in the same room as Airee Macpherson, the voice of Beautiful Remorse. Sierra closed the door quietly behind me, leaving me alone with Airee.
Was she as gorgeous as my imaginary ideal of her physical perfection that I’d been carrying around in my head? No, because that perfect vision in my head was missing all the little details, all the little flaws that actually make a person real. Honestly she was plain to look at, in the same way I judge myself to be plain when I look in the mirror. Not ugly, not grotesque, but not glamorous, not striking. Plain as in unremarkable, with her hair down loose, wearing a ratty T-shirt and gym shorts.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
“I do hear that sometimes,” I replied.
The show was hours from now and she was already assembling the makeup she planned to apply. At first I thought: aha, this is how she will transform into a gorgeous rock star. But then I took a closer look: this wasn’t your typical array of beauty cosmetics. This was serious stage makeup: grease paint, facial prosthetics, a handheld airbrush gizmo I’d never seen before. Several masks and wigs nearby made it clear: she intended a serious transformation tonight. She kept puttering with her makeup, selecting and organizing various pencils and brushes, and I just stood there gaping until finally she said, “Sit the fuck down, you’re making me nervous.”
I found a spot on the couch behind her, where I could see her face in the mirror. She made eye contact with me for the first time, and I suddenly became exceedingly self-conscious.
“You came a long way for an interview. Gonna ask me any questions?”
I was on the spot. Look, music bloggers aren’t journalists. We don’t get backstage passes on the regular. We definitely don’t talk to artists on any kind of frequent basis. I’ve interviewed a few people in my time, but exclusively by email. I found myself feeling massively unprepared and disappointed in myself for not thinking this all through before I ever got on an airplane to Austin.
“When are you releasing track four?” I finally asked. My voice was unexpectedly dry, like I was about to choke.
“We’re recording it live tonight. Dropping it online before midnight is the plan. It’s called ‘There Will Be Consequences.’”
“Is that . . . I mean, does that actually mean something?”
She cocked her eye at me. “Are you seriously asking me if my shit might actually mean something?” My cheeks burned with stupid embarrassment. “It all means something. The song titles mean something. The lyrics mean something. The fucking chord changes mean something.” She spun around to look at me directly. “And you being here tonight—that means something.”
“What’s it mean?”
She swiveled back around to her mirror, disenchanted even with scolding me.
“I hate liner notes
,” she said. “I hate giving away all the mystery. The music speaks for itself.”
“Then why do interviews?”
“I don’t. This isn’t. Get over yourself. Do you even have ten people reading your smug little blog?”
I had a few thousand people reading it, but I knew what she was getting at.
“You’re not here to interview me,” she continued. “You’re here to watch the show. You’re an invited guest.” She smiled unexpectedly. “Listen, I’ve got to shower. Hang out in the bar until the show. I’ll see you afterward.” She expertly shuffled me out of the room before I even realized what she was doing or what she’d just said.
By the time William caught up to me later that night, I’d sussed a few things out. Beautiful Remorse was technically the opening act, scheduled to play from 9:15 to 10 p.m. They had a video crew on hand to capture the set. They did not have a merchandise booth, which left open the question of how they were fronting the money for a video crew without record label backing. For that matter, none of the roadies or other band members would talk to me about where the tour was headed next or why they hadn’t bothered to promote this show locally in the first place.
“We promoted the show to the right people,” Sierra finally admitted when I caught her heading up to the stage for sound check. “True fans. Aficionados.” She probably winked mischievously when she added, “And of course, music bloggers.”
“Nobody cares about music bloggers.”
“Airee just wanted you to see our first live show. Seriously—check the Hype Machine. You were the first blogger to write about us. She didn’t get it at first, but . . . I convinced her you knew your shit. Cuz I remembered what you said about SSS back in Madison. God, couldn’t forget that kind of praise, not when you’re a dirt-poor little brat trying to learn the drums in front of two hundred people every week for three years. Totally kept me going, you know that?”