by Dan Kennedy
(Okay, easy on the Phil Hartman Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer “I’m confused by your modern world” act, sister. You just worked with your label and management to corner yet another check equal to the Gross National Product of some of the countries your last six world tours swept you through, so, you kind of understand power.)
The song finds its groove. Aging Suburban Classic Rock Guy bobs his head as if he can’t get enough of this one. A handful of aspiring co-somethings bob their heads as well and smile at each other. Anyone in the room who knows the irony of a song about not selling out being used to sell razors displays a perfect professional poker face. I, on the other hand, am most likely doing the thing where I stifle disbelief and then start getting paranoid that I totally don’t understand what’s going on and that it’s showing on my face, and then I get paranoid that you can get cancer this way. I’m not sure what to use to tap to the beat, so I just fold my stupid long arms across my stomach. I don’t know where to look, either, so I squint my eyes shut hard and try to focus on the song. An intern is kind enough to tap me on the shoulder and discreetly ask me if I am “having problems.”
Jewel hits the chorus and tells us that we need to follow our hearts and follow our intuition and then kind of repeats that we only need follow our hearts, “Just follow your heart, baby,” she sings out. The song is basically saying all this stuff about not giving into the insane waves of advertising and greed that are shoved at us all day long. But I still don’t get it and feel like when I was little and they said they were going to have to hold me back a grade unless I got with the program. So, I’m really trying to get with the program. But, she just licensed this song about following your heart and not selling out for use in one of the biggest ad campaigns of the year. Wait, maybe I’m dead and this is one of those old Disney comedies where I slowly start to realize I’m dead and nobody can see me except a child? And it’s, like, a hundred years in the future and licensing folk singers’ songs about not selling out for use in a forty-million-dollar ad campaign for razors makes sense to everyone in the future?
I look around the room for any sign of somebody willing to clue me in so I can enjoy the meeting, too: the usual suspects are bobbing politely to the beat; a pair of daydreaming eyes is suddenly averted when I look right at them; one guy is politely drumming on the edge of the table with the stylus from his Palm Pilot.
The label is working to time the release of this CD and first single to the rollout of the Schick ad campaign. Which will coincide with the video for “Intuition,” in which she’ll portray characters such as “Firefighter” (red leather shorts, white tank top sprayed at when hot male models point their fire hose at her and soak her down) and “Soda Drinker” (drinks what appears to be popular brand of lemon-lime soda that makes her shirts pop open and her breasts heave forward while a wind blows back her hair), mocking a culture in which scantily clad pop divas embrace the notion that everything is for sale — but Jewel’s, um, doing it in a way that is an irony, um, ironic. I’m confused.
I look over at the guy tapping his Palm Pilot stylus against the edge of the table. He’s worked here for five or six years, from what I hear; huge office, doing really well, doing way better than I am. You ever have that feeling? The feeling that everyone else has figured this life out and is succeeding wildly while it feels like you’re just doing okay or just getting by? That’s the feeling I get watching this guy drumming to the song with his Palm Pilot stylus. What do I have to do to succeed wildly in this life?
I make a loose fist and start to kind of do a bass drum by tapping it on my binder, politely bobbing my head and smiling pleasantly as Jewel slides into the bridge and reveals the most telling line in the song: “Sell your sin, just cash in.”
Sing it, sister.
SUBDIVISIONS
Sometimes I walk around the floors peeking in offices, like a tourist lost in a museum. You can’t help but feel how this is your last chance to see this. That none of the old-school mogul stuff is going to last too much longer — a little slice of American pop culture that might’ve peaked and is now almost gone without a trace. You look into these dioramas of offices and see the people who’ve been here who knows how long — separated off in a world that seems so far away from the day-to-day goings on of the middle class. And the older, wealthier, and higher up they are in the managerial caste system, the older their hairstyle is. The biggest offices can be the strangest little time capsules — mostly the men’s. The women seem to have an ability to move forward after their moment in the sun. The men, though . . . The guy who had something to do with discovering the band Rush twenty-five years ago apparently decided that very day that he would never change his hairstyle. The way a kid might declare that he would never wash his hand after meeting an absolutely peaking Evil Knievel in 1974.
When you walk by and look into the shadow box and see him sitting behind his huge desk and surveying his corner-office real estate like an isolated lord, you see a man who has been front and center for all of the highs, lows, hits, and stiffs of at least a couple of decades in this business. He looked up and smiled once as I was walking past stealing a glimpse, and I was stunned. This polite man behind such a huge desk in an enormous corner spread that looks bigger than a lot of apartments in this town — is he just a guy who learned the “smile and nod like a nice guy” trick? Because how the hell would a nice guy get anywhere in the record business? When you look in the couches, the huge living-room setting, the desk that is large enough to be called real estate, the art on the walls, the sculpture on the table in the center of the room, platinum albums lining the walls, each with their own little light focused on them — you see all this, but really, somehow, you keep coming back to the hair. When I learned that he’s the man who found Rush, or knew Rush, or managed Rush or whatever his thing is — I felt this weird kind of reckless, quiet, almost teenage melancholy sweep over me; because barring a building fire or a relapse back into my days of heavy drinking, I knew I’d never talk with him about the good old days that must’ve occurred at some point in this business. Here’s a guy who’s got to have some of the coolest stories in this building, he seems like a nice guy, and I’ll probably never hear his stories. I can’t explain it, but you just don’t talk to these guys, and they don’t talk to you — even when it’s just the two of you in the elevator for twenty-six floors.
There’s always this sort of old-school-looking gym bag next to his desk and I daydream of how he arrived at the point where he decided that he would always have it next to his desk. Did it come later in his career, or was it one of those early-years crazy rock-and-roll contractual clauses? “Okay . . . a million three a year . . . a corner office . . . and a contract that says (1) I grab my gear and head to the club whenever I goddamn well please, (2) I never have to cut my hair, and (3) a hot secretary brings me this gym bag and racquet anytime I press this button on my phone . . . and the contract’s pay or play for the remainder of my employment or the next thirty years . . . whichever is greater.”
Back in the glory days of major labels, they wouldn’t have even wasted the time with meetings and getting approvals for that kind of thing, I bet. All they would’ve been thinking was, “This guy found Rush/knows Rush/signed Rush. We want him. Give him five secretaries to bring him his tracksuit, headband, and racquet if that’s what he wants. And make sure they have a cold whatever-the-hell-he’s-thirsty-for after his game. I don’t care what it takes, this is rock and roll, baby!”
After today’s little stroll/expedition of walking around peeking in, I make my way back to my office. A piece of e-mail hits my in-box. Apparently, there’s a special meeting today in the serious conference room. Not the little Tuesday marketing meeting conference room, the big one. The situation room, if you will. Where the entire company can be assembled to receive a message from Rush Hair and then see a presentation from two guys that are supposed to be Internet wunderkinds. The rumor is that the wunderkinds are going to blow our minds. Have you ever had those days w
here you think to yourself, “Nothing could blow my mind today; not a perfect PowerPoint presentation, not Internet wunderkinds, nothing.” That’s the way I’m feeling at the moment. In all fairness, sure, if one just started screaming like bad performance artists, and running at us while screaming random jarring phrases like “Christ-meat-stench-fist-rot!” and set one of the conference-room chairs on fire and stared at it until he started to weep, while the other wunderkind started running around the conference room naked except for a rubber Nixon mask, a couple of pieces of electrical tape on his nipples, and a fanny pack strapped to his chest filled with diet pills and a gun, and he was screaming something like, “Tiny radios live in my head and I want to eat my own heart!” — then, yeah, obviously, you know, mind-blowing. You’d be like, “Those guys really turned my head inside out with their presentation.”
I get ready to leave my office and head to the conference room. The usual drill; quickly gather up enough gear to look responsible — my black binder/folder, two pens (Awesome. Well done), one of my fancy monogrammed notepads. As I leave my office and pass by Amy’s desk, I let her know with a little bit of professional urgency why I’m heading right back out again:
“Just got an e-mail about the online music meeting, so I’m out again!” I raise my eyebrows with a what-are-you-gonna-do kind of face in hopes that I seem politely busy and super professional.
I grab a seat at the conference table just in time. These two enter the room in a sensible fashion. They set up their PowerPoint. Rush Hair is already here. He gets up and tells the strangest story about how kids don’t even go to record stores anymore, and how they’re, get this, downloading music from the Internet these days. Rush Hair tells us that the problem with this is that it’s killing the industry, because . . . well, partially because the biggest selection of online music resides on illegal networks where people get it for free since the legal options are still scant, to put it mildly. And even if people use the legal downloading option of the iTunes Music Store, it means they can download single tracks for a buck a pop, which basically means the industry can’t sell a CD with only two or three good songs on it and get twenty bucks for it. I mean, this is never said out loud in our little family. I mean, maybe that kind of thing is said aloud in the upper reaches of the company, but down here it’s all kind of one big elephant in the room.
“We are really excited about trying to figure out a way to sell albums online. This is a really exciting time. It’s a challenging time, but it’s an exciting time. And these gentlemen are here to give us a sneak preview of just how we might go about moving forward,” says Rush Hair.
He goes on to tell the story of how dangerous it is that kids are downloading from Limewire and these different peer-to-peer networks. He gives the example of coming home to find his daughters downloading music illegally on the Internet and seeing pornographic pictures on the same network. Note to self: apparently there is also free pornography on the peer-to-peer networks people use to illegally download music. Dude. Seriously?
“Can I please have everyone’s attention?”
He tries to quiet the room so the Internet wunderkind twins can start their PowerPoint, but the idea of porn and music for free at the same time has created a buzz in the room. This must be what it felt like back in the heyday of the major record labels. People are chattering away, the electricity in the air feels like it just keeps flowing and flowing.
“Please. This is really exciting news, and I want to make sure everyone’s listening before these gentlemen get started.”
Sir, you might want to rethink your definition of exciting news after that little gem about free pornography that you opened with. He waits to get the room’s attention. He looks at each person as if he’s ready to say something again. I notice that this time I pay close attention. The room quiets down instantly. “Thank you. You need to give these gentlemen your undivided attention.”
He notices how well this little eye-contact trick worked, and he raises his eyebrows kind of comically, adding, “See, that’s why they pay me the big bucks. If you can do that, you can be president of a major record label and make a lot of money. A lot of money.”
The joke doesn’t really inspire laughter as much as it inspires people’s faces to appear stunned at somebody finally admitting this aloud. I see a couple people looking at me. I panic for a moment, wondering if it’s totally obvious that I’m sitting there thinking, I wonder if I could make these people be quiet like that and make more money.
The wunderkinds start their presentation. It’s filled with very impressive color graphics that are broadcast from their laptops up onto the conference room’s video screen. There are mocked-up frames of what this online music presence could look like, there are high-impact sights and sounds of the presentation, and then the whole idea basically boils down to people paying a monthly fee to have online access to a huge selection of the company’s music, but only to listen to at their computers — not to actually download and have a copy of.
A few folks around the conference table pose a couple of respectably diligent devil’s advocate questions, but it’s clear that no praise is being handed out for that kind of thing, so that type of question quickly recedes. For the most part, we nod to indicate we understand and we nod more to seem like we find it all very interesting. It’s important to look interested when you’re told something is exciting. At the end of the presentation, we even do a little bit of clapping . . . you kind of have to, the way the presentation graphics zoom in and everything; you’d be kind of a jerk not to clap, really.
BLACK DOG
I walk into Vallerie’s office a few days later; I need to talk to her about a new TV commercial that I’m going to be making for the Jewel album. She’s on the phone but motions for me to stay, indicating that she’ll be done in a moment, so while I wait I’m trying to be polite to Sylvia first. She’s Vallerie’s dog, and on Thursdays and Fridays little toy-size dogs like Sylvia are discreetly snuck into the building in designer handbags. Seems like a huge status-symbol thing with female executives here. One should know how to kind of schmooze the little dogs; it’s actually an important protocol. Everyone here has it down. They have the sweet voice to talk to the dog with; they know what questions to ask and then how to make conversation with Vallerie based on the question they asked the dog. I have no idea how to talk to the tiny executive dogs when they’re in the office. I grew up with big, dumb, friendly backyard dogs that made conversation easy. They would get happy when you came home from school. They’d look at you with a big smile, wagging their tail, and they seemed to be saying, “Throw my tennis ball! Throw it! Hey, throw my tennis ball! Throw! Throw it! Throw! Throw it, okay?” and you would just naturally say something like, “What are you doing? Does somebody want their tennis ball thrown? Is that what’s going on here, mister?” and the dog would get really happy and start barking. But these tiny, smart, urbane dogs with designer stuff make me feel stupid for even saying anything to them at the office.
Sylvia’s tucked away on her Burberry bed and doesn’t seem to be saying anything, let alone wagging her tail because she’s glad to see me, or asking to have a tennis ball thrown around. I don’t really want to kneel down, so I just kind of aim my head toward the general direction of the Burberry bed and give talking to her my best shot.
“Is somebody in her big fancy office today?” I ask a little too loudly and matter-of-factly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I’m pretty sure I see Vallerie look up from her important phone call, and I realize the question was strangely and perfectly suited to her. Further confusing matters, I realize I asked the question in my regular voice, not a doggie voice. Jesus, whisper, and do some kind of little doggie voice! I step closer to the dog’s designer bed in hopes of explaining my behavior a bit, and I whisper the question again.
“Is somebody staying in bed all day today, is that what’s happening?” I ask in a rushed, loud whisper with a voice just slightly higher pitched than my natu
ral voice. I am stunned to realize that I’m capable of sounding exactly like a middle-aged gay male nurse who’s a little upset with a patient.
Still nothing from Sylvia. Either the dog doesn’t consider her Burberry bed a “fancy office” and is pretty certain she’s not going to “stay in bed all day,” or she’s just not in the mood for talking to me. Jesus, dog. Cut me some slack here. Would it kill you to do something cute that’ll make me look good in front of my boss?
I put on a huge forced smile that seems odd to both me and the dog, judging by the way it’s shaking and quivering. I decide to go back to my normal voice. I try to think of what the hell to say.
Through my manic grin, I manage to whisper something like, “Well, hello there. Is it a good . . . day?”
Little Sylvia looks at me clearly nonplussed, totally silent, and does nothing. I stare at her and think, Fine, dog. You can’t say one little bark or run up to me? Two can play that fucking game, pal.
I stand silently staring at it, saying not one word to it, and waiting for Vallerie to get off the phone.
Yeah, tough life for the executive dogs around here. Assistants take them for walks when they need to “do their business” — that is, unless they use a little pad on the floor. Working on the front lines of rock and roll is where I first heard the term pee-pee pad. Those are the little white quilted pads that some executives bring in with their little dogs, and they put one down in the corner of the office in case the dog needs to go out and the assistant’s not around to take them out. Vallerie doesn’t have one in her office, which I respect. But for one inspired second or two, I think about how cool it would be to get my own pee-pee pad and never have to leave my office to take a leak. Better still, I should make a power play for the top and get my own dog. But it’s hard to imagine putting three thousand bucks on the table for something smaller than my shoe with a better pedigree than mine, so instead I stand waiting for Vallerie to get off the phone, and I’m daydreaming of what kind of office dog I would get. I think I’d head down to the pound and choose the cagiest, most high-strung, slouching, growling, medium-size passed-over derelict canine of the bunch. Something tortured by the dry itch of minor skin disorders to the point of lunacy. I would name him Taco. Taco would be too big to sneak in via handbag, so I would sneak him into the office on Thursdays and Fridays in a large duffle bag from the Army-Navy surplus store. I would have to wrestle the writhing duffle bag onto the elevator, occasionally coughing loudly in an attempt to cover up Taco’s spasmodic, dry, hoarse growling.