by Max Frick
said. ‘We’ll cut through here.’
Billy almost winced as Tony, unseeing, lifted a foot up above the bluebells, and brought it down – oh! – just the other side of them. Then Dooly ploughed straight through them and they went up through the trees.
8
The same secretary, or perhaps a different one cut from the same Stepfordian mould, was summoned by Steve Steve via the desk telephone and instructed to show Tony down to the recording studio, where he was left in the capable hands of ‘Chris, with a K’ one of the ‘boys’ in production.
Kris was as skinny as a rake, tall and haggard looking. The lines on his face told of a misspent youth and an even misser-spent middle age, and the heavy bags under his tired, if unrepentant eyes suggested that he had no intention of spending any more wisely now that his twighlight years were just around the corner. In matters of style he was a yesterday’s man, or even the day before yesterday’s. His thin, grey-blond hair was still tied back in a ponytail and his shirt – a silky/satiny looking violet or lilac creation – could not have been any more garish if it were fashioned entirely out of neon strip lighting. It was wide open at the neck, revealing a smattering of grey chest hair, and tucked in at the waist, billowing out over a studded leather belt that hung slant-wise like a gun belt on his hips. A pair of black leather drainpipe trousers emphasised the lankiness of his legs, the pointedness of his Chelsea boots and the fact that he still considered himself a bit of a ladies man. He was holding a rolled-up cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
Before ushering Tony into the studio, he directed a lingering, lecherous, lascivious look up and down the retreating back of the secretary and hissed:
‘Aaassss on thahat!’
No sooner had Tony stepped inside the studio than a camera, mounted like a bazooka on a shoulder of its enthusiastic young operator, was thrust lens first into his face. He instinctively stood his ground, giving first the camera, then the operator, via his one remaining eye, a threatening, questioning stare.
‘Oh, yeah,’ drawled Kris, coming in and closing the door behind him. ‘That’s Jeremy, the department apprentice. He’s in charge of the video. Just try and pretend he’s not here.’
‘Video?’ thought Tony.
‘What video?’ he queried.
Kris took a draw on his roll-up.
‘Basically,’ he said, ‘it’ll be sort of a fly on the wall type deal. We’ll film whatever happens in here today and then edit the ‘best bits’ together with archive footage of, you know, general urban decay: street violence, riots, that type of thing.’
A cigarette-handed air quotes at ‘best bits’, along with the jaded, almost sarcastic tone of voice was definitely offensive to Tony, but he had other things on his mind.
‘What, the song and the video all in one day?’ he said.
‘More or less,’ replied Kris. ‘It’s all fairly standard.’
‘Aw, is it, aye? And, eh, he’s an apprentice, you say?’
But Kris seemed not to notice his concern.
‘Yeah,’ he said, turning from Tony. ‘But like I say, just try and pretend he’s not here.’
The studio, after the near vulgar opulence of Steve Steve’s penthouse office, was relatively small and work-like, not unlike a workman’s bothy. It was even hung here and there with pages torn from porn mags and the odd Playboy calendar. Situated somewhere in the basement of the building it was simply a room…
‘Mate, come on, eh?’
The camera was still a bit too up close and personal for Tony’s liking and he renewed his threatening stare. Jeremy backstepped a pace or two.
…it was simply a room divided into two halves by a glass partition, separating a soundproofed singing area, or booth – the smaller of the two halves – from the area they were standing in now. This half of the room was dominated by a large, elaborate looking mixing desk – a bewildering array of dials and knobs and switches and faders and displays. The other half, hardly big enough to hold a band, appeared to contain little more than a mic on a mic stand, a song sheet on a stand of its own beside it and a pair of headphones, hung by their connecting band over the neck of the mic stand.
Kris set down his coffee cup and, placing the cigarette loosely between his lips for safekeeping, took a seat at the desk and went about readying it for Tony’s performance.
Holding an earphone to one ear only, as if listening for the sea, he turned the dials, flicked the switches and pushed up and pulled down the faders, all in a humdrum, offhand, blasé manner, as though he’d done it so many times before that it had become second nature to him; like a line worker in a factory who’s been tightening the same screws or soldering the same component day in, day out, day in, day out for so long now that he need no longer give it even a moment's thought. But if, like the factory worker, Kris had no great love for the work itself, unlike him he derived a great deal of pride from being in this particular line of work. He was only too well aware that to most people his job was a glamorous one, and it was this aspect of it – not the money it paid, which was probably very good, nor the freedom it allowed him to be ‘his own man’ (a dissolute lifestyle and unconventional dress sense were, as far as his employers, and even Kris himself, were concerned, an essential and inseparable part of the artistic temperament) – it was this glamorous aspect of it, though he would never admit to it, that he prized above all else. And he would shamelessly use it to good effect: preying on impressionable young girls in bars or at parties, manufacturing opportunities to oh so casually mention that he was ‘in music' or ‘in the music biz’, knowing full well that whenever he did, their ears would prick up and their eyes brighten, before he would regale them with tales of the stars he had met and made. And it was through their eyes that he had eventually come to see himself, and share their high opinion of his station in life, long since forgetting or regretting his own fruitless aspirations to stardom.
Even his humdrum, offhandedness as he readied the mixing desk was a little overdone, as though he knew that his mastery of such a technical piece of equipment couldn’t but impress someone like Tony, and to play it down was bound to impress him all the more.
‘Eh, will there be a band comin in?’ Tony asked.
Kris shook his head.
‘Nah,’ he said, still listening to the sea and making a few minor adjustments to the positions of the faders. ‘Not necessary at the minute. This baby’s got everything we need for now. Maybe if you hit ‘the big time’ (again offensive air quotes) the gaffer’ll splash some cash on a few session boys to back you up at any live gigs that might come your way. But for the time being it’s just the three of us. Or four, to be more precise.’
And, setting down the headphones, he stood up, patting the mixing desk as you would a horse, before embarking on a guided tour, such as it was, of the studio and offering a brief explanation of the recording process.
Taking up his coffee cup he sauntered into the sound booth beckoning Tony to follow. Jeremy darted in just ahead of Tony and, turning, filmed his entrance.
‘This,’ said Kris, taking another draw of his cigarette, ‘is the recording booth. Basically, you’ll be in here singing and I’ll be at the other side of the glass piping the music through to you from the desk. The song sheet here’s in case you forget the words, but only use it as a prompt. Don’t read off it if you don’t have to. Makes things less natural. And with this type of song we’ll be going for one continuous take. Again, keeps it a bit more real. Now, to save time today we’re using the original music but a new arrangement will be added later to, you know, modernise it a bit and bring it a bit more up to date. Once we’re all set up I’ll give you a few more pointers and we’ll get started.’
He took a drink of his coffee.
‘Any questions so far?’
Tony, sceptical to say the least with the whole workaday, time-is-money approach to the process up till now, did have one question, but try as he might he couldn’t muster the courage to ask it, lest his worst fe
ars be realised:
‘Eh, what exactly do you mean by “modernise”?’
9
Sites are cleared, foundations laid, great iron frameworks constructed and glazed; individuals swept aside as the multiples move in: department stores, superstores, mega stores, chain stores, ‘in shapes like their own selves hideously multiplied’; tailor made (entirely the wrong metaphor) to suit a model community mapped, measured and classified; a community first homogenised, then analysed, then re-divided; divided into ‘affinity groups with similar demographic and lifestyle attributes’ (a modern cousin of the stereotype); divided by age, sex, race, social class, disposable income, dietary habits, but never divided into parts so small as to once again become unwieldy individuals. The ‘buyer behaviour’ of each group is monitored-stroke-manipulated by corporate ladies and gentlemen – alike as so many peas in a pod – trained to identify-stroke-create ‘market trends’ and reason inductively therefrom (what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for a whole gaggle of ganders). Such a trend having been identified-stroke-created the machinery of emulation and replication is set in motion and makes this noise: sameness and repetition, sameness and repetition; widespread distribution, vigorous promotion, shelves are stacked and garment rails hung with whichever cut, colour, style, model or name (particularly