by Oli White
‘So that’s why you’ve started taking your T-shirt off at the merest hint of sunshine?’ Ella said. ‘You want to show off your muscles.’
‘No, I just get hot, that’s all,’ Sai said. ‘I can’t help it if women are drawn to an athletic physique, can I?’
‘Yeah, but you’re still short,’ Austin said. ‘And let’s not forget that the last girl you went out with dumped you mid-date when she found you looking for Pokémon outside the women’s toilet of the restaurant.’
A few feet away, Ava was trying to prise information out of AJ. ‘Come on, spill the beans. You’re being very cagey about something. What’s going on?’
I grabbed AJ’s free arm. ‘Yeah, what Ava said. What’s all this about toasting the start of a new era?’
I was speaking too loudly, and by this time everyone in the garden was staring at AJ, holding their glasses aloft and ready to drink to something else. He really had no choice but to come clean.
‘Well, I wanted to save this news till later, but—’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Austin said. ‘Just tell us!’
‘Total Festival,’ he said firmly. ‘One of the biggest and best music and arts festivals in America … in the world.’
‘What about it? Apart from the fact that it’s supposed to be amazing?’ I said.
‘Even I’ve heard of that one,’ I heard Mum mutter to Dad.
‘Well, would you like to do it?’ AJ said.
‘“Do it” how?’ Ava said.
‘It’s not set in stone, but the idea being tossed around is something along the lines of a complete GenNext takeover of the Total Youth stage.’
‘The what stage?’ Ella said, screwing up her face in disbelief.
‘Total Youth. It’s the third biggest of all the festival performance spaces, and one of the highlights of last year by all accounts,’ AJ said.
‘And what would a GenNext takeover mean exactly?’ I said, my excitement mounting.
‘All sorts,’ AJ said. ‘Introducing the acts, interviewing them before and after their performances, and on top of that live-streaming the whole thing through the GenNext channel. Well, that’s what I’m pushing for if it comes off.’
‘Are you frickin’ kidding?’ Austin said, his mouth falling open to the size of a small cave.
‘I am not kidding,’ AJ said. He was loving all this, I could tell.
‘So we’d get to, like, curate our own festival stage … at Total. Is that what you’re saying?’ Ella said.
‘In conjunction with the festival organisers, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Any questions?’
Aside from Meghan Trainor drifting out of the Sonos on the patio, there was silence for a moment while we all took this piece of news in. The Total Festival was immense. Huge. It was fast becoming known worldwide as the summer event to be at if you were a lover of music, great spectacle, and life in general. And what? GenNext were going to be presenting their very own stage there! It was too much to take in, what with the end of school and everything …
Eventually Sai broke the silence. ‘That’s held somewhere up north, isn’t it? Just outside Leicester.’
Everyone looked blankly at him for a second.
‘No, dear nephew, it’s in California,’ AJ said calmly, and we all cracked up laughing.
Within a few seconds the laughter had turned to cheering, cries of ‘GET IN!’ and general pandemonium. Dad made a sterling effort to distribute a few more of his organic sausages, but everyone was too busy jumping up and down and screaming to fill their faces.
I turned to a satisfied-looking AJ, raising my voice over the noise of the others. ‘It’s a bit close to the knuckle isn’t it, AJ? I thought these things were planned a year in advance.’
‘You’re right, Jack,’ he said. ‘The team originally hosting the Total Youth stage had to pull out at the last minute. The festival organisers weren’t happy about it, but …’
‘Their loss is our gain?’ I said, noticing that everyone had stopped leaping about like idiots and was now paying attention.
‘Exactly,’ AJ nodded. ‘The organisers want the Total Youth stage to be about young people communicating with an audience their own age, with younger acts and DJs and a fresh, raw approach to the presentation. They think GenNext is the perfect fit. We’d have a lot of work to do, but it’s an amazing opportunity. Do you think we’re up to it?’
My mind was racing like Bradley Wiggins round a velodrome. We were the perfect fit, and this could be the thing to propel GenNext back into the stratosphere. Sure, I’d always known we’d find something decent to mark our relaunch, but even I couldn’t have dreamed up this project.
‘We’re up to it, right, guys?’ I said, raising my glass.
There was a rousing cry in the affirmative, followed by the now customary group huddle. In a few short minutes we’d gone from celebrating the last day of school and wondering what the hell was going to happen next to being handed the most fantastic opportunity; something that could splash GenNext across the map internationally. I had a really good feeling about what was about to happen …
THE TASK
Things aren’t always as easy as you think they’re going to be, are they? Far from it. The next couple of weeks were a whirlwind that swept me up and carried me along, my feet barely touching the ground. Down at our freshly spruced-up and whitewashed HQ – Austin’s mum’s converted basement – the GenNext team beavered away like crazy: designing, discussing and planning into the late hours. We’d suddenly gone from being students, snowed under with essays and revision, to full-time working adults with a huge task ahead of us. A task that we were all up for despite having little to no idea of its magnitude. I mean, in my head it all felt reasonably straightforward: there was a stage and we were going to put artists on it, but there was so much more to it than I imagined. There were the festival organisers and various artists’ management to liaise with, merchandise to design and produce, potential sponsors to be sourced, contracts, insurance, equipment, travel … Jeez! The list seemed endless and most of it was completely new territory. Thankfully we had AJ to guide us through most of it; even so, it was a massive learning curve for all five of us … albeit a very exciting one.
The scariest thing was, Total was one of the world’s biggest music festivals and we really didn’t have a lot of time to pull all this stuff together. It was less than two months away, and every hour that passed brought a new decision to be made, each more important than the last. First and foremost we had to announce to our viewers and to the world that we, GenNext, were taking over the Total Youth stage. There were plenty of rumours flying around already, but we felt, of course, that we needed to make an extra-big splash when we made it official, so Sai edited together a fast-paced video-teaser campaign that went out on our channel over five nights: a series of smart, vibrant moving collages that included music clips, TV shows, movie moments, newsreel footage and festival-crowd panoramas, all cut at breakneck speed with a blistering dance soundtrack and all ending with a new and exciting message.
As each day passed, Sai’s videos went viral and the buzz grew. Then, on the sixth day, the Saturday, the message at the end read:
From then on in you could pretty much say it was online carnage, with everyone trying to gather as much info about the event as they could, particularly our more loyal viewers, who’d been patiently hanging on all year to find out what our next big thing might be. It suddenly felt like everyone was talking about us, and once Total started previewing the festival on MTV, including a massive plug for our stage, they definitely were.
After that, there were the actual bands and artists to decide on. Most of the acts earmarked to play on the GenNext stage had been put forward by the festival organisers and then given our seal of approval, but we also wanted to bring two or three artists to the table that we’d chosen ourselves – ‘wild cards’, we called them. This was especially important to me. I wanted to make sure that our stage at Total felt like it was authen
tically GenNext and not just something we’d stuck our name on. Ella, meanwhile, was insistent that we come up with some sort of theme for the stage and the setting in which we’d conduct our exclusive post- or pre-show interviews. It was a good thought, and the suggestions for this were varied and … well, let’s just call them interesting.
Sai was first in the queue with ideas at that particular breakfast brainstorming meeting. ‘Let’s rock a classic sci-fi-themed stage! Like Alien or Star Wars.’
‘Right, because no one would be expecting a group of techy teenagers to think that one up,’ Ava scoffed. ‘Hey, we could go all out and wear Mr Spock ears.’
Ella’s idea of a woodland theme was only slightly better received.
‘What, trees and shrubs and that? I suppose it could work,’ Sai said grudgingly.
‘Nah, it’s a bit Disney,’ Austin disagreed, his mouth full of bacon sandwich. ‘I’ve got visions of Snow White and singing squirrels. What about a post-apocalyptic vibe? You know, we could factor in a few wandering zombies or something.’
‘Yeah, ’cause that’s really cheery,’ I said. ‘“GenNext brings you death and destruction.” Good one, mate.’
At that point everyone dissolved into laughter and the general consensus was that we needed to dedicate a little more thought to our chosen theme. Whatever it ended up being, I was certain of one thing: it had to have our signature off-the-wall, no-nonsense stamp all over it. That was the thing to make us shine bright in amongst all that festival magic.
There was plenty of other stuff to consider, too. Austin was obsessed with designing the perfect ‘special edition’ version of our GenNext logo for the stage banner and all the merchandise, badgering me with a new, minutely tweaked variation of the same thing every few hours until in the end I could hardly tell one from the other. Ava and Sai were keen to update some of our cameras and sound equipment and spent hours cooing and purring over various high-end audio-video websites for items we couldn’t really afford. Ella, meanwhile, was all over the fashion, and with mood boards and Pinterest pages galore, she’d gathered together enough ‘great looks’ to take her and the rest of us well into our thirties. Added into the mix was the fact that AJ was in California for a week of meetings with the festival organisers and their lawyers, meaning that we were sort of on our own. Nothing could be left to chance; we all knew that. Everything had to be perfect.
There were late nights during those weeks when I think I was asleep before I even got into bed; early mornings when I was down at HQ sitting in front of a screen before I’d woken up, and as for romantic interludes between Ella and me, well, they were on virtual freeze-frame. Still, despite how knackered and downright frazzled we felt, it was obvious we all loved it. It wasn’t like A levels, where you worked your guts out for months and just got a piece of paper with a grade on it at the end of it all. This was something we were creating, something fantastic that we’d eventually unveil to the world. It was ours and it was going to be amazing. And as each day passed, the buzz of excitement was building. You could almost taste it in the air.
Still, there were a few moments when I felt like I was banging my head against a wall, especially when it came to locking in our wild-card artists. I don’t know, perhaps I’d been a bit too cocky about the whole thing, naively assuming I’d be able to make a few calls to some record labels, music managers and sponsors, armed only with my cheery disposition and boundless charm, and everything would fall neatly into place. The world doesn’t work like that, however. There are contracts and schedules and budgets to consider; there are nice people who just don’t call you back and not-so-nice people who don’t know who you are and who certainly don’t care about your deadline … and however cool and spectacular you might think your big plans are, and however well you sell them, there are those people who just respond with a big fat ‘NO!’
This cold, hard fact was bought home to me in a big way after a night-time flurry of WhatsApp messages on the ‘GenNext Total’ group, just one terrifyingly short month before the festival.
When I first met Suki, she’d been working for the record label that had signed our good friend Cooper, a singer-songwriter who’d since become a bloody humongous pop star in front of our eyes and who now spent half his time in America working with people like Calvin Harris and Drake. Yeah, I know! Suki went on to work for one of the biggest music management companies in the UK and, from what Ava told us, was poised and ready to break away from said company to look after her own client roster of talent. In other words, she knew what she was doing. When she breezed in through the door of HQ that next afternoon, I for one was very happy to see her. I’d always really liked Suki – in fact, despite being nearly three years older than us, she’d always fitted in with the gang really well. Certainly better than Jess had, anyway. We were all pretty gutted when she and Ava broke up. I could tell that Ava was pleased to see her too, even though she was clearly determined to act like it was no big deal.
‘Hey, guys! Long time no see,’ Suki said, flashing a smile. ‘What’s happening, gang?’
She looked as effortlessly cool as ever in a black jumpsuit with a chunky silver zip running all the way down the front, a black leather jacket and her trademark spiky heels.
‘Sukes, it’s really good to see you,’ I said. ‘Grab a chair.’
Suki sat down and looked round the room at us. ‘It’s good to see you guys too. All of you.’
I sensed she was a bit nervous and I knew Ava was the reason. They’d broken up in late spring, and as far as I knew, they hadn’t really seen each other since. In the end it had been Ava who’d called it a day, leaving Suki, from the sounds of it, pretty upset. I must admit, I couldn’t understand why Ava had broken it off at first. I mean, they’d seemed like such a great couple to me: always laughing, always affectionate. Then late one night a few weeks after their break-up, in a rare moment when I was alone with Ava at HQ, she’d subtly steered the conversation onto the subject of Suki, confiding to me that in the end she’d probably let her insecurities get the better of her.
‘I think I had a weird freak-out with everything that was going on,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘All the pressure of coming out, GenNext taking off, revising for exams and then making the decision to defer uni for a year. God, trying to hold down a relationship on top of all that … it’s a lot, Jack.’
She was perched on the end of my desk while I edited a couple of videos for the site and I got the feeling she’d been dying to get this off her chest for some time.
I stopped what I was doing and looked up at her. ‘It is a lot … but I’d have thought having someone to share it with would help, no?’
‘Oh don’t get me wrong, Suki was great at all that,’ she said. ‘Maybe too great if you want the truth.’
I smiled, slightly puzzled. ‘How is someone too great?’
‘Oh, you know: her lifestyle, her friends, her job, her general bloody fabulousness.’ Ava laughed as if she knew how ridiculous it all sounded. ‘I know she’s only a couple of years older than me, but sometimes I felt like I was running to keep up with her, you know? Like I couldn’t measure up to all that.’
‘So that’s why you ended it?’
She looked down at me with sad eyes. ‘Maybe.’
‘Have you told Ella any of this?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I think I’ve only just figured it out myself, to be honest.’
‘I hear you,’ I said. ‘And I think I know what you mean about running to keep up and all that stuff. I sometimes used to feel the same with Ella. Like I wasn’t good enough for her or some crap … It’s stupid, I know.’
I could see Ava’s mouth twitching as she stifled a smile, but in the end she couldn’t stop herself.
‘It’s not stupid at all,’ she said. ‘You’re really not good enough. Always remember that, Penman.’
We both laughed loud and I knew that she’d said all she wanted to say on the subject for the time being.
Now, Ava and
Suki were face to face in the same room for the first time in a good couple of months, and no one quite knew how it was going to go down.
‘So, what’s going on with you freaks?’ Suki said, sitting back in her chair and looking a bit more comfortable. ‘Exciting things on the horizon, I hear. Total Festival! How good is that?’
‘On the scarily close horizon,’ Austin said. ‘What about you, Sukes?’
‘Me? I’m on a sabbatical from my job, trying to decide whether I’m brave enough to go it alone as a manager.’
‘Really? That’s exciting,’ Ella said. ‘Do you think you will? I mean, do you think you’re ready?’
Suki smiled and shrugged, but then Ava chimed in. ‘Oh, she’s definitely ready. Come on, Suki; you know it’s the logical next step. You’ll kill it!’
Suki looked a little embarrassed by Ava’s sudden outpouring of praise. ‘Well, it’s nice to see you have faith in me, Ava.’
‘Always,’ Ava said.
‘Not always,’ Suki replied softly.
There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence so I decided to jump right in. ‘Well, we could really use your expertise as a manager, Sukes. How’s that for a start?’
‘Intriguing,’ Suki said. ‘Tell me more.’
‘We’ve got a few wild-card slots to fill for the festival. Artists or DJs that we’ve selected and brought in off our own bat,’ Ella said.
‘It was me who pushed for it so we could really put our stamp on it,’ I added. ‘Now I’m not sure it was such a brilliant idea.’
‘Why the hell not?’ Suki said, sitting forward. ‘I think it’s vital that you have a big say in what goes on on your stage – surely that’s the essence of GenNext. What’s the problem?’
Austin sent Miles out to get some coffees while I waxed lyrical about the difficulty we were having securing bands and artists at such short notice, plus the pitfalls of dealing with uncooperative managers and potential sponsors who needed to know they were going to get their money’s worth. Suki pursed her lips and nodded throughout, looking very businesslike. I wondered if maybe that was a cool front for the benefit of Ava, who’d kept a neutral, fixed smile on her face since the minute Suki walked in and clearly wasn’t going to let it drop any time soon. As my diatribe came to an end, Suki was grinning and shaking her head.