Sound Effects

by L. J. Greene

  I had seen him perform many times and had witnessed the magic from the side of the crowd. But it was almost unfathomable what it would feel like from the stage.

  “And the sounds,” he continued. “Those are harder to describe. When the houselights go down, there’s this roar of anticipation, and then it gets quiet. Nash will count in the first song of the set and the minute we start to play, the place goes bats. It’s like a wave that hits you on stage. There’s this electricity that bounces back and forth between the audience and us, each driving the other. I can’t tell you how surreal that is.”

  He went quiet for a moment and then he laughed, detangling his hand from mine and putting the arm behind his head.

  “Unless the crowd is flat, then it’s hell,” he said succinctly. “There is nothing worse than a flat crowd. You’re pulling and pulling and getting nothing from them. That’s when I feel like a dancing monkey on stage because it’s my job to get them going. Especially if we’re opening for someone–we’re the fluffers, so to speak.”

  “Do you mind opening for other acts?”

  “No. I mean it’s lovely to be the headliner, but now when we open, it’s for better bands, at least. That’s how it works. And even then, a lot of people come to see us in our own right. Those people deserve the best show we can give them.”

  “I dated a guy once who used to get so nervous playing drums in front of a crowd that he’d throw up in a bucket off stage between songs.”

  “You dated someone who was in a band?”

  “It was high school. Isn’t every guy in a band in high school? Wait,” I added as an afterthought, “were you in a band in high school?”

  “Yes, with Greg and two other blokes. But the other two were more interested in getting high, and that wasn’t what Greg and I were into. We were young, but sensible enough about that sort of thing.”

  “Someday soon those two may regret their choice.”

  He laughed. “Possibly. But I think life tends to unfold as it should. Greg brought in Nash; they had gone to school together. And I knew Killian because his mum and my mum were in the same church group. And we all just got on incredibly well.”

  “Thus, Cadence was born.”

  “Mmm hmm. But let’s get back to your passing fancy with musicians.”

  “Unfortunately, I wouldn’t exactly call it a passing fancy,” I admitted reluctantly. “I dated a bassist in college who seemed to have a total aversion to conventional time-telling, and a guitarist/singer who turned out to be a womanizer and a drug addict.”

  “Three musicians in your past,” he said with amusement. “Suddenly, I feel a bit used.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I assured him. “I swore musicians off completely after that last one.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long, pregnant pause. Then he slid out from underneath me so that I was forced to make eye contact with him. Even in the dim light, I could tell he was intent on something.

  “After all of that, why would you agree to go out with me?”

  It was a harmless and obvious question. But it wasn’t asked in jest and I wouldn’t answer it that way. Realness. That was what we had. That’s what we had had from the very beginning.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I whispered, knowing that I couldn’t be more honest than that.

  He nodded, though, seeming to understand something that I, myself, did not. But he was generous enough not to pursue it. Whatever it was that was developing between us had come unexpectedly for us both. And I was grateful he wasn’t pushing me to name it.

  “So, you’re telling me that if we collect up all your men, past and present, we could form a band?”

  I laughed. I had never thought of it in those terms.

  “A really horrible band, but yes.”

  No answer from the front man, but roguish thoughts were clearly ping-ponging around his brain.

  I went on, dryly. “Slightly off tempo, a little stupid, and sadly lacking in creativity.”

  “And me,” he said, with the humor I had come to love in him. His eyes narrowed as he considered me.

  “Mmm hmm. Well, you’d the best of them, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said slowly and with dramatic flair. “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jamie suddenly rolled, covering my body with his own. The weight of his hips was solidly between my thighs and he took both my wrists in hand, holding them tightly over my head on the pillow. My breasts were crushed against his broad chest. His eyes were glistening with humor, and his dimples declared a rather mischievous intent.

  “Well, then,” he said, shifting slightly so that I could literally feel the point he was about to make. “The one-eyed king is ready to take his spoils. And trust me, he’ll not lack in creativity.”

  Chapter 14

  Jamie

  “IT CAME!”

  The deal memo arrived at our apartment by courier late on a Wednesday afternoon. I was at a job site when Greg called with the news.

  “Did you open it?”

  “Yeah…trying,” he said, and I could hear him impatiently tearing at the envelope. “Fuck, my hands are shaking.”

  Fuck, my heart was pounding. “You’re sure it isn’t something else from Spire? Like, I don’t know, an invitation or something?”

  “No, dude, it’s the deal memo,” he said, matching my edginess.

  He accidentally hit a bunch of buttons on the phone with his chin as he struggled with the envelope, and the cacophony rang out loudly in my ear before I could pull my handset away.

  “Sorry. Okay, got it.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Dear Greg, Jamie, Killian and Nash, Spire Records is pleased to set forth below our proposal regarding the exclusive recording services of, and certain other rights relating to, Cadence–in parenthesis ‘artist.’”

  Then he stopped reading out loud.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Nothing–there’s just a lot here. It’s four pages long and there’s a lot of…legal stuff. Shit, I don’t even know what half this stuff means.”

  His words became an incoherent mumble.

  Running a hand through my hair, I tried my hardest to be patient. It was a losing battle. I surveyed the job site, looking for a distraction. Nothing came.

  “How many albums do they want?” I finally blurted out.

  “Well, I think it’s one, plus four 1-LP options. Is it good to have a lot of options or not good?”

  “I don’t know. What about the advance?”

  “It’s decent…I think.”

  He breathed quietly into the phone. The adrenaline was beginning to pass, and with it the realization was setting in for both of us that we had in our hands a legal document.

  “Base royalties, mechanical royalties, accounting…” I could hear him turning pages. “Non-record income, ancillary/non-performance income, controlled comps PRO income. Fuck, it’s like…it’s not even English.”

  “I’m going to phone Mel and have her come over and take a look at it with us. She’ll understand it.”

  “Yeah, good plan.”

  We both fell quiet. I was standing by a chain-link fence on the outskirts of the site and took a hold of it, pulling absently at the rough metal rungs. There was a hum of activity around me–blokes I’d worked with for a long time were moving pavers into place and trenching irrigation. It was backbreaking fucking work. This was a major project; they’d be here for another year or more.

  I wondered where would I be when it was completed. Lord, help me if I was still here.

  I was lucky to have the job; I knew that. The bit of coin I made paid my necessities and Cara’s tuition. But Mel was right; the physical toll of balancing work and music was steep. The idea that I might soon play my guitar without an ache in my hands from cuts and missing fingernails and sprained joints–it was almost too emotional for me to consider.

  “We did it, man,” Greg s
aid, eerily divining my thoughts. “We got a contract.” The last word came out broken and choked.

  I felt pinpricks in the corners of my own eyes, and pressed the tips of my thumb and middle finger to them. Turning my back on the work crew behind me, I gripped the phone hard with my other fist.

  “We did it.” I quickly dashed a drop from my face with the back of my hand, and took in a ragged breath.

  Greg sniffled sharply.

  “You know what I want to do?” he said, rustling the pages again. “I want to make like a dozen copies of this and send it out to people with a big Post-it note saying, ‘Fuck. You!’”

  I laughed gratefully.

  “Like that sound technician at Slim’s–what was that fella’s name?”

  “Larry…something. Yeah, I’d send one to that douchebag, for sure. And one to that landlady who always called the cops on us when we rehearsed.”

  “And how about one for the asshole at SF Weekly who said we were ‘destined for great anonymity?’”

  In fact, though, one could argue that he had done me a favor; he was the bloke who taught me that an artist must define for himself the value of his own work, or risk that his work be valued less by someone else.

  “And I’d send one to Charlotte.”

  “She was genuinely awful, brother.”

  “She was,” he agreed. “But she had that pierced tongue and she used to spread my–”

  “Stop! Holy God! Please don’t!”

  He laughed hard; we both did. Then the sound receded and all I could hear was his breath in the receiver.

  “Send one to my dad,” he said quietly.

  I nodded into the phone, though, of course, he couldn’t see me.

  “And one to mine.”

  The ensuing quiet spoke unequivocally of our mutual understanding.

  “Brother…” I finally said, though I didn’t know the words to continue. Greg and I had made the pilgrimage into music with the same dream. We had entered this business together as teenagers–children swimming among sharks. We’d made it thus far with only our determination to break through, and with each other to lean on. Whatever this contract meant for us–whatever legacy would be ours–Greg’s life and mine would forever be linked.

  Band co-founders.

  Songwriting partners.

  Friends.

  “Brother,” he said, mirroring my thoughts. “I know.”

  Chapter 15

  Mel

  THE MEN OF THE INDIE rock band, Cadence, were gathered in the living room when I arrived. Greg, Killian and Jamie were sitting on the couch, hunched over the coffee table, working through a complex mathematical exercise of contract compensation. Nash, as was his nature, was circling in the periphery.

  Nash was the most mild-mannered of the group, taller than Danny even, with Nordic boy-next-door good looks. He had a tendency to need to fiddle with things, and therefore always–always–had something in his hands. Today, it was a green apple, which he repeatedly tossed in the air. And I had the thought that if he set it down, even for a second, Jamie would eat it.

  As was Jamie’s nature.

  The man at the helm of the exercise was Greg, a notoriously fast talker who shot words from his mouth in rapid succession like bullets. I had a hard time understanding him when we first met, and found myself often gaping at him for multiple seconds while my brain caught up with the spray of sounds he emitted.

  Armed with a calculator, Greg was making a series of notes on a yellow pad as Jamie and Killian listed likely scenarios of the costs associated with recording a full-length LP.

  To me, Greg was the most unpredictable in the band. He was much harder to get to know than the others: eccentric and brilliant in certain areas of his life, and clueless in others.

  I was almost certain he was bisexual; he had a girlfriend, Christine, that he seemed loyal to, but she left me with the distinct impression that she was game for anything in that area. I asked Jamie about it once; he didn’t seem to know or care much one way or the other. Men are funny like that–even significant male friendships are often on a need-to-know basis. And Jamie never asked for details of a person’s life for his own information. He simply accepted those trusts as they were given to him.

  Beneath his hood of dark hair, Greg had the most brilliant turquoise eyes that he often highlighted with dark eyeliner. They were kind eyes that hinted at real depth and intelligence, despite his sometimes off-putting demeanor. I think that’s why Jamie enjoyed writing with him–Greg had substance, and he absolutely shared Jamie’s work ethic and drive to make something of his talent.

  The band member most like Jamie in demeanor was Killian. He was Irish as well–but American born, first generation. With dark hair and eyes, he didn’t have a great singing voice, but he had real flair on the guitar. Like Jamie, he was a showman. During one of the band’s recent gigs, he was in the middle of an intricate solo riff when he opened up a cut on his hand and he began to bleed all over his guitar. It wasn’t a small thing. We all watched in horror as blood dripped over the body of his Fender and down onto the stage. But Killian just went on playing, and the blood dripping off of that guitar only added to the bad-assery of his performance. He was that kind of guy, and the girls loved him.

  Jamie didn’t look up from his perch on the couch when I arrived, but reached his arm out for me, then wrapped it around my legs when I stepped in close. The men were deep in a discussion of the need to hire session musicians and how they might be able to minimize the cost of studio time. All of these considerations were important if they were to stay within the label’s recording budget for the first LP.

  Of course, I couldn’t add anything meaningful to that discussion, and instead gave in to the temptation to run my fingernails through Jamie’s beautiful hair. He liked to be touched. He was affectionate by nature and seemed to enjoy the comfort of a physical connection, no matter how small. So the effect of my caress on him was instantaneous. He lolled his head against my hip, making a soft sound of contentment, and squeezed me a little more tightly to his side.

  The deal memo was sitting on the coffee table–a four-page document that outlined all of the critical components of what would eventually form the center of a more lengthy agreement between Spire Records and the band.

  I abandoned stroking the fleshy curve of Jamie’s ear, and leaned forward to pick up the document in front of him.

  The idea behind a deal memo was that if key terms could be agreed upon, the rest of the contract would be simpler to structure to the mutual agreement of both parties, thus streamlining the legal process.

  “What do you think?” Jamie asked, his long lashes lifting to gauge my initial reaction to the document.

  He was still in his work clothes and boots, and he smelled of clean sweat and earthiness. Across his forehead was a smudge of dirt.

  “Um,” I said distractedly. “We should talk through this when you’re ready.”

  I flipped to page two.

  Handing a contract to a law school graduate is like handing a lollipop to a baby. I immediately became absorbed, so it didn’t register right away that all conversation in the room–all movement, in fact–had come to a screeching halt.

  “Is there something wrong with it?” Jamie asked.

  I glanced up from the page, somewhat surprised to find that I had unknowingly commanded the complete, undivided attention of every man in the room. And they were all waiting for an explanation.

  §

  “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  Every parent has a look that means business. Teachers have the same. Lawyers? We have a tone of voice.

  I had taken a position in the center of the room and Nash, with his apple, was now sitting on the arm of the couch next to Jamie.

  “First and foremost, this is a legal document,” I said, holding up the agreement. “Do. Not. Sign it. Until you are instructed to do so by your attorney.”

  Entertainment law was a subset of intellectual property law, but it
was very much a specialty unto itself. I could easily understand the language of the deal memo, but there was no way for me to keep up with the changing trends of what could and could not be successfully negotiated on behalf of a client. And I didn’t have the experience to understand all of the possible repercussions of the compensation schedule. That required a specialist.

  And in September of 2004, with the winds of change that would forever rock the music industry just gathering, an up-and-coming band needed the very best attorney it could get.

  The year prior, Apple had announced a new service–iTunes Music Store.

  The significance of this announcement in the decade that followed cannot be overstated. iTunes would revolutionize the distribution of digital music and would usher in the era of downloadable singles.

  iTunes wasn’t the first commercial attempt to sell music online, but it was the first to get it truly right–offering singles for 99 cents that had far more permissive digital rights management than other subscription services. It offered a convenient and legal alternative to the rampant music piracy that had been unleashed in the wake of the rise and fall of Napster.

  Apple dragged the music industry kicking and screaming into the digital age, coupling downloadable music with the user-friendly iPod.

  Consumers celebrated.

  Album sales plummeted.

  And in the face of this change in music, the 360-contract was born.

  Recognizing that album sales alone would no longer allow labels to recoup their costs, let alone drive profits, 360-contracts sought to take a piece of every dollar an artist generated–not just record sales, but touring, merchandise, appearances, etc. And contracts were structured so that artists had to repay every penny of the cost of making and promoting an album before they ever saw a dollar of revenue for themselves. For most artists, these ‘recoupable costs’ were insurmountable, keeping them in the debt of the label for years.