Climbing the Rock

Chapter 14A: The Core

Los Angeles, California

November 19, 1984

Jake's Corvette moved slowly down Hollywood Boulevard, caught in the thick Monday afternoon traffic. Jake was behind the wheel, feeling the usual frustration that came with driving a high performance vehicle he could rarely get out of second gear. Bill sat next to him, his thick glasses perched firmly upon his face, his hand playing with his crewcut, trying to determine if it was time to get another haircut or not. They had just finished a jam session, or rather, they had been forcibly pulled out of a jam session early by a National Records gopher who had shown up at their warehouse to give them a message. They were now on their way to the National Records building in Hollywood. Several blocks behind them were the two limousines carrying the rest of the band. The summons had asked for all of them, citing a "status meeting" as the reason.

"That asshole Crow keeps pressuring us to work harder, work longer, work faster," Jake complained as they sat through another red light for the second time. "He yells at us for wanting to take Thursday and Friday off so we can go home for Thanksgiving. And now, what does he do? He orders us to wrap up early today so he can tell us in an official meeting that we're not working fast enough."

"He does have a marked tendency to be counter-productive to our efforts," agreed Bill.

"We could have dialed in that new tune if we'd hit it just a little longer. We were getting there, you know what I mean? Now we'll have to spend an hour plugging back into it tomorrow." He sighed. "Oh well. What the fuck can you do?"

"Yep," said Bill with a nod. "Sometimes we're helpless before the actions of osmotic migration."

Jake interpreted that in his mind for a few seconds and finally decided — mostly through long experience of translating Bill's statements for others — that this meant 'what the fuck can you do?' as well. "Damn right, Bill," he said. "Well put."

The light turned green and they surged forward again, just clearing the intersection before the light turned back to yellow. Almost immediately, however, they were trapped in another section of gridlock waiting for the next light to turn.

"Coop and Darren are getting worse," Bill said.

"Yeah," Jake agreed. "They are. I don't think either one of them said a damn thing during the whole session today. They just did what they were told and played like they were told. It's making it harder to dial these tunes in."

Over the past few weeks, as the band tried frantically to come up with more tunes and to perfect them before the mid-December deadline for submission, Coop and Darren had become gradually but persistently less involved in each session. They would show up late, moving slowly, their actions lethargic and mechanical, their words few and far between. They had all but stopped contributing suggestions towards how the music should be played and mixed and, when asked to come up with a beat or a rhythm to back a particular beat, they would inevitably choose the simplest, least complex beat or rhythm possible.

"I never realized how much we relied on those two fuckheads to help set the backbeat for us until they stopped doing it," complained Matt during one of the multiple discussions the core members of the band had had on the subject. "It's hard enough coming up with the riffs and the mixes. Now we have to move their fucking fingers and hands for them as well to set the rhythm."

Both had been confronted on what the problem was and both had denied that there was a problem.

"We're doing everything we've always done," Darren would respond.

"Yeah," Coop would agree. "I don't see no problem. We're getting these tunes done, ain't we?"

They were, but the quality was starting to suffer, as was the speed of progression. There was also an insidious decline in the feeling of teamwork and camaraderie that had always marked their jam sessions in the past. It was starting to feel like a battle was being set up — a battle between the core and the rhythm.

"I think they're using heavy narcotics," Bill said now as the light turned green and they crept forward another fifty yards before it turned red again.

"Narcotics?" Jake asked, looking over at him. "Why do you say that?"

"Mostly the way they're acting," Bill replied. "We've all seen each other stoned and coked-out and drunk a multitude of times so I think we'd all know if any one or two or three of those things was the problem. Instead, they're acting quite atypically for the normal intoxicants we use. But remember when Darren was getting shot up with the Demerol before the shows?"

"How could I forget?"

"That's the way both of them are acting now," Bill said. "They move slow and they don't talk much. They're almost falling asleep sometimes while the rest of us are arguing over something. When you do talk to them, its like they're not completely cognizant of the words you're speaking to them."

"Hmm," Jake said, thinking about what Bill was saying and — now that it was pointed out to him — finding that he was right. They were acting a lot like that.

"And then there's the physical symptoms of narcotic intoxication," Bill said.

"The physical symptoms?"

He nodded. "Their pupils are always pinpoint sized now," he said. "It's not dark in the warehouse by any means, but its not bright either. Their pupils should be fairly normal sized, like yours and Matt's — about three millimeters, right?"

"You know what the normal pupil size is in millimeters?" Jake asked.

"Of course. Doesn't everyone?"

Jake let this go. "Go on," he said.

"Well... my point is, that your pupils and Matt's pupils, and, presumably, mine as well, tend to hover around three millimeters in the lighting conditions prevalent in the warehouse. Darren and Coop's pupils, however, tend to stay around a millimeter and a half no matter what the lighting is like. That's pretty small. It's also a side-effect of narcotic use."

Jake had never actually noticed this before, but now that it was mentioned to him, he did recall both Coop and Darren complaining at various times that the lights were too dim in the warehouse, that they were having a hard time seeing things because of this. Following his own train of logic he concluded that having your pupils be half the size that they were supposed to be would serve to make it seem dim when it really wasn't. It would be kind of like walking out of the bright sunshine into a normally lit room, only this wouldn't go away.

"There are a few other things too," Bill said.

"Such as?"

"I've noticed both of them have burns on their fingers and burn holes in their clothes. That's from cigarettes that they've forgotten about because they were too zonked-out to remember or that they've dropped the embers from. They don't notice it right away because of the pain-killing effects of the narcotic and the sedation of the drug effect and they end up with burns. I bet if you lifted their shirts up you'd see a dozen cigarette burns on their stomachs and chest."

"Hmm," Jake said. Again, not that it was mentioned, he had noticed several nasty looking burns on both of their hands, including nearly identical blistering burns between the index and middle fingers of their right hands — right where a cigarette would normally be held.

"And then there's their shirts," Bill said. "Have you noticed that they're both always wearing long-sleeved shirts now?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "I guess I have."

"They wear them even though it gets a bit warm in the warehouse. They don't want us to see their arms."

"So, when you're talking heavy narcotics here," Jake said, "you're not talking about just pills, are you?"

Bill shook his head. "Heroin," he said. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Jake said. "And you can bet who is supplying them with it."

"And who is ultimately paying for it," Bill added.

The National Records building was now in sight, rising above the concrete of Hollywood Boulevard ahead. They made it through the next light and then settled in to wait for the next.

"A couple of heroin addicts in the band," Jake said. "That's just beautiful."

"I just thought you should know what I suspect is taking place," Bill said apologetically.

"Yeah, I know," Jake replied. "And there's not a goddamn thing we can do about it either."

By the time the five of them assembled in Crow's office for the meeting, Darren and Coop were a little livelier than they had been at the jam session. Though they were still quite a bit on the lethargic side, they were at least talking now, and in sentences of more than six syllables even. Their liveliness kicked up a few notches when Crow, as was his custom preliminary to any meeting, offered them a few lines of cocaine. Matt, Jake, and Bill all respectfully declined — as was their custom during official meetings of any kind with any record company representative — but Coop and Darren both snorted right up.

"Good fuckin' shit, Steve," Darren complimented as the drug began to take effect.

"Fuck yeah," agreed Coop. "You got anything to drink in this place?"

Coop and Darren were served twelve year old scotch over ice cubes with coke. Matt, Jake, and Bill all accepted alcohol-free drinks, not even bothering to cast discouraging looks at their companions. Things had gone way beyond that now.

"First of all," said Crow once the preliminaries were complete, "let me congratulate you all on the continuing success of Thrill, the album. As of ten o'clock this morning, total sales were just one hundred and fifty thousand shy of two million. My guess is that you'll go double-platinum late next week or early the week after."

"No shit?" said Matt.

"No shit," confirmed Crow.

"Wow," Matt said. "And you told us our songs sucked ass, didn't you? I bet we'd be at quadruple platinum by now if we would just listened to you and used those hacker songs."

Crow cast a mildly contemptuous look at Matt but didn't bother to answer him. "And as for Crossing The Line," he continued. "It's still hanging in at number thirty-two on the Top Forty and is still in the top ten most requested on rock radio stations nationwide. There's even some talk of it being nominated for record of the year."

"We'd never win it," Jake opined. "Tina Turner has it in the bag."

"Nevertheless," Crow said, "it would be a great honor just to be nominated, wouldn't it? The publicity angle alone would be almost priceless."

"Isn't Crossing The Line one of those songs you initially rejected?" Matt asked. "You know? One of the ones we fought and struggled and issued ultimatums to get included?"

"I seem to recall something like that," said Jake. "I'm not sure though. My memory gets fuzzy at times."

"Yes," confirmed Bill. "It was definitely among the forbidden artistic efforts we initially presented for consideration."

Crow sighed, shaking his head and feeling the ulcer in his stomach start to flair — as it always did when he had to deal with this troublesome but hugely profitable group of musicians. "All right, guys," he said. "You've made your point and hammered it home quite nicely. We were wrong about those tunes. Are you happy?"

"Rapturous," said Matt. "So what else is up?"

"Well, as you know," Crow said, "Rules Of The Road has been moving up the charts as well. This week it cracked the top ten at the number nine position."

"Rules Of The Road?" asked Matt. "No shit? Hey, Jake, isn't that another one of those songs that they initially rejected? I mean, there were so many of them I can't keep track. Refresh my memory for me."

"Yes," said Jake. "I believe they said it was too complex of a song, that there were too many changes in tempo for the average consumer to appreciate it."

"There is a lot of fucking tempo changes in it," Darren muttered.

Jake and Matt gave him a dirty look this time but otherwise ignored him. Crow did as well.

"Can we let the past drop?" Crow asked them.

"Who's bringing it up?" Jake asked innocently.

"In any case," Crow said, letting a little of his irritation slip through, "Rules is finding itself locked into the same stiff competition as Thrill. Namely, a tune by La Diferencia just happens to be moving up the chart at the same time."

This was a sour spot with Matt. "That fuckin' Venezuelan bitch again. Her and her crappy ass happy tunes."

"Uh... please don't say something like that in front of a member of the press, Matt," Crow warned. "But yes, La Diferencia seems to be acing you out of positioning yet again. Their new tune is called Young Love and the pop demographic are buying it up like mad. It's only been played on the radio for the past three weeks and already it's in the top ten — at number eight, I might add. That's one of the fastest selling singles of all time."

"And it's a stupid fucking song," Matt said. "Holy shit, have you heard this thing?" He sang, viciously mimicking the accent of the female lead singer. "Young love, burns like a fast flame. Hot and strong, but dies without tending."

Jake hadn't heard the song, but he had to agree that the lyrics — if Matt had sung them accurately — were pretty simplistic. But then, pop music was simplistic, wasn't it? He had, however, finally listened to La Diferencia's first hit, I Love To Dance, which had aced CTL out of the number one spot back in September. As much as he hated to admit it (and he hadn't admitted it, at least not to anyone other than himself) he had actually found himself liking the tune a little bit. Not just not hating it, but liking it, singing along with it after a few repetitions, and even appreciating some of the musical qualities of it. The most striking thing about the tune was the vocals put down by Celia Valdez, the lead singer. Her voice was beautiful. There was no other way to describe it. It was rich and pure, sweet sounding, with considerable range for a pop singer. She had a strong Hispanic accent that was noticeable in her vocals but not to the point of distraction. It came through just enough to remind you that she was not American or English. And though the rest of the song consisted of a bland, formulistic backbeat, passable piano, weak lead guitar, and the inevitable synthesizers, there was a strong acoustic guitar backing that spoke of someone with some talent strumming the strings.

"What do we know about this band?" Jake asked. "Where'd they come from? How'd they get here? Are they really Venezuelans or is Aristocrat making all that shit up?"

"No," said Crow, "La Diferencia is really from Venezuela from what I understand. They come from some small town in the middle of nowhere and got noticed by the Venezuelan music industry. They put out an album of traditional Latin tunes early last year and it sold well enough in Venezuela that some record exec from Aristocrat decided to meet with them. They did up some tunes in English with more Americanized musical backing and the rest is pretty much history. They're a hit."

"They're a flash in the pan," Matt opined. "Just like most of the rest of the crap you record people put out."

Crow didn't even bother denying this. Flashes in the pan, after all, translated to lots of money for the music industry, so they were not really considered a bad thing.

"What about the band itself?" Jake asked. "How many people are in it? Who plays what?"

"Why are you so interested in these suck-ass pop assholes?" Matt asked.

Jake shrugged. "Know thy enemy," he said.

"Well," said Crow, "it should be quite obvious that the talent of the band is Celia Valdez. Without her, the rest of them would still be herding cattle or processing cocaine or whatever it is they do in that place. She sings and plays acoustic guitar. Her brother — I don't know his name — is the lead guitarist."

"Lead guitar my ass," Matt said. "He can't even play a simple three chord riff. It's a bunch of repetitive two-chord shit that just backs up the piano and the synthesizers. He doesn't do any solos, intros, or even mixes. The acoustic is the real lead in those tunes and the electric is the backing."

"He's her brother?" Jake asked.

"Oh yes," said Crow. "And the piano player is her sister. It's kind of a family band, you see."

"They keep that sister on the piano in the background in the videos," Matt said. "Her face ain't bad — though not as good as the lead singer bitch — but they never show her body at all. I bet she's a fuckin' whale."

"And she's certainly no great talent on the piano either," put in Bill. "She sounds like a first year student reading from a piano book."

"It's just like the lead guitar," Matt agreed. "Simple, repetitive melodies over and over."

"Are the rest of the band members relatives?" asked Jake.

"The guy playing the drums is a second cousin from what I understand," Crow said. "The bass player is a family friend and the gossip columns have been hinting that he and Celia are romantically involved."

"You gotta respect him if he's tappin' into that shit," said Matt.

"Hell yeah," said Coop. "I'd buy him a drink for that."

"The synthesizer player is the only one who was not an original member of the group. They got him from some band in Caracas when Aristocrat signed them. They originally had two acoustic guitar players and a bongo player to go with the drummer. They kicked them out and replaced them with the synthesizer guy in order to convert to American style tunes."

"So their material was fed to them by Aristocrat?" Jake asked.

Crow didn't like that particular terminology very much but he nodded. "Most of it," he agreed. "I think they have two of their own songs on the album and the rest are composed by American songwriters who work for Aristocrat."

"Including the two hits they've had so far?"

"Exactly," said Crow, smiling. "Do you see now why we encourage you to utilize our songwriters for some of your material? Look what they're doing for La Diferencia."

"Let's not even start down this fucking road again," Matt said. "If Jake is done gathering his intelligence on the beaner band, maybe we can talk about the reason you dragged us out of a fairly productive rehearsal session?"

"I'm done," said Jake.

"Okay then," said Crow. "Let's get to the meat of the matter. How are we coming along with new compositions? Do you have at least ten songs composed yet?"

"Hardly," Matt said. "As of this afternoon, we have three tunes we're pretty happy with, although we're still tweaking them a little here and there, and three more we're in the beginning stages of."

Crow's face turned to instant unhappiness. "Just three?" he asked. "And only three more you're working with?"

"I believe I spoke plain English there, didn't I?" Matt returned.

Crow shook his head. "Gentlemen," he said. "I'm afraid that's not acceptable. You need to work faster. Your deadline is only three weeks away."

"We're doing the best we can, Steve," Jake said. "We told you back when we started this thing that you were pushing us a little too fast."

"But you also agreed you'd meet the deadline," he said. "At this rate you'll have, what? Maybe six songs complete? That's simply not good enough."

"We can only work so fast," said Matt. "We're not machines."

"I've already reserved studio time for you," Crow said. "You're scheduled to enter the studio for full-time recording duties on January 3. And even with that late date and working six ten-hour days a week it will be a chore to be able to finish the album by mid-April."

"We could be jamming right now," said Matt, "but instead, we're in here listening to you tell us we're not doing it fast enough."

"I hardly think three hours off from your schedule is the cause of this delay," Crow said. "You have to work longer and faster. You simply have to. I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist you work through the Thanksgiving holiday period. I know you all have plans, but the show must go on. We need those tunes by mid-December so we can start working on an order of recording and an album theme."

"Fuck that," said Matt. "We've been going eight hours a day without a break for the last three weeks. And that doesn't include the time Jake and I spend at night coming up with the new tunes in the first place. I haven't even scored any puss in a week and Jake here hasn't been laid in God knows how long."

"Three and a half weeks," Jake said sourly. "I've had to resort to porno mags."

"Me too," said Bill. "Did you see this month's Hustler? That punk-rock model on the cover is a premium self-stimulation visual."

"Oh fuck yeah," said Coop. "I got that one. She's hot."

"Did you see that other bitch in there?" asked Darren. "The one who can tie her pussy lips in a knot?"

"That's some seriously over-used pussy if she can do that," said Matt.

"Gentlemen!" Crow yelled, exasperated. "Could we keep on topic here?"

"Forgive us," said Matt. "But I'm sure you can see by our conversation that we're all seriously in need of a break. We need one and we're going to take one."

"I forbid it," Crow said.

"Yeah?" said Jake. "And I forbid the proliferation of nuclear warheads, but guess what? They still keep proliferating anyway. Sorry, Steve. Bill and I have our plane tickets already paid for — out of our allowance I might add — and we're going. Our families are getting together for the holiday at my parent's house, and we're going to be there."

"And I've got myself booked on a private two-day deep sea fishing charter out of Marina Del Ray," Matt said. "I've also got a premium piece of puss scheduled to go with me. So you can suck my hairy ass if you think I'm gonna hang out in a warehouse."

"Yeah," said Darren, emboldened by his peers' defiance. "Coop and I got shit to do too."

Crow looked up at the ceiling for a moment and took a few breaths. Finally he looked down at his musicians. "All right," he said. "I guess I can't stop you from taking your little vacation. But we still need those tunes. The three you have ready. Are they decent tunes?"

"They're more than decent," Jake said. "They're bad ass."

"That's the only fuckin' thing we put out," Matt said.

"Good enough," Crow said. "How about you focus on perfecting those tunes prior to leaving on your holiday. When you get back, work out the other three as quick as you can. They don't have to be perfect, they just have to be palatable."

"Palatable?" Matt asked, hating that very word.

"The three main tunes can be the releases — if they're as good as you claim. The other three can be the filler. For the other four..."

"Don't even think about suggesting your hacker tunes again," Matt warned.

Crow held up his hand in a gesture of peace. "I understand your position on that and I respect it. What I was about to suggest was that you do some cover tunes to fill in the rest of the album."

"Cover tunes?" Jake asked.

"That's right," Crow said. "You can even pick them out yourselves. We don't care what they are. Pick three or four tunes from the old days and re-work them into something new. Do some country and turn it into rock and roll. Do some polka and turn that into rock. We don't care. Just let us know what they are as soon as you decide on them and we'll start working on the legalities of letting you perform them. There are a few songs you are not allowed to do — Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, and stuff like that — but pretty much anything else can be arranged. Is that acceptable?"

"No," Jake and Matt said in unison.

Crow let his head fall onto his desk. Slowly he lifted it back up. "Why not?" he asked wearily.

"We don't do cover tunes," Matt said simply. "That's not what we're about."

"Everyone does cover tunes when they're short on material!" Crow screamed. "Fucking everyone! Look at Van Halen! They had cover tunes on their very first album! Diver Down was full of them! Look at Motley Crue! They did a cover of Helter Skelter on Shout At The Devil! Even AC/DC and Led Zepplin did covers! There's not a goddamn thing in the world wrong with it!"

Jake and Matt were both shaking their heads.

"Sorry, Steve," Jake said. "We don't do covers."

"Nothing but original Jake Kingsley or Matt Tisdale material will ever appear on an Intemperance album," said Matt. "I swore that on my Strat, man! Don't you understand that?"

"Christ," Crow groaned, feeling his ulcer flaring up again. "Do you guys know what you're doing to me?"

None of them apologized. "I'm pretty sure that none of us care what we're doing to you," said Matt.

"We're just holding to our ideals, Steve," said Jake. "You ever heard of ideals?"

"Maybe in some philosophy class I took once," he said. "So what's the solution here, guys? You tell me how we're going to resolve this. I've got studio time reserved for January 3 and that is set in concrete. You have a deadline to provide me with at least twelve tunes by December 15. How are you going to do it?"

"We'll give you what we got on December 15," Matt told him. "As I told you, we're working as fast as we can here."

"But we're also not going to rush ourselves and come up with sub-standard material," Jake said.

"Exactly," said Bill. "One does not hurry the structural engineer into premature erection of his steel girders, does one?"

"Premature erection?" asked Darren. "Is there such a thing?"

"Yeah," said Coop. "I would think that the earlier you could get your girder up, the better."

"Otherwise it might not come up at all," said Darren, who had been having just that problem with his own girder since he'd started using the heroin more than three times a day.

Crow was now at his wit's end. "Look," he said. "I don't know how to put it any more plainly than this. I need those tunes from you — any tunes. I don't care if they're crappier than Queensrhyche covering Scarborough Fair. You can scream 'fuck the establishment' over and over again while Bill plays Beethoven tunes and Matt plays a goddamn electric harp. Just get the shit done so we can get this album in production. If we wait too long, you're going to fade and everyone will forget about you. I don't want that, National doesn't want that, and I know for damn sure that you guys don't want that. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal clear," Matt said.

"So you'll get it done?" Crow asked.

Matt smiled. "We'll do the best we can."

This wasn't really an answer and Crow knew it, but his ulcer was making his stomach feel like a blowtorch had been lit within it and he knew that further discussion would gain nothing while only making the burning worse. "All right then," he said. "I'll hold you to that."

"You do that," said Matt.

They passed a few parting preliminaries — including Darren and Coop trying unsuccessfully to score a few more lines of coke from Crow — and the meeting came to an end. The five band members stood up to leave.

"Oh, by the way, guys," Crow said as they headed for the door. "Stop at Darlene's desk on the way out. She has some envelopes for you."

"What kind of envelopes?" Matt asked.

"Nothing big," Crow said. "Just a summary of your end-of-tour financial status. The same thing you got at the end of the last tour."

They opened their envelopes in the elevator as they descended toward the lobby. Each contained a sheaf of financial sheets listing the expenses and revenue during the tour and correlated it with the total expenses and revenue. They were all slightly different — Jake and Matt earned a little more in revenue since they were the songwriters, Coop, Matt, and Darren had all burned a little more in "entertainment expenses" while off tour — but all were printed in bold red ink. It was the grand totals that were shocking to behold.

Jake looked at his numbly. It was worse than he'd imagined. "Damn," he said.

"Holy fucking shit," Matt said, shaking his head angrily as he looked at his own.

"Is this shit accurate?" asked Coop.

"It's about what I calculated it would be," said Bill.

"Are they gonna keep giving us our booze and shit?" asked Darren.

The elevator reached the lobby. Instead of exiting to their waiting limos and car, they grabbed a seat in some of the chairs around the lobby fountain where — oblivious to the pointing and gesturing of the tourists snapping pictures of them — they compared each other's sheets.

Jake looked at the bottom line, ignoring the rest. Since signing their contract with National Records and recording their first album, Intemperance had sold a grand total of 4,608,279 albums and 6,356,721 singles. This had generated a total of almost $5.2 million in royalties for the band, or, about a million bucks for each band member. However, between Shaver, who collected twenty-one percent, and the basic recoupable expenses like recording fees, breakage fees, tour costs, and promotion costs, that revenue had been cut down to a total of $240,000, or, about $48,000 per band member.

But then the other expenses began to come in. The 'entertainment expenses', which meant drugs and alcohol for the band, roadies, and management while on tour; the 'legal expenses', which meant the lawyers and the bail and the fines and the helicopter trip; the 'housing expenses', which was their condo rent and groceries and drugs and alcohol and manservants while off-tour; and, of course, the infamous 'miscellaneous expenses', which included airplane tickets, vacation expenses, limousine service, their allowances, their pre-paid cover charges at the nightclubs they frequented, and a hundred other things they'd found a way to charge to the band. The grand total of these other expenses — of which the 'entertainment expenses' made up a significant portion — totaled just a hair over $900,000, or, about $180,000 per band member. The net result was that each of them was about $132,000 in the hole, and falling further with each passing day.

Coop and Darren, after getting over their initial shock at seeing a six-figure number with a minus sign in front of it, seemed to take it in stride.

"Well, it ain't like we didn't know this shit," said Darren. "Now we just have an itemized list of it."

"Yeah," said Coop with a shrug. "It ain't like it means anything."

"What do you mean it doesn't mean anything?" Jake asked him. "You're almost a hundred and fifty grand in the hole. How can that not mean anything?"

"But I'm still living in a premo fucking condo in downtown LA, ain't I?" Coop countered. "I still got a butler who cooks my food for me and cleans the shit stains out of my underwear, don't I? I still get a thousand bucks every two weeks to blow on bitches and booze, don't I? And I still get to ride a limo everywhere I go, don't I? So we're in the hole? What's the big deal?"

"Yeah," said Darren. "It ain't like there's a way out of it, is there? Might as well just enjoy all the shit they're giving us and not worry about a bunch of fuckin' numbers on a piece of paper."

"Don't you want to have your own shit, Darren?" Jake asked him. "Your own house, your own car?"

"I got my own house," Darren said.

"No," Jake reminded, "you live in a condo leased by National Records, and everything inside of it, the furniture, the TV, the sound system, the fucking groceries in the refrigerator, all of that shit belongs to National too."

"That just means we don't have to pay to get the shit fixed," Darren said.

Jake shook his head in frustration.

Matt patted his shoulder companionably. "You're fightin' a losing battle here, brother," he told Jake.

"There ain't no battle to fight," Coop said. "Why are you guys even trippin' about this shit? Aren't both of you always telling us to not worry about things we can't change because it's fuckin' pointless. Well ain't this one of them things? We can't change this shit, can we?"

"That remains to be seen," Jake said.

"In my house," said Darren, "whenever my dad said some shit like that, it meant 'no'."

"Mine too," said Coop.

Darren stood up. "Look, guys," he said. "We got screwed with our contract and we ain't making any money. That's just the way it is. Now I'm gonna go home and enjoy all the shit they give me so I don't have think about that, you dig?"

They dug, especially Coop who stood up and followed him towards the lobby doors and their waiting limousine.

"Sheep," Jake said contemptuously. "Those two are just a couple of sheep."

"Yeah," agreed Matt. He flipped his sheaf of financial papers in disgust. "And its just like that prick Crow to have his fuckin' secretary give us these things as we're leaving. He's such a pussy."

"Hey, guys," said Bill, who had been furiously punching the keys on a pocket calculator (he habitually carried one with him everywhere but up on stage) during the entire discussion. "You want to hear something that will truly invoke anger within you?"

"Not really," said Jake, "but I'm sure you're going to tell us anyway."

"There's smoke coming off that calculator, Nerdly," Matt said. "What were you doing? Calculating Pi out to ten to the twentieth decimal?"

"Naw," said Bill. "This calculator isn't big enough for that, although I did calculate it out to ten to the tenth on my Commodore in my condo, just to see if the statistical randomness of the numerical assignments holds steady."

"You are a fuckin' party animal, Nerdly," Matt said.

"So what were you doing?" Jake asked. "Go ahead and hit us with it."

"I was trying to come up with a loose estimation of what National Records and Shaver are making off of us while we're going deeper and deeper into the red."

"And?" asked Matt.

"Shaver was easy," Bill said. "We made $5.2 million in royalties. Shaver got twenty-one percent of that. That's $1,092,000 that went to his agency from Intemperance album and single sales alone."

"Christ," Matt said in disgust. "And all he's done for us since we signed is act as spokesman for Jake when he started feeding his beef to Mindy Snow."

"And he's actually worked against us on several issues," Jake said. "He tried to talk us into doing the pre-written crap songs, he tried to get you to play that Brogan guitar during the first tour, and he went against us on the whole choreography issue too."

"Shaver is nothing though," said Bill. "National is the real robber baron here. It was a little harder to figure out what they're making since our royalties are based on the retail rate of five dollars an album, right?"

"Right," said Jake. "That means we get fifty cents in royalties for every album sold."

"But that was a negotiated rate, remember?" said Bill. "The actual retail rate of an album is more like eight dollars. So in actuality, our royalties are only about six percent of the true retail rate."

"So they're actually getting ninety-four percent of the money?" asked Matt.

"No, it's not quite that bad," Bill said. "Remember, they're not selling the albums and the singles for retail rate. That's what the record stores charge for it. National sells them to the record stores and Wal-Mart and all those places at the wholesale rate, which, to my understanding, is actually more like four dollars for albums and sixty cents for singles."

"So it sounds like we actually are getting one over on them," Matt said. "If they're only getting four bucks for each album and they have to pay fifty cents of that in royalties, doesn't that mean we're really getting twelve and a half percent?"

"It does," agreed Bill, "but don't let that fool you. That still means National is collecting three dollars and fifty cents for each album sold and fifty cents for each single. Now I went ahead and knocked off ten percent of the total sales of both albums and singles for my calculations in order to account for things like breakage, theft, and give aways. Even with that thrown in, they pulled in about $14.5 million in album sales and $2.9 million in single sales. That's almost seventeen and a half million dollars they've made off us so far strictly in music revenue."

"Seventeen and a half million bucks?" Matt said angrily.

"What about overhead costs though?" asked Jake. "They must eat away quite a bit of that."

"Unfortunately," said Bill, "I don't have a breakdown of their overhead costs relating to our albums and singles, but I don't think they're too terribly high. Remember, they have us paying for a lot of the traditional overhead costs out of our royalties. Our cut of the money paid for the cost of recording the albums, packaging the albums, marketing the albums, and shipping the albums. That includes the singles as well. We pay for half of the tour and half of the costs of making those abhorrent videos they insist on putting out. If their total overhead costs amounted to more than fifteen percent, I would be surprised."

"So they're rakin' it in while we're closing in on being a million in the hole," said Jake.

"Now we know how they can afford this big-ass building," said Matt.

"That's not the only revenue they're getting either," said Bill. "Let's talk about the tours for a minute."

"What about the tours?" Jake asked.

"They're making a considerable amount of money off them as well. The Descent tour ended up generating a profit of more than three million dollars in ticket revenue alone. The Thrill tour was a little more expensive to put on but it was still profitable. It made about a million in ticket revenue. Even though we paid for half of the costs of putting on the tours, they are not required to share any of the profit with us. And then there's merchandising. All those hats, T-shirts, sweaters, guitar picks, and other trinkets they sell at the concerts or in the department stores. We have no cut of any of that whatsoever. It is completely separate from our contract in every way."

"How much do you think they're making from that?" asked Jake.

Bill shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"I hardly think so," Jake said. "Come on, tell me what you think they're pulling in."

"Okay," said Bill. "Mind you, this is only an estimate."

"Of course."

"Those T-shirts they sell go for eight bucks. I'd be surprised if they actually paid more than a dollar apiece for them wholesale. Hats go for twelve and probably cost about two bucks wholesale. Sweaters go for sixteen and probably cost three wholesale. Let's assume that forty percent of the raw profit goes to operating expenses like shipping and paying for the employees who sell the stuff. That would mean they're clearing about $4.20 for each T-shirt, $6.00 for each hat, and $5.20 for each sweater. Now let's start with the T-shirts since they're the biggest sellers. How many T-shirts do you think they move in each show?"

Jake thought about that for a few seconds. "I wouldn't think it unreasonable to say they're selling about five hundred of them at every show."

"That sounds about right to me," agreed Matt.

"Okay," said Bill. "We'll plug in that figure then." He punched a few keys on his calculator. "That means for each show they're clearing $2100 in T-shirt sales. That's the net, remember. We did 126 shows on the Thrill tour. We did 110 on the Descent tour. $2100 times 236 shows is..." He pushed the buttons. "$495,600 in net T-shirt profit alone, none of which is shared with us in any way. Now the sweaters and the hats don't sell as well, but I think that a hundred apiece at each show is a conservative estimate, right?"

"Right," Jake agreed.

Bill punched up some more numbers on his calculator. "Assuming a hundred of each item times 236 total shows means they've generated $264,320 in hats and sweaters — give or take a few dollars because of uncertain variables."

"So basically, we're talking about almost three-quarters of a million or so in net merchandising profits," said Jake.

"I'm sure the grand total is closer to a million," said Bill. "Maybe even a little more. We just figured out the totals for T-shirts, hats, and sweaters. Don't forget, they sell dozens of other things with the Intemperance name on them. Lighters, stickers, baby-doll shirts, rolling papers, ashtrays, key-chains, pictures of us with our autographs copied on by a machine, fan club memberships. All of that stuff adds up to more revenue. And we also only did the concert sales. Don't forget, they're selling all this merchandise in malls and department stores across the country as well. I'm sure the profit margin is decreased in the mall sales but you can bet your protractor it's still significant, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it."

"So what's the bottom line here, Nerdly?" Matt asked. "How much money has National pulled in from us in total?"

"Well," he said, "as I told you, there are a number of variables that I just can't confirm, but I would think that somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars is about accurate."

"Twenty million dollars," said Matt, his eyes narrowing in anger.

"That's not fair," said Jake.

Bill and Matt both looked at him strangely.

"Well no fuckin' shit it's not fair," Matt said. "Now do you have anything constructive to say?"

"You don't understand," said Jake, "I mean it's not fair. We are not being treated fairly here." He looked at both of them. "I cannot condone being treated unfairly."

"So what's your solution then?" Matt asked. "Should we march in there and tell Crow and Doolittle that we don't like being treated unfairly and that they should change our contract around so they can give us a little bigger cut of that twenty fucking million they've made off of us?"

"We're locked into this contract for four more albums, guys," Jake said. "Do you know what that means? If things keep going at this rate, we'll be about five million in the hole and National will have made more than a hundred million." He shook his head angrily as that worked its way around his brain. "A hundred million dollars," he said. "I refuse to go along with that. I refuse! It's unacceptable."

Matt groaned in frustration. "But it's the reality we're faced with now, isn't it?"

"Reality can be changed," said Jake. "I think its time we tried to change it."

"How?" asked Bill. "We've signed a contract. We don't have a leg to stand on."

"A hundred million dollars is a lot of money," Jake said. "National won't want to risk losing that."

"What are you saying?" Matt asked.

"I've had an idea I've been tossing around for awhile," Jake said. "I think the time has come to start firming it up a little, to start thinking about putting it into motion."

"What's the idea?" asked Matt.

"It's kind of drastic," Jake said. "But if it works, we'll have ourselves a new contract, one where the terms will guarantee some positive cash flow for us, the band members, and will put a little bit of the control of our destiny back in our hands."

"What is it?" asked Bill.

"National will not want to jeopardize the future revenue stream that Intemperance will give them."

"And how will we jeopardize it?"

"Simply by the possibility of them losing it," Jake said.

Matt grunted. "Speak, Jake. Fucking speak. Quit talking in mysterious Zen Buddha language here and get to the point."

"It's simple," Jake said. "National caves to us every time we demand something that we really want and threaten to do something that will hamper production of their albums or their tour or anything else that generates revenue for them. They caved when you took a stand on playing your Strat instead of a Brogan. They caved when we refused to perform those hacker songs. They caved when we refused to do their little choreography moves on the Thrill tour. In each case they could have pushed the issue and possibly come out the winner — especially with your Strat and with the hacker tunes — but they didn't. And do you know why they didn't?"

"Because they'd lose money doing it," said Bill. "They would've been able to get a breach of contract ruling against us with the hacker tunes but they knew they would end up losing money."

"Right," said Jake. "They don't care about losing face, about being humiliated, about revenge, about making a point. All they care about is the bottom line. They will try to intimidate us, threaten us, manipulate us, and do a thousand other things to control what we do so they can produce more revenue out of us, but when push comes to shove, they always take the option that makes the most money for them. Always."

"That's true," agreed Matt. "But I don't see how that's going to help us here. What exactly is the plan?"

Jake looked at them both, his expression deadly serious. "The plan," he said, "is for us to cross the line."

Neither Bill nor Matt responded at first. They both knew the concept of his song and they both knew exactly what he meant. He wanted to go on strike, to cease all song composition and recording activities until National agreed to re-negotiate their contract.

"I don't know, Jake," Matt said. "You're talking about a blatant violation of our contract here."

"We really wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they decided to take legal action against us," said Bill.

"I don't think they'll take legal action though," Jake said. "They'll threaten it, and they'll bluster and they'll have us meet with their lawyers and they'll do everything else in their power to get us to cave in to them, but if we stand firm on this — if we stand really firm and united — they'll eventually get around to concluding that they would make more money by doing what we want then they would by filing a breach of contract suit and ruining us. Remember, all they care about is money, not saving face or making an example."

"We'd be gambling everything, Jake," Matt said. "Literally everything."

Jake nodded. "That's what crossing the line is all about, isn't it?"

Matt and Bill were clearly not keen on this idea at all. Jake could tell by the looks they were passing back and forth. He himself had already decided on the matter. He was not going to produce another album for National under their current contract. They were being treated unfairly and he was not going to tolerate it not matter what his fellow core members decided to do. If they wanted to keep working on this album under their current terms, they would have to do it without him. But he didn't want to tell Bill and Matt that unless he had to. It would be much easier if he could convince them to go along with this daring scheme of their own volition.

"Look, guys," he said. "We're rock stars, right? And not just any rock stars, but among the top five acts in the nation right now. We make badass music and we sell millions of records and singles. We sell out every auditorium we're booked in. Scalpers are charging eighty to a hundred dollars a ticket and people are paying that just to see us. Don't you think we deserve to get our fair share of that money? Aren't you tired of living in condos provided to us by the record company, waiting for your weekly allowance so you can go fishing or go out to the clubs? Wouldn't it be nice to buy your own house, hire your own servants, buy your own fishing boat perhaps?"

"My own fishing boat," Matt said, pondering that thought.

"Wouldn't it also be nice to have some say in what tunes we put on the albums? In how the tunes are mixed and mastered? Wouldn't it be nice to have some say in what our live show is going to look like? Or how about our music videos? We could stop letting that faggot producer make videos of what he thinks our songs are about and start making them about what they really are all about."

"How about our concert sound?" asked Bill. "Would we be able to make them let me be in charge of it?"

"Anything is possible," Jake said. "It would be a complete re-negotiation of the contract."

"The rewards would be great," Matt said.

"Yes," agreed Bill. "I must say he makes an intriguing argument."

"So what do you think?" asked Jake.

"Let's do it," said Matt. "Let's cross the line."

"Yeah," said Bill. "It's time for action."