Climbing the Rock

Chapter 4: Descent Into Nothing

Los Angeles, California

July 6, 1982

Jake sat on a wooden chair with special padding on the legs to prevent it from making noise if it were accidentally moved across the tile floor. On his head were a set of high fidelity headphones known as cans, through which the sound techs could talk to him and through which the music he would be singing to would be piped. The room itself was fifteen feet square and completely sound insulated. Hanging from the ceiling by an adjustable bracket, directly in front of Jake's face, was a padded voice microphone that was wired into a socket in the ceiling. There was a window in the wall through which a large soundboard and two sound technicians could be seen.

"Okay, Jake," said a voice in the cans. This was Stan Lowry, the voice tech who was coaching him through this portion of the recording process. "We're cued up in here. Let's do it again. Remember, two inches from the foam, nice even timbre, and watch the lip popping."

Jake nodded and gave a thumbs up. By now, he knew not to talk back to them.

"The Point of Futility," Stan's voice said. "First verse, take twelve."

The music began to play in the headset, the gentle, melodic fingerpicking of an acoustic guitar with a piano in accompaniment. These were the tracks of the song they'd recorded over the last three weeks, mixed together but not finalized onto the master just yet. The song did not start from the beginning. Jake was given just enough lead to plug himself into the song. He took a deep breath as his cue approached, making a check to see that his mouth was exactly two inches from the microphone, licking his lips a final a time to try to keep them from popping. The cue arrived-a long, mournful bending of the A string of Matt's guitar-and he began to sing, trying to project his voice perfectly.

"There comes a time when it's over

When souls have gone their own ways

When the things that brought you together

Now drive you apart, day after day

And you know that it's over

You've felt it go, there's been no mistake

It's the end of together

No more give, no more take"

"Hold up, Jake," Stan's voice cut in, overriding the music tracks. A second later they were turned off completely.

Jake sighed. After three and a half months of recording sessions, he was quite familiar with being interrupted like this. It meant something had fallen outside of parameters. Every strum of every guitar, ever tick of every drumstick across every cymbal, every piano key, and, especially, every nuance of the lead vocal track, needed to be just right before it was considered a good take. And "just right" was a stringent specification in this place. The sound techs in charge of capturing Intemperance on tape were the most anal retentive perfectionists Jake had ever met. Nothing the band had experienced while making the demo tape had prepared them for this constant litany of rejection of their efforts. Let's try that one more time, had become the most often heard and most hated phrase.

"A little too much on 'it's the end of together'," Stan said. "You red-lined the meter in the high end as you drew out 'together'. Try to keep that just under range or it might distort on the master."

Jake nodded.

"Okay then, let's try that one more time. The Point of Futility, first verse, take thirteen."

The music started and once more, Jake began to sing. This time he only made it through twelve syllables before Stan stopped him.

Eventually, on take twenty-three, Jake managed to croak out the entire first verse of the song without red-lining the meter or hesitating for a hundredth of a second or inhaling at the wrong time or not keeping exactly up with the timing. So far, after having recorded seven of the ten songs that would be on the album, this was about the average amount for vocal takes.

"Why don't we go ahead and break for lunch, Jake," Stan told him. "We'll start working on the second verse when you get back."

Jake looked at his watch. It was only 11:25. He looked at Stan through the window, pointed at his watch, and shrugged questioningly-his message: why don't we work on the second verse now? At least that way they could get the first six takes out of the way.

"I know its early," Stan said, "but I want to mess around with the cueing tracks just a bit and Max is here and wants to see you."

Jake nodded and took off the cans, setting them carefully down on the chair. He went to the door and opened it, stepping out into the technician's room. There, by the door that led out into the hall, stood Max Acardio, the representative for National Records' artist and repertoire (A&R) department who had been assigned to work with Intemperance. Max was in his early thirties. He was a tall, artificially handsome guy with an expensive and well-fitted toupee atop his head. His teeth were capped and so white they could potentially cause blindness. And he showed those teeth a lot. Max was always grinning and smiling. He was dressed in his normal attire of a stylish but slightly loud Italian suit and a short, skinny tie. The grin widened to the point of alarm when he saw Jake emerge from the sound room.

"Jake," he said, holding out his hand. "How the hell you doing today? You sounded great in there. Just great. I can't wait until we get this project in release."

"Hey, Max," Jake replied, shaking with him and then submitting to the one armed hug that Max employed if it had been more than forty-eight hours since he'd seen you last.

"How you holdin' up in there, Jake?" Max asked him. "They tell me you're doing good and that production is on time and under budget."

"It gets a little tedious at times, but I'm hanging in there," Jake told him.

"Good, good," Max replied, obviously not having even heard what Jake had just said. "I have some good news for you."

"What's that?"

"I was just up in the Arts department. They've finished the album cover. You want to come see it? I have it up in my office."

"Sure," Jake said. "I'd love to see it. What about the rest of the guys?"

"Matt's in studio B re-doing some guitar tracks for Who Needs Love?, Bill is going over some of the mixes in the sound room, and Darren and Coop are setting up their equipment in the red room for the next song."

"Oh, okay," Jake said with a shrug. All of that was pretty typical. "Let's go check it out then."

The recording studio was located in the basement of the thirty-story National Records Building-a glittery, gaudy skyscraper on the edge of Hollywood. They rode the rickety, cramped elevator up to the eighteenth floor. Max's office was on the north side of the building, overlooking the squalor of Hollywood Boulevard and the tenement apartments beyond it. Max's desk stood against the outside window, presumably so he didn't have to actually look out there. He sat down in his chair and invited Jake to sit in a smaller chair across from him.

"Here it is," he said, pulling an album cover out from beneath his desk. He handed it over to Jake. "What do you think?"

Jake looked at it with mixed emotions. On the front of it was the scene that Acardio and Rick Bailey from the Artist Development Department had come up with. It was a picture of a hotel room with empty beer and liquor bottles laying everywhere, lamps knocked over, even the television set lying broken and battered on the floor. There were several sets of women's panties crumpled about with the rest of the debris as well as a small mirror with dusty residue clearly visible on it (though the mirror itself was something it took a few viewings to notice). Lying face down on the bed was a man that could have been Jake but was actually a model that resembled him. The man was naked but had his bare ass covered with the twisted sheets from the bed. He was presumably passed out, his left arm curled around an almost-empty whiskey bottle, his right resting on the bare back of an attractive female model, who was equally passed out and who also had her forbidden parts strategically covered by the placement of the sheet. On the top of the picture, in large, uneven pink letters that appeared to have been written with lipstick in a drunken hand, was: Intemperance. Beneath this, in smaller letters but still in the lipstick writing, was the name of the album: Descent Into Nothing.

Acardio and Bailey had discussed this album cover with the band but that had only been a courtesy. They didn't care what the band thought about it (Darren, Coop, and Matt all liked the idea, Bill and Jake hated it). As the band had come to learn since entering into the recording contract, the album belonged to National Records. Period. They would produce it, promote it, sell it, and package it any way they wished.

"It goes along with the image we're going to be pushing for you guys," Bailey had told them when they'd first discussed the album cover.

"The image?" Jake had asked.

"Right. Every band has to have an image. It's part of what sells you to the fans. In your case, your image is reflected in your very name. Intemperance. A lack of temperance. Temperance means sobriety, control, clean living. You boys are going to represent and portray yourselves as the very opposite of all that."

"Shit," Matt had scoffed. "That shouldn't be too fuckin' hard. Why the hell do you think I named the band that?"

"Exactly," Bailey said. "And I want you to live up to that image-all of you. When you go out on the road to promote this album, I want you to party hard, to develop a reputation as total pagans, as ambassadors of debauchery. I want to hear stories circulating about drug and sex orgies from you. I want you to be notorious. As your publicity manager, I will do everything I can to get these stories into print. The more they print about you living up to the Intemperance name, the more popular you'll be and the more albums we'll sell."

"Shouldn't our music sell itself?" Jake had asked at this point. "I mean, we're a good band. People will want to hear our music because its good music, right?"

"Well... having your music actually be good is a bonus," Bailey allowed. "And the promotion department will make sure your tunes are played on the radio nationwide, but trust me on this, your image will sell more albums than your music. That's always been true and always will be. Look at Ozzy Osbourne. The best thing he ever did for his career was biting the head off that bat."

"But Ozzy makes good music," Jake had protested. "He has a good voice, good lyrics, and he had one of the best guitar players in the world."

"Until that little aircraft incident," Matt had said solemnly, actually genuflecting as the memory was invoked. Matt had taken the death of Randy Rhodes four months before very hard. Part of it had been his worship of Ozzy's guitar player-who really was one of the best in the business. A bigger part, however, had undoubtedly been the circumstances of the death. Rhodes had been in an aircraft that their tour bus driver had stolen from a hanger to joyride in. They buzzed the tour bus a couple of times and then the plane had struck it, spinning it into a house. All inside had been smashed to pieces and burned beyond recognition. None of the news stories said so, but Jake was pretty sure that alcohol and/or cocaine had been involved. After all, how fucked up do you have to be before riding in a small plane with an unlicensed tour bus driver starts to seem like a good idea? The problem with Matt was that he could clearly see himself doing exactly what Randy Rhodes had done. If he were drunk enough and someone suggested buzzing the tour bus with a stolen plane, Matt would be the first aboard.

"Yes, yes," Bailey had said, waving his hands at what he saw as the irrelevancy of it all. "Ozzy and Rhodes were good. I'm not saying they weren't. But my point is, that they didn't have to be. With Ozzy's reputation being what it is-the bat biting, the urination on the Alamo-people would buy his albums even if they sucked. It's his image they're in love with, not his music."

Jake, who was a music consumer as well as a musician, didn't agree with this image over quality argument. He didn't agree with it at all. He bought Ozzy Osbourne albums because he liked the music, not because Ozzy had once took a piss on the Alamo or bitten the head off a bat. But the National Records executives all believed that image was the important thing. This was especially true now that MTV was up and running and gaining popularity across the country. Shaver had told once told Jake-over a few lines of his infamous Bolivian flake-that he, Shaver, was concerned about this new trend towards image and looks. For the first time in music history, the A&R departments were starting to worry about what musicians looked like on camera instead of merely what they sounded like.

"Well?" Acardio asked when Jake had looked at the front cover art for almost thirty seconds.

"It's uh... very good photography," he finally said.

"I thought so too," Acardio told him. "We really do have the best graphic arts department here at National."

Jake flipped the album cover over to look at the back. Here, taking up the upper half of the space, was a group photograph of the band. Darren and Coop were sitting cross-legged in the foreground. Standing behind them were Matt, Bill, and Jake. All were dressed in their standard uniform of tattered and torn jeans and T-shirts. Matt was wearing dark shades. Jake had a two-day growth of stubble. Coop was holding a set of drumsticks in his hand. Darren had a cigarette in his mouth. None of them were smiling. The picture looked very natural, almost candid. It wasn't. Prior to the shoot, make-up artists had carefully applied coloring to their face, hair-stylists had gone to work on their manes, and wardrobe specialists had picked out their clothing. It had taken the better part of six hours to get the shot taken.

Below the picture was a listing of the band members and their roles. Darren Appleman-bass guitar, vocals; John "Coop" Cooper-percussion, vocals; Matt Tisdale-lead guitar, vocals; Bill "Nerdly" Archer-Piano, vocals; and finally, listed last due to his position in the picture, Jake Kingsley-lead vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar.

"I still think you boys should have listened to us about the name changes," Acardio said sadly. "Having stylish names helps with the band image. Look what it's doing for U2."

Jake bit back several nasty replies and simply shrugged. Jake and Matt had both gone around and around with Acardio, Bailey, and even Shaver on the subject of their names. Acardio was of the opinion that calling Coop Coop and calling Bill Nerdly was very hip, and that no one gave enough of a shit about bassists to have to change Darren Appleman's handle, but that the names Matt Tisdale and Jake Kingsley were just not interesting enough.

"It's what we do here in Hollywood," Bailey-who was the driving force behind the name-change effort-told them. "Why live with a plain name when you can change it to something that reflects your style and your outlook?" He'd looked at Matt, pursing his lips and thinking. "How about Rajin Storm?" he'd asked. "That's a good name for a guitarist of your caliber."

"Raging Storm?" Matt had asked, his eyes wide. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"Not Raging Storm," Bailey had said. "Rajin Storm!" He'd then spelled it out, as if that would change Matt's mind. "And you," he'd turned to Jake while Matt was still trying to process Rajin Storm. "I think something like... oh... say JD King."

"JD King?" Jake had repeated.

"Right," Bailey said. "King is a simple name with powerful connotations. Invokes images of Elvis and shit like that. And JD is short, sweet, manly, and the fans will speculate endlessly on what it actually stands for. It's also an abbreviation for a popular alcoholic beverage." He looked up at the ceiling as an inspiration assaulted him. "Shit, maybe we can even get the Jack Daniels people to sign some sort of endorsement deal with you. We can say that your parents named you after their favorite booze and introduced you to drinking it at a young age. We can have you drink JD on stage! Holy shit, this is great. Eventually we can have them sponsor a tour and then..."

"Wait a minute," Jake said, holding up his hand. He was still calm but it was an effort. "You're suggesting that I lie and tell the public that my parents named me after a brand of whiskey? That they used to give me whiskey when I was young?"

"It's nothing against your parents, Jake. This is show business. You give the people what they want to hear."

Jake was shaking his head. "I refuse to dishonor my parents-who were goddamn good parents I might add-just so you can shape my image to your liking."

"Okay, okay," Bailey said, rolling his eyes a little at the naiveté of this young punk. "We'll keep the parents thing out of it. We'll say that..."

"We'll say that my name is Jake Kingsley," Jake said. "That's what we'll say. It may not be the most image-enhancing name in the world, but it's the one I was given, the one I like, the one I'm proud of, and I'm going to keep it."

"Fuckin-A," Matt put in. "I'm Matt Goddamn Tisdale and that ain't gonna change either. That's what Heritage knows me as, and that's what I'm gonna play under." He shook his head in disgust. "Rajin fuckin Storm. Holy shit, Bailey. What fuckin' world do you live in?"

This had of course pissed Bailey off and caused him to complain to both the National Records higher-ups and their agent, Shaver. It was implied that they were putting their entire recording contract in jeopardy by not going along with the name changes but they held firm. By that point in the process, the album was already in production and neither Jake nor Matt thought they would cancel the whole thing over a Rajin Storm and a JD King. They were right. Though the pressure remained for the next few weeks, eventually Bailey and Acardio accepted that their artists were serious about keeping their Christian names for publicity and dropped the subject. Acardio's dig was the first time the subject had been mentioned in weeks.

Jake didn't take the bait. Instead he pointed to the portion of the cover below the picture and below the track listings. It was the part labeled: Special thanks to: He knew that he had never been asked who he would like to thank. He was pretty sure none of the other band members had been asked either.

"Who are all these people we're thanking?" Jake asked.

"Oh, the usual stuff," Acardio said. "Our production specialists, our technicians, our sound guys. They're all working hard on this project. Don't you want to thank them?"

"Sure," Jake said. "They are a good bunch. But what about these other people? What about these companies?" He let his finger trail down the list. "Brogan Guitars? Lexington Drums? Caldwell Pianos?"

"They're the people who supplied you with the instruments you play for the recording. You know that." And Jake did. The first thing they had been told when they'd come for the orientation session prior to starting the recording was that the battered old Les Paul Jake played and that the scratched and beaten Strat Matt played simply wouldn't due for recording quality play. Jake was given a brand new Brogan six string and a brand new Brogan mahogany finish electric/acoustic. Matt was given a top-of-the-line Brogan Battle-Axe guitar that he detested. Darren, who had already played a Brogan bass guitar was given nothing-apparently his scratched and battered bass was good enough. Coop's entire drum set had been replaced by a Lexington twenty-five piece set with the band's name on the dual bass drums. And Bill had been given both an electric piano and an actual acoustic grand piano from Caldwell.

"So this is an endorsement thing?" Jake said. "Is that why you insisted we play those instruments?"

"No," Acardio scoffed. "Not at all. We've simply found over the years that those particular instruments sound better when recorded. It's nothing more sinister than that."

"But you're getting money from these people to mention these instruments on your album covers, aren't you?"

"Well... yes, but I assure you, that has nothing to do with why we pick those instruments. We pretty much figure that since we're using them anyway, why not pick up a few endorsement fees for the effort? And since we do have an endorsement contract of sorts, it means we get to supply you with those instruments for free. Isn't that nice? The cost of your guitars and that drum set is not included in the recoupable costs portion of your contract."

"Uh huh," Jake said sourly. He didn't want to get into the old recoupable costs argument again. That was a very sore subject for him and the rest of the band. He slid the album cover back across the desk. "Very nice, Max. Thanks for showing it to me." He started to stand.

"Uh... before you go, Jake, there is one thing I need to talk to you about."

Jake sat back down, wondering what it was this time. "Sure," he said. "What's up?"

Acardio gave an apologetic smile. "Well, it's about the outside work clause in your contract. I assume you remember the terms of that."

"Yeah," Jake said bitterly. "I remember the terms of it."

The outside work clause he was referring to was a portion of their contract that stated the band Intemperance and its individual members were forbidden from performing musically for anyone other than the record label without specific permission. And the label routinely denied such specific permission, as had been the case when Jake and Matt had asked Shaver to try to get them a few gigs down in the L.A. area so they could pick up a few bucks to help supplement the meager advance money they'd been given. Shaver had told them that the label would probably not give permission for such a thing and, of course, he was right.

"Nobody sees you in concert until we get this album finished and get you out on tour," had been Acardio's response to the request. He had not explained himself any further than this, nor was he required to.

"What's the problem with the outside work clause now?" Jake asked. "We haven't been doing any gigs. You should know that."

"Well," Acardio said, "I have some information to the contrary, Jake."

Jake raised his eyebrows up. "Someone told you that we have a gig somewhere?"

"Not the whole band, just you."

"Me?" Jake asked. "Someone told you I have a gig by myself."

"Had, not have," Acardio said. "I'm told that you engaged in a live musical performance yesterday evening before a crowd. Is that true?"

Jake's eyes widened. "Last night? Are you talking about the parking lot party we had after work? Is that what you're talking about?"

Since they were not able to work as musicians during the recording process, and since their advance money was hardly enough to live on, everyone but Matt (whose parents send him generous allowance checks each week) had been forced to get night jobs to survive. Jake's night job was as a minimum wage dishwasher at The Main Course-a trendy yuppie eatery in downtown L.A. He worked from 7 PM to closing Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and 5 PM to closing Saturday and Sunday. On Wednesday nights he and a few of the other staff members were in the habit of gathering in the back parking lot after closing to drink beer and smoke a little weed if someone had some. Last night Jake had happened to have his old acoustic in the car and had put on an impromptu performance for his friends. It had been a good time. He wowed them with his voice and his guitar skills, performing before a group for the first time since their last gig at D Street West all those months ago. Performance was like a drug and being able to play his guitar and sing, to have people appreciate his gift, had given him a badly needed fix. That couldn't seriously be what Acardio was talking about, could it?

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," Acardio confirmed. "You were in violation of your contract, Jake. This is a very serious matter."

"Max, I was playing my guitar for a couple of work friends. I hardly think that qualifies as a gig."

"You were performing live before an audience," Acardio said.

"There were like eight people there," Jake said, exasperated. "We were drinking beer. It's not like I was charging them money."

"Nevertheless, that constitutes an audience. I'm also told that you performed copywrited material from other musical acts. That's even more serious. You don't have permission to sing Led Zepplin songs live. They're not even on our label. Do you have any idea what sort of trouble we would be in if it came to light that one of our musicians was performing another label's songs without permission? I shudder to think of what would happen."

"Max, this was not a concert!" Jake almost yelled. "I sang Stairway to Heaven because one of the waitresses liked the song! I was trying to get laid, for God's sake!" Something else occurred to him. "Wait a minute. How do you know that I was singing out in the parking lot last night? How do you know what fucking songs I was singing?"

"I see no reason to swear at me," Acardio told him. "And how I know is irrelevant. The fact is that you performed live before an audience last night in violation of the terms of your contract. Now, we're not going to fine you this time, but if something like this happens again I will be forced to penalize you monetarily by adding a five thousand dollar fine to your recoupable expenses. Do you understand?"

"You have a spy in the restaurant," Jake said in wonder, ignoring his question. "A fucking spy! That's why you recommended that job to me. That's why they hired me so quickly. They're on your goddamn payroll, aren't they?"

"The manager and I do have a certain arrangement," Acardio confirmed. "And he does have a network of people on his staff who keep him informed about the activities of certain people. But that's neither here nor there. What I want to know from you, Jake, is if you understand that you are not to do this again and what the consequences are if you do?"

Jake took a deep breath, resisting the urge to clench his fists, to yell further. After all, it would be pointless. "I understand," he said.

"Very good," Acardio told him. "I'm glad we were able to clear this up. You may leave now."

Jake left, heading to the cafeteria where he would eat the bologna sandwich he'd made for himself. His anger and frustration followed him down.

As they had been back in Heritage, Jake and Bill were roommates in Los Angeles as well, and for the same reason. They needed to split their living expenses in order to survive. Their apartment in L.A. cost almost one hundred dollars a month more than their apartment in Heritage had. And calling it a dump would have been giving it more credit than it was due.

It was in a squalid post-war era tenement building off Hollywood Boulevard, just two miles from the National Records building, but in a completely different world just the same. The complex was home to parolees and registered sex-offenders, to off-duty hookers and failed actors. It was the kind of place where nickel bags of marijuana were offered for sale to passing motorists out in front, where people sat on the stairs at all hours of the day and night drinking forty-ounce cans of malt liquor and smoking generic cigarettes. The sound of police helicopters hovering overhead and the sound of gunshots in the night were so frequently heard that they were rarely commented on. It was a complex that the LAPD visited at least three times in any given day, breaking up domestic disputes and handling overdose calls.

Their apartment was on the third floor of this building, tucked away in the rear. It was a two-bedroom and consisted of 642 square feet of living space. The carpet was a threadbare shit brown that radiated the faint odor of cat urine no matter how much they cleaned it. The bathroom featured a cracked and leaky toilet, a bathtub that was unusable because of the rust and mildew spots, and a showerhead that produced a pathetic trickle of lukewarm water at best. When Jake and Bill entered it after their recording session that day, it was stifling hot. There was, of course, nothing that resembled air conditioning available for their comfort.

"Damn, I hate this place," Jake said. "Let's get the fans turned on."

"Right," Bill agreed, setting down the twelve-pack of beer they'd purchased on the way home.

They opened all the windows and turned on all three of the fans they'd begged or borrowed when they'd moved here. That at least got the hot, sticky air circulating a bit and allowed fresh smog to be blown in from outside. They each grabbed a beer from the twelver and sat on their couch, which was pretty much the only piece of actual furniture they possessed.

"I hate L.A.," Jake said, taking a drink. "If we make it big with this recording deal I'm going to live anywhere but here. Hell, I'm not even going to come to this part of the state if I don't have to."

"This is a rather depressing existence," Bill said, taking a swig from his own can. "Do you really think we're gonna make it big?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "I do. The question is, are we going to be rich as well as famous?"

"Not under this contract we're not," Bill said. "That's for damn sure."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been doing some calculations."

"You, doing calculations?" Jake said with a grin. "Who'd have thought?"

Bill smiled briefly. "Make fun of me if you will, but know that I'm right as you do it. We've been screwed."

"I already know that."

"You may think you do," Bill told him. "But I don't think you appreciate the depth of our screwing. Our royalties are going to be ten percent, right?"

"Right."

"And that figure is based on a retail rate of five dollars per album, right?"

"Right," Jake said again. That had been a major negotiation point prior to signing the contract and the one thing that Shaver had fought tooth and nail for. The actual retail rate for an album was seven dollars but many first-time bands ended up having their royalties based on the wholesale rate, which was typically in the vicinity of two to three dollars. Shaver, wise to the ways of record contracts, had advised them to refuse to accept the wholesale rate. They did this but Acardio and the reps from the National Records business and legal departments had refused them a full retail rate. Five dollars per unit was the figure they'd eventually agreed upon.

"So let's be optimistic here and suppose our album goes platinum," Bill said. "That's one million albums sold, right?"

"Right."

"Which means we would get fifty cents for each album, or five hundred grand as a base rate."

"Yes," Jake agreed. "And I know that the recoupable expenses and Shaver's fee all come out of that."

"But have you ever actually added all of this up? It's kind of depressing."

Jake sighed. He didn't want to hear this, but he supposed that he needed to know. "Okay," he told Bill. "Depress me. Let's hear it."

Bill pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper upon which his calculations were written. "Okay, assuming we go platinum, our base royalty is half a million bucks. However, there's that ten percent breakage deduction that they threw in there."

"Yeah," Jake said bitterly. That meant that the label was assuming that ten percent of all the records they shipped would end up broken and un-sellable in transit. So if they sold a million copies, they would only be credited with nine hundred thousand for financial purposes.

"That brings our royalties down to $450,000. But then there is that 25% packaging fee."

Jake nodded. That was another figure the label wouldn't budge on, despite Shaver's wholehearted efforts to bring it down. The packaging fee was reported to be the costs associated with making the actual albums, the covers, putting them together and shipping them to the retail outlets where they would be sold.

"That's $112,000 off the top, which brings us down to $337,500. That also brings us to the biggest hit to our income, the recoupable expenses."

"The fuckin recoupables," Jake groaned. That had been the sorest part of the negotiations.

"The first thing is the advance they gave us when we signed. That was $50,000. Then there's the estimated studio time costs of $86,000, and the anticipated album promotion costs of $52,000. All of this is one hundred percent recoupable before a royalty check is ever issued and it adds up to $188,000. But it doesn't end there. We're responsible for half of the tour costs and half of the video production costs. That subtracts another $61,000, bringing us to a grand total of $249,000 in recoupable expenses. Do you know what that leaves us with?"

"How much?"

"$88,500," Bill said. "And don't forget Shaver's share. He gets twenty-one percent. That means we peel another $18,585 off, leaving us with $69,915. When you divide that figure up among the five of us, it comes out to $13,983 apiece. And that's assuming we go platinum. Cut that in half if we only go gold and sell half a million albums. If we do much worse than gold, we won't be able to cover the recoupable expenses at all and we'll be in the hole for the next album we do."

"Fourteen thousand bucks," Jake said, shaking his hand as he pondered the horror of that. "That's not even a living wage."

"You and Matt are entitled to extra royalties because you're the songwriters," Bill said. "But they don't amount to much. You can maybe add another thousand dollars apiece for that. And don't forget, we haven't even discussed taxes yet. Although they shouldn't be that bad since we would technically be below the poverty level."

"Jesus," Jake said. "That's what we get for all this work, all this sacrifice, for selling a million fucking albums? Fourteen grand?"

"Fourteen grand," Bill said sadly. "Hardly seems worth it, huh?"

"You seem depressed tonight," said Angelina Hadley, the waitress whose pants Jake had been attempting to penetrate the other night when he did his illegal concert. "I've been flirting with you like mad every time I come back here and haven't gotten a single return flirt." Angelina, or Angie for short, was an aspiring actress. At twenty-two years old, her body was absolutely fantastic, with curves in all the right places, a set of breasts that were the epitome of perfection, and legs that any man yearned to have wrapped around his back. Unfortunately for her career, her face was not as perfect. She had some acne scars left over from her adolescence, a nose that was just a little longer than optimum, and a mole just right of center on her chin. She was not ugly by any means, but these imperfections precluded her from any role in which her face needed to be seen, which pretty much precluded her from the profession of acting in general. She had had a grand total of three parts in her two-year career, two of them as body doubles for other actresses where a nude scene was required and one in a weight loss product commercial where her legs and tummy were shown bare but her face was never seen.

"Sorry," Jake told her as he pulled the dirty dishes from her tray and put them in the industrial sink before him. "I've got a lot on my mind lately."

"Pondering life again, huh?" she asked, sidling up close to him, close enough that her leg was touching his. "I told you about that. Life sucks. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to live it."

"Don't forget unfair," he said. "That's the big part. Life is unfair."

"That too," she agreed, putting her hand up on the back of his neck and giving him a caress.

He relished the sensation, letting his head fall back. He had not had an intimate relationship with a female since leaving Heritage and his body cried out for a woman's touch. And though he had not succeeded in bedding the luscious Angie after his illegal concert the other night, he had certainly made some inroads with her. Though they had shared a flirtatious relationship since he had been hired, it wasn't until he sang for her, had played his guitar for her, that she started to take him seriously. The power of music never failed to amaze him. "That feels good," he told her. "Can you keep it up for a few more hours?"

She laughed. "I wish I could. You want to talk about what's wrong with you?"

He shrugged, an action that caused her to put her other hand up to his neck as well. "It's about our recording contract," he said. "It's a long story."

"You want to know something?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"Don't be mad at me or nothing, but I didn't think you really had a recording contract until the other night."

"Really?" he asked, turning to look at her.

"Like I said, don't get me wrong. It's just that this place... this city, is so full of phonies. Hell, I may even be one of them. When someone tells you they have a roll in a movie or that they're going to be getting one of their screenplays produced, well... usually they're just... you know... exaggerating."

"Yeah," he said. "I've noticed that." And he had. Never had he met so many liars, cheats, and outright con artists as he had here in L.A.

"I guess I figured that you were just the same," she said. "But then I heard you play and sing."

"And that changed your mind?"

"Oh my God," she said. "You're good, Jake. In fact, you're one of the best I've ever heard. You really do have a recording contract, don't you? You really are going to have an album come out."

He nodded. "We really are, although they pretty much screwed us on the contract. I had that pointed out to me the other day."

"Screwing people is what Hollywood is all about," she said sadly. "Look at me. Half the guys in America got boners looking at my naked body in a bathtub because they thought it was Lynn Harold's. And for this I got a two hundred dollar check and my name mentioned in the credits, but way down in the credits, the part just before the Dolby Surround Sound label, the part that shows up long after everyone's left the damn theater."

Jake knew the movie she was referring to. It was a second rate psychological thriller in which second-rate actress Lynn Harold's character had been pitted against a psychotic murderer. The bathtub scene in the beginning of the movie was legendary, mostly because it was one of the first R rated scenes to show, not just bare breasts but pubic hair as well. And hardly anyone realized that the breasts and pubic hair in question were not really Lynn's, they were Angie's. "That always was one of my favorite scenes," he said slyly.

She giggled, removing her hands from his neck and slapping him on the butt. "You pervert," she said. "What you doing after work tonight?"

"I don't know. I thought I'd go home, drink my last can of generic beer, and then hit the rack."

"That does sound like a lot of fun," she said. "But if you're interested, I got a joint back at my apartment. Some pretty good shit too."

"Yeah?" he asked, looking at her face, seeing a twinkle in her eye.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "Sound like a date?"

"You bet your cute little ass."

Angie's apartment complex was just off Santa Monica Boulevard, in a part of Hollywood that was slightly more upscale than Jake and Bill's neighborhood. The LAPD only visited her complex once or twice a day and the number of parolees and sex offenders living there in the single digits. The apartment itself was only a one bedroom, and a very small one-bedroom at that, but it was cozy and well decorated, the furnishings both feminine and practical.

They sat on her couch, Saturday Night Live playing on the television before them, and Angie brought out her tightly rolled marijuana cigarette. They smoked it slowly, relishing it. It was a fairly new variety of greenbud that was making the rounds of late, a high quality domestic product known as Humboldt Skunkbud, named for the Northern California county where it was grown. True to its name, its taste and aroma strongly resembled that which emitted from a skunk's scent glands, although not as potent. Once you got used to it, it was actually pleasant. And it was certainly potent. By the time the joint was a roach, both of them were quite annihilated.

"When are you going to sing for us again?" Angie asked as she leaned back on the couch, her eyes locked onto a framed Ansel Adams print over the television set.

"I can't," he told her, his eyes locked on her legs. She was still wearing her waitress uniform, which featured a skirt that fell several inches about her knees when she was standing. Now that she was slumped backwards the skirt had crept considerably higher, well above mid-thigh. And what lovely thighs they were. The very sight was making him extremely horny. "Not anymore."

Silence descended for a bit-how long, neither could be sure since their sense of time was horribly distorted. Finally Angie asked him, "Why not?"

"Why not what?" he asked, having forgotten what it was they had been talking about.

She giggled, covering her mouth for a second and then slapping at his leg. "Wow, this is some good shit," she said. "Why can't you sing for us, you hoser?"

This gave him the giggles for a few moments as well, although just why, he was unsure. Finally, he got himself under control and answered her. "It would seem that playing my guitar and singing out in the parking lot after work is a breach of my recording contract. I'm not allowed to do any live performances without National Records' say-so."

"Wow," she said. "That's fuckin' trippy." She did not seem to be particularly surprised by this, however.

"Those assholes actually have a spy in the restaurant. That's why they got me a job there, so they could keep an eye on me." It suddenly occurred to him that Angie might be the spy. Was that possible? Hell, anything was possible in world where they implied they would ruin your career if you didn't say your name was JD King and that your parents were criminally negligent boozers.

"Tom's your spy," Angie said, as if reading his thoughts. "He and Marcus like to slip into the back room and suck each other's dicks every few days. Haven't you ever noticed how friendly the two of them are?"

Now that she mentioned, he had noticed that. And he knew she was not being figurative about them sucking each other's dicks. Tom was a flaming, flamboyant homosexual who had in fact made more than one pass at Jake since he arrived on the scene. And though Marcus, the manager, was not flamboyant or flaming, he was a forty-two year old, never-married man in a predominantly gay line of business.

Jake shook his head in bewilderment. "Spies and threats and positioning people where they can be watched. It's like Nazi Germany around here."

"Welcome to Hollywood," she told him. "Where any office boy or young mechanic can get fucked like a whore."

This too struck him as funny. They laughed together hysterically for the better part of two minutes.

"Oh wow," she said when they finally returned to normalcy. "I don't know what I'd do without good buds to get me through, or cheap beer." She slid over on the couch, until her leg was in contact with his. She turned toward him, a dreamy expression on her face. Her hand went to the side of his face, caressing him there, stroking him.

A moment later they were sharing their first kiss. It stretched out for some time, at first a gentle touching of lips, then a dance of tongues. She tasted of Skunkbud and spearmint chewing gum and she radiated eroticism from every pore as she began to heat up. He let his hands roam up and down her back, whispering over the cotton of her blouse. Her fingers went to his long hair and began to run through it.

"You are so sexy, Jake," she whispered to him when the kiss finally broke. "I always thought that, ever since you started working with us... but when I heard you sing... mmmm, when I heard you sing..."

She seemed incapable of completing the thought. Instead, she covered his mouth with hers once more. Her tongue slid back between his lips. They moved closer together, so her firm, feminine body was pressed against his. He let his hand drop down to her leg, just below the hem of her skirt. It was a soft, smooth, sexy leg, one of the finest he'd ever felt, perhaps the finest. But when he tried to slide his hand up higher, to put it under her skirt, her hand dropped down onto it, stopping him.

"No," she whispered softly, breaking the kiss but keeping her lips only a few millimeters from his. "Not tonight. Not on the first date."

"No?" he whispered back, unable to determine if she were teasing or not.

"No," she repeated. "I'm not that kind of girl." And then, having said that, her tongue slid out and licked slowly, sensuously across his upper lip.

He sucked it into his mouth and their kiss resumed, quickly becoming passionate, intense. Her hand went back up to his neck, where it caressed the skin there, her nails scratching at him lightly. He concluded that she really had been kidding about the first date prohibition. And besides, this wasn't really a date, was it? They had just come over to smoke a joint. He tried to push his hand upward on her leg again. Once again her hand slapped down on it, barring the ascension.

"Don't be naughty, Jake," she whispered, her tongue licking at his chin, sliding along the angle of his jaw to his ear. "First date gets first base only. That's the rule."

He groaned a little. His cock was rock-hard beneath his jeans and didn't much care for the idea that it would not get to play tonight. "Are there exceptions to the rule?" he asked her.

"No," she replied, licking at his earlobe, her fingers now scratching at the back of the hand that rested on her lower thigh. "Kissing only. No touching the private parts. No exceptions."

They continued to make out and she continued to deflect all of his efforts to move beyond first base. She allowed him to kiss her neck, to hold her by the waist, to run his hand up and down her legs below the skirt, but she refuted any attempts to touch her breasts or to slide his hands higher. Her hands were quite active as well. She ran them up and down his back, through his hair, even over his chest. But they went nowhere near his ass, let alone the bulge in his jeans. His erection was so intense that it was actually throbbing with the beat of his heart. He began to feel the sweet pain of blue balls for the first time since high school.

Finally, after nearly an hour, they broke apart. Jake was trembling with desire for her, especially since he could sense how turned-on she was as well. Her nipples were poking through her blouse. Her face and neck were flushed. Her lips were swollen and blood red even though her lipstick had long since been kissed clean off of them.

"Wasn't that fun, Jake?" she asked him, her breathing still heavy, her skirt still quite high on her legs.

He nodded. "Yeah," he breathed back. "But it could be funner."

She smiled sexily. "A second date might get you second base," she said. "If you're nice, that is."

"Is that a rule too?" he asked.

"That you have to be nice? That's always a rule."

"No," he said. "About second base."

"Don't you think second base is a good goal for a second date? I wouldn't want you to think I'm a slut or anything."

"I would never think that," he said.

"You guys all say that," she told him. "And you might even mean it, at least while you have a bulge like that in your jeans." She looked at it with interest, sighing a little.

"But..."

"I guess you're gonna have to take care of that yourself, aren't you?"

"Uh... yeah, I suppose," he replied.

"I'm gonna have to take care of myself too," she said. "I'm so wet right now, you wouldn't believe it. My panties are absolutely soaked."

A tremor worked its way through him at these words. God, what she doing? She had to be the worst cock-tease he had ever encountered.

"Tell me something," she said, her hand dropping to his knee and caressing there, almost absently. "Did you really like my bathtub scene?"

"Oh yes," he said truthfully. "It was very hot."

"Did it make your cock hard when you saw it?"

He nodded. "Yes." And it was true. It was hard not to get a hard-on while watching a woman with a beautiful body soap her breasts, stomach, and pubic region while laying in a bathtub.

"It turns me on to think that I've made thousands of guys hard," she said. "Millions maybe. Does that make me sick?"

He shook his head. "No, not at all."

She gave her sexy smile again. "You know," she said, "I could use a bath about now. Maybe I could reenact that scene for you. Would you like that?"

"Re... reenact?" he asked. "You mean..."

"You can't touch me though," she said. "That would be going past first base and that's not allowed on a first date." She stood up. "But if you wanted to watch me do something I've already done on a movie set... well, that's not being a slut, is it?"

"Of course not," he blurted as an additional surge of blood went rushing into his nether regions.

"Wait until you hear the water turn off," she said. "And then come on in." She cast him a knowing look. "With your clothes on."

"Right," he said.

She sashayed into the bathroom. The door closed behind her. A second later he heard the sound of water running through the pipes. The minutes stretched out with agonizing slowness. Jake's mind whirred with thoughts of her undressing, of what he was going to see when he went in there, with thoughts of what might happen as a result. His cock did not deflate so much as an iota. Finally, after several forevers, the rush of water came to an end. He stood up and walked to the bathroom door, his hand coming down on the knob. He turned it and stepped inside.

The room was steamy and warm. The bathtub was smaller than the one that had been featured in the movie, but that detracted little from the eerily erotic deja vu he experienced as he looked down at her. She was posed just as she had been in the film, laying on her back in clear water, legs slightly apart, breasts just above the surface. She had a bar of soap in her hands and was rubbing it in lazy, opulent circles across her breasts, over her smooth belly, across the sparse black pubic hair. Her head was back, eyes half closed, a sexy, contented smile on her face.

"You're beautiful, Angie," he said, walking closer, staring at her unabashedly.

"Thank you," she said, making another circle with the soap, lingering near the pubic region this time, sighing a little as it passed lower, revealing just a hint of the pinkness beneath.

"God," Jake whispered, wanting more than anything to rip off his clothes and jump in the tub with her, to drive himself inside her body.

"That's close enough," she said when his knees touched the edge of the tub. "Just look at me. Just imagine what my body feels like, what my hands are feeling right now."

He did just that, watching as she soaped her breasts again. Her nipples were sticking up proudly, the areoles perfect circles the size of half dollars. How slick they would feel against his hands, how firm. She moved the soap lower again. Her tummy was flat and smooth, her belly button flawless. How he would love to run his tongue over it.

"Of course you know what the implication of the scene was, don't you?" she asked, her hand trailing down into her pubic hair again, making lazy soap circles through it.

"Uh... I'm not sure," he said, hardly aware of what she was even talking about, so entranced was he by the visualization.

"Why masturbation of course," she said. "They couldn't actually show me playing with myself, but they could show me... getting ready to, you know what I mean?" She let go of the soap. It dropped beneath the water and disappeared. Her pelvis rose up out of the water, giving him an unimpeded view of her womanhood for the first time. Her lips were swollen and open. Her clitoris was erect and ready for pleasure. Her fingers dipped down, two of them sliding across those lips, touching them, delving inside for the briefest of seconds. "This," she said, her voice getting heavier, "is what the audience really wanted to see. What they were imagining. Mmmm, I wish I could've showed them this too."

"Oh God," Jake groaned. His hand dropped down to the bulge in his pants. He rubbed it a few times.

"But you can see it, Jake," she said, sliding her fingers a little faster. "You can see what I really wanted to do in that tub, what everyone really wanted me to do."

"Angie... Jesus," he said, rubbing the bulge a little more. He started to drop to his knees.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Keep standing. No touching me. We stay at first base."

He grunted in frustration but stayed on his feet.

"But you can touch yourself," she said. "That's not going beyond first base." Her eyes locked onto his crotch. "Play with yourself while you watch me. I want to see it."

He didn't hesitate for a second. He ripped his jeans open and pushed them down, his underwear going with them. His hand went to his hard cock and began to stroke.

"Yessss," she said, licking her lips, her fingers moving faster against her lips. "That's right. Play with it. Jack off while you look at me."

He began to stroke faster, as did she. Her hands began to make circles around her clit. Her other hand went down there and slid first one and then two fingers inside of her body. They began to move in and out in short jabs.

Jake fought to keep his orgasm under control, employing every mental block he had learned over his sexual years. Despite this furious effort, he knew he wasn't going to last long. This was, without a doubt, the most erotic, sensual thing he'd ever experienced. And he wasn't even touching her.

"I'm gonna... gonna come, Jake," she panted, her fingers now a blur, her pelvis rising and falling, sending ripples of water out to either side of her. "And when I do, I want you to come too. I want you to come all over my body."

Jake's mental blocks crumbled in a smoking, sizzling wreck as he heard this. He began to tremble all over, his legs going weak, his own hand now a blur as well. "You better... better hurry," he grunted.

She hurried. With a drawn out groan of pleasure she began to come, her body nearly seizing as it released. He groaned as well, his orgasm slamming through his body, building and peaking with an intensity that was almost frightening.

"All over me," she panted, her fingers still working away. "All over meeeeeeee!"

He semen sprayed out of him with a power unlike anything he'd experienced before, spurt after spurt hitting her in the breasts, in the stomach, on her hands as they played, on her thighs. She moaned and jerked with each blast that struck her. When it was finally over she slumped down in the tub with enough force to send a wave of water splashing out. He slumped to his knees, landing in the puddle she'd created.

They sat in silence for a few moments, basking in their respective afterglows. Finally he looked over at her. "How about we go out again tomorrow night?" he asked. "I've just got to find out what second base is like."

They got together the next night after work. This time they drank a six-pack of beer before commencing with the make-out session. As promised, the second date led to a second base encounter. She allowed him to put his hand under her shirt and beneath her brassiere. Her breasts felt heavenly. Later, she allowed him to remove her shirt and suckle her nipples. They tasted as heavenly as they felt. Later still she stripped off her clothes and had him rub baby oil into her breasts. He used nearly half a bottle, his hands slipping and sliding over the perfect orbs but not allowed to venture below. The evening ended with her masturbating herself as he stroked her breasts with one hand and his cock with the other, until he ejaculated all over her oily boobs as she herself came.

Their third date was the following Tuesday. They actually went out to a restaurant and a movie that day and commenced making out in the back row of the movie theater. He soon had his hand up her skirt and in the tightness of her body, driving in and out. She played with his cock through his jeans and finally, just before the credits rolled, took it out and stroked it. He managed to give her two orgasms. She refused to allow him to come, however. She wanted to save that for later. Back at her place she dropped to her knees and elbows, pulled up her skirt, slid down her panties, and had him violently finger-fuck her from behind. As she approached orgasm she let him go to "third and a half base" and put his mouth on her pussy. He ate her to two orgasms, one from behind and one from the front. After, she opened his pants and gave him an agonizingly slow blowjob, teasing him unmercifully for the better part of thirty minutes before finally allowing him to blast a torrent of semen into her mouth.

The fourth date was not really a date at all. They spent eight hours in her apartment, screwing each other's brains out in every conceivable way.

Their relationship continued and was initially based primarily on passion and the alleviation of their considerable lust whenever they were able to be together outside of work. Often they would begin within minutes of finding themselves alone, sometimes the moment the door shut behind them. On one memorable occasion Jake fucked her as she stood against the door, while she was still wearing her waitress uniform and smelling of food and liquor and cigarette smoke from her shift. Their sessions lasted for hours at times as they basked in the pleasures of the flesh. Both of them happily accepted that it was a friends-with-benefits arrangement, concluding this was just what they were looking for. But as time went by and their lives went on, as Jake went to recording sessions and listened to endless bullshit from Acardio and Bailey and even Shaver, and as Angelina went to audition after audition and was turned down on the basis of her imperfect face time and time again, a strange thing began to happen, so slowly that they hardly realized it. The friendship part began to become more important than the benefits. Though their sex life remained active, varied, and even unconventional at times, they found themselves getting together just to talk more and more often. They began to call each other on the phone when they couldn't get together-Jake from the recording studio, Angelina from various studios or agent's offices. They began to go out to restaurants and to take weekend trips to the beach just because they wanted to be together. Before either of them realized it had happened, their booty-call relationship evolved into an actual lover's relationship, complete with passion, jealousy, longing, and trust.

On August 28, 1982, the final voice track of the first Intemperance album was completed. The next day the dubbing and mixing began. The band was asked to redo individual portions of the songs-a ten second section of guitar here, a twenty-second portion of drums there, a piano section somewhere else, a bit of lead or backing vocal somewhere else still. Each of these dubs required an average of fifteen to twenty takes before the techs were satisfied it was right. In addition, they did a multitude of overdubs. Overdubs were extra instrumental tracks-usually guitars-that were laid down atop the existing music to make it blend smoother or sound better on tape.

Jake, Bill, and especially Matt had been vehemently opposed to doing this at first.

"Intemperance is a five-person band," Matt had protested. "You're suggesting we add another rhythm guitar over a song. That's more than five! That's not how we do things!"

"That is how we do things," Acardio told them, "and since you are under contract with us, you will do whatever the hell we tell you to do. If we want you to put a fucking Polka accordion track in one of your songs, you'll do it. If you don't, you're in breach of contract. Get it?"

They got it. They didn't like it, but they got it. They performed the overdubs when they were told to and when they got to the mixing process, everyone except Matt-who remained a stern traditionalist on the subject-had to admit that the overdubs did add quite a bit to the recording, giving it a smoother, more radio-friendly sound.

"We won't be able to reproduce it live though," Matt said. "Don't you guys understand that?"

Jake thought that maybe Matt was overexaggerating a bit. The overdubs were quite audible to professional musicians and sound techs, but most of the people buying the albums and going to the concerts would not fit into this category. Jake himself had never noticed such things in his favorite music before and this had never kept him from enjoying a concert.

In any case, the discussion was meaningless. Acardio was right. They were required to do what they were told.

The mixing process, which went on in conjunction with the overdubbing and the re-dubbing, was the very definition of tediousness. Day after day, for hours at a time, the sound techs would listen to each individual track of each individual song and blend them together piece by piece. Their perfectionism and anal retentiveness about this process was agonizing and made that displayed by Bill during their sound checks seem like hastiness personified in comparison. Only Bill himself found the process anything but boring. He was actually fascinated with it, and would spend as much time with the techs as he could, asking hundreds of questions, listening to hundreds of nuances through the headphones, and learning the very basics of a skill that he would one day be counted among the world's best at.

On October 2, 1982, at long last, the mixing, dubbing, overdubbing, and re-dubbing was finally declared complete and the end result was put on a master tape. Intemperance's first album was recorded and then copied onto another tape. That tape was sent to the manufacturer for production.

"They're going to run off one hundred thousand copies to start with," Shaver told them the following week, as they sat in their bi-monthly meeting with him. As usual, he had treated them to a few lines of his Bolivian flake and a round of Chivas and Coke. "In addition, they're going to run off about thirty thousand singles of Descent Into Nothing. That will be the first track that gets pushed. A few thousand of those copies will go off to radio stations all around the country, mostly in the bigger markets. National's promotion department is already talking to their contacts in the various cities about you guys and they'll start playing Descent even before the album and the singles are released for sale."

"So we'll be on the radio soon?" Matt asked.

"Probably within the next three weeks," Shaver said.

"I can't fuckin' wait to hear us on the radio, dudes," Darren said wistfully. He had helped himself to a double dose of the cocaine and was working on his third Chivas and Coke. "That's gonna be bad-ass."

"Indeed it will," Shaver said. "In any case, the tentative release date for the album and the single is December 7. I suspect its going to do well as long as the radio stations keep up their end of the bargain and give it widespread and frequent airplay. Descent is a catchy tune and people will love it if they get to hear it."

"Yeah," Jake said, a little sourly. He didn't really care for one of his songs-the lyrics and melody of which represented some of his deepest emotions-to be referred to as "a catchy tune".

"When it starts to sell, they'll run off more copies of the album and the original single. They'll also release the next single which will be Who Needs Love?. Long before this happens though, you boys will be going out on tour. We're already starting to talk over the details of that."

"Oh yeah?" Matt asked, his ears perking up. "What do you mean?"

Shaver smiled, taking a sip of his Coke-less Chivas on the rocks. "Well, it just so happens that one of my other clients-Earthstone-is releasing an album mid-November. Acardio and I both believe it would be beneficial for all concerned if you went out on tour as their opening band."

"Earthstone," Matt said in awe. "You mean... The Earthstone. Richie Valentine and Brad Winston. That Earthstone?" Earthstone was a favorite band of all of the Intemperance members. They were solid musicians and good lyricists, hindered only by the fact that many of their tunes were too lengthy for radio airplay.

"Those are my boys," Shaver confirmed. "I discovered that band, you know. Just like I discovered you. This will be their fourth album. We're calling it Losing Proposition. Some damn catchy tunes on this one. I'm hoping this one will be their first platinum cut."

"So, we'll be on the Losing Proposition tour?" Jake asked, wondering if that was prophetic or not.

Shaver laughed. "It's just a name," he said. "You boys like Earthstone? They're great guys. You'll love touring with them. They really know how to party."

NTV Television Studios, Los Angeles

October 25, 1982

The video producer was Norman Rutger. He was fifty years old but, thanks to multiple plastic surgeries on multiple portions of his body, looked an artificial thirty-five. He was a lecherous bisexual who came equally onto any man or woman who crossed his path. He had the habitual sniff of a habitual cocaine user and the trendy dress of a Hollywood insider. And he did not like being questioned, particularly in matters of one of his beloved music videos, which the members of Intemperance were here to film.

"I can't work with these people, Maxie," Rutger cried dramatically to Acardio. "How dare they question my choice of clothing. How dare they question my imagery!"

The band fumed as they watched this overdramatic tantrum. Matt, acting as spokesman, attempted a rare display of diplomacy. "Look, Max," he said, holding up the clothing in question. "We're not trying to be insulting, it's just that we don't wear stuff like this. I mean, leather pants? And red ones at that? We wear jeans on stage. Old, faded jeans and T-shirts. They're comfortable and that's the image we want to project."

"Not anymore you don't," Acardio said without hesitation. "Leather pants are in and that's what you're going to wear, both in the video and out on tour."

"I'm not wearing any fuckin' leather pants on tour!" Darren interjected.

"You'll wear whatever the hell we tell you to wear," Acardio said, glaring at Darren and making him look away. "If we want you dressed in a goddamn tutu with crotchless panties and your dingus hanging out and flapping in the breeze, that's what you'll wear!"

Darren's fists clenched up but he said nothing.

"Look," Jake said, stepping up to the bat. "The clothes are one thing. I suppose we can live with leather pants if we have to. But all this satanic imagery you're putting in this video. What is up with that?"

"It's the theme of the video," Acardio said, rolling his eyes. "Are you so dumb you don't realize that? Satanism sells! Look at Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden. We're shooting a video called Descent Into Nothing! A perfect opportunity to inject a Satanist image towards our band. It's not overt of course, we just show you descending further and further towards a dark and flame-ridden place with each scene. What possible problem could you have with that?"

"Well... that's not what the song is about," Jake said. "Descent is about the struggles of growing up, about leaving childhood behind, about the disillusionment of becoming an adult. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Satanism."

Max rolled his eyes again. "Nobody gives a fuck what you think the song is about."

"What I think the song is about? I wrote it! I'm pretty fucking sure that's what its about!"

Max waved this off. "Videos about the struggles of growing up don't sell albums and that's what we're here to do. Now I've had about as much of this shit as I'm going to take from you punks. Norman is producing this video and you are employees of National Records and you will do exactly what he tells you to do. Is that clear?"

It was clear. It took almost a week of ten-hour days, but they shot the video. They did what they were told, like good National Records employees.