Different Circles

Chapter 10: On the Radio

Los Angeles, California

July 2, 1992

KPID was the most listened to radio station in the Los Angeles basin. Licensed by the FCC since 1956, its format was pop music, primarily songs that were currently on the Top 100 list, with heavy emphasis on those in the Top 20. For that twenty percent of airtime in which they were not playing something from the current Top 100, they used approximately half playing songs that had been in the Top 10 in recent years but were now off the charts, and about half playing up and coming songs that were projected to hit the Top 100 soon.

KPID was but one of ninety-seven radio stations in the United States and Canada owned by the publicly traded entity known as Consolidated Radio Communications Corporation, or CRCC. Most of those stations, like KPID, focused primarily on popular music, but they owned a decent variety in other formats as well: Soft Rock, Hard Rock, Country, and even a few talk radio stations. Their headquarters was in the Library Tower Building in downtown LA, the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River, where they occupied the entirety of the 66^th Floor.

It was those popular music stations owned by CRCC and that latter ten percent of airtime in which new music was played that concerned Michael Riley, not just on this day, but on every day. Mick, as he liked to be called, was an independent record promotor, though that title—which did appear in bold on his custom designed business cards—was a wee bit of a misnomer. While he did promote music, he was not really independent, per se. He was paid by and answered to the National Records Music Promotion Department, an entity that took up the entire sixth and seventh floors of the National Records Building and carried an annual budget of forty million dollars, with access to another twenty million in emergency funding if such a thing became necessary. For legal reasons, however, Mick and those like him—National contracted with at least one independent music promotor in every major market in the nation—were not allowed to actually be employed by the record company itself.

The reasoning behind this was because of little thing called payola. It was illegal under FCC rules for a record company to directly pay a radio station or a DJ or a program director or anyone else affiliated with a radio station or radio stations to play certain music. However, if the person paying the radio station or the program director to play certain tunes was an independent contractor, well, that did not technically violate the letter of the law, though it did tramp rather ruthlessly over the spirit of it.

Mick Riley, at age forty-six, had long since made peace with the ethical concerns attached to his profession. Payola would go on with or without him. It was one of those things like police corruption, political corruption, or judicial corruption, that was just never going to go away. He considered what he did to be no different than being a corporate lobbyist who influenced congress members and senators. He was simply the conduit for delivering bribes in a fashion that was technically legal. And he made a pretty good living at it too. Last year he’d cleared a quarter million in taxable income plus another eighty thousand in under the table income. And that was not to mention the all-expenses paid trips he often made on National’s behalf, trips in which he was flown first-class, put up in five-star hotels, and usually treated to a round of golf at whatever the local country club happened to be.

He pulled his 1990 Corvette C4 into the valet parking area of the seventy-seven story building and brought it to a halt. He stepped out—after a moment of struggle to unwind himself from the low-riding driver’s seat—and stood up straight, stretching out to his full five feet eight and a half inches of height. His head was balding but he displayed it without shame, not bothering with a combover or a toupee. He had learned long ago that when one made more than a quarter mil a year, it did not really matter what one looked like to the opposite sex. When he wanted to get laid—and that was quite often, actually—he got laid, balding head, bulging stomach and all.

This was not to say that he did not display a certain amount of style. After all, in his business, image was almost as important as connections. He dressed his part well. He was currently wearing a stylish, custom fit Italian suit that had cost him four grand in a Rodeo Boulevard shop—one of six such suits that he owned. His shoes were custom fit wingtips, highly polished, that had cost him three hundred dollars in a different Rodeo Boulevard shop. In his left ear was a gold stud imbedded with a diamond. And, to complete the picture, a pair of three hundred dollar Ray-Ban Aviators were perched on his nose, completely obscuring his eyes.

Mick was here often enough that the valets all knew who he was, and he knew them. Jesus, an aspiring actor (of course) who worked the day shift, came rushing over when he saw Mick get out. He knew the record promotor was a good tipper.

“Mick, my man,” Jesus greeted. “How’s it going today?”

“Like an old man who just had a prostatectomy,” Mick replied, reaching into the car and retrieving his sixteen hundred dollar Louis Vuitton briefcase.

Jesus furled his brow a bit. “Does that mean good?” he asked.

“It means good, Jesus,” Mick assured him, holding out his hand. They had a shake and then Mick asked him about his career.

“I auditioned for a deodorant commercial last week,” he said. “Still waiting to hear back.”

“Good luck on that,” Mick told him. “Many the prestigious career was launched on the back of a good deodorant commercial.”

“That’s what my agent says,” Jesus said.

“He sounds like a wise man,” Mick said. “Now take care of my car for me, huh? I’ve gotta go talk some music with some people.”

“You got it, Mick,” Jesus told him, folding himself inside the sixty thousand dollar car. He fired it up and roared off toward the parking area beneath the building.

Mick walked to the large doors and into the spacious lobby of the building, going past the row of shops, the restaurant, and the main kiosk. He came to the primary bank of elevators. An armed security guard behind a desk guarded access here. He too knew Mick by sight.

“Welcome, Mick,” the guard greeted. “Heading up to sixty-six?”

“You know it, Jeff,” Mick returned. “I have a ten o’clock up there with Larry Justice.”

“Here you go,” Jeff said, handing him the keycard pass that would allow him into the elevators.

“Thanks,” Mick told him.

He used his keycard to call one of the express elevators and, two minutes later, he was on the sixty-sixth floor. The offices of CRCC were tastefully decorated, using primarily blacks and whites and shades of gray, the furniture and the artwork modern and incorporating the same basic color scheme. He checked in with the receptionist at the main desk—her name was Julie and, though she was friendly to him, she had rejected every offer he’d ever made to go out with him—and barely had time to sit down in one of the chairs before he was called into the office of Lawrence Justice III, the head of the music promotion department.

LJ3 was one of the higher ups in the CRCC hierarchy. Mick wasn’t sure what kind of coin he was pulling in, but he knew it had to be at least in the low seven figure range. He was a fit man in his late forties, the holder of a master’s degree in Business and Accounting and a card carrying CPA. He was also a former musician, having supplemented his family income through school by playing sessions on the drums at both National Records’ and Aristocrat Records’ studios.

There was no trace of that former drummer in his appearance now. He looked like something straight out of a Republican Party recruiting poster. His dark hair was immaculately styled and held in place by enough hair spray to constitute an explosive hazard. His suit was dark and he made a point to keep his jacket on whenever meeting with someone. The pictures on his desk were of his trophy wife and their two trophy children. It was common knowledge, however, that he was actually a fan of young men in their late teens—or maybe even a little younger?—who were willing let him into their back doors for a little game of may-I-push-in-your-stool?

“Mick,” LJ3 greeted from behind his twelve thousand dollar oak desk. “It’s good to see you.”

“Glad you had time to squeeze me in today, Larry,” Mick returned, reaching out and taking the offered hand for the obligatory shake. He then sat down in the leather chair across the desk and set his briefcase down on the Berber carpet.

“Hey now,” Larry said. “It’s you and your fellow IMPs who are the lifeblood of this industry called radio. And National is one of the bigger music producers we play at CRCC. You bet your mutual fund I’ll always make time to see you.”

Right, Mick thought cynically. It’s actually the two and a half million dollars a year I transfer from National’s promotion budget account to CRCC’s general fund that keeps that door open for me and lets me call you Larry. If it wasn’t for that, they wouldn’t let me sweep the floors in this place. Of course, he would never actually say anything like that, or even hint at it. The game here was that they had to pretend that Mick was just suggesting new music and they were just considering and then ultimately accepting those suggestions. That deuce and a half in “incidental promotion costs” had nothing to do with anything.

“I have some new material being released soon that National thinks you might be interested in,” Mick told him.

“Always happy to hear new releases from National,” Larry said with a smile. “What do you have?”

Mick opened his briefcase and pulled out four CD cases, all of which had printed papers with very specific promotional instructions and information attached to them.

“These first two,” he said, “are a couple of new acts that National has signed and that they’re getting ready to release debuts on.” He slid one of the cases across—a mostly black case with a human skull the primary feature on the front. “This is Primal Fire, a thrash metal group out of Albuquerque. Bailey over in the NAD department is really excited about this one and the promo boys are telling me that we’ve got two solid radio friendly cuts on there they would like to see given saturation airplay—assuming, of course, that you folks like the cuts.”

“Of course,” Larry said, looking at the cover with a bit of distaste. “I’m guessing this would be for our hard rock stations?”

“Correct,” Mick said. “They’re radio friendly for that genre only. We’re talking about the cut Born to Die as the first promoted and then Cut Your Wings as the second. If we get enough airplay with those two, the album sales should be good and everyone is happy.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Larry said, pushing the CD and the paper off to the side.

“This next one,” Mick said, handing him a case with a barely concealed naked woman riding a black unicorn as the featured photo, “is Immaculate Conscription. They’re an all-female pop group aimed at the eighteen to thirty-fours ostensibly, but what National is really shooting for are the teens.”

“Ahhh,” Larry said knowingly. “So, they’re a bit too edgy to officially be a teen targeted group, but you anticipate they will be the primary audience anyway.”

“Exactly,” Mick agreed. “They’re a bunch of anorexic mid-twenties chicks that look like concentration camp survivors if you see them in real life, but look like hotness personified on camera when they’re all made-up and constructed. They do a lot of four-part harmony backed by dance beat and synthesizer tracks. The lyrics are simplistic, but full of heavy sexual innuendo that will appeal to the primary demographic, both male and female. Their videos are pushing up against the very boundary of obscenity. Fucking parents are going to hate them.”

“That is never a bad thing when you’re shooting for that demographic,” Larry said.

“It is not,” Mick agreed. “The teen guys are all going to be pumping their pythons to the videos and the promo pics, and the teen girls are all going to want to be them.”

“I like them already,” Larry said. “Would you suggest playing them heavily on the pop stations during the two to seven period?”

“It’s like you read my mind,” Mick said. The 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM was the time period when the twelve to eighteen male and female demographics were most likely to be listening—a sharp contrast from the 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM slot, which was when the eighteen to thirty-fours were most likely. “The first cut we would suggest promoting is In the Park, which is suggestive about furtive sex in a car while out on a date. The second cut to be promoted should then be Go Downtown, which is suggestive about male to female oral sex.”

“Only suggestive, right?” Radio executives nationwide lived in constant fear of actually having a song legally declared obscene on some level that would set a precedent.

“Naturally,” Mick assured him. “The lyricists that penned the tunes for these chicks are some of National’s best. Everyone will know what they’re really talking about, but the verses are ambiguous enough and symbolic enough for plausible deniability.”

“Very good,” Larry said. “We’ll give them a listen and see what we can do. What else do you have?”

“These next two kind of go together in a strange way,” Mick said, picking up the last two CD cases. “They’re not really new artists at all, but members of former top-selling groups that are now solo.”

“Oh?”

“Celia Valdez and Jake Kingsley are both releasing solo albums in the next two weeks.”

“Really?” Larry said, taking the CDs in hand and looking at them. “I’ve heard some rumors floating around about that.”

“The rumors are true.”

“They’re not on National’s label,” Larry said, seeing the KVA Records emblem on the back.

“That’s correct. They’ve gone independent and they signed with National for MD&P, therefore they fall under my umbrella for this region. They come as a package deal with some very specific ... uh... suggestions for how their music should be promoted.”

“Is that a fact?” Larry said, raising his eyebrows a bit.

“It’s a fact. National agrees strongly with their suggestions and would request that they be followed, if you can accommodate, of course.” This was the polite way of saying that CRCC needed to follow the instructions carefully or their income string could take a hit.

“We will certainly accommodate you if we can,” Larry said, which was the face-saving way of saying he would make it so. He then flipped the CDs back over and looked at the covers.

As a primary homosexual—though he was confident that no one knew about this—his eyes were drawn to Kingsley’s cover first. Can’t Keep Me Down was the title of the album. There was a glossy photo of Kingsley sitting on a stool with a battered looking acoustic guitar in his hands, as if he were playing it. He was wearing a pair of ripped and faded blue jeans and a sleeveless black shirt that displayed the tattoos on his upper arms. His face looked pretty much as it always had, perhaps a bit older than his cover photo for Lines On the Map, the last Intemperance album, but still unmistakably Jake Kingsley. He still had the shoulder length hair and the slight scruff of whiskers on his face. Larry did not suspect in the least that the scruff had been put in by photographic effects over the image of a clean-shaven face and that the hair itself was a carefully matched and styled wig that Kingsley had worn just for the photo shoot.

A little old for me, Larry thought, but I’d still hit that in a hot minute.

“I assume we should play this on the hard rocks?” he asked Mick.

“Well ... yes, naturally,” Mick said, “but it is also thought that there will be some significant crossover into the pop genre among the entire eighteen to forty-nine spectrum for both sexes.”

Larry raised his eyebrows. That was a very bold statement. “Really now?”

Mick nodded seriously. “It’s not quite of the Intemp genre,” he said. “It’s rock music, have no doubt about that, but it’s not heavy metal at all. Some of the stuff in there doesn’t even have electric guitar in it.”

“You’re putting me on,” Larry said.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Mick assured him. “Kingsley’s gone experimental. He’s come up with some pretty cool stuff. National thinks it will appeal to more than just the hard rock demo.”

“It sounds a bit risky. You understand that we do have to maintain our primary goal of keeping ears on our stations, right?”

“I understand,” Mick assured him. Again, they were discussing the unwritten rules and understandings of the relationship between record company, radio executive, and promotor. CRCC was obligated to promote the music as suggested if they wanted to keep receiving their funding from National. But if that music turned out to be unappealing to the music consumer and CRCC could show that people were actually turning their radios to other stations in large numbers when one of the songs they were being paid to promote was played, they were free to stop playing that song without penalty. This was exactly what had happened with Matt Tisdale’s tunes and Larry was undoubtedly thinking about that. “National does not expect you to lose advertising revenue if the tunes turn out to be unpopular. They just ask that you give them their fair shake and let the consumers and the listeners be the judge.”

“Fair enough,” Larry said with a shrug. He then picked up the Celia Valdez CD. The Struggle was the title of album. The cover showed a full color side profile shot of Valdez that had apparently been taken in the recording studio. Her dark hair was spilling across her shoulders and a pair of studio headphones—cans, as they were called—were covering her ears. Her hands were on the outer part of the earphones and her mouth was open, showing impossibly white teeth, as she sang into a ceiling mounted voice microphone. The side profile was the perfect angle to show the side swell of her left breast in a tight maroon sweater. Though Larry wasn’t really into that sort of thing, he had enough heterosexuality and artistic appreciation within him to recognize how alluring the shot made those fabulous boobs of hers look. Celia really was an attractive representation of femininity. The profile shot was the only part of the cover that was in color. Blended into the rest of the cover was a background, in black and white, of a grove of fruit trees in full blossom stretching off to the horizon. Rising above that horizon, also in black and white, were menacing looking thunderheads that seemed to threaten Valdez with their approach.

“Good photo effects on that cover, huh?” Mick asked.

Larry nodded with genuine appreciation. “I’m impressed,” he said. “It looks like she’s recording in the middle of a dark orchard and about to get hit by lightning, and that juicy tit of hers almost looks like you could reach out and touch it.”

“That’s exactly the effect they were going for.”

“How’s the music though?” Larry asked. “I seem to remember that La Diff’s last two albums were varying degrees of failure.”

Mick smiled. He had listened to The Struggle (the album, as well as the song) several times now, and though it didn’t happen often in his business dealings, he now spoke the complete truth. “This album is going to blow people away,” he said. “She has ten extremely solid cuts here that are going to appeal to the entire spectrum from pop to hard rock and across the entire teen to sixty-five range.”

Larry looked at him in disbelief. “You almost sound as if you believe that bullshit,” he said.

Mick’s expression did not change. “I’m not bullshitting, Larry,” he said. “This album is a once in a decade piece, I’m telling you. The combination of her voice, the lyrics, and the musical composition is just ... I can’t even describe it. You’ll see what I’m saying when you give it a listen.”

“If you say so,” Larry told him. “We’ll certainly give it enough airplay for the people to let their opinions be known. After that ... well ... as long as our ears on the other side of the airwaves aren’t turning the station whenever she comes on, we’ll keep it up.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” Mick assured him. “Now ... how about we go over the specifics of how we ... uh ... that is National, wants these albums promoted?”

Larry gave a little frown. “Aren’t the suggestions written on the promo sheets like always?” he asked.

“They are. And for Primal Fire and Immaculate Conscription, I’ll just let you read those sheets and do your thing. With Valdez and Kingsley, however, the suggestions are a bit more than the normal play this and then play that in this demographic kind of thing. National wanted to make sure I went over the plan in detail with you so you can draft specific directions in your memos to your affiliate stations around the country.”

“All right,” Larry said with a sigh. “Lay it on me.”

“Okay” Mick said. “The albums are going to hit the shelves on Tuesday, the 14^th of July. Naturally, National wants to start getting some exposure to the initial release cuts before that date to build up a little familiarity in advance.”

“Nothing unusual about that,” Larry said.

“No, but hang with me for a few. They want Valdez’s initial cut to be The Struggle, the title cut of the album, and Kingsley’s to be The Easy Way. They want both of them played across the entire eighteen to fifty-four demo, with heavy concentration on the morning and evening peaks. They want no other cuts from either album to be played at all until the initials start to catch and chart.”

“Assuming that happens,” Larry said.

“Assuming that happens,” Mick agreed. “Now, for Struggle, it will only be on the pops, and they want universal mentions of the artist name by your jocks whenever the cut is played, but only after it has played. They want no artist ID beforehand during the pre-release period.”

Larry raised his eyebrows up. “You want me to tell all of the DJs in sixty-plus stations not to say the artist before they spin Struggle?”

“Correct,” Mick confirmed. “That means the cut cannot be played at the beginning of a set or in the middle, only at the end. Until the CD reaches the shelves, artist name announced every single time after the song is over. Once the release date comes, you can start going back to the normal scheduling, but always have the jock say that Valdez is the artist until the cut starts to chart.”

“Okay,” Larry said slowly.

“Now for Easy,” Mick continued, “things are a bit more complex.”

“More complex than what you just told me?”

“Correct,” Mick said. “Easy is to be heavily played on both the hard rocks and the pops. On the hard rock stations, always announce Kingsley as the artist prior to playing the cut, never after. On the pop stations, however, use the same rule as Valdez. Put the cut at the end of a set and then announce artist consistently after it has played, never before. This is to be kept up, not just until the release date, but until the cut starts to chart.”

Larry was shaking his head. “I don’t understand the purpose of all this.”

Mick gave a shrug. “It seems the plan for Valdez and for Kingsley on the pops is to let the listeners hear the song and connect with it before they know who is singing it. This will hopefully avoid having station switch occur just on name alone. On the hard rocks, however, they want listeners to know that a new Jake Kingsley tune is about to be played. That way the Intemp fans will hang around and give the tune a listen just because it’s Jake Kingsley.”

Another raise of the eyebrows by Larry. “I believe that somebody over at National is overthinking things a bit.”

“Perhaps,” Mick allowed, “but they are very insistent upon these suggestions.”

He gave a little shake of the head and an eye roll. “I’ll make it happen. Is there anything else?”

“There is,” Mick said. “There is to be no mention that Kingsley and Valdez have gone independent. Most of the listeners won’t even know what that means anyway, but for those that do, just let them go on thinking that a major label is behind the albums until they buy the CD and see the KVA logo.”

“What is the point of that?” Larry asked.

“National does not want Kingsley and Valdez to be associated with each other. They want the general public to assume that these two albums have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”

“What about when people buy the CDs and see the KVA label on both? Surely, if National thinks these things are going to appeal to a broad spectrum of the demographic, there will be people who buy both, right? Won’t that clue them in?”

“Not your average music consumer,” Larry said. “If anyone notices the KVA label at all, they’ll just assume it’s another record company out of LA. They’ll have no way of knowing that Valdez and Kingsley are the only two artists on the label.”

“I suppose,” Larry said.

“Your jocks, however, might notice something like that. That’s fine and dandy as long as they keep those speculations and suppositions off the air. No mention of KVA Records on air. No pondering of the relationship between Kingsley and Valdez.”

“Just what is that relationship anyway?” Larry had to ask. “Are they boning each other?”

“Undoubtedly,” Mick said, “but that stays privileged information. National would be very upset if one of your jocks started spouting off about it.”

“I will see to it that they are instructed to avoid any on-air speculations,” Larry promised. “What are you going to do about the independent stations though? My word doesn’t cut any shit with them.”

“Don’t worry about the indies,” Mick said. “You will not be held in any way accountable for what they do or say or play. Not under your control.”

Larry nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

“Not at this time,” Mick told him. “Once the initial promos start to chart, however, I’ll have more suggestions about what to release next and how to promote it.”

“I can’t wait to hear them,” Larry said, hardly even bothering to sound sincere.

Larry Justice did not listen to either CD. He did not actually care what they sounded like. It was not his job to care about that. Instead, he dictated a memo to his secretary that laid out the specific instructions on the suggestion form, adding a little language that made it very clear that the instructions were to be followed exactly (particularly those dealing with the speculation about KVA Records and the Kingsley-Valdez connection). This memorandum was then faxed to every CRCC station that would be playing either or both of the soon-to-be-released cuts.

The faxes, which were each addressed by name to the program directors of the stations in question and marked CONFIDENTIAL in bold lettering, went out before the close of business that day. In most cases, they were sitting in the program director’s inbox the next morning. The program directors read the memo and then compiled memos of their own that would be sent to their DJs. As of yet, however, none of the stations even had a copy of either CD. This was deliberate. The promotion instructions had to be received, understood, and acknowledged before anyone had actual access to the music.

Twenty-four hours later, the CDs began to arrive. They came in boxes shipped from National Records’ manufacturing facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, stuffed in among more than two dozen other new release CDs from other artists old and new, corporate and independent, who had music that would be released on Tuesday, July 14, 1992. In most cases the program directors had already received their promotional instructions on how/when/what to play from each one. This was a routine aspect of the business of radio in the United States.

The program director at KPID in Los Angeles was Ron Jenkins, a fifty year old UCLA alumni with a master’s degree in communications with a minor in business. Ron had been in the radio biz for more than thirty years, starting out spinning vinyl on the night shift at the UCLA station and working his way steadily up the ladder. He had enjoyed his life a lot more when he had actually been the power behind what KPID played on the air—back before CRCC had come to town and acquired the station (as the term went) from the independent owners in 1987—but he made a lot more money these days being a corporate lackey. Though he found the instructions regarding the Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez releases to be a bit overbearing and odd, he nevertheless composed his memos and even had a mandatory meeting with all of his DJs to make sure they all understood the instructions regarding these particular releases. Once he was satisfied that they did, he made note of the length of play of each tune and then got together with his staff to start working on plugging the airplay times and frequency into the schedule. Ron Jenkins did not listen to the CDs either. Being involved in the business of music had long since destroyed his ability to enjoy simply listening to it.

The actual first employee of CRCC in the southern California market to hear anything on either CD was Frank Terrell, aka Freaky Frankie, the flamboyant KPID DJ who played music for the LA basin during the six to ten morning commute slot. At 5:30 AM on Monday, July 6^th, the first commute day after the holiday weekend, he was in his booth going over the day’s playlist and organizing the CDs he would need preparatory to starting his show. He saw that both Struggle and Easy were to be played several times during his shift, always at the end of a set, just before the commercial breaks. Having been at the meeting last Friday, he knew it would be his responsibility to announce the artist name before cutting away to those commercials. He was quite aware that this was all shameless promotion for a record company’s releases, promotion that National Records had bought and paid for, but he was unoffended by this. He had been in radio long enough to know the realities.

Curious, he grabbed the Celia Valdez CD from the hopper before him and took a look at it. He gave an appreciative nod as he saw the side profile of Valdez on the cover. Nice fucking tits, he thought, licking his lips a little. I wonder if she’s going to show up here for some promo at some point? That was certainly not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe I could accidentally cop a feel of one of those hogans if she stops by? Definitely something to think about. He could ask her to pose for a picture with him, put his arm around her for the shot, and maybe his hand could just creep around a bit onto the side boob. The plan had some merits.

He pondered the idea of groping Celia Valdez for a few more minutes and then decided to see what all the fuss was about. He popped open the CD case and put the disc into the number two of his three CD slots. He put his headphones on and heard the sound of Linda Fong, the late night DJ who was sitting in the next booth over, getting ready to start her final set, announcing that the next song would be Friday I’m in Love, the first of eighteen spins it would receive on KPID today. With a quick flip of a switch, the headphones went silent, cutting off The Cure before they could even get started. He looked at the back of the CD case and saw that The Struggle was the first cut. He took one quick look to make sure his output switch was set to headphones only instead of transmit, and then started it playing.

The music filled his ears—a mournful saxophone melody, some acoustic guitar, a violin, a mild electric guitar. Nice opening, he thought appreciatively, with the ear of a professional music evaluator and aficionado. And then the vocals started and his opinion of the tune started to climb. Damn, she’s got a nice voice. And the lyrics—they were just so sad, so realistic. He had spun quite a few La Diferencia tunes in his career—KPID still played I Love to Dance once or twice each day, as a matter of fact—and he remembered them as cheesy pop staples, perhaps a cut above other such tunes just because of Valdez’s voice and the acoustic guitar work. Valdez certainly seemed to have upped her game on her solo effort.

He listened to the tune all the way through and genuinely enjoyed it. This tune is going to chart big time, he predicted to himself with confidence. It was a confidence that was well-earned. A career of listening to pop music and playing it for LA had turned him into a fairly good authority on the subject.

He popped the CD back out of the slot and then carefully replaced it in its case, handling it only by the edges, and then returned the case to the frequent play hopper where it belonged. That done, he took out the Jake Kingsley CD from the same hopper. He looked at the picture on the front for a moment, taking in Kingsley’s face. He had met the man several times back during Intemperance’s heyday and he was a fan. Though only a few Intemp songs had been regularly played on KPID over the years, those that were had been huge hits. He respected Kingsley on two different levels. Musically, he was beyond reproach, but his reputation as a prolific plunderer of pussy Frank held in particularly high regard. How could you not respect a man who had nailed Mindy Snow? And now the word on the street was that he was slamming Celia Valdez. He had been instructed to keep that rumor off the air, but that did not prevent him from pondering it in his own mind. I wonder if she moans in Spanish to him while he’s railing her? He liked to believe she did. And does she take it up the old poop chute? He chose to believe she did that as well.

When he finally tired of contemplating the sexual practices of Jake and Celia, he removed the CD from its case and popped it in. The Easy Way was the first cut on the album and he fired it up. It caught him off guard when he heard the synthesizer and the underlying beat, but once Kingsley’s voice started singing, he warmed up quickly. And then when the song went up-tempo and the guitar started to crunch a little more, his appreciation increased.

Not bad at all, he thought, nodding his head to the beat. Not exactly what I was expecting from a Kingsley tune, but it works. I think this one is going to chart as well.

He listened to this tune all the way through as well and then put the CD back where it belonged. He went back to his programming list and looked it over again. Struggle would be played for the first time at 7:05 and then again at 8:34. Easy would be played at 7:27 and then 8:48. He found himself looking forward to spinning both.

This same story was going on all across the United States and Canada. The corporate owned stations got the CDs first and played them first by virtue of the fact that they were, by definition, corporate and, thus, could receive instruction and direction at multiple stations by the authority of a single office, which made it easy for someone like Mick to do his job.

On July 6, 1992, every major market in the US heard both The Struggle and The Easy Way on at least one station, but usually on several. In every case, the local programming directors and the DJ or DJs spinning the tunes followed their presentation directions to the letter.

Nothing terribly dramatic happened on this first day. Nobody fell down in the streets in awe as they heard the tunes and nobody vowed to blow up a radio station either. About the only thing of note was that a dozen or so of the hard rock stations received phone calls from male listeners—they were all males—asking if that tune they’d just played was really Jake Kingsley, The Jake Kingsley? Of Intemperance fame? Most of these callers, when told that it really was The Jake Kingsley, expressed degrees of disappointment with the tune that ranged from “not what I was expecting” to “What a fuckin’ sellout!”

Two days later, the independent stations—which, at this point in the history of radio broadcasting, still made up more than half of all FCC licensed broadcasters—began to receive the CDs as well. The delay here was because each individual program director and/or station manager had to be contacted directly, one by one, by whatever independent music promoter was assigned to that particular region.

KRON was one such station. As the most popular hard rock station in the Los Angeles region, KRON was worthy of having two hundred thousand dollars a year indirectly paid into its account by Mick and his team, acting on behalf of National Records. This was not to mention the unreported cash payments, elaborate trips to ‘radio conferences’ in Hawaii or Las Vegas, and the three martini lunches that both the director and the manager were routinely treated to by Mick himself. As such, when Mick gave them their list of ‘suggestions’ regarding the Kingsley CD, they listened and implemented those suggestions.

By July 13^th, one day before the release of the CDs for sale in music stores, Walmarts, department stores, and everywhere else CDs could be purchased, every market in the USA and Canada were regularly playing both The Struggle and The Easy Way, and most music consumers who cared enough to know the names of artists they enjoyed were aware that Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez solo albums existed.

Jake and Laura were together when they first heard one of their efforts played on the radio. It was 7:05 AM on the morning of July 6. Jake had just come in from his morning run up in Griffith Park. His T-shirt was damp with sweat, his shoes and socks brown with trail dust. On his face, his mustache was nearly grown back now after being shaved for the album cover photo session.

“Hey, babe,” he greeted Laura, who was sitting before the master bath mirror wearing only a pair of black panties. She had just come out of the shower and was combing out her hair. She had another gig down at the National studio today and needed to be there at 9:00 AM. It was her fifth such session in the past two weeks, doing overdubs on a smooth jazz project by someone Jake had never heard of, but Laura had.

“Hey, sweetie,” she returned, flashing him her smile. She seemed very happy these days and was always in a good mood. “How was the run?”

“It was there,” he said, and then reached down and ran the back of his hand across one of her exposed breasts.

“Stop that!” she said, pushing the hand away. “You’re all grimy and sweaty!”

“You don’t seem to mind that at other times,” he challenged.

“I’m not getting ready to hit the studio at other times,” she shot back. “You can play with them all you want when I get home, but hands off right now.”

“Prude,” he told her.

“Am not,” she said stiffly. “I’ll have you know that I let some guy lick my butthole while I was in the hot tub last night.”

“Yeah?” he said, smiling at the memory. “Anyone I know?”

“Shut up,” she said, slapping at him again.

Jake gave her a quick kiss on the back of her exposed shoulder and then pulled off his shirt and dropped it into the laundry hamper. His shorts, underwear and socks soon followed. He then walked over and turned on the shower. While waiting for it to heat up, he flipped on the radio that was on the counter next to Laura. It was already tuned to KPID, the pop station, not because Jake or Laura listened to pop music—they really didn’t—but because they both knew their cuts were going to be played soon and they wanted to keep their ears out for them.

Friday I’m in Love was in its final throes and winding down. Jake was glad. “What a stupid fucking song,” he opined, having heard it multiple times over the past few weeks as it climbed the charts. “Talk about formulistic. You just repeat the days of the week over and over again with some simplistic lyrics and people eat the shit up.”

“Yeah, it hasn’t really grown on me either,” Laura told him, putting down her brush and picking up her lacy black bra.

“A perfect example of how the MTV phase mortally wounded the music industry.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” she said. “The music I like is still around and still going strong because it’s not popular. That means it’s not treated as a commodity by guys in suits and remains relatively pure to its message and cause.”

Jake looked at her and nodded thoughtfully. “That’s pretty deep, babe,” he said.

She smiled. “I came up with that while we were smoking pot last night. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Pretty cool,” he agreed.

He was just stepping toward the shower and Laura was just snapping her bra into place when Friday (as they undoubtedly called it in their inner circles) faded out and a very familiar melody began to play over the top of it. Both of them stopped what they were doing and stared at the radio.

“This is it!” Laura said excitedly. “They’re playing Struggle!”

“Yes, they are,” Jake said, a little excited himself.

They listened to the tune all the way through, Laura transfixed, an expression of awe on her face as she heard her own saxophone coming out of the speaker. Jake watched her face, knowing how she felt. There was nothing quite like hearing your first piece on the radio after all the hard work, all the ... well, the struggle. He remembered when he’d heard Descent Into Nothing played for the first time. He had been in bed with Angie—his girlfriend at the time—in her Hollywood apartment when it had come on the cheap bedside radio/alarm clock that they had turned on while they were having sex. He remembered being entranced as he heard his own voice, his own guitar chords coming out. That had been special.

Of course, shortly after that moment in time he had climbed on a bus for the Descent Into Nothing tour and had never seen or talked to Angie again. He felt a sharp stab of guilt as this part of the memory surfaced, wondered for a brief moment what Angie was doing now, and then he pushed those thoughts back down and went back to watching Laura’s face. Jake was not one to dwell on the past, especially when the present was looking and feeling pretty good.

The song ended and the DJ—someone who called himself Freaky Frankie—began to speak: “What do you think of that cut, LA?” he asked his audience, which, since this was the highest rated non-syndicated morning show in the market, was considerable. “That was some new music for you, a little tune called The Struggle, which is the title cut from a solo album by Celia Valdez. Remember her, LA? She was the lead singer for La Diferencia a few years back and now she’s on her own. That album will be available in stores on July 14^th, I’m told, but remember, you heard it here first on KPID on the Freaky Frankie morning show!”

“Wow,” Laura whispered, a smile on her face. “That may be the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Cooler than me licking your butthole?” Jake had to ask.

“Even cooler than that,” she confirmed.

It took Celia a few more days to hear her cut for the first time. She and Greg were in their house in Palm Springs, California and that particular market did not have any corporate owned radio stations currently.

It was just after seven o’clock in the morning on the morning of July 9^th, 1992. Greg had just showered and was putting on his golf clothes—a pair of tan shorts, a white polo shirt from Saint Andrew’s golf club in Scotland, and a pair of ninety-dollar athletic socks—preparatory to hitting the club for his 7:45 tee time with a couple of potential investors in his Coos Bay golf links project. Celia was still in bed, dressed in her standard pajamas: a long T-shirt with a picture of a cat on it. She had no bra on because she hated trying to sleep in a bra. She did have on a pair of blue panties because she and Greg had not had sex last night.

She was halfway between asleep and awake. She did not want to climb upward into the land of full wakefulness because she’d been up until nearly midnight trying to compose some new material. She could not, however, drift back down into sleep because Greg was puttering around and making noise and the damned alarm clock radio, which had awakened him, was still on and pumping out pop music hits.

She rolled back and forth a few times, twisting the covers around, kicking until one bare leg poked out, her long hair getting wrapped around her forehead and her eyes. She was in a bit of a cranky mood of late. The stress of her impending CD release coupled with the fact that Greg had dragged her to the goddamn desert in June just so he could schmooze with the rich people who lived here was wearing on her nerves a bit.

And then she heard it. I’m Too Sexy faded out and the familiar intro to The Struggle began to play. Sleep fell away from her like a robe being shrugged to the floor. She sat up in bed, pushing the covers down and the hair out of her face.

“Hey,” said Greg lightly from the mirror, where he was painstakingly working on his own hair (which he was just going to cover with a golf cap anyway). “That’s your song.”

“Yes, it is,” she said in wonder.

“Nice to finally hear it on the air,” Greg said, still fussing with one of his locks, trying to make it just so. “And they didn’t intro it first either. I guess all that stuff Jake was pushing for came off, huh?”

“So far,” she agreed, still transfixed, wishing that Greg would just shut up and let her listen.

Though she did not say this to him, he picked up on it nonetheless. He kept his mouth shut and let her listen. He had heard the song several times since Celia had brought home her copy of the master, and he liked it well enough, but he didn’t understand why she was so fascinated to be hearing her own voice coming out of the radio now, especially when it was a tune she had just finished playing hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Musicians, he thought with a shake of the head. They’re a strange bunch.

The song played out and then the DJ came on. It was a female with a sexy sounding voice. “This is Barbara Jo here on the Hot 97, KROK, Palm Springs and the desert region. We just played a little new music to get your morning mood set. That was Celia Valdez, formerly of La Diferencia, with the title cut from her new solo album: The Struggle. I kind of liked that one, if I do say so myself. I think we’ll give it a few more spins later in the morning. But now, how about we take care of a little business?” And with that, she cut to a commercial for Desert Motors, who were allegedly the premier Toyota dealer in the greater Palm Springs area.

“That was cool hearing the song on the airwaves,” Greg said. “You guys did a good job in that studio—even if we did all have to pony up another quarter mil to launch the projects.”

“It’s all starting to seem real now,” she said. “We really did put out something worth listening to. They really are playing it on the radio.”

“Did you ever have any doubt?”

She gave a crooked smile. “Yes,” she admitted. “I did. Multiple times, in fact.”

He walked over and kissed her on her forehead. “I didn’t,” he told her. “I saw how determined you and Jake were the whole time.”

She looked up at him and smiled, feeling the love she had for him coursing through her. He was a bit stiff at times—no pun intended—but he had his moments. “Thanks, Greg,” she told him. “For everything.”

“Hey,” he said. “Someone has to start bringing some income into this marriage, don’t they?”

She laughed. “I guess so.”

“What happens next?”

“Now, we sit back and go along with the ride. Hopefully it’ll be an enjoyable one.”

Ted Duncan was on duty on the afternoon of July 8, 1992, when he first heard Struggle played on the air. He was working with Caryn Brown, a five year EMT who was currently engaging in a struggle of her own: She was trying to work full-time hours while simultaneously putting herself through a local paramedic school so she could upgrade and, hopefully, get herself a job with LA County Fire in the next few years.

Caryn—an out of the closet and proud to be there butch lesbian—sat in the driver’s seat of the blue and white converted Ford van ambulance as it sat beneath a tree in the back reaches of Corrigan Park near central Pomona. She had a large textbook—The Principals of Emergency Medical Trauma Assessment and Care—balanced on the steering wheel and open to the chapter regarding mechanisms of injury and how to evaluate them. In her lap was a notebook that she was jotting down sample test question answers on. In the passenger seat was Ted, her assigned partner for this particular six month rotation. He was currently dozing in his seat, his head slumped over to the side in a position that looked hideously uncomfortable, loud snores issuing from his mouth on occasion—snores that were often cut suddenly off for alarming amounts of time by sleep apnea. Both medics were dressed in the standard summer uniform of navy blue cargo pants and light blue polo shirts with their last names and positions stenciled on them. Ted’s polo was untucked and would remain as such unless a field supervisor happened across them—an unlikely scenario on such a warm day. Their communications radios—one tuned to the Pomona City Fire channel and one to their dispatch channel—were squawking out an endless stream of traffic, but both were veteran enough that the volume was kept low. If something came across either radio that concerned them, they would hear it. The music radio was on as well, and tuned to the afternoon show on KPID.

Eric Clapton’s song, Tears in Heaven, came to an end and Caryn’s attention was diverted from her studying when she heard the familiar sound of The Struggle by Celia Valdez start. Though Caryn had not heard the song played on the radio yet, she—along with pretty much every other member of the Pomona division’s paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, supervisors, and managers—had been given a cassette copy of both Celia Valdez’s The Struggle CD and Jake Kingsley’s Can’t Keep Me Down CD that Ted had recorded from the master copies he’d been given. She had listened to both cassettes multiple times in her car during her commutes and really enjoyed both. She had always liked working with Ted—he was a funny guy and a great medic—but that enjoyment had gone up a few notches once he returned from his leave after spending the better part of a cycle recording music with Jake Kingsley (who Caryn considered a legend) and Celia Valdez (who Caryn wanted to palpate in more than a clinical manner).

“Hey,” Caryn said, reaching over and giving him a shake on the shoulder. “Wake up!”

Ted went immediately from sound asleep to wide awake—this was a skill essential to first responders and Ted possessed it—his eyes flying open, his head turning to look at her. “What?” he asked. “Was it the apnea again? I told you, you don’t need to wake me up unless it’s been more than a minute.”

“No, not the apnea,” she said. “You were staying in the thirty to forty seconds range, mostly. Your song is on the radio. I thought you might want to hear it.”

“My song?” he asked, then tuned his ears into the music issuing from the cheap stock speakers in the doors of the rig. He heard the melody playing, heard the rhythm set by his drums and Ben Ping’s bass. He smiled. “Well, what do you know?”

Caryn reached over and turned up the volume a bit, as loud as she dared without drowning out their dispatch radios. “It really is a good tune,” she told him. “I can’t believe that’s actually you on the drums.”

“I’m pretty good, ain’t I?” Ted said. “This was one of the easier cuts, of course, but I got into some pretty complex shit on Jake’s album, also on Games on Celia’s.”

“I really dig Playing Those Games,” Caryn said. “That’s my favorite song on the tape. It rocks.”

“It is badass,” Ted agreed. “Jake told me it’ll be the second cut they start promoting from Celia’s CD.”

“Who would’ve thought that the I Love to Dance girl could put out some premo shit like this?” Caryn said. She looked at Ted meaningfully. “Tell me the truth. Is Jake Kingsley boning her?”

“He’s not boning her,” Ted said. “They’ve definitely got some chemistry working between them—anyone who hangs out with those two can see that—but I’m pretty sure he’s not wetting his weenie with her.”

“A shame,” Caryn said. “I’d sure as shit would play the scissor game with her if she gave me a shot. Is she as hot in person as she looks on TV?”

“Hotter,” he assured her. “Did I ever tell you about the time she got in the hot tub with me?”

“No,” Caryn said. “Do tell.”

“It was back when we were all staying in the house up in Oregon, the one on the cliff over the ocean.”

“You told me about the house,” she said.

“Yeah ... well, there’s this big ass hot tub out on the deck just over the cliff. Jake and Laura spent a lot of time in there, especially at night right before they went to bed, but everyone else had their turns in there too. One night—this was while we were still working on the basic tracks in the beginning—I go out there with a couple of beers so I can relax and listen to the ocean a little—kind of meditate, you know? I’m just sitting out there, minding my own business and the door opens and out comes Celia fucking Valdez dressed in a robe and carrying a towel, a glass, and a fuckin’ bottle of white wine. She sees I’m in the tub and I figure she’ll either go back inside or just wait for me to leave—I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that I ain’t the most attractive thing in the world with my shirt off, you know what I’m saying?—but she don’t even bat an eye. She just asks me if I mind if she joins me.”

“And you said yes?”

“Hell to the yeah I said yes,” he told her. “She smiled at me and then set down her wine and her glass and then she drops that fuckin’ robe and is standing there right in front of me in a goddamn bikini.”

“Wow,” Caryn whispered. “A bikini.”

Ted nodded his head, flushing a bit at the memory. “I’m telling you,” he told her, “those titties of hers are a sight to behold. I mean, they always look nice no matter what she’s wearing—she could be in a fuckin’ burqa and they’d still look good—but in a bikini ... that shit’s enough to make you believe in God.”

“What about the rest of her body?” Caryn asked. “Is it nice too?”

Ted nodded. “Fuckin’ premo,” he said. “Smooth skin that’s just a little bit dark, hot legs that got some runner’s muscle on them, nice flat belly with the kind of belly button you’d like to nut on.”

“Sweet,” Caryn whispered.

“She climbed on into the tub and sat down across from me and then poured herself a nice big glass of wine. And then ... and then she just started talking to me.”

“Talking to you? About what?”

“Normal everyday shit,” he said. “We talked about the sessions we were doing and how we all wanted to kill the Nerdlys. We talked about the ocean and how much we liked it. Just a normal everyday conversation like we were normal everyday people.”

“That’s fuckin’ cool,” Caryn said.

“Yep,” Ted said. “And all the while, them fuckin’ titties of hers are bobbing up and down in the water as she shifts around. At one point I was even able to see some nipple bulge. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to fucking stare at them.”

“Yeah, staring is bad,” Caryn said. “You gotta do the whole quick glance and admire with the peripheral vision thing.”

“You would’ve been proud of me,” Ted assured her. “So, we sit out there long enough for her to drink a couple of glasses of wine and then she says she’s starting to get hot. She stands up and...”

“Hold on,” Caryn said, stopping him. “When she stood up, did ... did like the water go cascading down off of her?”

Ted gave her a nod. “It fuckin’ cascaded,” he said.

“Damn,” she whispered.

“Anyway, she walks across the bottom of the tub to the step that’s right next to me. As she climbs it, her calf kinda rubbed against the outside of my thigh, just for a second, totally accidental, you know, but...” He shook his head. “ ... her skin was so fuckin’ soft and smooth. It was sublime, dude. Absolutely fucking sublime.”

“That’s awesome, Ted,” she said, pondering the story. “You actually touched Celia Valdez!”

“I touched her,” he confirmed. “I had to sit in that fuckin’ hot tub for another twenty minutes before my shit deflated enough for me to go back in the house. And for months afterward, I wasn’t able to whack off to any other mental image.”

She smiled. “I bet you still pull that one out on occasion, huh?”

“That ain’t no shit,” he said.

On the radio, the guitar solo of Struggle was just winding down, leading to the final verse and the outro. They listened until the song ended and the DJ came on, telling them that they had just heard The Struggle, Celia Valdez’s title cut from her new solo album, which would be available in stores on Tuesday, July 14.

“You going to do any more drumming for them?” Caryn asked as the commercials started.

Ted shrugged. “If they ask me, I will,” he said. “It was an awesome gig. Paid well, I got credits on two albums as the drummer instead of just doing overdubs like they had me doing back in the day. I got to hang out with Jake Kingsley and Greg Oldfellow and I got to see Celia Valdez in a bikini. Fuck yeah, I’d do it again, but it’ll probably be awhile before they start putting together new material.”

“What about in the meantime? Are you gonna try to score a gig with someone else?”

He shrugged. “I thought about it,” he said. “And I got those reference letters from Jake and Celia and the Nerdlys, and Nerdly said he’d hook me up over at National if I want to do some sessions, but ... well ... I don’t really want to do that.”

“How come?”

“I don’t want to just do sessions,” he said. “It’s too unreliable, has too much variety. If I’m going to play, I want to play with the same people all the time and work toward a common goal.”

“You want to be in a band,” she said.

“Right,” he said. “That’s when drumming is fun instead of just a job. Until someone offers up a band position, I’ll just wait for Jake and Celia to call back.”

Little did Ted know, but someone was about to do just that. Coincidentally, Ben Ping heard The Struggle on the radio for the first time at exactly the same moment, on exactly the same station. Ben, however, was not at work, as it was summer break and he did not teach summer guitar classes. His wife, Lisa Ping, twenty-six years old and a former student in Ben’s class who had been knocking out an Art prerequisite, was also home as she was on summer break between semesters two and three of the four semester nursing program she was enrolled in. Aubrey, the five month old girl their union had produced, was taking her afternoon nap. Ben and Lisa were making good use of her slumber time.

Ben was on his back on their marital bed, naked, sweaty, laying atop two large beach towels that their experience with post-partum sex had taught them should be there. Lisa, equally naked, her large, milk-swollen breasts bouncing up and down with her rhythm, her own olive colored Italian skin shiny with her own sweat, was impaled upon his manhood and going for broke.

“Yeah, baby,” Ben grunted happily, his hands stroking her thighs. “Use my cock! Make yourself come!”

“I’m getting there,” she panted, thrusting and grinding herself upon him, shifting her body to get the exquisite contact she needed to push her over the edge. They had found long ago that this was the easiest way for her to have an orgasm during intercourse—when she could control the contact and the rhythm and the pressure. Not that Ben could not bring her to the peak otherwise—because he could—but when you lived with a baby, alone time was fleeting and precious and time was of the essence when coupling. You finished fast or there was a good chance you would not finish at all.

“Do it baby, do it!” Ben encouraged, thrusting upwards against her. “Make them things fire off!”

“All right,” she panted breathlessly, “I feel it! It’s coming, baby!”

“Come for me, baby! Come for me!”

She came for him, her body flushing and breaking out in gooseflesh, her pelvic thrusts becoming erratic. And then came the sure-fire sign that this was a genuine event and not a mere performance. Powered by the oxytocin flooding her bloodstream by the orgasm, her breasts began to expel milk out of the swollen nipples. It ran down her body, puddling on Ben’s stomach. It dripped down onto his chest. A few shots even hit him in the face, some of the pale white liquid dribbling into his mouth. The first time this had happened, four and a half weeks after Aubrey’s birth (they had been told to wait six weeks post-partum before ‘engaging in vaginal copulation’, as her OB/GYN put it, but hadn’t been able to hold off that long), it had startled him. Now it was just part of getting it on. In truth, he actually thought it was kind of hot.

“Fuck yeah,” he groaned, letting his hands go to those mammaries. He squeezed and stroked them, encouraging even more milk to expel. He even attached his mouth to one nipple and gave a little suck, getting a good mouthful of the slightly sweet liquid.

“That’s so fuckin’ hot when you do that,” Lisa breathed. “Do it some more!”

He did it some more, switching to the other nipple and going for broke. Lisa, meanwhile, reached between them and started playing with his testicles. This made short work of him and soon he was pouring himself out into her body.

When it was over, she collapsed atop him, both of them messy with milk, sweat, and sex secretions, both of them feeling quite satisfied.

“That was awesome,” Lisa said, rolling over onto her back so she was lying next to him.

“Hell to the yeah,” Ben breathed, his hand stroking her bare leg.

“Why do you always say that?” she asked him.

“I don’t really know,” he had to admit.

The clock radio was playing next to the bed, tuned to KPID, the pop station that Lisa was a fan of. Tears In Heaven, Eric Clapton’s tribute to his son Conor, who had died tragically a year and a half before, was just wrapping up. Ben was just about to get up and head for the shower to start the obligatory cleanup when the familiar melody of Struggle began.

“That’s one of your songs!” Lisa said excitedly. She had been given cassette copies of the masters that had been sent to Ben and had been listening to them a lot of late. Jake Kingsley’s music was slowly starting to grow on her—especially Insignificance and Hit the Highway—but she had absolutely loved Celia Valdez’s work from the very first listen.

“It is,” Ben said in awe. He reached over and turned up the volume a little. He then laid there mesmerized as he heard his bass guitar playing on the radio. That’s really me! he thought in wonder. I really am a recording artist. The emotion he was feeling was quite similar to what he’d felt when he’d seen Aubrey’s big head making its emergence into the world from between his wife’s legs—not quite as powerful, true, but the same emotion.

They listened to the tune without speaking, just enjoying the moment in time. Soon—too soon—it ended and the DJ told them what they already knew: That they had just heard the title cut from Celia Valdez’s new solo album. The station then went to commercial and Ben reached back over and turned down the volume.

“That was really cool hearing you on the radio,” Lisa told him. “My husband, the music star.”

“Well, I’m not quite a star,” he said, “but it was cool. I’ll never forget this moment and what was happening when I first heard myself on the radio.”

Lisa giggled. “It’s a good thing we were doing something fun right before it happened, huh?”

“A good thing,” he agreed.

She rolled over and got out of bed, standing naked next to it. She picked up the beach towel that had been on her side of the bed and used it to wipe down her torso, cleaning off the milk and other liquids that were still clinging to her. Ben, taking the hint, did the same on his side of the bed.

“I’m gonna shower before the little monster wakes up,” Lisa said. She gave him a saucy look. “Hopefully you left enough of the supply so she doesn’t go hungry.”

“I just had a few sips,” he said, with mock defensiveness.

She stroked his cheek affectionately and then walked into the bathroom portion of their room. Other than the toilet itself, which was contained behind a door, there was no partition between the bedroom and the shower area. She turned on the taps and then dropped her towel into the hamper. While she was waiting for the water to heat up, she turned back to her husband, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring thoughtfully into space.

“What you thinking about?” she asked him.

“I’m still kind of in awe about hearing Struggle on the radio,” he told her. “It’s making me kind of miss the sessions and all that.”

“I thought you said it was tedious as hell,” she said.

“It was,” he said. “But it was a good tedium, if that makes sense. We had fun. That was really one of the best times of my life.”

“The recording process?” she asked.

“Well ... that was part of it, but mostly just having a regular gig to go to every day. When I was playing with them in the studio over in Santa Clarita every day, it was a grind, playing six days a week with only one day off, but I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, what I was put on Earth for, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying,” she said. “You’re always happiest when you’re playing in a band. Even when you were playing with that Led Zepplin bunch, you were walking around in a good mood all the time, always wanting to get it on with me.”

“Are you complaining?”

“I am not,” she said. “I suspect that we made Aubrey one of those nights after you came home from a gig.”

“Quite possibly,” he said.

“Anyway, if it makes you happy to be in a band, why don’t you get in one again?”

He gave a sideways frown. “I’m a father now,” he said. “I have more responsibilities. I don’t have the time to commit to playing in a band.”

“Being a father doesn’t mean you’re dead,” Lisa told him. “You can find the time. If you want to play, you should play. Aubrey and I will understand, and I’ll pick up the slack.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” he said. “You’re going to be starting third semester soon. Didn’t you tell me that that’s the most difficult semester in nursing school?”

“That’s the rumor,” she said, “but don’t worry about me. I’ll get by. Your band practices and gigs are always at night, right?”

“For the most part,” he agreed.

“Well, my school is during the day. And, thanks to all that money you hauled in working for KVA Records, I don’t have to work while I’m in school. We’re in good shape. If you need to be gone a few nights a week to play with a band, that’s fine. I can study while Aubrey and I hang out.”

“But...”

“No buts,” she said. “I want you to be in a band, Ben. I really want you to do this.”

“Why?”

“I already told you,” she said. “You’re in a better mood and you’re happier when you’re playing regularly. You’re a musician, honey, and you should make music. Do what you were put on Earth to do.”

He had no counter-argument to share. In truth, he felt a wave of love for his wife washing over him that was powerful and almost breathtaking. She really did understand him. And she was willing to accommodate his wants and needs. “All right,” he told her, surprised to find himself almost near tears. “I’ll do it.”

“Good,” she said, smiling. “I’m glad that’s settled. Now, are you going to try to hook up with those Led Zepplin guys again?”

He shook his head. “A bunch of hackers, except for Ted,” he said. “I can do better.”

“Who then?”

“I have a little idea.”

“Oh?”

“I think I’m going to give Ted and Phil a call.”

“Phil? The gay guy that sang backup?”

“That’s him,” he confirmed.

She raised her eyebrows up. “Something you need to tell me, honey?”

He chuckled. “You’re funny,” he told her. “It occurs to me that if Ted and Phil are willing to get together and jam with me, we’ve got a complete rhythm section and a vocalist. All we’d need is a guitar player and we’ve got ourselves a band.”

Matt Tisdale had heard the rumors floating around about Jake and his solo album. He had also heard that he had formed an independent label with Celia Valdez, that mouthy bitch who had once called him a cabron (whatever the fuck that meant), who was working on a solo album of her own. He had even heard the whispers that Jake had to be boning Valdez. But that was pretty much the extent of his information. He went out of his way not to listen whenever that traitorous mole’s name came up in conversation. As such, he did not even know that the CDs were done and getting airplay until two days before their actual release.

On the evening he did find out—July 12, 1992—Matt had spent two hours after dinner working on new material for his planned second album. He had been doing this in his normal manner. He had retreated to the music room of his mansion and locked himself inside with his old bong, his Strat, an amplifier, and an eighth of an ounce of good Humboldt skunk bud. There, he had pounded out new riffs he was developing and occasionally jotted down some lyrics to go with them.

He was not looking forward to his next album as much as he knew he should be. He was still quite wounded from the dismal sales and airplay of Next Phase and the dismal tour numbers that had followed. National had actually cancelled the third leg of the tour, citing pathetic west coast ticket sales as the primary reason. Matt had fought them on this but they were insistent and, most importantly, they had the legal right to do that shit under the terms of his contract. For the past two months now he had been home, drinking, smoking, and snorting a lot more than normal and trying to come up with new material.

The problem was that any new material he came up with was going to be subjected to the whims of the audio engineering teams in the recording studio. He had made his gamble and he had lost. And unlike fucking Coop, he had some honor in him and was going to abide by the terms of that deal. Even if it made him a sellout rat.

He finished up for the night around nine o’clock. He powered down his amp, unplugged his Strat, and then closed up his tune notebook, which was full of scribbles, cross-outs, and corrections, both in the written word and in musical notation. He left the bong and the tray of marijuana where it was and then unlocked the door and made his way downstairs. It was time for a couple of drinks, a smoke, and then maybe a little tap in the ass with Kim.

Kim Kowalski, aka Mary Ann Cummings, was sitting at her desk in the office just off the main entertainment room. She was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra, her hair back in a ponytail. She had an array of paperwork spread out before her and was tapping away on a calculator with one hand while holding a pen in the other. A portable radio, tuned to the local pop station, was playing softly atop the raised portion of the desk.

“Hey, Mattie,” she greeted when he walked by. “All done for the night?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “I got a few more riffs worked out, managed to nail down a few more lyrics. Things are coming along.”

“That’s good,” she said, looking over and giving him a smile.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just going over some of the financials for the company,” she said, referring to the pornographic movie company she held controlling interest in. “They’re looking pretty sweet.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Those assholes I’m partnered with keep trying to get me to cut costs on production, remember?”

He nodded. They had had this discussion before. Her partners were established porn producers who thought they knew everything about the business and considered Kim to just be an investor who should not interfere in how they wanted to do things. Kim, however, thought they were out of touch with their audience and were in the process of killing the industry with what they believed to be ‘the formula’ for producing porn. It was a story that was very familiar to Matt. And it was the very reason why Kim had set up her company in such a manner that she had controlling interest in it, and therefore the say-so in how things were run. She was most certainly not the dumb porn actress they had all assumed she would be.

“They keep wanting us to just find some hot performers and have them fuck on camera. Little short clips of ten to fifteen minutes that are nothing but sex. No back-story at all. No establishment of who the characters are or why they’re fucking. ‘That’s what the porn watcher wants’, they keep telling me. ‘They don’t need to know the people, they just want to watch them fuck so they can get off’. Package up ten to fifteen such clips on a video, put some provocative imagery on the front, give it an attention catching name like: Buttfest 92 or Sorority House Sluts, and throw it out to the rental market.”

“That kind of porn sucks,” Matt said righteously. “I can look at fuckin’ Hustler if I just want to see some tits and snatch or a dyke-out scene without any context.”

“Exactly,” Kim said. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along. I ask those fuckers all the time, ‘when was the Golden Age of Porn?’ And they will agree with me that it was the mid to late eighties, when the factor of home VCRs and video rental both came into being. That was when porn had some fuckin’ style, and a big part of that was the plot. The best selling porn movies of that era were the movies that had the most significant plotlines to bind together the fucking. They won’t acknowledge that shit, however. They whine at me because I pay higher end writers, producers, and directors to put our videos down on camera.

“‘There’s no need to have a director,’ they tell me. ‘Why are you spending ten grand to have some idiot tell people how to fuck?’ And the writers...” She shook her head. “You should hear them go on about me giving another five grand to a script writer.”

“But the financials are proving you right?” Matt asked.

“Fuckin’ A, they are,” she said. “That piece we released back in January—Hometown Pussy—the one about the guy coming back from LA to where he grew up in the small town in the Midwest, is the top rental of the year so far. We’ve sold more than thirty thousand copies of it to adult rental stores at a profit margin of four dollars per unit. And guess what the number two rental of the year is?”

“Enlighten me,” he said.

“That would be Step Mom’s Temptation, a premier release from Mary Ann Cummings Productions and featuring a complex story line conjured up by one of the premier writers in the business. We’ve sold twenty-six thousand copies of that one.”

“That was a pretty good flick,” Matt said appreciably. He particularly liked the scene where the step mom in question gave into that temptation and dyked out with her eighteen year old stepdaughter after rubbing oil on her next to the pool.

“Of course it was,” she said. “It was hot because you knew who the characters were, because you could relate to the passion and the lust. That is what makes good porn.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, baby,” he told her, “but I will tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“All this talk about porn is getting me fired up. How about I slide you some schlong?”

“Can it wait a little?” she asked. “I kind of need to finish this up tonight. There’s a board meeting tomorrow.”

“You can keep working while I bust one out,” he offered.

She thought this over for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay,” she said casually. She stood up and pushed her chair to the side. She then pushed her sweats and her panties down and kicked them off her feet. Now naked from the waist down, she bent over the desk, her shapely rear end pooching out toward him.

While she went back to the task of going over the numbers on her financial sheets and making notations in her ledger, Matt dropped his own pants and underwear, freeing his weapon for use. He slid his fingers into Kim’s famous vagina and began to pump them in and out, gently at first and then with more force. Soon she began to lubricate. When she was wet enough, he lined up on target and slid inside, where he began to thrust in and out of her while holding onto her hips.

“Mmmm,” she sighed, punching a few keys on her calculator and then picking up her pen to note down the result. “That feels good.”

“Fuckin’ A, it does,” Matt said, speeding up his motion. “You want me to make you come?”

“Naw, I’m good,” she told him. “I dildoed myself earlier. Go ahead and fire at will.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m gonna put it in your ass though.”

“Do what you need to do,” she said with another shrug.

He pulled himself out of her vagina and inserted himself into her tight back door. After working his way in and making sure there was enough lubrication, he went to town, developing a hard, fast rhythm that would make short work of him. Just as he was really getting into it, however, he became distracted by the song that was playing on the radio. It was a mellow piece, with a saxophone laying down the primary melody. He had never heard the song before but there was something familiar about it nonetheless—something in the way the guitar chords were being played, something about the voice of the woman singing.

“What’s this shit?” he asked Kim.

“What’s what shit?” she asked. “I’m clean back there. Took a bath earlier.”

“No,” he said, “I mean the song that’s playing. Have you heard it before?”

She listened for a moment and then nodded. “They’ve been playing it all week. It’s your old nemesis: Celia Valdez. She’s got a solo album coming out, apparently.”

“Ahhh, the Mexican bitch that likes to dance,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”

“I kind of like the tune,” Kim told him. “It’s got some soul to it.”

Matt, continuing to thrust in and out of her anus, listened to the song for a minute and then nodded. “It does sound like an improvement over that hacker shit she used to play.”

“I used to like La Dif,” Kim said, “but this does sound better, more ... I don’t know ... honest.”

“Hmmph,” Matt grunted. “Who would’ve thought?”

He gripped Kim’s hips a litter harder and got ready to go for broke. Before he could even set his feet, however, the guitar solo for the song started and he froze in his tracks.

“What’s the matter?” Kim asked, looking over her shoulder at him. “You didn’t come.”

“That’s fucking Jake Kingsley playing that guitar,” he said.

“What?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The guitar solo that’s playing right now. That’s Jake Kingsley playing it.”

“How do you know that?” Kim asked.

“Because I’m a musician and I played with the motherfucker for more than ten years. I know the sound of his playing the same way I know the sound of his voice. That’s him playing that lead guitar.”

“Ummm, okay,” she said. “Is that a problem?”

He thought about that for a moment. It certainly felt like it should be a problem, but was it really? “I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s just a little surprising. I mean, I heard the two of them started their own label and were working on something, but I didn’t think he’d be playing guitar for her.”

“You think he’s boning her?” Kim asked.

“Undoubtedly,” Matt said with a sigh. He shook his head. “Man, that bitch has got a set of titties on her that won’t stop. If I didn’t hate his ass so much, I’d be kind of envious.”

The song came to an end and the DJ began to speak, confirming what Kim had already told him: He had just heard The Struggle, the title cut of Celia Valdez’s upcoming solo effort. The DJ said nothing about Jake Kingsley playing guitar. He did not mention Jake Kingsley at all, in fact.

“Uh, Mattie?” Kim said. “You gonna finish up back there, or what?”

“Oh ... right, sorry,” he said, and began to thrust again. But as he powered his way toward orgasm his mind continued to ponder that guitar solo. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that it had been Kingsley laying down those notes. Were they trying to keep that a secret? And if so, why?