Different Circles полностью

“Each individual member has made well over a million-five from the first CD and are poised to pull in almost as much with the second. Unless they completely crash and burn—which I don’t think is likely at all—they will be set for life as long as they don’t do something stupid. And if you throw in the touring income—they would be entitled to half of KVA’s cut of the profits to divide up among themselves—that puts them in an even more secure position.”

“Did you explain that shit to them?”

“I did, and so did Pauline. But that’s not the only thing factoring into their decision. They all have kids in school. They don’t want to leave them for four or five months while they travel all over the country playing dates.” Jake shrugged. “Can’t say I fault them for it.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” G said, though he really had no concept of what it was like to have to worry about the welfare of children. Neither did Jake, really, but he was starting to understand it a little now.

“We’ll see how it goes,” Jake said. “Maybe by the time we get to Brainwash III, they’ll be ready to make the move.”

“There’s gonna be a Brainwash III?”

“Absolutely,” Jake said. “They have an incredible catalogue of marketable tunes. We could easily get two or three more hit CDs out of them just with their existing repertoire. And they tell me they’re getting together on the weekends again up in Providence to work on new material.”

“That’s cool,” G said. “What about the band that Phil and Ted and the boys put together? How’s that going?”

“V-tach,” Jake said, smiling. “I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with them. Aristocrat listened to the CD and agreed to MD&P for them for only twenty-five percent royalties—plus payment in advance for the cost of manufacturing and distribution, of course. Not bad for a first-time act on an indie label.”

“Not bad at all,” G agreed.

“They’re not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts,” Jake said. “They want to stay on our good side, knowing that there will be future Celia Valdez and Jake Kingsley and Brainwash releases that they can profit off of as long as they keep us happy. Besides, I think they finally have faith in me and my ability to find and produce good music. They listened to V-tach’s master and seemed quite impressed with it. It has a bunch of solid tunes that will be appealing to the younger gen-x crowd in particular. I am rather proud of the end result. I worked very closely with them through the whole process and was able to shape everything like I did with Celia and I and the first Brainwash.”

“They’re a good bunch,” G said. “I had a lot of fun playing with them for the TSF. You gonna send them out on tour?”

“We’ll have to play that one by ear,” Jake said. “Their first release will be a tune called When I’m Not Home. It’s about a dude who thinks his lady is getting dicked by someone else while he’s at work.”

“A subject to invoke strong emotion in the male listening audience,” G said.

“Agreed,” Jake said. “It’s a solid piece with a good hook. It’ll start getting airplay on Fourth of July weekend. The CD will hit the shelves on July 22. We’ll see how the sales go after that. Like with any new band, we’ll probably need to get three hits out on the air before CD sales start to take off. They’ll have to be selling an assload, however, before it becomes financially advantageous to send them out. Aristocrat has already told us they won’t finance one hundred percent of a tour for V-tach but they will spring for half if they think it will be profitable. That means they’ll have to be popular enough that we can at least expect to sell tickets for sixty minimum.”

G shook his head in amazement. “Sixty a ticket minimum for a new band,” he said in wonder. “Remember all of them years we were charging sixteen-fuckin’-fifty for all the seats in the house even after we were established?”

“I remember,” Jake said. “Times have certainly changed.”

“And they keep fuckin’ doing it,” G said. “What’s next, you think?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “I’m not sure where else we can go from here.” At the moment, he, nor even the Nerdlys, had the slightest inkling of the coming rise of the MP3 file with its easy transmission over the internet, its easy storage on media with greater capacity than a mere CD, and how that would change the music industry in a way that was nearly as fundamental as the invention of the sound recording itself.

But that was still a few years in the future. For now, they had a tune to work on.

“Where do we start?” asked Jake.

“The same way we did for Signed,” G said. “We come up with a concept that is shared by both of us and try to come up with lyrics and a melody for it.”

Jake nodded. “We already covered getting screwed by the record companies,” he said. “What else do we got in common?”

“We both like pussy,” G suggested. “We could write something profound about our love of sinking into some trim.”