“Yeah,” Crow said unenthusiastically. “It’s in here as well. I guess we’re kind of obligated to give it a listen.”
“That’s pretty shrewd of Kingsley to include her in the deal like that,” Bailey observed. “He’s got to be boning her. Why else would he tie up his career with such a has-been?”
“Yeah, he’s sliding her the salami all right,” agreed Crow, “but I wouldn’t use the word shrewd to describe him. I’d use the word stupid. Depending on how bad her crap is, that could be the deal breaker.”
“I’m not sure there’s much hope for a deal with this bunch anyway,” said Doolittle. “They already signed a contract with OB2 for forty percent royalties. That means that OB2 won’t accept anything more than mid-thirties. There would have to be some extremely marketable shit on those masters for us to even consider entering a deal for that kind of a percentage. Especially when they’re not planning to tour to help us promote the fucking things.”
“Well,” Crow said, pulling the CD out of its case. “Shall we get on with it?”
“Let’s hear it,” Doolittle said.
Crow put the CD in a small boombox and turned it on. The first cut started. It was called The Easy Way, according to the track sheet. It started off slow, with a gentle melody played out with a mildly distorted electric guitar and backed by...
“Is that a synthesizer?” Bailey asked.
“It is,” Crow confirmed.
“On a Jake Kingsley cut?” Doolittle said. He shook his head. “We’re not off to a good start here.”
They continued to listen. Jake sang through the first verse and then did a slow, mellow rendition of the first two lines of the chorus, using his voice to its best advantage. And then the tempo kicked up. The distortion on the electric guitar grew more distorted, more authoritative. Percussion kicked in along with bass. Jake’s vocals became stronger, more authoritative as well. But still, there was that synthesizer laying down the secondary melody.
Crow stopped the CD when the song faded out. “Well?” he asked his companions.
“It’s kind of catchy,” Bailey offered. “And Jake does some good vocalizations there.”
“Yeah,” said Doolittle, “but it’s not heavy metal. There was no guitar solo in that song at all. Who is playing guitar for him?”
Crow looked at the track sheet and shook his head. “It doesn’t say,” he reported. “It just says that Ben Ping is on the bass guitar, Ted Duncan is on the drums, Mary Kingsley is on the violin...”
“Violin?” Doolittle said incredulously. “A fucking violin is on this CD?”
“Mary Kingsley?” asked Bailey. “Does Jake have another sister?” They were, of course, very well acquainted with Pauline, the sister of their nightmares.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” Doolittle said.
“His mother is a symphony musician,” Crow said, pulling a bit of trivia out of his ass. “You don’t suppose that’s who Mary Kingsley is ... do you?”
“His mother playing on his album?” Doolittle thundered. “That’s absurd!”
“And the piano player is listed as Cynthia Archer,” Crow read. “Nerdly’s mother is a pianist! I remember him telling me about that.”
“Holy Jesus,” Doolittle said, shaking his head again. “They’ve actually got their mothers playing music for them? And they want us to agree to thirty-five percent? Good fucking luck with that.”
“And then there’s this Laura Best chick listed as the saxophone player,” Crow finished up.
“Saxophone?” Doolittle nearly screamed. “He’s got saxophone on this album too?”
“I hear it’s for sure that he is boning this sax player,” Crow offered. “Word is that he’s set up an audition for her with Frank Vile down in the basement.”
“Is she hot?” asked Bailey.
“I don’t know,” Crow said. “I’ve never met her.”
“If Kingsley’s boning her, she must be hot,” Bailey opined.
“I don’t give a fuck who Kingsley is boning,” Doolittle said, “or what she might look like. I do give a fuck that he is expecting us to help promote an album that has fucking violins and synthesizers and saxophones on it. Kingsley is associated with the heavy metal genre. He can’t just go changing to this catchy feel good shit and expect us to go thirty-five percent. That’s why we didn’t offer him a contract after Intemp broke up! Because he wanted to do shit like this.”
“Why don’t we listen to the rest of the cuts?” Crow suggested. “Maybe there’s some heavier shit in there.”
Doolittle sighed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s hear what else he’s got.”
They weren’t terribly impressed with what else he had, at least not on an economical basis. There was only one tune on the entire CD that could be considered hard rock—that was Can’t Keep Me Down, according to the track sheet—and, while it was a powerful song with deep, meaningful lyrics and a catchy hook of a chorus, it was still not even close to heavy metal, which was what Jake Kingsley fans were going to want. And then there was Insignificance, the song that featured Kingsley’s mother quite heavily on her violin. There wasn’t a single lick from a single electric guitar in the whole tune! There was no percussion either! It was mostly just Kingsley’s voice (mixed with a chick’s voice during the choruses) and a fingerpicked guitar backed up by the violin—a fucking violin! True, the lyrics were quite dark and the chorus was quite catchy—Baily actually found himself humming the melody and singing the chorus under his breath—but it was barely rock and roll. Who was going to buy something like this? What radio station was going to play it?
“I’m inclined to just reject this deal out of hand,” said Doolittle once the last track was played. “Maybe if we could get sixty or sixty-five on royalties—and even that’s a big maybe—but with Kingsley slinging this feel good pop shit and OB2 asking for thirty-five.” He shook his head. “Negotiations wouldn’t even be worth our time.”
“I don’t know,” said Crow. “I’ll agree that it’s not quite what we were hoping for in a Jake Kingsley solo album, but some of those tunes actually sound pretty good.”
“That’s not the point,” Doolittle said. “I’m not saying he made bad music here—I’ll even admit that I keep turning that song with the violin around in my head like a fucking ear worm...”
“Which one?” Bailey asked. “He had three songs with violin in there.”
“The one about how life sucks,” Doolittle said. “The one without any fucking percussion or electric guitar in it.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “I kind of like that one too.”
“But again,” Doolittle said. “That’s not the point. It’s not what people are going to be looking for in a Jake Kingsley release. His fans want to hear grinding guitars and ripping solos and pounding drums, not fucking violins and horns and synthesizers. I just can’t see this thing selling all that much. He’ll go Gold just on hype alone, but I seriously doubt he’ll come anywhere near Platinum.”
“Do you really think his reputation is that important?” asked Bailey.
“What?” Doolittle asked.
“Well ... pretend this master didn’t come from Jake Kingsley,” he said. “Pretend it came from some unknown band that we were considering signing. Judge those tunes on that basis and what do you think?”
Doolittle sighed. “They’re good tunes,” he said. “I’ve already said that. And if I were to judge them by themselves, without considering who had put them down, I think we would probably offer a contract and would even expect to cash out on it. But this is not an unknown we’re talking about here. The music industry is a harsh one and the consumers that buy our albums have their own psychology about them. This is Jake Kingsley putting these tunes down and they will reject them because it’s not what they want to hear from him.”