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 14th, 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 9th, 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.”