“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?
Chapter 11: Selling Out
The term “with a bullet” had been coined for songs like Celia Valdez’s first single release as a solo artist, The Struggle. After only three weeks of saturation airplay on the popular music stations throughout the United States and Canada, Struggle debuted on the Hot 100 chart at sixty-seven. The next week, as the airplay continued unabated, it was at thirty-three. The week after that, it broached the top 20 at number eighteen. The week after that, it was in the Top 10 at number six. From there, it spent the next two weeks climbing to the number one position, neatly dislodging End of the Road by Boyz II Men like an infantry squad occupying a hill. Once in the number one spot, Struggle would remain there for another five weeks before being dislodged in turn by one of the masters herself: Whitney Houston and I Will Always Love You.
As Jake had predicted, the song was popular across the entire eighteen to sixty-four demographic, as it was neither a rock and roll song or a formulistic pop song. It resonated with people from all walks of life, all age groups with its universal message of love gone bad and spiraling to its death, sung out by Celia’s glorious contralto voice and accompanied by Laura’s mournful saxophone melody.
Jake’s debut effort, The Easy Way, did not fare as well, but it still put in a respectable performance. It was played quite regularly on both the hard rock stations and the pop stations, and research showed that people who enjoyed the tune and kept the station dial in place when it came on outnumbered those who switched by a considerable margin. The song moved slowly but steadily upward on the chart, reaching its peak at number eight the same week that Struggle started to fall downward. Easy held onto number eight for two more weeks and then it too began to drop slowly back down, week by week, falling faster than Struggle, which kept a tenacious grip on the Top 40.
In these days of CDs, where there was no longer any such thing as forty-five RPM records with their two songs for sale for a dollar, simply having hit tunes did not translate into any direct income for KVA Records. The only way they would make money would be to sell the actual full CDs. And people did not tend to buy a complete CD, which would run then around ten dollars at retail rate, based on a single hit song. In the time period between July 14th, 1992, the release date for the albums, and December 2, 1992, when both Struggle and Easy began to fall from the charts, only fifty-five thousand copies of The Struggle, the CD, and thirty-three thousand copies of Can’t Keep Me Down, the CD, were purchased. These numbers were alarming to Greg Oldfellow, Jill the accountant, and Pauline the manager as they meant that KVA was still operating deep in the red.
Jake, Celia, the Nerdlys, and Obie, however, were not worried. They knew that once two hit songs were getting airplay and starting to chart, the album sales would start to pick up. It was time to put Phase Two of his marketing plan into action.
On December 5, Jake arranged a meeting with Obie, who just happened to be in LA at the moment. He had noticed that Obie was spending a lot of time in LA of late, flying down from Oregon nearly every weekend even though he and the Nerdlys were hard at work on the recording of his own upcoming album, but he didn’t think too much of it. He certainly did not suspect that Obie was coming down to visit his sister so the two of them could play hide the bratwurst in Obie’s hotel room or Pauline’s house. Greg and Celia were invited to the meeting as well, and, since it was in her house, Pauline would be in attendance too. Jake brought along Laura, knowing she could use a little relaxation time. Since it was a Saturday, they decided to have a barbeque after they talked business. Jake brought some New York steaks he’d picked up at a local meat market while Pauline provided some potatoes and zucchini she’d picked up at a local farmer’s market. Celia and Greg brought a few bottles of good red wine they’d picked up at a specialty store in Beverly Hills.
They discussed business first, the six of them finding seats in Pauline’s entertainment room. Since Obie was present at the meeting, the usual rule of no alcohol was thrown out for the day. Obie refused to have a meeting without a nice glass of whiskey in some form in his hand, and he refused to drink alone.
“To success!” Obie toasted to open the discussion.
“Success!” they all echoed, drinking from whatever they had concocted at the bar. In Jake’s case it was a tall, pale rum and coke—which was still his favorite potable for general drinking.
“All right then,” Obie said. “I assume y’all want to talk about the next step in the promotion process for the albums?”
“You assume correctly,” Jake said. “It’s time to get those second songs on the air so we can start picking up some album sales.”
“That’s what those suits down at National keep telling me as well,” Obie said. “They’ve been hounding my ass for a month now about getting the release authority for the next ones. They think you’re waiting too long.”
“Are they seriously afraid that the public will forget about us over four weeks?” Celia asked.