“Uhhhhh,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Not just yet. I’ll get there.”
“All right,” Matt said, “but eat something before you crash out. Don’t starve yourself.”
“I won’t,” the drummer promised.
Matt picked up the two remote controls that controlled his television and satellite receiver. “Let’s see what’s on the tube,” he said, turning on first the TV and then the receiver.
The screen came to life and he began to flip around through the channels. He could pull in literally hundreds of separate channels, but many of them were aimed at the Latin American nations and were either in Spanish or Portuguese. He dialed over to the bank where the American broadcasts were primarily found and began to channel surf, passing over an episode of Love Boat, several episodes of Cheers, a variety of news broadcasts, a couple of porno channels, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and ESPN, before finally stumbling onto a broadcast of American Entertainment, the celebrity gossip show based in Los Angeles. He was about to flip onward to the next station—he had no interest in that show whatsoever—when he noticed a picture of himself up there, standing with the other members of Intemperance. It was the group photo from the back cover of the Lines on the Map album, Intemperance’s last studio work.
“What the fuck?” he asked, pausing, turning up the volume a bit.
“Coming up next on AE,” said the skinny female commentator with the bolt-on titties and at least a hundred grand worth of facial surgeries, “a report on the infamous death metal band Intemperance and it’s notorious former members. What are they doing these days? Some of their exploits just might surprise you.”
“They’re talking about you,” Steve said. “What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “Nobody contacted me about doing a piece on that slander show.”
“Do they have to contact you?”
“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “The gossip shows don’t really count as journalism.”
He waited through the commercial break, which was kind of odd with his setup. Sometimes it was just a blue screen because the actual ads were being broadcast from the local stations, not over the satellite, and sometimes the commercials were there because they were network commercials. After two periods of blue screen interspersed with two ads for upcoming network shows, AE came back on. The picture of Jake, Matt, Coop, Nerdly, and Charlie reappeared.
“The members of the death metal band, Intemperance,” the commentator said, “went their separate ways almost three years ago now, breaking up after the tragic heroin related death of former bass player Darren Appleman while his replacement, Charlie Meyer, was out on tour with the rest of the band. It was well publicized at the time that iconic guitarist Matt Tisdale—known as much for his relationship with adult film actress Mary Ann Cummings as for his prowess with the guitar—blamed the rest of the band for Appleman’s death because they’d voted to replace him over Tisdale’s objections. Tisdale is on record multiple times accusing the other band members of murder and vowing that he will never play music with any of them ever again. So far, that is a vow he has kept as both he and former Intemperance lead singer Jake Kingsley have both released solo albums.”
“Fuckin’ A right, I kept that vow,” Matt grunted.
“You really called them murderers?” Steve asked.
“I did,” Matt said softly.
“Dude, isn’t that a bit harsh?” Steve asked.
Matt sighed. “Maybe,” he reluctantly allowed. “It was how I felt at the time.”
The graphic on the screen changed to show a silent video clip of Matt up on stage, shirtless and playing his strat. Matt recognized the clip as having come from a publicity video that had been shot during the Next Phase tour. He even remembered the venue where they had shot it. It had been in Jackson, Mississippi, just four days before his little bout with SVT and having electricity coursing through his body to shock him out of it.
As the clip played on, the commentator continued commentating. “Tisdale released a solo album last year and went on tour to support it. The critics panned his album, Next Phase, as ‘poorly executed noise’ and sales of the album were quite dismal. The tour itself was far from successful, with ticket sales a mere shadow of what they’d been in the Intemperance days.
“Undaunted, however, Tisdale returned to the studio a few months ago and his latest effort, an album called Hard Time, just hit the shelves two days ago. The first release from that album, a song called Time to Go, has been getting extensive airplay across the nation for the past two weeks now and it is receiving much warmer reviews from the critics. His effort has been called ‘the true next phase of his music’ and ‘a complex masterpiece of metal guitar work and dark, powerful lyrics’.”
“How about that shit?” Steve asked. “They like our tune!”
“What’s not to fuckin’ like about it?” Matt asked.
“Tisdale and his band will be hitting the road again soon,” the commentator continued on. “They will be starting their tour in Bangor, Maine and working their way across the northeast United States over the next few months. According to Steve Crow, of National Records, Tisdale’s artist and repertoire representative, Matt is being booked in first-rate arenas across the board and advance ticket sales, while still lagging, are starting to pick up.”
“Fuck yeah!” Steve said. “I can’t wait to get out there and play our shit!”
“Crow didn’t tell me he’d talked to those fucks,” Matt growled. “Fucking typical.”
The graphic changed again, this time showing silent video of Jake Kingsley strumming his Les Paul and singing into a microphone on stage. Once again, Matt recognized the source of the video. It was an old clip taken from the video release of In Action, their live album. This particular segment had been filmed in Detroit, Michigan and Jake was singing the tune Life of Toil, one of the non-studio cuts from that show.
“Jake Kingsley, meanwhile,” the commentator stated, “has been enjoying his own brand of success since parting ways with Intemperance. His solo album, Can’t Keep Me Down, has spawned four Top Ten hits on the Billboard chart and, just last week, achieved triple platinum in sales. While Kingsley has not toured to support the album, just this week he made several surprise appearances on stage as a guest performer with smooth jazz legend Bobby Z.”
“He did what?” Matt asked.
“Jake and Bobby Z?” Steve asked. “What the fuck?”
“As we reported a few months ago,” she continued, “Bobby Z and his former saxophone player, Dexter Price, had what Bobby’s manager termed ‘a professional disagreement in musical direction’ and parted ways just as his tour was getting underway. Price was replaced on the sax by Laura Best, who came to fame recently when she put down the saxophone tracks for Celia Valdez’s hit album, The Struggle, which, as we reported two weeks ago, has now passed quadruple platinum and is still selling well. Kingsley and Laura Best became romantically involved with each other during the recording of this album, as Jake was recording his album at the same time and in the same studio as Valdez.
“Jake decided to go visit Laura out on tour while Bobby Z and his band were making their way through the southwest last week. Bobby asked Jake if he would be interested in joining him on stage for a few numbers and Jake took him up on the offer. Here’s a clip of Kingsley performing his hit song, South Island Blur, in Albuquerque three nights ago.”