It was Jake who suggested maybe stepping things up a bit. That had been during one of his session days after they’d worked on Can’t Keep Me Down, the hardest rocking tune in his current inventory, a tune that featured the very drop-D guitar he was using combined with Celia on her acoustic-electric to back him—the only tune he had, really, that even approached the Intemperance genre (though it was still quite a bit shy of that level). Down (as they called it) was an angry tune as well, one that Jake had written after they put KVA together. It was a declaration of liberation for him, a rant in three verses and a bridge stating, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to live life as he wanted to live it, control his own destiny, and not let anyone fuck him over—though he did not actually say this in those words. It was Celia’s comments about how his guitar work fit nicely with the emotion of the piece that turned on the little light bulb above Jake’s head.
“What if we played Games like that?” he suddenly asked her.
“Games?” she returned, giving him a look of confusion. “You mean with the distorted drop-D?”
“Why not?” he asked, already pondering what it would sound like in his head. “Throw out the piano, throw out the violin—sorry, Mom, sorry Cindy—and just hammer that melody out as a distorted rock and roll riff with some pounding drums and a solid bass line.”
“I don’t play rock and roll music, Jake,” she said.
“Is there a law that says you can’t?” he returned, liking the idea more and more by the second.
She thought it over for a moment, obviously still doubtful, but she was open minded. “We would have to go considerably up tempo.”
“Naturally,” Jake said. “Probably one twenty or so.” He fiddled with his guitar a little bit and then suddenly struck out the melody as a rock and roll riff. He went through it three or four times, each repetition getting a little stronger. “What do you think?” he asked, once he stopped.
“It’s uh ... really loud, Jake,” Mary told him.
“I’m not sure I care for that,” agreed Cindy.
Jake grinned at Celia. “The mothers hate it,” he said. “You know what that means, right?”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s means we’re on to something here.”
“Jake,” Mary said. “That’s not very nice.”
He ignored her. “What’s your first impression, C?” he asked her.
“It did sound angry,” she admitted, “just like what I’m trying to convey.”
“Let’s try it again,” he suggested. “This time, Ted and Ben need to hop in.”
“Jake, it’s your day,” Celia said. “We need to work on Highway next.”
“Screw whose day it is,” Jake scoffed. “We’re dealing with inspiration here.” He stood up from his chair. “Come and sit down. Sing into my mic.”
She did, reaching over and adjusting it to her level.
“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s try this thing. You down with this, boys?”
“Hell to the yeah,” Ted agreed.
“Where are we starting?” Ben asked.
“First verse and see how far we can take it,” Jake said. “I’ll start with the riff and you chime in after. Once we hit it a few times, you jump in, C.”
They did it, and it wasn’t spectacular that first time—in fact, it was kind of jangled and jarring. But it was enough to see that they really were onto something. To the chagrin of the mothers, they spent the next three hours working on it, playing with the riff a little here and there, and coming to the conclusion that the best way to intro the tune was to play out the first verse as originally intended, with Cindy on the piano and Mary laying down a sweet secondary melody atop it. And then, once that verse was done, they would kick into gear.
By this time, in the studio, while they were trying to actually lay down the tracks, they had fine-tuned and adjusted Games into what they all believed was going to be a tune that changed the public’s musical opinion of Celia quite drastically once it was given some airplay. It was going to give her some rock and roll street cred. Even the mothers had learned to like the beat of it and they tapped their feet along as they listened to Jake’s guitar and Celia’s angry verses in their headphones. The only one who didn’t really care for the song was Laura, but that was okay because there was no saxophone in it. And even she sometimes caught herself tapping along to the rhythm, though she would not admit this to anyone, anywhere, even under torture.
The tempo dropped down to ninety while Celia sang out the bridge. After that, it kicked back up again and Jake laid down a blistering guitar solo, the likes of which he had never composed before. He had no complex solos in his own tunes, knowing that trying to get too intricate would only serve to open him for negative comparisons to Matt Tisdale. As such, he had left solos completely out of most of his work and when they were there, such as in the outro to Down, he made them deliberately simple, as if to say: I know I’m no Tisdale, so I’m not even going to try.
On Celia’s tune, however, he let it all hang out. His fingers moved up and down the fretboard while he hammered on the strings with his pick. He showcased his virtuosity quite well and was more than a little proud of the composition, although he knew, without reservation, that he was still not up to Matt Tisdale level. He also knew that the comparison game would not matter much here. They had no intention of crediting Jake Kingsley as Celia’s guitar player when the album was released.
After the solo wound down there was one more verse and then the outro, which consisted of a few more repetitions of the riff combined with some complex drumming by Ted and then a final close out. In the groove, they managed to make it all the way through the song without anyone making anything more than a minor error.
If only they could do that in the actual recording process.
“Nice one, guys,” Sharon said from the control room. “Now ... is everyone ready to start laying some track?”
They were ready. It was time for the tedium to truly begin.
They managed to make it all the way through the first two verses of Games by lunchtime—a minor miracle. The catering service that Jake had hired for them then brought in their daily caloric intake. Today it was hamburgers, a pot of chili, and a large garden salad. Soft drinks and iced tea were included as well.
“Good fuckin’ grub,” exclaimed Ted as he worked on his second double cheeseburger and his third bowl of chili.”
“Only the best for our musicians,” Jake said, carefully keeping his eyes off of Ted so he wouldn’t have to ponder the juice running down his chin and onto his neck.
“You know what this reminds me of,” Ted said. “I was working over on the south side one shift and we got this call for...”
“Ted!” Jake said warningly, holding up his hand.
“What?”
“Not while we’re eating,” Jake reminded. “Remember Rule Number 3?”
“Oh ... oh, yeah, sure,” Ted said. “But this isn’t a gross story or anything, it’s actually kind of...”
“Gross is in the eye of the beholder, Ted,” Jake said. “Rule Number 3.”
“Rule Number 3,” Ted agreed sadly. He went back to eating.
After lunch, they got back to it. It was time to work on the bridge section of Games, the part just prior to the solo. They bogged down immediately and entered what seemed to be a hopeless purgatory of one or the other of the Nerdlys intoning: “Let’s just run that through again, from the top.”
Just after two o’clock, they took a break. Jake wandered over to the cafeteria area to get something cool to drink. There he found his sister and Stan, who had driven her here from the airport, sitting at one of the tables nibbling on some of the cheesecake they served.