“The piano?!” Matt almost yelled. “There’s a fucking piano in this song?”
What fucking can of worms did I just open up? Jim’s mind asked helplessly. And how do I close it again? “Yeah ... there’s a piano, mostly in the beginning and in the end parts.”
“Motherfucker,” Matt whispered slowly. He picked up his drink and downed the remainder of it. And then something else seemed to occur to him. “Was there a guitar solo in the song?”
“A guitar solo?”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “You do know what a guitar solo is, right?”
“I do,” Jim said. “And ... uh ... yeah, there was one.”
“And ... what did you think about it?” Matt wanted to know.
“The solo?”
“The solo.”
“Uh ... it kind of shredded, to tell you the truth,” Jim said softly.
“That motherfucker,” Matt said, shaking his head again.
“It wasn’t as good as one of your solos though,” Jim added quickly.
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Matt said. He stood. “Excuse me. I think I need another drink.”
The guitarist stood and walked to the bar, slamming his empty glass down. Jim was relieved and hoped he wouldn’t come back.
What in the fuck was all that about?
The chartered Dash-8 aircraft carrying Matt Tisdale, his band members, his road manager, and his tour paramedic landed without incident at Boeing Field at 2:15 PM. The passengers deplaned and collected their meager luggage, with Jim the paramedic the only one carrying more than one bag. A limousine was waiting for them on the tarmac and they all climbed inside for the trip to the hotel. Since Matt and the boys were scheduled to hit the stage at 8:30 PM for their ninety-minute set, that meant the moratorium on intoxicating subjects officially went into effect at 4:30. Usually Matt adhered to an additional three hours atop that—at least—but on this day he needed a little something. He shot down one more Jack and Coke and two lines of cocaine in the limousine.
Greg Gahn got them checked into their individual suites at the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle shortly after 3:00. They only had time to drop off their bags before they had to climb back into the limo for the trip to the KZOK radio station—the primary local hard rock—for the day’s interview. Everyone except Matt stayed in the limo.
The DJ doing the interview was a greasy looking biker type who went by the moniker “Doctor Biz”. During the pre-interview meeting with Biz and the station manager, Matt suddenly asked them: “Have you been playing that new song by Kingsley and Bigg G?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, seemingly passing some message back and forth. Finally, they both shrugged.
“I Signed That Line?” Biz said. “Yeah, of course we’re playing it. We just got it in a few days ago and they released it for airplay this morning.”
“We’ve scheduled it for eighteen plays over the course of the day,” the manager added helpfully.
“So ... let me get this straight,” Matt said. “You’re playing a song by Bigg G, the rapper, from his latest rap CD, on your hard rock station?”
“Well ... it’s not strictly a rap song,” the manager explained. “It’s a fusion of rap and hard rock. And it has Jake Kingsley in it—playing the guitar even.”
“We still play Step Inside at least once a day,” Biz added. “For the same reason.”
Matt felt the little burst of anger flaring inside of him again, but he suppressed it. He looked at Biz, who he figured would be a little savvier when it came to judging rock music. “What do you think of it?”
Biz looked at him carefully. It was obvious he knew of the bad blood between Matt and Kingsley. “Honestly?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Matt said simply.
“I think it’s an amazing tune,” Biz said.
“Elaborate,” Matt requested.
“Well ... first off, it’s very innovative. Nothing like this has really been done before—with the exception of Step Inside—and they pulled it off quite well. It’s like Step Inside taken to the next level, made more intense.”
“I did that shit with Grandeur back on the Lines on the Map album with Intemperance,” Matt said. “Hard rock guitar with rap beat and rap vocalization. I wrote and composed that tune. Kingsley and G did not invent the genre.”
“Well ... you have kind of a point there, Matt,” Biz allowed, “but I wouldn’t put Step Inside and especially not I Signed That Line in the same genre as Grandeur. Don’t get me wrong now. Grandeur is a badass tune, one of my all-time faves from the stuff you did with Intemp, and it was innovative, but Step Inside and I Signed That Line are a different kind of fusion of the genres. Especially I Signed That Line. The tune shifts back and forth from full-on hip hop to full-on hard rock and has some mellow piano riffs thrown in at the beginning and the end. And in the bridge and the changeover, you get the true fusion where you have the DJ on the turntables, the piano playing, and the guitar chords all at once. It’s quite complex and compelling.”
“Really?” Matt asked, trying to picture in his mind how what Biz was describing could possibly be pulled off.
“Have you heard the tune yet?” asked the manager.
“No,” Matt said. “I didn’t even know it existed until one of my crew told me about it on the flight up here.”
“You didn’t know it existed?” Biz asked incredulously. “We’ve been hearing rumors about a new Kingsley and G duet for a couple of months.”
“Is that so?” Matt asked slowly.
“Yeah,” the manager said. “Our promotors have been telling us about this since at least July, since even before they started telling us about your new CD. We were really happy to start playing it this morning.”
Matt frowned as he heard this. How was it that these radio assholes in the Pacific Northwest had known about this new tune by Kingsley and G, but he, who was eyeballs deep in the music industry in the very city that produced ninety percent of American music, had not heard a word? Something smelled like a skanky crotch here. “Any chance I could score a copy of that CD?” he asked his hosts.
They looked at each other for a moment and then back at him. “Well...” said the manager, “unfortunately, we only have two copies of Bigg G’s new release currently. I’m afraid I can’t give one of them away.”
Matt felt that burst of anger again. He suppressed it again. They probably were not lying about that. “I understand,” he said softly.
“I could run you off a cassette tape of it though,” suggested Biz.
“A cassette?”
“That’s right,” Biz said. “We have a high-speed cassette recorder in the studio. Employees use it all the time to make personal tapes from our collection. I can get you one made while we’re doing the interview.”
“All right,” Matt said, nodding. “That’d be cool.”
The interview went well. When it was over, Biz handed Matt a cased cassette tape with the title of Bigg G’s latest CD written in black sharpie on the front.
“Thanks,” Matt told him, pocketing the tape.
“I Signed That Line is the first cut,” Biz told him. “There’s probably nothing else on there that you’ll want to listen to.”
“Probably not,” Matt agreed.
He went back to the street and climbed into the limousine again. They started heading for their next destination: a music store in Tukwila, near the airport they had landed at earlier.
“Hey, Greg,” Matt said as they worked their way through the afternoon traffic. “I need you to get something for me.”