“Yeah,” Jake said, fighting not to roll his eyes. “They’re doing a great job. Now it’s time to bring things to the next level and start generating some more CD sales.”
“What do you mean?” Miles asked.
“We need to release the next single for airplay,” Jake said.
“So soon?” Miles asked. “Jake, Together is still getting tremendous airplay all across the country. They’re even starting to play it in the UK and Australia.”
“I understand,” Jake said. “But if we get What Can I Do? out on the waves with it, and make sure that people understand it is also a Brainwash tune, the album sales will start to climb like a rocket.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Jake,” Miles told him. “You should know that the formula in promotion is to wait until the first hit has pretty much de-charted before releasing subsequent hits.”
“I do know that,” Jake said, “but Brainwash is not an ordinary band. They have multiple singers instead of a single vocalist. They have multiple genres of rock. Releasing What right now while everyone is still enjoying Together is the right move to make. It’s Steph’s song and it’s of a completely different style and composition than Together. It’ll resonate in a favorable way and make people start to get curious about what else is on that CD.”
“I don’t think this is prudent,” Miles said. “It’s too early for a second release. We must be patient and not get greedy for album sales right now. They’ll come in time.”
“They’ll come as soon as we start getting airplay for What,” Jake insisted. “I want to start hearing the tune on the radio by Wednesday.”
“I must protest this,” Miles said firmly. “It’s too early.”
“It’s not,” Jake said.
“And not only that, but I strongly recommend that What, as well as all of that lesbian woman’s tracks, be kept as deep cuts. They’re too controversial. In this political climate, no one wants to hear the rantings of an oppressed lesbian.”
“It’s a solid tune that has nothing to do with being a lesbian,” Jake said. “It’s a female empowerment song, an anthem if you will. And, perhaps you’re not aware of this, women make up more than fifty percent of the human race. Tapping into that market will generate sales.”
“I’m sorry, Jake,” Miles said, shaking his head. “I just don’t think this will work out.”
“I don’t really care what you think, Miles,” Jake told him. “I have a contract with you that says all promotional decisions are the exclusive right of KVA Records. I am exercising that right. Now, unless you want to be in breach of contract and forfeit your organization’s royalties on what I suspect is going to be one of the best-selling CDs of the decade, you will do what I say, exactly as I tell you how to do it.”
Miles did what he said, exactly how he told him to do it, and by Wednesday morning, Steph’s song, What Can I Do? was being played for listeners nationwide during the morning and afternoon commute hours, always at the beginning of a set so the DJs could announce that this was the new song from Brainwash.
By the following Wednesday, What Can I Do? was being requested for airplay across the country. And, as Jake predicted, album sales of Brainwash, the CD, began to tick steadily upward, not just in New England this time, but everywhere that CDs were sold.
By the close of west coast business hours on March 31, 1995, the end of the first quarter of the year, Brainwash had sold three hundred and eighteen thousand, four hundred and sixteen CDs and was climbing up the Billboard Hot 100 album chart.
Warwick, Rhode Island
April 14, 1995
For Jim and Marcie Scanlon, the ride that Brainwash was taking seemed almost surreal, as if it were all an illusion and not really happening. For them, life went on pretty much normally. They were aware that their CD was selling like hotcakes, that their two singles were extremely popular—hell, they heard one or the other of the songs pretty much every day during their commutes or while listening to music at home. But otherwise, things pretty much remained the same as they had always been. They struggled from paycheck to paycheck, finding it increasingly difficult to pay all their bills, their credit card debt (they barely managed to make the minimum payments each month and the balances never seemed to get any lower) and still have enough money left over to keep themselves and their children in gas, food, and household staples.
All they were seeing at this point in the game were the downsides of fame. The PTA, for instance, was outraged that members of a rock and roll band who had written and performed songs advocating lesbianism (there were members of the group who had gotten their hands on a copy of the CD and correctly analyzed Steph’s song Wrong Tree), communism (Jim’s song Up in the Tower, which was about the rich exploiting the poor had been interpreted by the same group in this manner) and underage sex (Marcie’s ballad about growing up in rural Louisiana, On the Water’s Edge, mentioned her high school boyfriend nostalgically and had been interpreted as being about this subject) were allowed to have daily access to Providence’s vulnerable children. They had protested in front of the school several times. They had petitioned the school board and even the state legislature several times trying to have the band members forcibly removed from teaching. When none of that worked, many of them demanded that their children not be assigned to classrooms where one of the communist pervert devils was teaching.
All five of the Brainwash members tried the best they could to take all of this in stride, but it was tough sometimes to turn the other cheek and keep showing up for work each day. Anne had all but begged them on multiple occasions to reconsider her offer of a voluntary leave of absence, even going so far to offer to put into writing her guarantee that they would be allowed back to work at the start of the following fall semester.
“It’s for the good of the school,” she insisted. “The good of the children.”
Neither Jim nor Steph took her up on the offer. Nor did Marcie or Jeremy or Rick when similar offers were made to them from their respective schools’ versions of Anne.
And now, the first quarter was over and Jim and Marcie were desperately awaiting their royalty check. Tax Day had been delayed by two days this year thanks to April 15 falling on a Saturday, but come Monday the 17th, they were going to owe a whopper to both the State of Rhode Island and the United States Internal Revenue Service. And the reason they were in tax trouble this year was because of the Brainwash project. They had been given a twenty-thousand-dollar advance by KVA Records back in May of 1994, their share of the fifty thousand dollars in advance money fronted to the band against future royalties. They had failed to take that money into consideration when figuring out their tax withholding. And now the bill was due. They owed Uncle Sam more than nine thousand dollars in taxes and Aunt Rhode Island nine hundred and fifty-five. And currently, their checking and savings accounts combined had a total of fifty-three dollars and seventy-four cents. Their three credit cards were all maxed out. They were, in short, in big trouble if their royalty checks were not enough to cover what they owed.
“You called Jake, right?” asked Marcie, who had been chewing her fingernails obsessively for the past two weeks, ever since Jim had figured out their taxes using a computer program a friend of his had loaned him. Not believing the result at first, he had then painstakingly figured out the taxes by hand and came to the exact same figures.