More "Confessions"
So, yesterday, I was all set to do another "100 Things." It was going to be all about my love of ensemble casts rather than focusing on a central character and it was going to explore my fascination with writing about bands and musicians and it was going to be glorious. Then, my laptop, which had been arguing with its internet connection since Saturday (at the time I thought it was because of the rain or something) decided to rage quit and stop recognizing the network entirely.
I think I finally got it fixed, so here's another bit of "Confessions" while I psych myself up to rewrite that band-love thing.
I've skipped a chapter, 'cause I didn't like that one so much, so here's the pertinent information: Jesse and RJ are coerced into going to an audition in Vegas by Jesse's older sister Jane. They lie about their dancing ability but get in anyway based on their singing and meet Jake, Riley, and Lewis for the first time. The five of them sing Elvis's "Love Me Tender" in five part harmony and Jesse has a religious experience.
Enjoy. This one isn't as long as the first, and I'll try to do a better job on formatting so it isn't as confusing. Also: I don't know anything about how the music industry really works. Enjoy.
Chapter Three
How to Make a Boyband, or: The Unbelievable but True Story of Jake Song and the Good People of GRC Records, Plus: How Jake Fought and Won to Get Me In
I didn’t know it at the time, but Jake Song was something of a local legend in certain parts of Las Vegas, and not for the kind of stuff people usually get to be legendary in Vegas for, either. At fourteen he’d been the youngest member of a highly competitive break dance crew, the kind you see on TV and backing up superstars in music videos. They were known throughout the underground dance scene in the city (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d say or type) as the crew to beat, and Jake didn’t just provide the high flying stunts (as the littlest he got thrown around a lot, as I understand it), he also made most of the mixes the crew danced to himself.
Then, when he was sixteen, the crew disbanded and Jake was left without a direction or a purpose, disowned by his strict parents and living on his own, but with reputation as a skilled young dancing protégé. His grandmother took him in, made him go back to high school, and he spent the next year or so focusing (obsessively) on his music, continuing to dance whenever he could get a gig (and this being Vegas, that was both easier and harder than it might seem, easier because there was always someone looking to put on a show, and Jake had the reputation and the skills, harder because he was still a little under aged). When he finished high school, one of his former crew-mates, who’d spent the time since the breakup touring as a backup dancer for Miss Kelly-Kelly, got him in touch with an exec at GRC Records.
GRC loved him like a baby loves candy. He was a little Asian, perhaps, for the American pop market, but GRC was an international company, and they knew an attractive young man who sang, danced, and wrote all his own songs would always make money.
Then Jake told them he really wasn’t interested in doing the solo thing. What he really wanted was to put a vocal group together.
GRC was less than enthused. It was 2003 and who was doing the boyband thing anymore, really. Jake listened to all of that, nodded along to their promises of fame and fortune if only he would drop that stupid idea and get a solid solo demo together, and politely (politely for Jake anyway, I’m guessing) explained that the music he was writing at the moment really needed four more voices to fill out the harmonies, and no, double-tracking his own voice wouldn’t cut it.
The good people from GRC shared a disgruntled look, muttered to each other about artists, and wished him luck on his future endeavors as they prudently made for the door. Except for one.
Ms. Mel Peterson was new, deeply ambitious, and shark-like in her business sense. She ran the numbers and decided that the right group in the right place at the right time could be very profitable indeed, and she was going to be the first one in on whatever this Song kid put out. She gave Jake her card and told him to call her when he had the group together
Riley Andrews had been the first addition to the group. He’d moved to Vegas with his family when he was fifteen and knew Jake from various choral and talent competitions around the city back when they’d both been in high school. His real passion, however, had been for skateboarding, until an untimely injury ruined his hopes for a professional career.
He’d been doubtfully touring the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus when he ran into Jake, who’d been tooling around optimistically looking for talent. Jake told Riley about the group and Riley said sure, he was in.
Then, when Jake called him back a few days later (it always seemed to take Jake a few days to remember anything, in between swimming in his music), Riley realized Jake had been serious and suggested his younger step-brother to join as well.
Lewis, who was fourteen at the time, had spent the past four years deeply resenting the move that had taken the blended family away from Los Angeles, because Lewis wanted to be a star, to sing and dance and perform, and how the hell was he supposed to do that if he wasn’t in LA? He still doggedly went to auditions, encouraged by his mother, and was, in general, pretty miserable until Riley introduced him to Jake.
Jake, as far as Lewis was concerned, was pretty much the coolest person ever, a real performer, who did real gigs and everything and was almost a little bit famous in Las Vegas already, and who sang and wrote songs and wanted Lewis to join his group.
Jake said Lewis had a great voice, and he could see him doing a lot of the leads once his vocal chords had matured some more.
He took his two new members to see Mel, who looked at Lewis’s angelic blond curls and saw dollar signs.
“Just the three of you,” she said hopefully.
But Jake shook his head. “I need two more. And I really want a bass singer.”
Unfortunately, the three of them were pretty much at the end of their ready-made friends and acquaintances who might be interested or capable of being in a group like this. They languished for a few weeks before Mel impatiently suggested holding an audition.
Jake and Lewis, who had both been through an audition process in Las Vegas before, both winced expansively and dithered for another few days before giving in and bracing themselves.
From two o’clock until seven o’clock they indulged the usual collection of weirdoes and crack fiends who all thought they could sing and only a few of which actually could, including a group of guys in tight mesh shirts who were almost definitely rent boys, three drag queens, and one very butch woman who very nearly got the bass part before Riley figured out a polite way to ask whether or not she had a vagina (then it was an uncomfortable few minutes before she--he, I guess--accepted that they probably wouldn’t be able to let him in the group even if he was post-op, and yes it was a fucked up and unjust policy, but there wasn’t anything they could do). To be fair, most of the rest of the auditioning singers weren’t quite so bad or strange, but none of them sounded right, and to Jake the sound was the most important thing, followed swiftly by the dancing.
Then two clueless kids from Freeland came in and the sound fell right into place.
---
Jake was less than pleased to find that we weren’t actually Las Vegas residents like we said.
“Was there anything else you lied about on the fucking form?” he asked.
We thought about it. “I’m actually closer to five three than five six,” RJ offered (Jake rolled his eyes at him).
“And I don’t actually turn seventeen until summer,” I confessed.
Jake sighed. “Ok, so we’ll work something out. You’re both still in school?”
“I really wasn’t planning on going back for my senior year,” I offered helpfully.
“Not really an option for me; my dad would kill me if I dropped out to join a boyband, and he has a gun, and he’s a cop, and the desert is really big and, like, right there.”
Jake nodded. “Sure. Alright, whatever. So long as you guys aren’t, like, convicted felons or something.”
RJ and I looked at each other. “Was destroying that guy’s car a felony or just a misdemeanor?” he said.
“It was just a juvenile finding, I don’t think it counts,” I said.
Jake stared at us for a moment, then started to laugh.
Lewis, meanwhile, looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, so I fixed my very best juvenile delinquent sneer on, just for him. He glared at me, then looked away.
---
Ms. Peterson, however, was of the same mind as Lewis.
Jake had waited until we’d all sung together a few more times before taking us to meet her.
We sang the song he’d written and taught to us, and she watched with a tight, pleased smile on her face, but when we were done and introductions were made she stared at me for a few long minutes before taking Jake aside for a private conversation about business.
“I don’t think the big blond one is right for the image of the group,” she said, cutting straight to the chase.
“What image?” Jake said, honestly confused, because he still thought he was putting together a group of singers who would also dance during the show (the fool).
Mel pursed her lips a moment, then said judiciously. “His singing is clearly not up to par with the rest of you, and I’m not convinced he can dance.”
Jake frowned, finally deciding he didn’t like the direction of this conversation. “So I’ll teach him. He’ll be fine.”
Mel’s mouth twisted tighter. “If he causes trouble he’s out.”
Jake rolled his eyes and started seriously rethinking the label thing, wondering if an indie, underground boyband was a viable option. “Whatever.”
Then Mel found out about my record. “Absolutely not,” she said. We were at Jake’s place, which was actually a pretty nice house that his grandmother had left him, and Jake was trying to teach me some moves and me and RJ how to sing properly, and we were all trying to figure out how we were going to work the distance thing, since three hours was a long way for me and RJ to travel for rehearsals every day, when she came in with a folder in one hand and a hard expression on her face. “We can’t have someone with a criminal record in the group, I’m sorry, he has to go.”
We were all in the kitchen, taking a break and listening to her talk. I was holding a water bottle so tightly that the plastic crackled and creaked and none of the other guys were looking at me. I wondered how she’d even gotten a copy of my record, or why it had even occurred to her to look it up, then turned to glare at Lewis, who was pointedly not looking at anything at all, his face blank.
“What does his record have to do with how he sings, though?” Jake argued, frustrated, and Mel huffed an impatient sigh.
“Look. This kind of group comes with certain expectations and generally attracts a certain kind of crowd. I can’t sell a juvenile delinquent with a violent crime on his public record to suburban teenagers.”
“Don’t all groups like this have, like, a... bad boy or whatever?” Riley pointed out, and I glared at him a little, just on principle, because there was no way I was going to let them just stick me with that stupid fucking label.
“Yeah,” I muttered, “and you can be the fucking stupid one.”
Mel flapped a hand dismissively. “There’s ‘Donnie Wahlberg wears a leather jacket and ripped jeans, isn’t he sexy’ nonthreatening bad boy, and there’s ‘malicious destruction of personal property, arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile detention center’ bad boy.”
“AJ McLean is a recovered alcoholic and he’s in a boyband,” RJ pointed out.
“And if Jesse had waited until after he’d sold more than nine million albums to get arrested we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
I stood up and headed for the door, ignoring the other guys when they called out to me. Fuck it. I didn’t even care anymore. If she wanted to kick me out because of what I’d done, whatever, I’d deal. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to people passing judgment on me because of my past. I guessed it was going to be harder to get away from Freeland than I’d thought, though, if it kept following me like this.
“Jesse! Fucking wait!” Jake had followed me out and finally caught up with me. I was halfway through the back yard with no idea where I thought I was going.
I shrugged off his hand where he grabbed my shoulder and scowled at him. “What?”
“What? Dude, where are you going?”
“Back to Freeland, I guess. I’ll talk to RJ, see if I can convince him to stay anyway, I know he said he was out if I was, but I think he really wants to do this, so don’t worry.”
He stared at me. “You’re quitting?! You can’t!”
I stared right back. “Dude, I’ve been kicked out.”
“What?! Mel can’t kick people out! It’s my fucking group!”
I frowned, confused, then shook my head. “It doesn’t fucking matter-”
“Of course it fucking matters!” He was scowling now, and gesturing wildly with his hands as he talked. “It’s my group, and I want you in it. I-” He broke off and frowned at me. “Do. Do you want to quit?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Being in a group like this--a pop vocal harmony group--didn’t seem like something I should want. It was stupid and dorky and incredibly gay. But RJ was my best friend--my only real friend who wasn’t directly related to me and had to put up with me--and he loved it. And I loved singing with these guys. I didn’t used to sing a whole lot, at least not where other people could hear me, since I had a reputation as this tough, scary guy and all, but Janie always said that singing was the best way to have music, because you didn’t have to pay for it and no one could ever take it away from you.
“...I don’t want to go back to Freeland,” I finally said, and Jake seemed satisfied.
“So don’t.” In a few years, I’d know Jake well enough to translate that into what he really meant. Don’t let Mel bother you, don’t let Lewis get to you, don’t doubt yourself, don’t doubt me, don’t worry, don’t stop singing. That day I just followed him back inside.
“Jesse is a member of this group,” Jake said to Mel. “He’s one of us and he stays.”
Which wasn’t the end of it. Mel brought it up again and again, but Jake pretty much just refused to listen, and eventually she let it go.
In other news, I read all of Kevin Smith's book "Tough Sh*t" yesterday while my laptop was refusing to talk to the network and get online. The man is my big, fat, balding, middle-aged hero and I love him. I might do a "100 Things" about him instead, because he had a lot to say about following dreams and shit, and it was really inspiring. It was a library book and now I have to buy it.
I think I finally got it fixed, so here's another bit of "Confessions" while I psych myself up to rewrite that band-love thing.
I've skipped a chapter, 'cause I didn't like that one so much, so here's the pertinent information: Jesse and RJ are coerced into going to an audition in Vegas by Jesse's older sister Jane. They lie about their dancing ability but get in anyway based on their singing and meet Jake, Riley, and Lewis for the first time. The five of them sing Elvis's "Love Me Tender" in five part harmony and Jesse has a religious experience.
Enjoy. This one isn't as long as the first, and I'll try to do a better job on formatting so it isn't as confusing. Also: I don't know anything about how the music industry really works. Enjoy.
Chapter Three
How to Make a Boyband, or: The Unbelievable but True Story of Jake Song and the Good People of GRC Records, Plus: How Jake Fought and Won to Get Me In
I didn’t know it at the time, but Jake Song was something of a local legend in certain parts of Las Vegas, and not for the kind of stuff people usually get to be legendary in Vegas for, either. At fourteen he’d been the youngest member of a highly competitive break dance crew, the kind you see on TV and backing up superstars in music videos. They were known throughout the underground dance scene in the city (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d say or type) as the crew to beat, and Jake didn’t just provide the high flying stunts (as the littlest he got thrown around a lot, as I understand it), he also made most of the mixes the crew danced to himself.
Then, when he was sixteen, the crew disbanded and Jake was left without a direction or a purpose, disowned by his strict parents and living on his own, but with reputation as a skilled young dancing protégé. His grandmother took him in, made him go back to high school, and he spent the next year or so focusing (obsessively) on his music, continuing to dance whenever he could get a gig (and this being Vegas, that was both easier and harder than it might seem, easier because there was always someone looking to put on a show, and Jake had the reputation and the skills, harder because he was still a little under aged). When he finished high school, one of his former crew-mates, who’d spent the time since the breakup touring as a backup dancer for Miss Kelly-Kelly, got him in touch with an exec at GRC Records.
GRC loved him like a baby loves candy. He was a little Asian, perhaps, for the American pop market, but GRC was an international company, and they knew an attractive young man who sang, danced, and wrote all his own songs would always make money.
Then Jake told them he really wasn’t interested in doing the solo thing. What he really wanted was to put a vocal group together.
GRC was less than enthused. It was 2003 and who was doing the boyband thing anymore, really. Jake listened to all of that, nodded along to their promises of fame and fortune if only he would drop that stupid idea and get a solid solo demo together, and politely (politely for Jake anyway, I’m guessing) explained that the music he was writing at the moment really needed four more voices to fill out the harmonies, and no, double-tracking his own voice wouldn’t cut it.
The good people from GRC shared a disgruntled look, muttered to each other about artists, and wished him luck on his future endeavors as they prudently made for the door. Except for one.
Ms. Mel Peterson was new, deeply ambitious, and shark-like in her business sense. She ran the numbers and decided that the right group in the right place at the right time could be very profitable indeed, and she was going to be the first one in on whatever this Song kid put out. She gave Jake her card and told him to call her when he had the group together
Riley Andrews had been the first addition to the group. He’d moved to Vegas with his family when he was fifteen and knew Jake from various choral and talent competitions around the city back when they’d both been in high school. His real passion, however, had been for skateboarding, until an untimely injury ruined his hopes for a professional career.
He’d been doubtfully touring the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus when he ran into Jake, who’d been tooling around optimistically looking for talent. Jake told Riley about the group and Riley said sure, he was in.
Then, when Jake called him back a few days later (it always seemed to take Jake a few days to remember anything, in between swimming in his music), Riley realized Jake had been serious and suggested his younger step-brother to join as well.
Lewis, who was fourteen at the time, had spent the past four years deeply resenting the move that had taken the blended family away from Los Angeles, because Lewis wanted to be a star, to sing and dance and perform, and how the hell was he supposed to do that if he wasn’t in LA? He still doggedly went to auditions, encouraged by his mother, and was, in general, pretty miserable until Riley introduced him to Jake.
Jake, as far as Lewis was concerned, was pretty much the coolest person ever, a real performer, who did real gigs and everything and was almost a little bit famous in Las Vegas already, and who sang and wrote songs and wanted Lewis to join his group.
Jake said Lewis had a great voice, and he could see him doing a lot of the leads once his vocal chords had matured some more.
He took his two new members to see Mel, who looked at Lewis’s angelic blond curls and saw dollar signs.
“Just the three of you,” she said hopefully.
But Jake shook his head. “I need two more. And I really want a bass singer.”
Unfortunately, the three of them were pretty much at the end of their ready-made friends and acquaintances who might be interested or capable of being in a group like this. They languished for a few weeks before Mel impatiently suggested holding an audition.
Jake and Lewis, who had both been through an audition process in Las Vegas before, both winced expansively and dithered for another few days before giving in and bracing themselves.
From two o’clock until seven o’clock they indulged the usual collection of weirdoes and crack fiends who all thought they could sing and only a few of which actually could, including a group of guys in tight mesh shirts who were almost definitely rent boys, three drag queens, and one very butch woman who very nearly got the bass part before Riley figured out a polite way to ask whether or not she had a vagina (then it was an uncomfortable few minutes before she--he, I guess--accepted that they probably wouldn’t be able to let him in the group even if he was post-op, and yes it was a fucked up and unjust policy, but there wasn’t anything they could do). To be fair, most of the rest of the auditioning singers weren’t quite so bad or strange, but none of them sounded right, and to Jake the sound was the most important thing, followed swiftly by the dancing.
Then two clueless kids from Freeland came in and the sound fell right into place.
---
Jake was less than pleased to find that we weren’t actually Las Vegas residents like we said.
“Was there anything else you lied about on the fucking form?” he asked.
We thought about it. “I’m actually closer to five three than five six,” RJ offered (Jake rolled his eyes at him).
“And I don’t actually turn seventeen until summer,” I confessed.
Jake sighed. “Ok, so we’ll work something out. You’re both still in school?”
“I really wasn’t planning on going back for my senior year,” I offered helpfully.
“Not really an option for me; my dad would kill me if I dropped out to join a boyband, and he has a gun, and he’s a cop, and the desert is really big and, like, right there.”
Jake nodded. “Sure. Alright, whatever. So long as you guys aren’t, like, convicted felons or something.”
RJ and I looked at each other. “Was destroying that guy’s car a felony or just a misdemeanor?” he said.
“It was just a juvenile finding, I don’t think it counts,” I said.
Jake stared at us for a moment, then started to laugh.
Lewis, meanwhile, looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, so I fixed my very best juvenile delinquent sneer on, just for him. He glared at me, then looked away.
---
Ms. Peterson, however, was of the same mind as Lewis.
Jake had waited until we’d all sung together a few more times before taking us to meet her.
We sang the song he’d written and taught to us, and she watched with a tight, pleased smile on her face, but when we were done and introductions were made she stared at me for a few long minutes before taking Jake aside for a private conversation about business.
“I don’t think the big blond one is right for the image of the group,” she said, cutting straight to the chase.
“What image?” Jake said, honestly confused, because he still thought he was putting together a group of singers who would also dance during the show (the fool).
Mel pursed her lips a moment, then said judiciously. “His singing is clearly not up to par with the rest of you, and I’m not convinced he can dance.”
Jake frowned, finally deciding he didn’t like the direction of this conversation. “So I’ll teach him. He’ll be fine.”
Mel’s mouth twisted tighter. “If he causes trouble he’s out.”
Jake rolled his eyes and started seriously rethinking the label thing, wondering if an indie, underground boyband was a viable option. “Whatever.”
Then Mel found out about my record. “Absolutely not,” she said. We were at Jake’s place, which was actually a pretty nice house that his grandmother had left him, and Jake was trying to teach me some moves and me and RJ how to sing properly, and we were all trying to figure out how we were going to work the distance thing, since three hours was a long way for me and RJ to travel for rehearsals every day, when she came in with a folder in one hand and a hard expression on her face. “We can’t have someone with a criminal record in the group, I’m sorry, he has to go.”
We were all in the kitchen, taking a break and listening to her talk. I was holding a water bottle so tightly that the plastic crackled and creaked and none of the other guys were looking at me. I wondered how she’d even gotten a copy of my record, or why it had even occurred to her to look it up, then turned to glare at Lewis, who was pointedly not looking at anything at all, his face blank.
“What does his record have to do with how he sings, though?” Jake argued, frustrated, and Mel huffed an impatient sigh.
“Look. This kind of group comes with certain expectations and generally attracts a certain kind of crowd. I can’t sell a juvenile delinquent with a violent crime on his public record to suburban teenagers.”
“Don’t all groups like this have, like, a... bad boy or whatever?” Riley pointed out, and I glared at him a little, just on principle, because there was no way I was going to let them just stick me with that stupid fucking label.
“Yeah,” I muttered, “and you can be the fucking stupid one.”
Mel flapped a hand dismissively. “There’s ‘Donnie Wahlberg wears a leather jacket and ripped jeans, isn’t he sexy’ nonthreatening bad boy, and there’s ‘malicious destruction of personal property, arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile detention center’ bad boy.”
“AJ McLean is a recovered alcoholic and he’s in a boyband,” RJ pointed out.
“And if Jesse had waited until after he’d sold more than nine million albums to get arrested we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
I stood up and headed for the door, ignoring the other guys when they called out to me. Fuck it. I didn’t even care anymore. If she wanted to kick me out because of what I’d done, whatever, I’d deal. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to people passing judgment on me because of my past. I guessed it was going to be harder to get away from Freeland than I’d thought, though, if it kept following me like this.
“Jesse! Fucking wait!” Jake had followed me out and finally caught up with me. I was halfway through the back yard with no idea where I thought I was going.
I shrugged off his hand where he grabbed my shoulder and scowled at him. “What?”
“What? Dude, where are you going?”
“Back to Freeland, I guess. I’ll talk to RJ, see if I can convince him to stay anyway, I know he said he was out if I was, but I think he really wants to do this, so don’t worry.”
He stared at me. “You’re quitting?! You can’t!”
I stared right back. “Dude, I’ve been kicked out.”
“What?! Mel can’t kick people out! It’s my fucking group!”
I frowned, confused, then shook my head. “It doesn’t fucking matter-”
“Of course it fucking matters!” He was scowling now, and gesturing wildly with his hands as he talked. “It’s my group, and I want you in it. I-” He broke off and frowned at me. “Do. Do you want to quit?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Being in a group like this--a pop vocal harmony group--didn’t seem like something I should want. It was stupid and dorky and incredibly gay. But RJ was my best friend--my only real friend who wasn’t directly related to me and had to put up with me--and he loved it. And I loved singing with these guys. I didn’t used to sing a whole lot, at least not where other people could hear me, since I had a reputation as this tough, scary guy and all, but Janie always said that singing was the best way to have music, because you didn’t have to pay for it and no one could ever take it away from you.
“...I don’t want to go back to Freeland,” I finally said, and Jake seemed satisfied.
“So don’t.” In a few years, I’d know Jake well enough to translate that into what he really meant. Don’t let Mel bother you, don’t let Lewis get to you, don’t doubt yourself, don’t doubt me, don’t worry, don’t stop singing. That day I just followed him back inside.
“Jesse is a member of this group,” Jake said to Mel. “He’s one of us and he stays.”
Which wasn’t the end of it. Mel brought it up again and again, but Jake pretty much just refused to listen, and eventually she let it go.
In other news, I read all of Kevin Smith's book "Tough Sh*t" yesterday while my laptop was refusing to talk to the network and get online. The man is my big, fat, balding, middle-aged hero and I love him. I might do a "100 Things" about him instead, because he had a lot to say about following dreams and shit, and it was really inspiring. It was a library book and now I have to buy it.