"Yeah," said Coop with a shrug. "It ain't like it means anything."
"What do you mean it doesn't mean anything?" Jake asked him. "You're almost a hundred and fifty grand in the hole. How can that not mean anything?"
"But I'm still living in a premo fucking condo in downtown LA, ain't I?" Coop countered. "I still got a butler who cooks my food for me and cleans the shit stains out of my underwear, don't I? I still get a thousand bucks every two weeks to blow on bitches and booze, don't I? And I still get to ride a limo everywhere I go, don't I? So we're in the hole? What's the big deal?"
"Yeah," said Darren. "It ain't like there's a way out of it, is there? Might as well just enjoy all the shit they're giving us and not worry about a bunch of fuckin' numbers on a piece of paper."
"Don't you want to have your own shit, Darren?" Jake asked him. "Your own house, your own car?"
"I got my own house," Darren said.
"No," Jake reminded, "you live in a condo leased by National Records, and everything inside of it, the furniture, the TV, the sound system, the fucking groceries in the refrigerator, all of that shit belongs to National too."
"That just means we don't have to pay to get the shit fixed," Darren said.
Jake shook his head in frustration.
Matt patted his shoulder companionably. "You're fightin' a losing battle here, brother," he told Jake.
"There ain't no battle to fight," Coop said. "Why are you guys even trippin' about this shit? Aren't both of you always telling us to not worry about things we can't change because it's fuckin' pointless. Well ain't this one of them things? We can't change this shit, can we?"
"That remains to be seen," Jake said.
"In my house," said Darren, "whenever my dad said some shit like that, it meant 'no'."
"Mine too," said Coop.
Darren stood up. "Look, guys," he said. "We got screwed with our contract and we ain't making any money. That's just the way it is. Now I'm gonna go home and enjoy all the shit they give me so I don't have think about that, you dig?"
They dug, especially Coop who stood up and followed him towards the lobby doors and their waiting limousine.
"Sheep," Jake said contemptuously. "Those two are just a couple of sheep."
"Yeah," agreed Matt. He flipped his sheaf of financial papers in disgust. "And its just like that prick Crow to have his fuckin' secretary give us these things as we're leaving. He's such a pussy."
"Hey, guys," said Bill, who had been furiously punching the keys on a pocket calculator (he habitually carried one with him everywhere but up on stage) during the entire discussion. "You want to hear something that will truly invoke anger within you?"
"Not really," said Jake, "but I'm sure you're going to tell us anyway."
"There's smoke coming off that calculator, Nerdly," Matt said. "What were you doing? Calculating Pi out to ten to the twentieth decimal?"
"Naw," said Bill. "This calculator isn't big enough for that, although I did calculate it out to ten to the tenth on my Commodore in my condo, just to see if the statistical randomness of the numerical assignments holds steady."
"You are a fuckin' party animal, Nerdly," Matt said.
"So what were you doing?" Jake asked. "Go ahead and hit us with it."
"I was trying to come up with a loose estimation of what National Records and Shaver are making off of us while we're going deeper and deeper into the red."
"And?" asked Matt.
"Shaver was easy," Bill said. "We made $5.2 million in royalties. Shaver got twenty-one percent of that. That's $1,092,000 that went to his agency from Intemperance album and single sales alone."
"Christ," Matt said in disgust. "And all he's done for us since we signed is act as spokesman for Jake when he started feeding his beef to Mindy Snow."
"And he's actually worked against us on several issues," Jake said. "He tried to talk us into doing the pre-written crap songs, he tried to get you to play that Brogan guitar during the first tour, and he went against us on the whole choreography issue too."
"Shaver is nothing though," said Bill. "National is the real robber baron here. It was a little harder to figure out what they're making since our royalties are based on the retail rate of five dollars an album, right?"
"Right," said Jake. "That means we get fifty cents in royalties for every album sold."
"But that was a negotiated rate, remember?" said Bill. "The actual retail rate of an album is more like eight dollars. So in actuality, our royalties are only about six percent of the true retail rate."
"So they're actually getting ninety-four percent of the money?" asked Matt.
"No, it's not quite that bad," Bill said. "Remember, they're not selling the albums and the singles for retail rate. That's what the record stores charge for it. National sells them to the record stores and Wal-Mart and all those places at the wholesale rate, which, to my understanding, is actually more like four dollars for albums and sixty cents for singles."
"So it sounds like we actually are getting one over on them," Matt said. "If they're only getting four bucks for each album and they have to pay fifty cents of that in royalties, doesn't that mean we're really getting twelve and a half percent?"
"It does," agreed Bill, "but don't let that fool you. That still means National is collecting three dollars and fifty cents for each album sold and fifty cents for each single. Now I went ahead and knocked off ten percent of the total sales of both albums and singles for my calculations in order to account for things like breakage, theft, and give aways. Even with that thrown in, they pulled in about $14.5 million in album sales and $2.9 million in single sales. That's almost seventeen and a half million dollars they've made off us so far strictly in music revenue."
"Seventeen and a half million bucks?" Matt said angrily.
"What about overhead costs though?" asked Jake. "They must eat away quite a bit of that."
"Unfortunately," said Bill, "I don't have a breakdown of their overhead costs relating to our albums and singles, but I don't think they're too terribly high. Remember, they have us paying for a lot of the traditional overhead costs out of our royalties. Our cut of the money paid for the cost of recording the albums, packaging the albums, marketing the albums, and shipping the albums. That includes the singles as well. We pay for half of the tour and half of the costs of making those abhorrent videos they insist on putting out. If their total overhead costs amounted to more than fifteen percent, I would be surprised."
"So they're rakin' it in while we're closing in on being a million in the hole," said Jake.
"Now we know how they can afford this big-ass building," said Matt.
"That's not the only revenue they're getting either," said Bill. "Let's talk about the tours for a minute."
"What about the tours?" Jake asked.
"They're making a considerable amount of money off them as well. The Descent tour ended up generating a profit of more than three million dollars in ticket revenue alone. The Thrill tour was a little more expensive to put on but it was still profitable. It made about a million in ticket revenue. Even though we paid for half of the costs of putting on the tours, they are not required to share any of the profit with us. And then there's merchandising. All those hats, T-shirts, sweaters, guitar picks, and other trinkets they sell at the concerts or in the department stores. We have no cut of any of that whatsoever. It is completely separate from our contract in every way."
"How much do you think they're making from that?" asked Jake.
Bill shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"I hardly think so," Jake said. "Come on, tell me what you think they're pulling in."
"Okay," said Bill. "Mind you, this is only an estimate."
"Of course."
"Those T-shirts they sell go for eight bucks. I'd be surprised if they actually paid more than a dollar apiece for them wholesale. Hats go for twelve and probably cost about two bucks wholesale. Sweaters go for sixteen and probably cost three wholesale. Let's assume that forty percent of the raw profit goes to operating expenses like shipping and paying for the employees who sell the stuff. That would mean they're clearing about $4.20 for each T-shirt, $6.00 for each hat, and $5.20 for each sweater. Now let's start with the T-shirts since they're the biggest sellers. How many T-shirts do you think they move in each show?"