Jake would never forget hearing the first fully mixed copy of their first song. It was Descent Into Nothing, a song they had played perhaps a thousand times since he'd written it sixteen months before. But when Brad turned on the reel-to-reel tape to let them hear how the recording had come out, his mouth dropped as the guitar chords poured out of the speakers, as his own voice began to issue forth.
"You guys are pretty good," Brad said appreciatively.
"We really are," Jake agreed, listening to the near-perfect blending of instruments and voice, to the pounding drive of the backbeat. For the first time he was hearing their music as others heard it, and in a format that was much smoother and more articulate than a live performance. And they really were good. Not just a little bit, but a lot.
"We're gonna make it," said Matt from his seat next to him. Apparently he was having a similar epiphany as he listened to the recording. "I always thought we would, but now I fuckin know. We really do rock."
"Goddamn right," said Bill, whose mouth was open in awe. "Goddamn fucking right."
When the recording sessions came to an end and all six tracks were captured on the master to the best of Brad's abilities, he went about making the actual demo tapes themselves. This was even simpler than pushing the record button on a home tape deck since the studio had extremely high speed dubbing equipment. It took less than thirty seconds to put the six tunes onto a blank high-quality cassette tape. He ran off twenty copies to send to Shaver (Brad had never actually admitted Shaver had paid for the session, but had loosely implied it on more than one occasion) as demo tapes. He ran off another half a dozen for each of the five band members to do with as they pleased and told them that Glockman Studios would store the master recording for them for two years free of charge, but that after that they would have to pay sixty dollars a year to keep it in the vault.
"No problem," Matt told him. "Thanks for everything, Brad."
"You're more than welcome," Brad said. "It was fun working with you. You're good musicians and I think you're gonna go far."
And with that, they left the studio for the last time, leaving a master recording in its vault that would one day-because it contained two songs that Intemperance would never end up recording in any other forum-sell at an auction for almost half a million dollars.
Life, such as it was, returned pretty much to normal in the weeks that followed. Winter came to Heritage and the band continued to play at least three times a week. They went back to working on new material, including a stirring new ballad from Jake entitled The Point of Futility. The crowds seemed to love this song with a passion that had so far been unmatched. It was tale of hopelessness in love, of the pain of letting go of someone, of the helplessness of not being able to change things. Ironically, the subject of the song-Jake's break-up with Michelle-was something he had pretty much gotten over by the time the song was performed before an audience for the first time.
Jake never tried to call Michelle and she, as far as he knew, had never tried to call him. He heard no rumors about her, spoke to none of her friends. It was as if she'd disappeared from the face of the Earth. As more time went by and he had time to put the relationship in perspective, he was able to conclude that it was probably for the best. They were incompatible personalities at the base. She would go on to be a bible-thumping teacher in a private religious school for the rich, and he would go on to whatever his destiny held in store. He stopped feeling guilty about bedding groupies after each show and learned to enjoy it almost as much as Matt and Darren did.
The subject of the demo tape they had made and what Shaver, their agent (it made them feel like rock stars just to say they had an agent) was doing with them, was always in the back of their minds and occasionally, when they were smoking weed prior to a jam session or drinking beer among themselves after a rehearsal, the topic of intense conversation. But when Matt would call Shaver to enquire on how things were going, all he would be told was that the tape had been sent out to various contacts in the industry and that it took time to get a response to them. Be patient, Matt was advised. Things will start moving soon.
And it turned out that Shaver was right. In mid-February of 1982, just as Jake was starting to think that the whole agent thing had been for nothing, he received a phone call from Matt.
"Wassup, Matt?" he asked, using the remote control to mute his television set. "You sound excited."
"I am," Matt said. "I'm about ready to come in my fuckin jeans, brother."
This got Jake's attention. "Shaver?" he asked.
"Bet your ass," Matt told him. "He came through for us. I just got off the phone with him. He's sending us some plane tickets and we're flying down to L.A. next Thursday."
"Who? Me and you?"
"No, the whole fuckin band, man. All of us."
"What for?"
"We're gonna meet with a guy from National Records."
"National Records," Jake said slowly, pondering. National Records was one of the largest names in the business.
"Fuckin A, homey," Matt told him happily. "Shaver says they want to discuss signing a recording contract with us."
"Holy shit," Jake said.
"Holy shit is right! Shaver did it. The motherfucker actually went and did it!"
Chapter 4: Descent Into Nothing
Los Angeles, California
July 6, 1982
Jake sat on a wooden chair with special padding on the legs to prevent it from making noise if it were accidentally moved across the tile floor. On his head were a set of high fidelity headphones known as cans, through which the sound techs could talk to him and through which the music he would be singing to would be piped. The room itself was fifteen feet square and completely sound insulated. Hanging from the ceiling by an adjustable bracket, directly in front of Jake's face, was a padded voice microphone that was wired into a socket in the ceiling. There was a window in the wall through which a large soundboard and two sound technicians could be seen.
"Okay, Jake," said a voice in the cans. This was Stan Lowry, the voice tech who was coaching him through this portion of the recording process. "We're cued up in here. Let's do it again. Remember, two inches from the foam, nice even timbre, and watch the lip popping."
Jake nodded and gave a thumbs up. By now, he knew not to talk back to them.
"The Point of Futility," Stan's voice said. "First verse, take twelve."
The music began to play in the headset, the gentle, melodic fingerpicking of an acoustic guitar with a piano in accompaniment. These were the tracks of the song they'd recorded over the last three weeks, mixed together but not finalized onto the master just yet. The song did not start from the beginning. Jake was given just enough lead to plug himself into the song. He took a deep breath as his cue approached, making a check to see that his mouth was exactly two inches from the microphone, licking his lips a final a time to try to keep them from popping. The cue arrived-a long, mournful bending of the A string of Matt's guitar-and he began to sing, trying to project his voice perfectly.
"There comes a time when it's over
When souls have gone their own ways
When the things that brought you together
Now drive you apart, day after day
And you know that it's over
You've felt it go, there's been no mistake
It's the end of together
No more give, no more take"
"Hold up, Jake," Stan's voice cut in, overriding the music tracks. A second later they were turned off completely.