Jake sighed. After three and a half months of recording sessions, he was quite familiar with being interrupted like this. It meant something had fallen outside of parameters. Every strum of every guitar, ever tick of every drumstick across every cymbal, every piano key, and, especially, every nuance of the lead vocal track, needed to be just right before it was considered a good take. And "just right" was a stringent specification in this place. The sound techs in charge of capturing Intemperance on tape were the most anal retentive perfectionists Jake had ever met. Nothing the band had experienced while making the demo tape had prepared them for this constant litany of rejection of their efforts. Let's try that one more time, had become the most often heard and most hated phrase.
"A little too much on 'it's the end of together'," Stan said. "You red-lined the meter in the high end as you drew out 'together'. Try to keep that just under range or it might distort on the master."
Jake nodded.
"Okay then, let's try that one more time. The Point of Futility, first verse, take thirteen."
The music started and once more, Jake began to sing. This time he only made it through twelve syllables before Stan stopped him.
Eventually, on take twenty-three, Jake managed to croak out the entire first verse of the song without red-lining the meter or hesitating for a hundredth of a second or inhaling at the wrong time or not keeping exactly up with the timing. So far, after having recorded seven of the ten songs that would be on the album, this was about the average amount for vocal takes.
"Why don't we go ahead and break for lunch, Jake," Stan told him. "We'll start working on the second verse when you get back."
Jake looked at his watch. It was only 11:25. He looked at Stan through the window, pointed at his watch, and shrugged questioningly-his message: why don't we work on the second verse now? At least that way they could get the first six takes out of the way.
"I know its early," Stan said, "but I want to mess around with the cueing tracks just a bit and Max is here and wants to see you."
Jake nodded and took off the cans, setting them carefully down on the chair. He went to the door and opened it, stepping out into the technician's room. There, by the door that led out into the hall, stood Max Acardio, the representative for National Records' artist and repertoire (A&R) department who had been assigned to work with Intemperance. Max was in his early thirties. He was a tall, artificially handsome guy with an expensive and well-fitted toupee atop his head. His teeth were capped and so white they could potentially cause blindness. And he showed those teeth a lot. Max was always grinning and smiling. He was dressed in his normal attire of a stylish but slightly loud Italian suit and a short, skinny tie. The grin widened to the point of alarm when he saw Jake emerge from the sound room.
"Jake," he said, holding out his hand. "How the hell you doing today? You sounded great in there. Just great. I can't wait until we get this project in release."
"Hey, Max," Jake replied, shaking with him and then submitting to the one armed hug that Max employed if it had been more than forty-eight hours since he'd seen you last.
"How you holdin' up in there, Jake?" Max asked him. "They tell me you're doing good and that production is on time and under budget."
"It gets a little tedious at times, but I'm hanging in there," Jake told him.
"Good, good," Max replied, obviously not having even heard what Jake had just said. "I have some good news for you."
"What's that?"
"I was just up in the Arts department. They've finished the album cover. You want to come see it? I have it up in my office."
"Sure," Jake said. "I'd love to see it. What about the rest of the guys?"
"Matt's in studio B re-doing some guitar tracks for Who Needs Love?, Bill is going over some of the mixes in the sound room, and Darren and Coop are setting up their equipment in the red room for the next song."
"Oh, okay," Jake said with a shrug. All of that was pretty typical. "Let's go check it out then."
The recording studio was located in the basement of the thirty-story National Records Building-a glittery, gaudy skyscraper on the edge of Hollywood. They rode the rickety, cramped elevator up to the eighteenth floor. Max's office was on the north side of the building, overlooking the squalor of Hollywood Boulevard and the tenement apartments beyond it. Max's desk stood against the outside window, presumably so he didn't have to actually look out there. He sat down in his chair and invited Jake to sit in a smaller chair across from him.
"Here it is," he said, pulling an album cover out from beneath his desk. He handed it over to Jake. "What do you think?"
Jake looked at it with mixed emotions. On the front of it was the scene that Acardio and Rick Bailey from the Artist Development Department had come up with. It was a picture of a hotel room with empty beer and liquor bottles laying everywhere, lamps knocked over, even the television set lying broken and battered on the floor. There were several sets of women's panties crumpled about with the rest of the debris as well as a small mirror with dusty residue clearly visible on it (though the mirror itself was something it took a few viewings to notice). Lying face down on the bed was a man that could have been Jake but was actually a model that resembled him. The man was naked but had his bare ass covered with the twisted sheets from the bed. He was presumably passed out, his left arm curled around an almost-empty whiskey bottle, his right resting on the bare back of an attractive female model, who was equally passed out and who also had her forbidden parts strategically covered by the placement of the sheet. On the top of the picture, in large, uneven pink letters that appeared to have been written with lipstick in a drunken hand, was: Intemperance. Beneath this, in smaller letters but still in the lipstick writing, was the name of the album: Descent Into Nothing.
Acardio and Bailey had discussed this album cover with the band but that had only been a courtesy. They didn't care what the band thought about it (Darren, Coop, and Matt all liked the idea, Bill and Jake hated it). As the band had come to learn since entering into the recording contract, the album belonged to National Records. Period. They would produce it, promote it, sell it, and package it any way they wished.
"It goes along with the image we're going to be pushing for you guys," Bailey had told them when they'd first discussed the album cover.
"The image?" Jake had asked.
"Right. Every band has to have an image. It's part of what sells you to the fans. In your case, your image is reflected in your very name. Intemperance. A lack of temperance. Temperance means sobriety, control, clean living. You boys are going to represent and portray yourselves as the very opposite of all that."
"Shit," Matt had scoffed. "That shouldn't be too fuckin' hard. Why the hell do you think I named the band that?"
"Exactly," Bailey said. "And I want you to live up to that image-all of you. When you go out on the road to promote this album, I want you to party hard, to develop a reputation as total pagans, as ambassadors of debauchery. I want to hear stories circulating about drug and sex orgies from you. I want you to be notorious. As your publicity manager, I will do everything I can to get these stories into print. The more they print about you living up to the Intemperance name, the more popular you'll be and the more albums we'll sell."
"Shouldn't our music sell itself?" Jake had asked at this point. "I mean, we're a good band. People will want to hear our music because its good music, right?"
"Well... having your music actually be good is a bonus," Bailey allowed. "And the promotion department will make sure your tunes are played on the radio nationwide, but trust me on this, your image will sell more albums than your music. That's always been true and always will be. Look at Ozzy Osbourne. The best thing he ever did for his career was biting the head off that bat."