The members of Earthstone were initially very proud of this fact and were quick to take credit for it. This was natural since they were the headliners of the show. On the day they got the news, just prior to the end of the first leg of the tour, all four of them had been strutting around like Gods, high-fiving each other, and proclaiming that this album had indeed been their shining jewel. Their attitude was understandable. On their three previous tours they had only sold out the smaller venues and had never been booked at Madison Square Garden at all.
It was Greg, in a fit of cocaine-induced tactlessness, who had been the one to burst their bubble. "You guys didn't have anything to do with the sell-outs," he told them. "It's Intemperance they're coming to see, not you."
They tried to scoff at this suggestion but Greg scoffed at their scoffing.
"I'm not making this stuff up," he told them. "National has done the studies and the polls. Intemperance is hot and most of the people buying tickets are doing it to see them and not you. It seems like the word has spread about how good of a show they put on."
Earthstone had undoubtedly already suspected this fact but having it pointed out to them in such a fashion had been perhaps one of the unkindest things Greg could have done. From that point on the indifference Earthstone had shown towards the members of Intemperance changed to out and out hostility.
"Nice," Jake told Greg as he watched the four men he had once idolized go storming out of the backstage area, kicking over boxes and trashcans on the way. "Did you have to be so brutal with them?"
"Fuck 'em," Matt said with a shrug. "It's a brutal world."
Jake could not deny that it was indeed a brutal world.
For reasons they were initially unable to fathom, each member of Intemperance was put up in a luxury suite in the Park Avenue Towers Hotel for the duration of their stay in New York - this despite the fact that Earthstone was still assigned to what was little better than a motel across the river in Jersey City. Jake, though mystified, could not help but be impressed by the 1600 square foot room on the 43rd floor, a room that overlooked Central Park.
"To what do we owe this pleasure?" he asked Greg as they headed for the radio station interview of the day.
"Just a little reward for you boys for doing such a good job on the tour so far," Greg responded, grinning from ear to ear of course.
It was the next morning - after playing before their largest crowd ever and then engaging in a night of New York debauchery - that the real reason became clear. A reporter from Spinning Rock magazine - the premier publication for rock music and everything associated with it - arrived to hang out with the band for twenty-four hours so she could do a story on them. Her name was Gloria Castle and she was an attractive, self-assured woman in her late thirties dressed in jeans and a T-shirt from the recent Rolling Stones world tour.
"As you can see," Greg told her after introducing her to the band in Jake's suite shortly after breakfast, "the band members demand only the best in their accommodations and we at the record company go to great lengths to keep them happy."
"I can see that," Gloria said, scratching a few things in a notebook she carried. "And do you guys enjoy this sort of treatment in every city you visit?"
"Of course they do," Greg said, before any of them could answer. "We treat our talent like royalty at National. Like the kings that they are."
"Jesus," Jake muttered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.
"We're hip-deep in the bullshit here," Matt agreed.
If Gloria heard their comments, she made no indication so. She simply snapped a few pictures of the room, a few pictures of the band sitting at the dining room table, and then sat down.
"Would you care for a little party-favor?" Greg inquired, whipping out his fabled cocaine kit and cracking it open.
"By all means," Gloria replied, smiling for the first time.
Greg laid out a tremendous spread of the drug, covering nearly the entire mirror. It was passed from person to person, with no one abstaining. Once this ritual was complete, everyone was in a better mood.
"So tell me," she asked no one in particular, "how did you guys get together in the first place? My understanding is that you all met in college in Heritage?"
"Well, kind of," Matt said, lighting a cigarette. "You see, Darren and I have been friends since junior high school. And Coop hooked up with us in high school, when we tried to get our first band together."
"What was the name of the high school?" she asked.
"Casa del Oro in Gardenia. That's a suburb of Heritage."
"The rich suburb," Jake said. "And Casa del Oro was where all the rich kids went."
"Hey, my family wasn't rich," Darren protested.
"No shit," Matt said. "That was why I hung out with you. I hated rich kids."
"You were one of the rich kids," Coop said.
"I know. That's why I hated them so much. A bunch of preppie faggots."
"So you didn't know them in high school, Jake?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I grew up in South Heritage. I've known Bill since I was a kid though."
"Oh?" she said.
"Yes," he confirmed. He tried to explain how their mothers were best friends and fellow musicians in the Heritage Philharmonic Orchestra, but she wasn't interested.
"Tell me about how the five of you came together," she said after interrupting his story. "That's what the readers are really going to want to know."
"Well," Matt said, "Darren, Coop, and I had been playing together all through high school. Some other guys drifted in and out of the band, most of them sucked ass, a few were decent, but none of them wanted to make the band like... you know... the most important thing in their lives. They would get jobs or find girlfriends who didn't want them spending so much time rehearsing and shit. Anyway, after we graduated from high school we started doing some original songs together. I was singing at that time. I have a pretty good voice and..."
"So you went to college?" she cut in, not wanting to hear about how good Matt thought his voice was.
He gave her an irritated look but kept his tongue civil. "Yeah," he said. "We couldn't get any gigs or nothing because we just didn't sound quite right. I decided to take some classes at Heritage Community College - some of the music courses just to... you know... get a little more educated in my field." He scoffed. "That was a joke. I had already studied most of that shit on my own. I knew more about music theory than most of the instructors. And I sure as shit played better than any of the guitar instructors who tried to..."
"So that was where you met Jake?" she interrupted again.
The look of irritation was a little stronger this time. "Yeah. That was where I met Jake."
"And what were you doing there, Jake?" she asked him.
"I was taking general ed classes," he replied. "After I graduated, I worked for about a year and just kind of drifted from job to job. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life... other than be a musician of course, and that seemed like such a long shot I didn't gear myself too much towards it. So anyway, I got tired of my parents nagging at me to go to college and get a degree so I signed up for some classes, thinking I'd start working towards an English degree and then kind of decide from there what I wanted to do. I had this vague thought that maybe I'd like to be a teacher. You know... so I could..."