"Uh... actually that's not true," she said. "This is a six year contract, Jake, calling for six albums, not including Greatest Hits re-releases or live albums. Are you telling me you didn't know that?"
"Well, I know it's a potentially six year contract," he said. "I'm not completely stupid. But there are those options for re-negotiation after each contract period. Didn't you read that part?"
"Oh I read it all right," she said. "But apparently you didn't. Those options you're talking about all belong to the label, not you."
"Huh?" he asked, starting to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"Each option period is for one year and one new album," she explained. "You signed up for six option periods. At the end of this period the label has the option of retaining your contract for another period, which means another year and another album. If they didn't like the way your first album sold, they have the option of releasing you from the contract. You, however, do not have the option of doing anything but what they decide. If they want you to record another album you are obligated under the contract to do so and the terms you signed up for on the first album will still apply."
"You mean we're stuck with a fifty thousand dollar advance and all the recoupable expenses?" he asked.
"You got it. And furthermore, any debt you incur as a result of those recoupable expenses will carry over to the next album. They'll still give you your advance, but you'll start out two or three hundred thousand in the hole and it'll only get worse. And once that second contract period is up, they can force you to exercise the third option, and then the fourth, and then the fifth and finally the sixth, all under the same terms. You're stuck with this deal, Jake, until 1988 at least."
Every interview they did that day was longer than usual, both because it was their hometown and it was therefore felt they owed the local media a little more and because of the Spinning Rock article and the tumult it had caused. The first of the day was with Brian Anderson of KROT, the local hard rock station. Anderson was a DJ they had all listened to for years, his voice as familiar to them as their mothers and fathers. The first question out of his mouth was one the band was already becoming intimately familiar with.
"Did you really snort cocaine out of a girl's butt?" he enquired.
"I would certainly never imbibe in illegal drug use," Jake responded with a forced laugh.
"And even if we did," Matt added. "It's not polite to snort and tell."
Anderson laughed, saying he understood. He then went on to a more conventional interview.
From KROT they were driven to the Channel 6 studios in South Heritage, very near Jake's old neighborhood. The interviewer here - a heavily made-up, impossibly Ken-doll like man named Nolan Starr - was not quite as friendly.
"So you're denying the allegations?" he asked.
Jake tried to keep things on an even keel. "Well, I'm certainly not going to admit to them."
"Is that the same as denying?" Starr probed.
"We're taking the fifth on this, dude," Matt told him. "You dig?"
Starr dug, but he didn't let the issue drop. "What do you think about the efforts of the Family Values Coalition of Heritage to get the city council to revoke your auditorium permit?"
"Well, obviously I'm against that," Jake said. "This is our hometown and I'd hate to have our local fans miss out on our show just because a few people are overreacting to a entertainment article."
"So you think the people who are upset by these allegations are overreacting?" Starr asked. "That the parents of many of your fans who believe you advocate Satanism and drug use and rampant, irresponsible sexuality are overreacting as well?"
"I'm just a musician," Jake said. "I don't advocate anything."
"Then you do think they're overreacting."
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I do."
"And what about the allegations that you had sex with minors?" Starr asked next.
"I have never had sex with a minor," Jake said forcefully, although that wasn't entirely true, but it hadn't happened since he was eighteen and had slept with a seventeen-year-old girl.
That interview ended soon after. They were immediately driven across town to another one, this one for the Channel 9 news. It went pretty much the same as the Channel 6 one had.
From Channel 9 they went to the Lemon Hill branch of Zimmer's Records. There was the usual crowd of fans waiting outside to have their albums and singles signed but there was also a group of news crews with cameras set up and a group of hostile older people off to the side. When they got out this latter group pelted them with rolls of toilet paper and chanted, "Clean yourselves up or get out of our town!" The sheriff's department, which had been standing by to control the crowd, kept the angry mob away from them. And when they went inside and began signing autographs nearly ever person asked their own version of the same question: Did you really snort coke out of a girl's ass?
By the time they finished with all of this, it was after three o'clock. They were given bag lunches of sandwiches in the bus as they were driven downtown to Community Auditorium. They ate them in their seats, washing them down with cold beer since it was still over four hours until eight-thirty, the time they were scheduled to take the stage.
Since they'd been delayed so long with interviews the entire schedule was running behind. The members of Voyeur could not complete their sound-check because Intemperance needed to complete theirs first. As such, they were waiting impatiently just off-stage in the stage right bleacher section when Jake and the others emerged from the backstage area to finally get it done. None of the Voyeur members acknowledged the Intemperance members other than their lead singer - a short, skinny man who called himself Scott Bonner (though his real name was Steve Callman) - looking at his watch impatiently.
"Yeah yeah," Matt told him. "Keep your fuckin' pants on, hacker. We'll be done in a little while and then you can get up there and do your poor man's imitation of AC/DC again."
Callman - aka Scott Bonner - fumed but kept his mouth shut. He had already had his eye blackened and two of his ribs sprung when he'd made the mistake of getting in Matt's face for insulting their musical abilities and their unabashed (and poor) imitation of AC/DC. That had been prior to their second tour date together, just before Voyeur had taken the stage, just after Matt had accused him of sacrilege for having the audacity to call himself Scott Bonner - an obvious reference to the legendary Bon Scott, the original singer of AC/DC who had died of an alcohol overdose in 1980.
That had just been the culmination of the tension that had existed between the two bands even before they had met for the first time in Seattle. Voyeur was touring for their third album, having put out two gold albums prior to their latest effort, which was called The Promised Land. They seemed to think it was demeaning to have to open for a band touring for their debut album, as if seniority carried any shit with the National Records executives. Intemperance, on the other hand, thought it was demeaning to have their very name on the same ticket as a group whose sole appeal was imitating another band. To any professional musician or true music aficionado their music was atrocious - their guitar chords were hopelessly simple, their backbeats were unimaginative, and their lyrics were nothing but blatant rewrites of the concepts the band they were imitating had already covered.
"Look at this shit they're passing off as original music," Matt complained at one point. "Road to Purgatory, Murder For Hire, Blown Out of the Sky, Black is the Color, all played with repetitive three-chord riffs and that asshole singing in his quasi-evil voice. How do they get away with it? Why the hell doesn't AC/DC sue their asses?"