“All I did was open cans and boxes and bags,” Jim said. “Marcie did all the actual cooking.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jake said. “Go sit your ass down. I’ll take out the garbage.”
“You said ‘ass’!” Jessica shouted out delightfully. “Put a quarter in the swear jar!”
“Shit,” Jake muttered, reaching into his pocket, where he had taken to carrying a roll of quarters with him. They now officially had a swear jar. Jenny had set it up after hearing the typical conversations that took place among the musicians and witnessing their inability to restrain themselves when the children were present. The going rate was a quarter per swear for typical profane utterings, a dollar when the F-bomb was dropped. There was at least five dollars worth of quarters and perhaps ten in folding currency in that jar from Jake alone.
“Two quarters!” Alex said with glee. “You said ‘shit’ too!”
“Two quarters, going in,” Jake said, pulling them out of his pocket and dropping them in.
“You know, Jake,” said Jenny, her mother’s gaze of disapproval upon him, “the idea of the swear jar is not to collect money for investment purposes, but to dissuade profanity.”
“Really?” he said with a smile. “Now you tell me.”
“Can I just drop a ten-dollar bill in there at the beginning of each week and talk like normal?” asked Steph, who had dropped at least as much currency into the jar as Jake.
“You may not,” Jenny said sternly.
“Well, that sucks butt,” Steph told her, just barely keeping on the right side of the swear line with that one.
Jake chuckled once more and then grabbed hold of the black Hefty garbage bag inside of the trash can. He pulled it out, struggling a little and having to brace the can with his feet, but it finally came free. He twisted it closed and then walked through the kitchen to the side door that led outside.
It was only six days past the summer solstice and, as such, the sun was still well above the western horizon even though it was past seven o’clock. The sky was cloudless and a brilliant blue. A slight onshore breeze was blowing and the sounds of waves crashing to shore at the base of their cliff could be heard.
Jake carried the bag of refuse over to the plastic can that had been issued to the house by the County of Coos for weekly garbage collection. He opened the lid and dropped it inside. He shut the lid again and then walked over to the driveway where he stood facing the ocean. He stood there for a moment, enjoying the breeze on his face, the smell of the salt, the sound of the waves, the relative serenity of the environment outside of the house.
Brainwash and families had been living in the house with Jake, Laura, and the Nerdlys for a week now. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Having children around was definitely a change in the usual dynamic of communal living. One had to watch what one said these days or risk having to feed the swear jar. One stepped on toys in the hallway. One walked across scattered beach sand in the entryways. One had to listen to complaints that there wasn’t anything to eat around here. One had to wait one’s turn to use the bathroom, especially if one wanted to use one of the downstairs ones. The Scanlon and the White children were starting to grow a little on Jake—they were all reasonably well-mannered and engaging—but he was always the first to volunteer to take out the garbage, or make a run to the store, or anything else that let him step out into the quiet and calm of the outside for a few minutes.
So far, Project Brainwash was on time and only slightly over budget. KVA had flown the entire bunch of musicians and family members from Boston to Los Angeles on June 7th, put them all up in the Hilton Hotel in Santa Clarita, and provided them with rental cars (including a rental minivan for Jenny to drive the children around in). There, the band, the Nerdlys, and Jake had spent two and a half weeks working eight-hour days in the KVA rehearsal studio, picking out the fifteen songs they were going to work up, and then culling that down to the ten that would appear on the album.
This turned out to a little more difficult of a task than Jake had been anticipating. It was not because Brainwash had to struggle to find suitable tunes to work-up, it was because they had too many to choose from.
“How many songs to you have in your repertoire?” Jake asked them on one of the first days, after listening to them name off several dozen possible pieces to work on.
“Sixty-eight that we have composed and worked-up enough over the years to be played live in front of an audience,” Jim told him.
“Sixty-eight?” Jake asked incredulously. “You mean ... like ... ten times six, plus eight? That kind of sixty-eight?”
“That’s right,” Steph said. “Of course, at least twenty or thirty of those we haven’t done in a few years. I’m thinking we should stick with our classics and the newer stuff.”
“That’s incredible,” Jake said. “And they’re all as good as what we’ve been hearing from you?”
Marcie laughed. “That statement is open to debate,” she said. “I, myself, have more than a handful that I’m not particularly proud of these days.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Steph.
“Not me,” said Jim. “All my tunes are freakin’ masterpieces.”
“Oh really?” Marcie challenged. “Even Lock and Load?”
“What’s wrong with Lock and Load?” Jim asked with a smile that implied he knew exactly why Marcie objected to it.
“You know very well that Steph and I both hate that song,” Marcie said. She turned to Jake. “He wrote it back when he was playing with Courage. It’s a misogynistic rant about bagging groupies and then leaving them behind.”
“It’s a realistic portrayal of the life of a traveling musician,” Jim insisted. “I’m sure Jake can relate.”
“Groupies?” Jake asked. “You mean those mythical women of loose morals who come backstage after the show hoping to engage in meaningless fornication with a band member?”
“Mythical?” Steph asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Yeah, mythical,” Jake said. “I personally don’t think they really exist.”
Those were still the early days and it took a few moments for them to realize he was joking—and that he was also changing the subject.
“In any case,” Jake told them. “Having sixty-eight songs to choose from is incredible. You must’ve been very prolific writers and composers.”
“Yeah,” Marcie agreed. “There is a chemistry between us that makes it easy for us to work up a new song.”
“True that,” Steph agreed. “We’ve been playing together almost ten years now.”
And so the first few days had mostly been composed of Brainwash going through a good chunk of their repertoire, song by song, so Jake and the Nerdlys could help them pick out the very best. And while Marcie and Steph had been right—there were quite a few clinkers in the inventory—most of the songs were impressive pieces that, with a little work, would sound amazing on a CD.
“I think we’ve associated ourselves with a goddamn gold mine,” Jake told Pauline one day during the weekly business meeting. “They have sixty-eight songs in their inventory, at least forty of which are recording quality in composition and lyrics. We pull off this first album with them and there are at least four more that can be done even if they never write another song from this point forward.”
“That’s good to know,” Pauline said. “But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. How about we just concentrate on making this first Brainwash album everything it can be.”
“That’s the plan, sis,” he assured her. “That’s the plan.”
In the end they settled on sixteen of the very best Brainwash originals to work up. After another week in the studio rehearsing those sixteen over and over until everyone was sick of them, it was time to head north and get to work.