"Thanks," she said, looking her brother up and down a little. "You look a little haggard yourself."
Jake shrugged lightly. "It's always like this after a tour. Too much exercise from jumping around on stage every night, too much crappy food, too much coke and alcohol and cheap, meaningless sex. Give me a week or so to detox and catch up on some sleep and I'll be my old self again."
"Are you going to be able to detox?" she asked a little worriedly. "I've been getting the 'entertainment expenses' reports from when you were out there. You guys were spending an average of four thousand dollars a week on coke, pot, and booze."
"They didn't itemize that out, did they?" he asked.
"No, of course not, except for the booze anyway, but is there any reason to question the amounts?"
He shook his head. "We do love to party out on the road," he said. "That sounds about right to me."
"And just like that you can give it up?"
"Well... I didn't say I was giving anything up," he told her, "but I will be slowing down once I get back into the rhythm of being home. We're gonna have to start working on material for the next album, after all."
She looked like she had her doubts about that but she kept them to herself. "Well anyway, it's good to have you home. I actually missed you, if you can believe that."
"No, I don't believe it," he said.
She laughed and they sat down at the desk. Gloria stuck her head in and asked if either of them would like something to drink.
"I'll have another cup of coffee, Gloria, thanks," Pauline replied.
"I'll have a beer if you got one cold," Jake said. Pauline glanced at the clock on wall — it read 11:05 — but said nothing.
"Coming right up," Gloria said. "Corona with a lime?"
"You read my mind," he said.
She smiled and made her retreat. Once she was gone, Jake turned back to his sister/manager. "So how are we doing?" he asked her. "Lay some management shit on me."
She laid some management shit on him. "As of last Sunday Balance Of Power — the album — has sold three million, four hundred thousand copies, making it number three for all-time fastest to go triple platinum. It has been at number one on the album sales chart ever since it was released and shows no signs of being dislodged any time soon. Not even the last La Diferencia album — your closest competition — could ace you out this time."
"Ha," Jake barked, grinning. "We finally beat those fuckers. They knocked us out of the number one album spot the last time we were there." La Diferencia was a pop band from Venezuela that had become quite the sensation over the last three years with their feel-good, formulistic music. Their lead singer, Celia Valdez, was the reason for the runaway success of La Diferencia. Her voice was beautiful and she knew how to use it to the best of her abilities, to draw out any intrinsic value contained within the catchy, record-company written tunes she performed. Without her they never would have left Venezuela. She was also very attractive. Jake had met her twice the previous year during the Grammy Awards and she had shot down his advances firmly but kindly.
"They gave you a run for your money," Pauline agreed, "but album sales are not quite the strong point of La Diferencia's fan base. They kicked the shit out you in singles sales though. Every time one of your singles from Balance Of Power started moving up the charts, one of their songs was already there to keep it from making number one."
Jake nodded. "That's what happened the last time we went head to head with them. It's just part of the business. A hard rock band relies on album sales to make money while pop bands rely on single sales. Frankly, I think it shows how much crossover we're getting that our tunes are even appearing on the single sales charts at all. I mean Led Zepplin and Van Halen don't get as many singles out of their albums."
"That's true," she agreed.
Gloria came back with their drinks, setting a bottle of Corona before Jake and a steaming cup of coffee on a saucer before Pauline. They both thanked her. When she left Jake took a drink of his beer, draining it well past the neck. He stifled a belch.
"So anyway," Jake said, "I guess that damn Tipper-sticker on Balance Of Power didn't do us too much harm, did it?"
"No," she said. "I'll admit that you were entirely correct about that. Balance is your fastest selling album so far."
The "Tipper-sticker" he was referring to was the explicit lyrics or content sticker that was placed on any album that the Parent's Music Resource Center, or PMRC, deemed offensive to young minds. The PMRC was a group headed by several prominent politician's wives — Tipper Gore, wife of Senator Al Gore, chief among them, thus the name "Tipper-sticker" — that had declared themselves the guardians of community standards of decency in regards to music. They had formed the previous year in response to a growing media frenzy about satanic and sexually explicit lyrics in rock music which, it was claimed, were leading to teen suicide, teen rape, teen pregnancy, and the downfall of the American family. During the latter part of 1985 the PMRC actually managed to get senate hearings opened up on this subject, their goal to put ratings on albums and to censor those that earned the explicit lyrics definition. Frank Zappa, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, and John Denver all testified before this senate committee, all of them vehemently opposed to any sort of labeling or censorship of music. A variety of psychiatric and educational experts testified as well, most of them with the opinion that modern rock music was harmful to adolescent development and family values. The Recording Industry Association of America — or RIAA — who spoke for the musicians but who actually represented the record companies' interests, actually caved to the PMRC before the senate hearings were even completed. Or perhaps 'caved' is not the best choice of words. They made a deal in the finest tradition of American politics. They agreed to voluntarily label any album the PMRC deemed "explicit" with a warning label in exchange for the passage of the so-called "blank-tape tax", which added a percentage onto every blank cassette tape sold in the United States. The revenue from this tax was then given to the RIAA to distribute among the record labels they represented — the justification being that it was compensation for the millions of dollars they were losing by people using those blank tapes to record and distribute copyrighted albums. In any case, the Tipper-stickers were born and Intemperance's third album, Balance Of Power — though it contained no profanity other than the words "damn", "hell", and "ass" — was declared by the PMRC to be explicit because of the lyrics to one of Matt's songs called Service Me, which was about having sex with groupies out on tour. National Records put the Tipper-sticker on each one that was produced, warning parents that the contents might corrupt their children and lead to the downfall of the American way of life. This wasn't so bad in and of itself since the Tipper-sticker meant that parents would not approve of the album, which was an almost guaranteed way to get teens to buy it. It was the stigma that went with the Tipper-sticker that had potential financial and legal problems. Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, refused to sell any album with a Tipper-sticker on it. And there were many members of congress and of various state legislatures who were attempting to either forbid the sale of Tipper-sticker albums to minors or to out and out declare them obscene and ban them entirely. Pauline, when the album was in production and it was first announced that Service Me was earning them a sticker, had wanted to cut the song from the album, fearful that if Wal-Mart didn't sell it, they would be missing out on hundreds of thousands of potential buyers in the more rural portions of the country where Wal-Mart was often the only place to buy music. But Jake and Matt had both held their ground, insisting that the sticker would do nothing but help them.