Rock On (19 page)

There are a few trade magazines in my mailbox, so I grab them and sit down in my office to read them. The story has moved forward. The grandson of the booze mogul is now making it clear in the press that if the sale is approved, he has plans to cut at least a thousand employees in hopes of finding $250 million in cost savings once the deal is officially closed. He has also made clear his plans to cut a lot of bands from contracts, also to help get that $250 million in savings. Everyone knows it's going to be a bloodbath. Nicknames for this guy are already floating around the floor, ranging from the obvious franchised antagonists like Dr. Evil to the basic standbys like Whitey and the Man. It's brought to my attention, by an honorable intern using the Internet to apply due diligence to researching our potential new owner, that he has been something of a lyricist in the past. Love songs — slow jams, it turns out. Holy Christ, it just keeps getting better. Ladies and gentleman, the man who is about to fire me and 999 other employees would like to drop a sexy, heartfelt number on you. He wants to lay it down real nice and slow for you with a ditty about love that he wrote for Celine Dion. It's called “To Love You More,” and it goes a little something like this . . .

Take me back in the arms I love

Need me like you did before

Touch me once again

And remember when

There was no one that you wanted more

Don't go you know you will break my heart

He won't love you like I will

I'm the one who'll stay

When he walks away

And you know I'll be standing here still

I'll be waiting for you

Here inside my heart

I'm the one who wants to love you more

You will see I can give you

Everything you need

Let me be the one to love you more

See me as if you never knew

Hold me so you can't let go

Just believe in me

I will make you see

All the things that your heart needs to know

I'll be waiting for you

Here inside my heart

I'm the one who wants to love you more

You will see I can give you

Everything you need

Let me be the one to love you more

And some way all the love that we had can be saved

Whatever it takes we'll find a way

I'll be waiting for you

Here inside my heart

I'm the one who wants to love you more

You will see I can give you

Everything you need

Let me be the one to love you more

There's this part of me that wants to believe everything our new owner is saying to me in his song. I mean, he's clearly a guy with feelings like any other human being on the planet. It's a little awkward, but I feel like I would imagine the woman character in this song feels when she hears these words. In other words, I hope he means what he says. I mean, I want to believe him. I want to, as he puts it, “let him be the one to love me more,” as opposed to the guy who's going to put me and everyone else around here out of a job. God, this must be what women feel like when they're dating a songwriter. I wonder if this is how Vallerie felt when she was dating a songwriter. I mean, you just, you want to believe all the things he's saying about love, and his heart, and his ability to be the one to love you more. But the second we buy into it, we're afraid we'll get burned. So we keep our guard up and protect our hearts. Don't we, ladies? Yes. Yes, we do.

So, Vallerie is officially packed up and out of the building now, but while she was here all those years, she had an annual tradition that marked the holidays — a party in her office over-looking Rockefeller Center, on the evening of the Rockefeller Center tree lighting. Now that Ms. Chocolate Chip is the new sheriff in town, she's moved her stuff into Vallerie's corner office, and is keeping the tradition alive. I walk down the hall and right into her lair. Everything is in full swing and the central focus of the soirée is watching a collection of videos from back in the day. We all take to watching one-hit wonders who have faded and bygone hopefuls who never made it.

A sobering education, this reel of videos; feels like it could be part of a “Scared Straight” outreach program to kids thinking about signing record contracts with major labels. They're sort of like fashion knock-offs, these bands in the videos, made up to look like what was supposed to be the next big thing at the time. We've got young cute female rap trios that aren't TLC, sultry divas who were born with only one name but aren't Madonna, a gaggle of toned and chest-hairless boy-men who are not the Backstreet Boys. At the moment there's a video on the screen that must be twenty-five years old. It's an act that
might as well have been named Also-a-Cute-Female-Rap-Trio-with-Big-Loud-Colorful-Clothing. I can't recognize them for anything. Jesus, one-hit wonder is one thing, but we are literally watching a no-hit wonder. Maybe even a no-album-was-actually-ever-released-after-we-signed-them wonder.

Everyone in the room is cracking up; we're all having a big laugh, and the more serious and sexy the girls on screen try to be, the harder it is to keep from laughing. They're doing some super-sassy, serious-but-playful, sexy dancing around in an alley where eighties fashion-model types are dressed in torn jeans and kind of brightly colored hooker clothes, leaning against the picture-perfect graffiti-stained brick walls and smoking cigarettes. They look on in a sexy, jaded way as the Unrecognizable American Rap-Trio seem to be trying to get their message across even though the TV is on “mute” and the party is drowning them out. They dance and posture around on the perfectly wet-down asphalt that's reflecting neon lights, they move in and out of the alley cluttered up with new wave hookers, and push their faces up near the camera lens, making it clear they could either make love to you or kill you with their hip-hop prowess.

I try to move in and make a comment to Ms. Chocolate Chip. I lie to myself that my late-in-the-game outgoing gestures of nervous goodwill toward her are some kind of spiritual progress, a sign of enlightenment or something. She stands watching the screen intently, drinking from a small clear plastic cup, holding something small and square on a napkin that she's maybe planning on nibbling on. It looks like, maybe, a little puff pastry? Filled with cheese? Jesus, don't ask her about the snack. The last thing I need is another food-based showdown
like when I met her way back on my first day here. I stand next to her, also watching the screen intently. I wait a few beats, sizing up the video with a quiet grin. This is the time. She is thinking the same things I am. Say something.

“Oh, boy. Jeeez. It's kind of strange, isn't it? I mean, standing here, sure it's funny, watching and everything, but at the end of the day our commitment to artists is . . .”

“Shhhh!”

“Oh. Whoops.”

“Here it is, you guys!” she hollers out to the room.

Something's about to happen on screen. The anonymous eighties female rappers have bid a sassy farewell to Smoking Big-Haired Cynical Hooker Alley and are now speeding along in a car. Speeding and rapping, driving playfully reckless as images of streets and traffic are projected behind them. I'm not sure what they're running from. One of the hookers could've freaked them out, perhaps. I try to discreetly strike up a conversation again. Quietly this time, just between us.

“You know, I wonder where they're driving to and if the . . .”

“Okay, get ready everyone!” she screams.

“Yeah, okay . . .”

“Keep your eyes on the cop when they get pulled over, everybody!” she hollers again.

Jesus, right in my ear, with the yelling. I think my equilibrium is permanently damaged. I bet if I try to walk away in a straight line, I'll just be walking in tight circles around the snack table.

The car lights up with red and blue lighting. The images projected behind the car start slowing down, then stop. The rapper girls look like everyone looks when they get pulled over,
but sexier. Kind of like, “We're getting pulled over, but we're just gonna go ahead and let this police officer know that we're an intoxicating combination of playful, angry, and sexy.”

When the cop walks up to the car, everyone at the party screams. It's this big-shot executive from upstairs. The guy who signed Twisted Sister and Kid Rock and matchbox twenty. (Note to editor: please leave that last band name all lowercase, otherwise their manager calls up screaming about how their name is to appear all lowercase. And I mean SCREAMING. Trust me on this.) Somebody unmutes the TV just in time to hear him deliver his line about how the rapper girls were speeding and how he'll need to see their licenses. Then everyone starts laughing so loudly that I can't hear how the sexy anonymous rappers get fresh with him, but it looks like they got off the hook. The video ends, the party chatter resumes, and me and Ms. Chocolate Chip are finally able to have a moment to chat and catch up with each other a bit.

“Ah, that was funny. Classic, right? Hey, great party, by the way. Good move. Hope you do it again next year.”

“I will, if any of us are even still working here.”

Okay, then.

First of all, I don't understand this band called the Darkness. I've watched the band's video about a thousand times in the process of going about making a television commercial for them, and I'm still confused. The lead singer is a guy in a fluorescent pink dancewear unitard thing that is cut low and hints at showing you the flames tattooed above his penis. The bassist looks sort of like every janitor of every public school I ever attended, save for the fact that his shtick in the video we're watching seems to be walking like a robot and wearing a Kamikaze headband. And in the video, while the singer wrestles on the floor near a ring of flames with a woman who looks like Satan — far away from the big tentacles of the space alien thing that's trying to kill them all — the lead guitarist (no leotard, headband, or shtick —
that
must've been a tense band meeting) simply plays long solos and casually takes note of the ensuing battle. Your first thought, if you're anything like me, is that this is some kind of post–Spinal Tap brilliant rock-and-roll irony. Your initial reaction is kind of like, “Ha! That's awesome!” with this sort of half grin on your face, as if you're in on the joke. Right, but then you hear how pissed off they get when anyone in the office assumes that this stuff they're doing is some kind of funny joke, and then what are you supposed to think about them?

There's the story floating around here about when the band
showed up at the offices once and someone in the A&R department basically made a comment something to the extent of, “You're totally in character, even in a meeting. I love it!” The confused and upset reaction from the band and their management prompted much company-wide discussion about how the man in the hot pink spandex jumpsuit barely concealing his fiery crotch, and his friend the robotic janitor man, are
not
being ironic. They are being serious, they have sold loads of records in the U.K., and they should be treated accordingly.

They're coming around here again, promoting the record, plus they've got a hit single in the States right now. They'll be doing an in-store performance in Times Square at the Virgin Megastore. And the usual e-mail gets sent out to everyone in the company, saying you should show up and support the in-store performance. I usually dodge these e-mails when they come around, especially when they ask us to stand out in front of MTV holding signs up in the air as if we're fans waiting outside for whatever Time Warner recording artist is showing up that day to promote something. I read those e-mails and wonder how this is really fooling anyone. I mean, do people walking around in Times Square see the likes of us standing there with the perfectly preprinted “homemade” signs and think, “Oh, I guess the young pop artist that's coming to MTV's studio today is not only a hit with the fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds, but it seems they have quite a contingency of die-hard fans who are thirty-one- to fifty-year-old office workers.” Anyway, a lot of people from the office are going to the Darkness in-store performance, and I figure I probably should, too. Especially with all the talk of a merger and people getting laid off. It's probably a really good time to start becoming
a gung-ho employee. In my head I'm imagining best-case scenarios like this:

New Owner: “I think we can fire most of the marketing department, don't you, Investment Partner?”