Read You Must Go and Win: Essays Online
Authors: Alina Simone
You Must Go and Win: Essays (7 page)
Lisa Cane did not have a manager, a booking agent, or a brand-name label. She didn’t dance on bar stools naked, dress up like a velociraptor, or traffic in the kinds of scatological stunts that generate instant acclaim. Nor did she have a hit song or a large, homegrown fanbase. And yet Lisa Cane was managing to take the New York City music scene by storm. Within a couple months, she’d landed a deal with one of the best indie labels in the country. A small ache opened in my chest whenever I saw her name. How was it that she’d managed to arrive on the scene so fully formed and primed for ascent, I wondered? I was jealous. But I was also curious. So I went to her website and started looking around, hoping for some clues. And after a while, I found this mysterious directive: “For more information, contact Shellac.”
Shellac, I learned, was a media relations and marketing company, but I still didn’t know exactly what that meant. I sent a vague note to the address listed, expressing interest in their “services,” and threw in a link to some of my MP3s for good measure. A reply came the next day from someone named Suzanne. She had listened to my songs and liked what she heard. Would I be interested in coming by the office for a visit to discuss my
music, and what Shellac might do for me? I agreed and we set a date.
music, and what Shellac might do for me? I agreed and we set a date.
The following week, I showed up at the front desk of their cavernous space in the Flatiron District where the ceiling fans were whirring so far overhead they may as well have been helicopter blades spotted from the Brooklyn Bridge. I was overwhelmed by the sheer real-estate-ness of the place. A young woman who looked as though she’d just stepped out of a fashion spread in
Vice
magazine darted out from behind a workstation.
Vice
magazine darted out from behind a workstation.
“Alina? Suzanne,” she said, motioning me into a nearby office. “You’re in luck. Lea said she can join us.”
“I’m sorry … who is Lea?”
“Lea founded Shellac. Let’s wait to talk until she gets here.”
A few minutes later, a formidable woman arrived in the doorway, announcing herself with a jangle of heavy jewelry.
“We listened to your music,” Lea said, without stepping into the room. “Tell me—did Pitchfork review your EP?”
“Y-yes,” I said.
“And what was your number?”
My number? No one had ever asked me for my Pitchfork score before. It was like asking someone their IQ or their cup size or the balance of their savings account. There must be a rule somewhere saying that you can’t just come right out and ask someone for
their number
without exchanging bodily fluids first. I was scared. I didn’t really know whether mine was a good number or a bad number, objectively speaking. The review had been pretty good. But the number? It wasn’t a terrible number, for sure. Not an amazing number, perhaps, but still—
their number
without exchanging bodily fluids first. I was scared. I didn’t really know whether mine was a good number or a bad number, objectively speaking. The review had been pretty good. But the number? It wasn’t a terrible number, for sure. Not an amazing number, perhaps, but still—
I gave Lea my number. She stood there thinking.
“Okay,” she said at last, coming unstuck from the door frame, “we can talk.” Then she sank into a chair and proceeded, over the course of the next hour, to explain how everything worked.
By the time Lea was done, I felt as though every song I’d ever loved, every band I’d ever worshipped, every bit of musical lore I’d ever stumbled upon and repeated was not a matter of personal taste or an act of free will, but the result of a successful campaign waged by beautifully coiffed people who moved purposefully from desk to desk in this spacious aerie with cell phones pressed to their ears.
“But I don’t understand why it matters whether I send a press kit or Shellac sends it …”
“Because then our name is on the envelope,” Lea replied briskly, “and it gets opened. People know we’re selective. We’re the gatekeepers—not the only ones, but one of them. Labels know we have influence, that’s why they hire us.”
“Is that how Lisa Cane got those great opening slots?”
“We have relationships with some of the better bookers around town. They know that if they include a band on our roster, their show will get a lot of press. When a slot opens up, they call.”
My head was spinning.
“And … so … how much does all that cost?”
“It depends. There’s a range.” Then Lea mentioned a few of my favorite indie bands and told me their labels had kept Shellac on retainer for as long as eighteen months, easily spending tens of thousands of dollars to promote a single release.
“Well, can you … would you mind giving me the low end?” I asked.
Then Lea leaned forward and gave me her number. And I couldn’t help it—I giggled.
I walked out of Shellac’s offices that day feeling as though I’d just disembarked from the mothership onto a planet that looked very much like Earth, but was subject to completely different laws of gravity. I had always assumed that there was only one way to “make it” and that was to keep grinding your way through the
club circuit until one day the right person happened to be in the room. I had really never considered that money could help lubricate the process.
club circuit until one day the right person happened to be in the room. I had really never considered that money could help lubricate the process.
Once I started keeping my ear to the ground, I found no shortage of stories. I heard about bands renting out venues themselves and booking nationally known acts just to guarantee themselves an opening slot, bands who bought up all the tickets to their own shows, then slapped “sold out” posters all over the city, bands who spent a small fortune branding themselves as the next big thing with videos and merch and tricked-out tour vans, bands who hired Shellac before they even released their first EP. All the bands I’d ever played in had done everything themselves—silkscreening posters, booking tours, writing press releases. But Shellac’s roster included the kinds of bands I’d always assumed were totally DIY as well: punk bands, garage bands, Riot Grrrls, metalheads. Thus enlightened, I found it hard to go back to my old ways. The Wednesday-night gig at Bar B on the Lower East Side and the featured-performer slot at the Ristra Lounge Open Mic Night in Hoboken lost whatever luster they once had. And living with Sarah only made things worse. By week two we’d settled into a routine. She would come home from something fabulous—a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom, a private party sponsored by Ray-Ban, a meet-and-greet with some
Rolling Stone
journalist—breathless with the day’s successes. Her client had just gotten selected for an Urban Outfitters compilation, her client was performing live on
Conan
next week, her client had just landed a profile in the
L.A. Times
… and on it went. I would listen to the flood of good news with a growing sense of unease. Sufficiently recovered from my trauma with the children, I had started looking for a new label again. Only this time it was considerably less easy. My leads had long since dried up. The A list had given way to the B list, and now the names of labels I was contacting read like an exotic-heirloom-seed catalogue.
Rolling Stone
journalist—breathless with the day’s successes. Her client had just gotten selected for an Urban Outfitters compilation, her client was performing live on
Conan
next week, her client had just landed a profile in the
L.A. Times
… and on it went. I would listen to the flood of good news with a growing sense of unease. Sufficiently recovered from my trauma with the children, I had started looking for a new label again. Only this time it was considerably less easy. My leads had long since dried up. The A list had given way to the B list, and now the names of labels I was contacting read like an exotic-heirloom-seed catalogue.
“So did you reach out to anyone new today?” Sarah would ask on her way to the fridge.
“A few …”
“Cool. What ones?”
“Um. Thistle Heart, Unyielding Crotch, and … um … Shoot the Muffin, I think. There may have been one more.”
“Oh,” Sarah would say, crinkling her cute nose in confusion. Her clients were on Interscope or Matador, or some other undeniably cool and fashiony label. “I haven’t heard of any of those … but I’m sure they’re all really great! I hope one of them says yes, right?”
Then she would dash over to the CD player, yelling, “By the way, we just got this in today. It’s an amazing new band from Bristol you’re going to love love love!” and I would grimace as the room grew loud with bright, happy sounds.
The only way to get internet access in the apartment was to cadge it from the restaurant next door. And the only way to cadge it was by sitting on the very edge of Sarah’s bed, balancing on one quarter of a butt cheek while resting a laptop on a partial slip of window ledge. I often chose to go to the coffee shop down the street instead. The music in the coffee shop was so loud that it was impossible to work, and yet every seat was always reliably full of people working. I would sit there composing sad queries to labels or following up on sad queries to labels. After two weeks of near constant effort, I’d turned up only one possibility, a small label in Acme, Michigan. They asked for a copy of the album, and as I wrote their address on a CD mailer, I wondered whether Acme was a real place. Hadn’t Acme been the name of the company that manufactured the flawed contraptions in those old Road Runner cartoons? The Dehydrated Boulders and Harpoon Guns and Super Leg Vitamins that always reduced Wile E. Coyote to a tiny, smoking turd? Free association wasn’t helping lift my spirits any. Especially now that it was truly winter, and Brooklyn’s
color-saturation knob had been dialed down to zero. One evening as I returned home after another afternoon of fruitless searching, a skinny man with an expensive haircut jogged up to me.
color-saturation knob had been dialed down to zero. One evening as I returned home after another afternoon of fruitless searching, a skinny man with an expensive haircut jogged up to me.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Would you go out with my drummer?”
I stared at him. He looked sober.
“Um,” I said, reshouldering my bag. “No.”
“We rehearse right there,” he said, pointing to a building on the corner of Roebling, as if the drummer’s sheer proximity might sway me.
“Uh huh,” I replied tetchily and resumed walking, picking up the pace.
“Listen. He, like, really,
really
needs to get laid,” the skinny man continued sotto voce, trotting alongside me.
really
needs to get laid,” the skinny man continued sotto voce, trotting alongside me.
“Sorry to hear that.” You, my friend, I thought to myself, are what make people hate Williamsburg.
“He’s a totally nice guy—”
“Dude?”
“—and, to be honest? It’s kind of an
emergency
.”
emergency
.”
I wheeled around to look him in the eye.
“I? … am married.”
I’d said it and now it was very quiet. I had gotten married at twenty-five, an age by which no small number of women already have kids and mortgages as well, but here in Williamsburg, on those blocks populated mainly by rootless twenty somethings, saying “I’m married” was like announcing you were poisonous. It was like saying “I just swallowed a radioactive spider and if you stare at me for one more second, you will die too.” Being married was a secret I’d kept for weeks from the first band I joined in Brooklyn, living in well-justified fear of the inevitable condemnation. A girl singer for a Brooklyn band was not supposed to be married; she was supposed to be cute and available, living a carefree life that involved drinking endless beers without ever gaining weight.
“Oh my God!” Sarah had whispered when I’d broken the news. “What’s that like, being married?”
“Well, it’s like … dating someone …” I’d replied slowly, careful not to scare her, “ … only you have to, like, date that same person every day. Forever.”
The man with the haircut looked at me as though a cockroach had just crawled out of my mouth.
“Oh,” he said. “Shit.”
And then he ran up Hope Street, in search of someone hotter and more fuckable. I made sure he had fully faded from view before turning into our doorway. Then I unlocked the metal gate and stepped onto an echoey landing full of trash bins and debris. There was a bright bar of light beneath our door and I could already hear the music blasting before I turned the knob. When I walked into the living room I found Sarah, hair tied back with a sparkly wrap, broom in hand.
“Great news,” she beamed. “I found us a third roommate!”
A third roommate? But the apartment only
had
two bedrooms and weren’t they both full of Sarah and me? I remember Sarah mentioning that she and Becca had once rented out the ledge on top of the bathroom cube. It was a shelf of space maybe three feet high with just enough room for a futon—ideal for vampires or people who happened to lack a torso. The girl lasted for three months before vanishing one day without a word to anyone.
had
two bedrooms and weren’t they both full of Sarah and me? I remember Sarah mentioning that she and Becca had once rented out the ledge on top of the bathroom cube. It was a shelf of space maybe three feet high with just enough room for a futon—ideal for vampires or people who happened to lack a torso. The girl lasted for three months before vanishing one day without a word to anyone.
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