Different Circles

Obie, Pauline, and Tabby were staying in Obie’s house in Coos Bay while Obie was working on his CD. Jake, Laura, Celia, and the Nerdlys had dinner with them on the following Friday night so they could have their regular business meeting. Obie made some homemade chili and then grilled up some bratwurst for the occasion. Jake, Obie, Celia, and Pauline all had various alcoholic beverages to go with their meal. The Nerdlys were not in the drinking mood so they had lemonade. Laura, naturally, abstained from alcohol as well. Jake himself would be on the teetotaler list in another seven days. That would be when they were within two weeks of Laura’s delivery date and he would need to be ready to fly them to SLO at a moment’s notice. The partners talked no business until after the meal was complete and the servants had taken the dishes away.

“All right,” Jake said, a glass of twenty-five-year-old scotch on the rocks before him, “I have good news to share.”

“I like good news,” Pauline said. “Let’s hear it.”

“I was able to meet with the suits over at Aristocrat last Friday before Laura’s OB appointment. We’re starting to see a significant upswell in CD sales for Brainwash II over the past three weeks.”

“How significant?” asked Pauline. She had been up here in Oregon for almost six weeks now and felt decidedly out of touch with what was going on.

“More than six hundred thousand since we started pushing for airplay and promotion of Glory,” Jake said. “And growing every week.” Glory was one of Marcie’s tunes, a moderate tempo feel-good piece expounding on how good it was to be alive in the world and in love. It had a catchy hook line and complex guitar work by Steph and Jim that was complimented by Marcie’s voice on the lyrics. Jake had always considered it the best tune on Brainwash II and had pushed for it to be second promoted on the theory that it would start to push CD sales. It was a theory that seemed to be correct so far.

“That is good news,” Pauline agreed. She had been worried about the initial sluggish sales of Brainwash II despite the popularity of the first promoted tune—Jim’s What’s in a Name?

“Indeed,” said Celia, who had a glass of scotch of her own. “The band should get respectable royalty checks next quarter. And they’ll only get bigger from there.”

“Yes, I think they’ll be happy,” Jake said. “The question is, do we want to start working on their next CD come the summer? Or do we want to give them another year off like we did with their debut?”

“I think we should get them back in studio in the summer,” Pauline said. “It seems obvious to me that this CD is not going to sell as well as the first. We’ll all make money off of it—Brainwash included—but we could have done better. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them fade from consciousness for a whole year. We can record their efforts over the summer and release it whenever we feel the time is right.”

“I like the sound of that on the surface,” Jake said. “But remember, I’m developing new material and will be ready to start working it up once Project Tisdale and C’s new CD are done. It seems likely that I’ll be ready to hit the studio come early spring.”

“Well,” said Obie, “it seems like y’all are managing to work with two studios at the same time right now. I might be able to schedule the time for you if you think you can pull off a Brainwash III and a Jake Kingsley at the same time.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” Jake said. “Right now, I’m not responsible for any recording except for some backup singing and maybe a few overdubs, so that lets me concentrate on being the producer for both projects. If I’m recording my own shit, however, I’m responsible for all the lead vocals, all of the primary guitar work, and some of the secondary guitar work in addition to the production. I cannot do that and simultaneously produce a Brainwash project. And—no offense, Nerdlys—I don’t think it’s a good idea to put out another Brainwash if I’m not able to produce with everything I have.”

“I thought we did a good job,” Nerdly said with a pout.

“And you did,” Jake said, appeasement in his voice, “but a successful CD needs me and the two of you together. The shining example of that concept is V-tach.”

“They are enjoying quite the run of popularity currently,” Nerdly had to agree.

“Fuckin’ A they are,” Jake said. “Home went to number one on the chart and hung in there for three weeks. It’s still getting saturation airplay nationwide. And Rock started getting airplay three weeks ago now. You know how that is going.”