Different Circles

“It’s more in line with Matt’s earlier work,” Jake explained. “After hearing Faithless, with the mellow guitar work and the more technical engineering, his old fans will be happy to hear Dethroned, and his new fans that he picked up with Faithless will appreciate the energy.”

“Right!” Crow said. “Makes perfect sense.”

“Perfect sense!” echoed Doolittle.

“Like before,” Jake told them, “I want it played only at the beginning of the sets for the first four weeks. Make sure the DJs always intro it. I know the hard rock stations will play the shit out of it, but I’m guessing we won’t get any airplay on the pops or even the alt-rocks. Dethroned is a little too hard of a tune for them. That’s okay though. Our CD sales for Faithless are coming from the hard rock demographic anyway.”

“Understood,” Crow said. “I trust you have this all written down though?”

“It’s written down,” Jake assured him. “Now, for Celia, I want the title cut promoted next. Living in Limbo, the song.”

“A good tune,” Crow said.

Jake wondered if he was even the least bit familiar with the tune. He was still not convinced that Crow and Doolittle had even listened to the CD after their initial preliminary playing of it. They still did not give much of a rat’s ass about the CD sales, especially since National was only getting twenty percent royalties on those sales. They were all about the touring income, and were very excited about those numbers.

“It is a good tune,” Jake agreed. “It’s also the hardest rocker on the CD. It’s not heavy metal by any means, but it does have distorted guitars playing out the riffs and a pretty blistering solo. It’s friendly enough for the pop stations and they will love it, but it will also play well on the alt-rocks and even the hard rocks. On the pops and the alt-rocks, I want the tune introduced at the beginnings of the sets. On the hard rocks, however, I want it played at the end of the sets with no intro at all, but with the DJs telling the listeners that they heard the latest from Celia Valdez after the song plays. I don’t expect this one to chart as well as Journey did, but once we get saturation airplay of the tune, I expect the CD sales will start going through the roof.”

“Whatever you say, Jake,” Doolittle told him. “Just give us the instructions and we’ll make sure it happens.”

“This coming weekend,” Jake said. “Starting on the Friday commute hours.”

“Absolutely,” Doolittle said.

“We just need to make some phone calls,” Crow said.

“Okay then,” Jake said. “I guess that’s that then.”

“There is one other subject we would like to talk about,” Crow said. “If it’s okay?”

“That depends on what you want to talk about,” Jake said.

“We have come to the understanding that you have been working in your studio rather hard this last month,” Crow said.

Jake wondered who had told them that. Certainly, none of the band members had. But then the National suits always seemed to be able to pick up information by one means or another. “I have been,” he said carefully. “What of it?”

“We were just wondering what you’re working on,” Crow said. “Is it a new Brainwash CD? Because if it is, it’s never too early to start talking about a deal. We would certainly be interested in coming to a deal on a Brainwash tour.”

“There is a lot of money to be made from that group,” Doolittle said. “Even though their last CD did not sell as well, that first CD put them on the public’s radar in an impressive way.”

“Brainwash,” Jake said, as if pondering the subject. “The band you rejected out of hand without even listening to their demo when I first brought them to your attention. So, I went ahead and signed them myself and produced their first CD. And that CD has now sold, as of the last quarterly report, more than five million copies.”

“Exactly!” Crow said excitedly. “That’s what makes this so lucrative. They are still getting frequent airplay for most of the tunes from that first CD. They play the tunes from Brainwash more than they do for Brainwash II!”

This was true information. Though Brainwash II was not a failure or a money-loser, only three of the tunes from it had charted and it had only sold a million and half copies at this point. Enough to make a nice profit for everyone involved, but not nearly as much as Jake had hoped for and a mere pittance compared to their first CD. And again, he blamed himself for this. He had not been as involved as he should have been in the production of the CD. The Nerdlys had done their best, but it took Jake’s input to make things shine.

“Well, sorry to burst your bubbles,” Jake said, “but we’re not working on new Brainwash just yet.”

“You’re not?” asked Crow. “Why the hell not?”