Beginning of the End
I am in BIG TROUBLE. My manager has just called, demanding to know whether it is I who have posted a message on an industry message board lamenting my current miserable situation and describing my A&R man as “barking mad”.
“But he bloody is” I tell him.
“I know he is”, my manager replies “but now not only is he barking mad, he’s really fucking furious.”
“Oh”, I reply. I am having a hard time stifling my giggles. I think my manager is too, but is attempting to take up the mantle of THE ONE WHO IS THE ADULT HERE to my wilful, disobedient child. (They call that child THE ARTIST in the music business. Record contracts are written in much the same language as those disclaimers at the bottom of school prospectuses, that while they are loco parentis (couldn’t that also read ‘the mad parent’?), ultimately, if your child decides to be a complete brat it’s not their fault. In the parallel world of the recording contract, this means that even though a label may try their best to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (for this read any individual found on a reality television show), they cannot be held accountable for the artist’s own cock-ups (or theirs, for that matter): cock-ups entailing everything from cancelling a gig after a few too many lines of the finest Colombian to selling 1 record, even if they, THE COMPANY, deemed it necessary to spend only the equivalent of one round for the A&R department in the pub on your entire marketing campaign.)
“Your presence, and mine, is requested in his office at 6 pm tonight. I suggest you practice your crying now, and I will tell him you are having your period.”
By now, it is becoming the most replied to post of the day. I should be honest and say that it is hardly the main thoroughfare for all the world’s pop biz cognoscenti, especially not since it’s father founder got himself banged up for paedophilia (why didn’t they get him for his appalling novelty hits as well?), but it is England’s sad and sorry answer to the American behemoth that is the Velvet Rope. (On which board there is a grading system from bronze to diamond according to how many posts and individual has made - diamond is the equivalent to 2000 posts. And there are a lot of sad sad sad diamond members, who are always the first to dole out their pearls of wisdom - but tell me, would you take career advice from someone who has got enough time to post on a messageboard all day long? You know they have to work on reception or something. In the factory of a mail order company in Arkansas or somewhere.) So, while as I say this is hardly the centre of the music universe, I am pleased to notice that not only is it the most replied to post of the day, but that people are guessing it is I who have written it, and moreover, there seems to be a collective voice of agreement with my comments, and sympathy for my predicament.
I show up at my manager’s place around 5, where he is wearing the face of a man who must punish his protegé, while all the time agreeing with them. A bit like Dumbledore to my Harry Potter, but then, I flatter myself. (I do wear glasses though, and have a scar on my forehead, but that was from a particular Glastonbury of which I have a limited and hazy recall. I do, however, know that alcohol, and other things, were involved, but that’s another story......) I am still thinking this a big huge joke and we are just going round to the little Iranian restaurant next door for some excellent Borani and mint tea. But no, he’s got THE BRIEFCASE, he’s shuffling his papers, he’s picking it up, and now he’s directing me towards the door.
We are going. Armageddon is coming, and I still think it’s really really funny.
The first inkling I get that the shit is about to hit the fan is when passing the office of my product manager’s door - he at first pretends to notice that I am not there, and then when my moony, grinning (and wholly unrepentant, I might add) face pressed up against the window makes it impossible to ignore me, he sort of bumbles out in his camp, but thoroughly lovable fashion, and babbles “oooh, C______’s not a happy man......he’s very very very cross, you know.” (But I will maintain to the end that he finds it hilarious too. In fact, I will put money on it (of which I have none, it’s true, but still) that most of that floor had a bloody good laugh in the bar that night at my A&R man’s expense.)
The lay out of this particular record label’s offices is sort of open plannish, but not really. Which is totally and utterly in keeping with the main Fuhrer’s management ethos - let’s make our minions feel like it’s all out in the open and that it’s got a nice cosy, independent co-operative feel, but let’s give the executives the big, fuck-off offices at the end and round the sides (and the only spaces with natural daylight) so that they can plot and talk about who is next for the chop. It’s a bit like battery hens in the middle (secretarys, assistants, the only ones who ever do any real work in these corporations), and the free-range, super dooper platinum egg laying cock chickens or whatever you call them arranged around them. (So, I know cocks don’t lay eggs, but allow me the metaphoric license here. A cock is always a good analogy in this context.) This also means that in order to get to the office in which I am expected, I have to navigate the entire length of the floor, past every office and every tut-tutting assistant. I am thankful for two things - it is 6 pm, and thus in time honoured tradition most people have gone home, and secondly, I am not wearing high heels, a mini skirt or my pink sparkly Barbie buffalo boots.
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