Rock On (16 page)

“Are you guys set, do you need anything?”

“Yeah, no. Thanks. I don't think, I mean, water is probably . . . good,” I answer.

“This is great. It's an interesting time for you to be here checking things out. If you guys want to order lunch or need anything, let me know,” Amy offers.

Christina smiles. Amy leaves. We enjoy about a minute and half of silence while we are simply enjoying the terror of the silence while smiling politely at each other.

Then I figure the best thing to do, evidently, is to spasm into a diatribe about 1979 Los Angeles punk, and how when I was little I woke up one night, walked into the living room, and the eleven-o'clock news was doing a story on the band X, playing at the Universal amphitheater.

Turns out that the nice thing about spontaneous fits of awkward expository monologues from a man sixteen years older than Christina is that they sometimes break the ice. She and I start talking about favorite bands and albums, college radio, and underground pirate radio stations. She's really cool! She tells me all about the pirate radio show in Shanghai that she hosts with her boyfriend. And she's wearing these really cool Chinese knock-offs of Converse high-tops. I tell her they're cool and she explains that they can't get real Converse in China. I ask her if it's because the government won't allow it. No, not really, it turns out — just hard to get and too expensive there. I find that aside from comparing notes on new bands and old favorites, my only persistent contribution from my end are questions about government oppression. She tells me her boyfriend can't keep doing the radio show (
Fascists cracking down on you over there?
) because he feels he has gotten behind in his studies at school. That she's only staying here for five days (
Commies got you on a tight leash, do they?
) because she would like to visit friends in Utah. She tells me that even though piracy runs rampant in China, they still have all of these great underground record stores in Shanghai, where you can buy music from bands that aren't the huge worldwide hits getting bootlegged and sold on the street corners.

“Underground, as in ‘we need to hide it so the fascists don't crush it? So they won't take it from us?'”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The next two days of her visit are spent mostly at the editing studio, where I am working on the Jewel commercial. And Christina loves it there. I love it there, too. The contrast between the offices and the editing studio, where my friend Ben works, is night and day. You walk around there unafraid of corporate protocol and the weight of who you say and don't say hello to when you pass through the halls. There's laughter and very loud music to trade comments on, jokes to tell, and weekend stories — all of the things you don't find back at the offices.

While Christina is around, we're watching footage from the Jewel video together on two big editing screens, cutting it down to make a rough version of the TV commercial for her new record. There's a point when Christina asks if this new look and sound is supposed to be a reinvention for Jewel. Having now written and revised the script for the commercial countless times, after endless input from Dick and management, finally arriving at the perfect line (turns out that “the new album
0304
is an
exciting
step in the
breathtaking
career of Jewel”) — which will let North America know just how big this reinvention is — I tell Christina that yes, it is indeed a reinvention of some kind. She asks me if I think it seems sincere, this reinvention, or more like a gimmick. I tell her I've heard that the whole thing's supposed to be somehow ironic, and I say that it seems a little gimmicky to me, but that it's not my job to say that. I say I think it probably started out as a sort of satire of selling out, but that too many people got involved
and next thing you know, it wasn't coming across like irony or satire, but it's not my job to say things like this. I can think stuff like that, but I gotta hide those thoughts from the Man.

What am I saying this for? I could get in trouble. I could get fired.
I say something about how Jewel and her reinvention will probably succeed wildly in alienating her faithful fans, maybe winning a few thousand fair-weather friends that won't be around for the next album.

Dude! Hello? Take it back!
I backpedal like crazy. I consider the political implications of telling an intern invited by the CEO of our parent company what I think about all this. I cover my ass and I say that, to Jewel's credit, maybe she's making the most integral move she can imagine making as an artist and probably doesn't care if this record sells less, because she's doing whatever she wants to do and that's what being an artist is all about.

And there you go, there's my little reinvention of
my
own sound. Christina looks at me like she has just seen her first real tourist attraction in America: a little tiny record businessman totally afraid to say what he thinks about a record.
Oh, come on, sister . . . you're from Communist China. I shouldn't have to tell you that it's all about saying the right thing when you know it could get back to the wrong people.

We continue cutting and recutting. Scene by scene from the big-budget video is cut down, frame by frame, into our little commercial. Ben moves the footage on screen forward and backward, forward and backward, looking for points to make his cuts in perfect time. Christina and I sit on the studio's big couch and watch the monitors. A pretty girl, who became a pop star, moves forward across the street very quickly, then backward slowly, then forward again, and on and on until a
cut is made into the next scene and then the new scene starts the same back-and-forth drill. Repeat for the next four hours, and then it's time to head back to the office. On our walk Christina tells me that the editing studios are more like what she thought the record company offices would be like.

We pass through the revolving doors just in time for Vallerie to see us. She comes over to say hello.

“Oh, my God, there you are! I think she has a crush on you! What was it like, was it weird! Oh, God, I saw you two walking around. I started laughing so hard I had to duck into Lee's office and set down my coffee so I didn't spill it all over myself!”

Okay, this conversation is clearly not intended for our guest's ears. And two seconds ago, as far as I can recall, Christina was standing right next to me. She's short, but still, I mean, she's standing right here. Maybe Vallerie thinks there's a language barrier? I try to give indication — by way of odd combinations of subtly nodding my head and raising my eyebrows — that the intern is very near the two of us. I try feebly to steer the conversation toward the weather or lunch or just about anything else besides how funny Vallerie seems to think it is that Christina and I are spending three days together and that we seem inseparable.

“Do you . . . is . . . um . . .” I stammer before she interrupts me again, happy as hell to keep going on.

“And you still have two days left! Oh, God, it's just too funny! This is so classic. Okay . . . so, what's she like? What do you two even talk about!”

I cough loudly. “Okaaaaay, so, looks like rain out there. Anytime now. Going to lunch? I What do you think you'll
have today, for lunch? Do you like the rain, having lived in London?”

Vallerie looks at me as if I've just erupted into the type of brief monologue usually associated with the clinically insane. I look down at my right side where I last saw Christina and realize she's not there. I whip my head around to my left side to see if she's there. She is not. This leaves one option: that is, that she has disappeared around the back of me. Maybe she's right up against me? [She can be shy if she doesn't know you, so] maybe she's hiding. Vallerie excuses what appears to be my mildly psychotic episode and goes on.

“Well, I think she's cute! I think you two make” — starts her laughing thing where she won't be able to stop — “Oh, my God . . . seeing you” — more laughing, this is getting so dangerous that I'm grinding teeth the happier she gets — “you two make such a weird perfect pair to be running around midtown Manhattan together!” — laughing again — “Like! . . . Like some kind of strange movie about a duo who . . .”

Suddenly Vallerie looks down at my left side. Stunned silence. Guess who came into view.

Christina beams and adds a little wave: “Hi!”

To which Vallerie replies, “Oh! Well . . . Hello!”

And I add, “Okay, so . . . lunch for you.” And with that we part ways, Christina and I heading to the elevator. Upstairs, I leave a videocassette of the rough cut on Vallerie's desk so she can check it out when she gets back.

Come up with satanic acronym for J.E.W.E.L. (Jesus Eats What Everyone Loves? Not so good, but will work on this, you guys.)

Invent new angle on back story: Yes, she lived in a van in the early days. That's because it was easier to
worship Satan
without having to worry about tipping off neighbors, etc. Yodeling?
Speaking in tongues!
If you were one of the Knights in Jewel's Service (new name for fan club?), you would have understood the message.

Art direction: Hair? Black. Guitar? Black. The standard blue-jeans you're used to seeing her in? More like
black
jeans.

Leak rumors to press:

• White doves were going to be used in the new video . . . that is, until J.E.W.E.L. tore them into pieces and threw the bloodied bird carcasses out into a crowd of shocked, frightened onlookers on set.

• Play “Who Will Save Your Soul?” backward and the answer to the musical question is a revealed when you hear the back-masked phrases “Satan will save,” “Dark Lord, he will save it,” and “Sing for me, children of Satan, I am Alaskan.”

• Allowed editors to use her actual blood in red ink for the Jewel Comic Book and Jewel Army Newsletter.

• Prays to devil before each concert.

First thing: Front man Darius Rucker to dis other rappers in press, should be timed to the release of a newly remixed, remastered box set of their hits called
Straight outta Columbia, South Carolina
in reference to N.W.A's seminal
Straight Outta Compton
.

Shorten name to “Ho Blow”?

New video for remake of “Hold My Hand” now called “Hold My Handgun” and will be the only “new” track on
Straight out of Columbia, South Carolina
box set.

Shoot video in same house where they filmed the “Let Her Cry” video in 1994, but now it's well over a decade later, the place is littered with old vials and glass pipes, stained with the vaguely antiestablishment, crack-fueled graffiti of aimless addicts. Windows are boarded up.

Drummer plays with his shirt off whole time, just like in original, but now we see his “bullet wounds” (latex/makeup) where he was “shot
ten
times” — that's one more than 50 Cent clamed fyi — “at point-blank range, but managed to survive and foster a reputation as hardest, baddest, blah, blah, blah.”

Hire freelance writer to pen badass investigative piece entitled “Where was Darius on the night Tupac was shot?” Piece could posit “theory” that Darius and guitarist Mark Bryan were both unaccounted for in the lineup of obvious suspects. Best-case scenario, it reopens the case in the public eye and gets the Columbia, South Carolina, region included in on East Coast – West Coast hiphop feuds of nineties, garnering the band some street cred.