Chapter 6: Christmas Presents

December 24, 1998

Santa Clarita, California

Jake was far behind on putting his CD together before entering the recording studio in Oregon on January 4^th, the first Monday of 1999, a date that was now less than two weeks away. And, since V-tach, who served as Jake’s band as well as putting together their own CD was so far ahead of schedule thanks to Jake’s extended absences over the past two months, it was decided that they would roll full steam ahead and focus almost exclusively on Jake’s material with the time they had left. V-tach would take Tuesday afternoons to go over their own music just to keep in the groove, but Mondays, Tuesday mornings, and Wednesday through Friday were all about Jake Kingsley. They had made good progress and Jake was feeling better about entering the recording studio instead of feeling woefully unprepared as he had upon the return from their little Venezuelan jaunt, but there were still some rough patches in a few of his tunes that needed further polishing. As such, he and the band (Laura included) even worked on Christmas Eve, starting the session at 9:00 AM with plans to keep it up until 4:00 PM, at which point everyone would take a Christmas break until the following Monday.

It was just past three o’clock and they were working on one of those rough spots. Jake was at the microphone, his Ibanez acoustic-electric in hand. He was strumming the primary melody and singing the lyrics for his tune Any Given Sunday, which was not by any stretch of the imagination about football. It was a mellow, primarily acoustic song he had penned about how much he and Laura enjoyed Sundays, the one day of the week they could reliably be at home together, with no obligations to worry about, where they could enjoy each other’s company, day-drinking wine out on the deck while smoking a few bowls and pondering the ocean or the trees or the seabirds or the squirrels. It was a day of relaxing, marijuana enhanced laziness and the lyrics perfectly captured that feeling.

But there was something just not right about it. It was not the lyrics or the primary melody, Jake was quite happy with those. It was not the backbeat, which was minimal with only gentle tom and snare strikes by Ted and a mild supporting rhythm by Ben. No, it was the secondary melody and the fills that just weren’t doing it. Those were being provided by Natalie on the violin and Laura on the soprano sax, the two of them playing in near-harmony. The two ladies were playing beautifully, as they always did, but those two particular instruments in this particular piece just did not seem to complement each other. He had tried eliminating one or the other of them at various times in the process, had even taken out the secondary melody entirely in one experiment, but none of this improved the situation. The piece cried out for secondary support, and Jake knew the answer was to provide more of it, not less. But he was all out of instruments to throw into the tune. Nerdly was already providing the piano fills and Lenny was providing backing acoustic and the occasional distorted electric fill. And with all that, the tune still needed more.

As they finished up the latest rendition, Jake simply shook his head in frustration.

“Still not right?” asked Laura.

“Still not right,” he confirmed. He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe we just shelf this one for now. Work it up again on the next CD.”

“No way!” Lenny said immediately. “You have to put it on the upcoming CD. The piece is incredible.”

“It really is,” Laura said. “You’ve managed to capture our Sunday afternoons perfectly. When you sing the song, I can almost feel myself out on the deck, looking at the pelicans flying by and taking a nice hit of good ganja with a glass of wine in the other hand. It has to be there, sweetie!”

“But the secondary melody,” Jake said. “I’m just not happy with how it sounds—no offense to you, hon, or you Nat.”

“I do agree,” said Nerdly. “The mixture of the soprano sax and the violin is not as musically esthetic as I would have believed—again, through no fault of the artists—but what is the answer?

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “If we’re going to keep Sunday on the CD, we need to beef up that secondary somehow. But how? Maybe we should have Laura play the alto sax or maybe even the tenor? Maybe have Nat go distorted electric on the violin? Some combo of that?”

“That is something to consider,” Sharon said thoughtfully.

“I don’t even own a tenor sax,” Laura pointed out.

“But you could play one, right?” Jake asked.

“Yes, I can play one,” she said huffily, as if he had asked her if she could write her name or roll a joint. “I’d just need a few hours of practice to dial in the scales and the breathing.”

“Something to think about then,” Nerdly said thoughtfully.

“But nothing we can start working on right now,” Sharon added.

“I wasn’t suggesting we start working up new instruments right now,” Jake said. “It might be something we play around with once we’re in Oregon.”

“Yeah,” Laura said, nodding. “We can always fly up to that music store in Portland and get a tenor sax there if you think it might work.”

“We could do that,” Jake said slowly, hiding a little grin. He knew the Portland Music Store very well and had some fond memories connected to it. Every time he took someone to that store to purchase an instrument, he ended up having sex with them for the first time later that evening. He made a mental note to never take Meghan or anyone other than Laura or Celia to that particular business establishment.

“What should we do now?” asked Natalie. “Go through Sunday a few more times?”

“No,” Jake said. “We’ve about hammered it into the ground for today. Let’s let it simmer over the Christmas break and then maybe we’ll have a fresh perspective for the final few days before we pack up and head to Oregon.”

Everyone nodded at this with varying degrees of doubt or enthusiasm.

Before Jake could start to think on what they should work on to round out the final hour before the break (and, in truth, the thought of just letting everyone go early was at the forefront of his brain), the studio door unlatched and slowly swung open. Standing there in the doorway was Gordon and Neesh Paladay.

“G! Neesh!” Jake greeted with a smile. “Come on in!”

“I heard y’all wasn’t playin’ nothing at the moment so I thought we’d come in and see what’s up.”

“Welcome,” Laura said, rushing over and giving first Neesh and then Gordon big hugs. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Sorry we’re here a little early,” G said. “The traffic was a lot lighter than normal. In fact, there wasn’t much traffic at all.”

“You gotta love Christmas Eve,” Jake said. He and Gordon did an elaborate handshake and then a bro-hug. He then hugged Neesh as well.

Everyone in the room had worked with Bigg G before during the Tsunami Sound Festival, and all had met Neesh a few times during the rehearsal portions. Handshakes, hugs, and greetings were passed around, taking up the better part of five minutes.

“What are you doing here, G?” asked Ted.

“We’s been invited to the tighty-whitey Christmas gathering ats the big house of Massa and Missus Kingsley,” Gordon said with a grin. “I guess Massa Kingsley figured that since Mammie Elsa be gettin’ her Christmas off, he gotta have a couple of us darkies there to serve dem foods and mops that flo’.”

“That’s right,” Jake said with a smile. “And then you can do a little dance for us after dinner. I heard you people can dance.”

“Naw, it ain’t that we niggas can dance,” G shot back, “it’s just that y’all can’t.”

Everyone had a little chuckle at the exchange—except Ted, who was a bit butt-hurt that he had not been invited to the Kingsley house for Christmas.

“You’re going to spend Christmas with Jake instead of your families?” asked Natalie. “Won’t that hurt their feelings?”

“Shee-it,” said Gordon, “it’s they that’s hurtin’ our feelings. My mom and pop are on a fuckin’ cruise to Mexico right now, won’t be back ‘til the first week in January.”

“Mine are in Hawaii,” Neesh said. “Annual tradition for them since I was a kid.”

“Yep,” Gordon said. “They drivin’ us into the arms of Whitey.”

“Well, I hope we can keep you entertained,” Jake said.

“Doubtful,” G said with a grin. “So ... what y’all working on? Final workups before the studio?”

“Kind of,” Jake said with a shrug. “We’re still a bit behind schedule but we’ll pull it together. Matter of fact, I was thinking about letting everyone go home early today.”

“Now you’re talkin’!” said Ted, quickly regaining his enthusiasm. He knew that even if Jake did let them go early, he would still pay them for the entire session.

“We could get a jump on the flight if you did that, sweetie,” said Laura.

“And we would get to see Kelvin a little earlier,” suggested Sharon, who, along with her husband, was usually reluctant to end sessions early but was missing her child, who Jake had flown up to SLO the day before along with Pauline, Obie, Tabby, and Eric the violinist (Eric had somehow become a fixture in the Kingsley household when there was a Thanksgiving or Christmas gathering).

“Those are good points,” Jake agreed.

“They are,” Gordon agreed, “but ... truth be told, I was kind of hoping y’all would give me a little preview of The Song.”

Jake smiled. The Song (that was the title) was one of the tunes he would be recording for the upcoming CD, and it was very special song. The result of a bet that Jake and G had made eighteen months before, The Song was a tune Jake had penned and composed in which the lyrics had absolutely no meaning whatsoever. In fact, Jake had gone a step further than that. The lyrics of Song (as they called it) were not just indecipherable, but were actual, literal gibberish in parts of the chorus and the bridge sections. If Jake could achieve saturation airplay with the tune and have it chart on the Billboard Top 5 for at least one week after release and promotion, he would win the bet—the point of which was to prove that the average music consumer had no idea what the songs they enjoyed were even about—and G would have to personally deliver to him a case of Glenlivet single-malt Scotch.

“Ahhh, The Song,” Jake said, nodding his head. “You want a little preview of your undoing then?”

“I want to make sure of a few things,” G said. “First of all, that you actually are working on a song that meets the requirements.”

“I told you we were working on it,” Jake said. “I even told you the title. Are you accusing me of lying to you, G?”

“Not at all, homey,” G said, “but I still want to hear what you got. I want to make sure the lyrics really don’t make no sense.”

“Oh, they don’t,” Jake said with a chuckle. “Nat, do the lyrics to Song mean anything?”

“Not a goddamn thing,” she said with a smile. “Complete and total nonsense.”

“It does rhyme though,” said Nerdly.

“Yes,” said Sharon, “and it does have a rather pleasant beat to it.”

“All right then,” Gordon said. “Run through it for me then. Let’s hear what you got.”

“I don’t know, G,” Jake said. “We’re all kind of tired, and I have to fly in a little bit.”

“Don’t be like that,” G said. “Play the shit for me.”

“All right, all right,” Jake said with a mock sigh. “Let’s run through Song before we go so G won’t whine like a bitch all fuckin’ weekend.”

“Hey now,” Neesh said. “I’m a bitch and I don’t whine.”

Jake nodded. “Good point,” he said. “All right, everyone. Let’s run through it.”

Of course, it was not as simple as just sitting down and playing the tune. Not with the Nerdlys involved. Since they had been working on a different tune with different instruments, Nerdly made them go through a quick level check before he would let anyone start playing. And, of course, any level check that involved the Nerdlys was not quick. It took the better part of twenty minutes before Jake was able to make the declaration that they were ready.

“All right,” G said. “Fire it up.” He was sitting in one of the chairs behind the sound board with Sharon. Nerdly was sitting at the Korg synthesizer, which featured heavily in the piece. Jake was behind his microphone with his black Les Paul in hand. He would play the lead guitar as well as put down the vocals. Lenny was sitting in in a chair next to the soundboard as there was no need for a secondary guitar in the piece. Natalie and Laura, however, were in the piece to provide fills and to complement the primary melody in certain places. Laura had her standard alto sax but Natalie was using the electric violin set for moderate distortion.

“Let’s do it, people,” Jake said. “Nerdly, open us up and let Ted and Ben establish the rhythm for a couple of measures. I’ll cue with a low-E strum when I’m ready for everyone else to jump in.”

“Sounds good,” Nerdly said. He began to play the primary melody on the synthesizer. It had a strong 80s sound to it but when the bass and the drums kicked in, G realized that the backbeat was even older than that.

“Four on the floor, homey?” he cried out in protest. “That’s fuckin’ disco!”

“No law says we can’t use the four-by-four time signature,” Jake said into his microphone, his foot tapping to the beat. “The song itself isn’t disco, it just uses that beat.”

“That’s cheatin!” G declared. “You’re using the beat to help sell the tune.”

Jake shrugged. “We never established what time signature I had to use,” he said. “Now shut up and let us play.”

“All right,” G said, still shaking his head.

Jake let them cycle through three more repetitions of the primary melody and then he did a subtle strum of his low-E string, just enough to send out a single chord of distortion, which, aside from adding to the sound of the tune, told the other musicians he was ready to launch into the main part of it.

On the start of the next rep, Natalie and Laura chimed in, playing over the top of the synthesizer and enhancing it. Jake played a mild secondary melody. And then he began to sing out the first verse.

And then it was time for the chorus. They went up-tempo for it and Jake took over the primary melody with his Les Paul, grinding out a near-heavy metal riff to lay it down. He put considerable angry emotion into his voice as he sang it.

They then transitioned back to the primary 4/4 time signature and Nerdly took over the primary melody again. Jake sang out another, lengthier verse full of nonsense phrases and accompanied them by more and more frequent electric distortion fills with his guitar. Ted and Ben just kept pounding out that addictive and easy to dance to beat. And then they hit the second chorus, going up-tempo again and with Jake playing the riff harder and angrier this time. He blasted out the same chorus lyrics as before and then they transitioned into a bridge in which Laura and Natalie played the primary melody while Jake and Nerdly did the fills.

Jake then stomped on one of his effect pedals and launched into a grinding guitar solo that played out to the up-tempo beat of the choruses. He had learned a thing or two from working with Matt on his last CD and he incorporated his new knowledge of combining different effects into the solo.

Gordon could not help but grin and shake his head as he heard the tune. He already had a strong suspicion that he would be delivering a case of scotch to Jake’s house sometime next year. In a way, the tune was brilliant for what it was trying to accomplish. The heavy disco beat was addictive and would serve to lock the tune into the listener’s brain once it was heard a few times. And the harsh electric guitar sections contrasting with the 80s level synthesizer made the tune unique. And then Jake’s voice belting out the nonsense words with a strong outpouring of angry emotion made it sound like he took whatever he was singing about extremely personally.

Jake closed the song with a lengthy guitar solo and multiple repetitions of the opening verse line The song plays because I made it so, which could be argued was the only line in the tune that actually had meaning and made sense. The band eventually came to a jangling, uncoordinated halt.

“Sorry about the rough ending,” Jake apologized once it was done. “We haven’t worked out a proper closing for it. We’ll likely just do a fade-out when we record it, although I do try not to use that technique too much.”

“That’s okay,” G said.

“What did you think?” Jake asked.

“It was solid shit, homey,” Gordon admitted. “I still think you’re cheating by using the four on the floor though.”

“Cheating is a strong word,” Jake said.

“Yeah ... I suppose,” G allowed. “You’re playing dirty. How’s that? Better?”

Jake nodded. “Much better,” he said. “I’ll cop to playing dirty. After all, a case of single-malt is at stake here.”

The Kingsley house was pretty full on Christmas Eve. Though Elsa was in Orange County with her family, Meghan was home (though off duty until Monday) and there were numerous houseguests. Stan and Cindy Archer were there to visit Nerdly and family (and they had brought Kelvin a wealth of Christmas presents to open despite the fact that he was a Jew and the Nerdlys did not celebrate Christmas). Mary and Tom Kingsley had driven up with them with a load of Christmas presents for Caydee and Tabby (they were still hurt that they had not been able to celebrate Caydee’s first birthday with her, but were trying to get over it). Gordon and Neesh were there, as were Obie, Pauline, and Tabby. Eric the violinist was there, mostly keeping to himself. And Celia was there as well. She had been staying with the Kingsleys ever since returning from South America with them.

The sleeping arrangements were a bit muddled. There were five guest bedrooms in addition to the master suite where Jake and Laura slept and Caydee’s room next to it, but one of them was Meghan’s room. Mary and Tom were given the largest of the guest rooms. Stan and Cindy got another. G and Neesh got the one on the far side of the house. Obie and Pauline and Tabby got the smallest one (which was still big enough to accommodate them quite easily). This left the Nerdly family, Eric, and Celia to sleep in alternate places. The Nerdlys took the formal living room, which could be closed off and which contained a fairly comfortable fold-out couch. Eric was given Jake’s composition room, which had a locking door and a reasonably comfortable couch of its own. Celia was assigned to share Caydee’s room, which had a nice couch of its own. Only the parental Kingsleys, the parental Nerdlys, and the Paladays really believed she was going to sleep there. As to whether or not that belief would survive the weekend was anybody’s guess.

The Christmas Eve dinner was prepared by Obie and the mothers. Obie had been slow-grilling some baby back ribs all day long on Jake’s charcoal grill and he took them off just past 6:00 PM. Mary had put together a large, flavorful coleslaw to go along with it and Cindy had made a pot of her famous baked beans. Everyone sat down at the large dining room table at 6:30 and tore into the meal. Jake opened up some bottles of French chardonnay for the occasion.

After eating, Rule Number 1 was declared and everyone except Obie and the mothers pitched in to help clean everything up. This got the house back to reasonable cleanliness by 7:30, at which point the children were allowed to gather at the Christmas tree in the entertainment room and open one gift apiece.

“Why can I only open one?” asked four-year-old Kelvin. “There are seven presents for me under this tree.”

“Because it’s only Christmas Eve,” Cindy, his grandmother explained. “Tradition is that you get to open one present on Christmas Eve, the rest on Christmas morning.”

“After you see what Santa brought for you,” added Stan.

“Dad says there is no such thing as Santa,” Kelvin said.

“What?” screamed Tabby, who was almost a year older than Kelvin but from a family that embraced the whole Santa Claus fable. “That’s bullshit!”

“Maybe you could find a nicer way to express yourself, Tabs,” said Pauline tiredly.

“It’s true,” said Kelvin. “Dad says that Santa Claus is just your mom and dad putting things under the tree after you go to bed.”

“That’s a lie!” Tabby said, outraged at the blasphemy. “Tell him, Mommy!”

“Uh...” Pauline said, unable to think of what to say in this circumstance. She cast an evil look at Nerdly, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

Jake came to the rescue. “It’s like this, Kelvin,” he said. “Everyone can believe what they want to believe about Santa Claus. That’s what makes America great, right?”

He shrugged, unimpressed by the argument.

“You have to think about the bottom line here, K-dude,” Jake continued, deliberately using a nickname he knew the entire Nerdly family abhorred.

“The bottom line?” Kelvin asked. He had been taught about the bottom line and knew the concept.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “In the morning, there is going to be a big-ass load of presents under that tree for you. Most of them will be some pretty cool shit, I’m thinking. Allegedly, Santa Claus will be the one who brought them for you. You don’t believe there is a Santa Claus. But when you come right down to it—to the bottom line—does it really matter how the presents got there? You still get a bunch of cool shit, right?”

Kelvin considered this for a moment and then nodded, a smile forming on his face (this was a rarity for Kelvin). “That does make sense,” he said.

“It’s all a matter of how you think about it,” Jake said.

“But what about Santa, Uncle Jay?” asked Tabby. “It’s not really Mommy and Daddy that are putting those presents there, is it?”

“Well ... let’s look at this thing from the Occam’s Razor point of view,” Jake said. “Remember when I taught you about Occam and his Razor?”

“Yeah!” she said enthusiastically. “Whatever seems the most true is usually true, right?”

“Close enough,” Jake said. “So, with that in mind, Tabster, what do you think is more likely to be true: That there is a magical man named Santa Claus who travels the world on Christmas Eve giving gifts to all the children of the world and that he has been doing this for centuries, or ... that there is this vast, worldwide, multigenerational conspiracy among every parent in the world to pretend that there is a Santa Claus while they themselves hide presents and then stay up late on Christmas Eve just so they can give the credit for those presents to some mythical figure?”

Tabby thought this over for a moment and then nodded. “You’re right, Uncle Jay!” she yelled. “There has to be a Santa Claus!” She turned and looked at her honorary Jewish cousin. “Screw you, Kelvin!”

“What does that mean?” Kelvin asked, confused.

“Never mind,” Sharon said, shaking her head at the whole discussion. “Just pick which gift you want to open.”

Kelvin examined all the packages with his name on them carefully and then chose one. Inexperienced at this game, he chose poorly. He got the one with the new pair of pajamas in it. Tabby, a veteran of the Christmas Eve game, did much better. She chose the smallest but proportionally heaviest package and scored herself a Furby, which Obie had had to pull a few strings to get his hands on (and he would be damned if some mythical fat-ass was going to get credit for getting it for her). She immediately tore open the packaging and started playing with it (after giving the directions to Obie so he could start figuring out how it worked).

Caydee was unclear on the concept of wrapped gifts and Christmas in general. This was her second Christmas of her life, but she had only been a few weeks old for the first one and had no memory of it. Nor was she likely to have any long-lasting memory of this one. But still, after watching her cousins (honorary and actual) opening their gifts, she kind of got the idea. Laura put all of her gifts together (there were sixteen of them, and that did not include the Santa swag) and let her pick one out. She picked at random and they walked her through the opening process. It was a small harmonica that Jake had gotten for her.

“You got her a toy that makes noise?” asked Pauline as Caydee looked the object over, trying to figure out what is was for. “Are you insane, man?”

“It’s not a toy,” Jake said. “It’s her first musical instrument. Here, Caydee-girl. Let me show you how it works.”

She handed him the small metal rectangle and he put it to his mouth. He blew gently into it, playing out the melody for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (or the Alphabet Song, if you prefer).

“Moo-zik!” Caydee yelled, elated. “Dada moo-zik!”

“That’s right,” he said. “It’s a harmonica and it makes music.

“Harm-ika?” she asked.

“Close enough,” Jake said with a nod. “And now Caydee can make music too.”

“Caydee moo-zik?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Jake said.

“Caydee moo-zik harm-ika?” she asked, just for clarity.

“Caydee make music on the harmonica,” he told her. “It’s easy. All you have to do is blow into it or suck air in through it. Different places make different notes and so does blowing versus sucking.” He gave her an example. He played through the scales on it, naming off the notes as he played them: D, E, F, G, A, and then B. He then played out the melody for Proud Mary, a song he had recently introduced to her during guitar and sing time.

“Roll River!” Caydee yelled when she heard it. “Roll River, Dada!”

“That’s right,” Jake said, and then sang, “Rollin’ on the river,” before finishing up the melody.

“Caydee play!” she yelled, holding out her hand for the instrument. He gave it to her and she immediately put it in her mouth the wrong way. He gently helped her orient it and then let her have at it. She got the concept of how to make noise with it pretty quickly, but became upset that she could not just bust out a rendition of Nights in White Satin or War Pigs right away. She was already musically sophisticated enough to know that she was not hitting the notes.

“It takes practice, little girl,” Jake told her. “You have to learn the scale and then learn how to combine the notes. You can’t just sit down and be able to play it right away.”

“Pleeeeeea?” she cried.

Jake chuckled. “It’s not something that just saying please can fix, my love,” he told her.

“Awww,” she pouted.

“Such is life,” Jake said apologetically. “But the harmonica is one of the easiest instruments to play. In a couple of months, you’re going to be hell on wheels with that thing.”

“Hell wheels?” she asked.

“Fuckin’ A,” Jake assured her.

While Tabby and Obie worked on the Furby, and while Caydee quickly annoyed everyone by blowing ceaseless noise on her harmonica, and while Kelvin pouted about the pajamas he had opened while the other two had opened cool shit, Jake sat down on the couch between Celia and his mother. Both of the ladies were drinking glasses of red wine that Jake had opened.

“Do you ever think,” asked Mary delicately, “that maybe Caydee is exposed to too much profanity?”

Jake pretended to think this over for a moment and then shook his head. “Naw,” he said at last. “She has to learn it somewhere. Might as will learn it at home in its proper context so she can use it appropriately later in life.”

Mary shook her head in disapproval but said no further on the subject.

Celia, who had to hide a little smirk for a moment, said, “Mary was telling me about the orchestra she conducts at the local high school where she lives. It sounds like she has quite the group of musicians.”

“Yes,” Mary said, instantly becoming more animated as she did whenever the subject of “my kids” came up. “We just put on three Christmas concerts before the break. They were quite well attended. Sold out all three nights, in fact. We actually made money for the school.”