Chapter 23: Yankee Nashville

I didn’t give up then, though, on my music dreams. I started writing my own songs. Venturing more into a pop direction. Making dance-pop tracks, heavy on synth but with growling, death metal sort of vocals. Not the best combination (but a group from Japan has recently made it work!)

I took my demos into a local recording studio, hoping to perfect them. I hired a local singer to provide vocals for a couple tracks and had a CD pressed.

The studio was the same spot where the 2 Live Crew had once recorded, and I loved walking in and seeing their platinum plaques adorning the walls in the lobby.

Unfortunately, the owner, the boss of the studio was a dick. In our initial meeting, I’d been told I could record the demos (which were already done, really only needed mastering, additional vocals) and that I could pay for the recording sessions after completion.

But once the process began, he forced me to pay daily, as I went, not making eye contact as he’d summoned me into his office, which felt like a trip to see a middle school principal. The chubby 60ish fellow, with his mop of dyed blond hair and his marshmallow body, had demanded immediate payment, looking squirrely as he spoke, and when he spoke I remember his mouth didn’t move much, almost as if he were a ventriloquist and I remember how his dentures seemed a tad out of place.

Worse than suddenly having payment terms changed was that, at the end of the process, the recording studio charged me far more than I expected or was first quoted.

I suspect the studio boss had changed the terms because he thought I might rip them off. And I probably should have.

They certainly ripped me off. Overcharging me. The mastering sucked too. They placed the singer I’d hired’s vocals way in front of the music, so loud the music could barely be heard.

The way they’d EQed her vocals too, made her sound like Pat Benatar. Not the sound I was after and not how she sounded in her audition.

The demo sucked. Plus, they’d overcharged me for it. I was pissed.

As a struggling college student, working part-time jobs at stores and selling occasional bags of weed to stay afloat, it hurt me financially. Wasn’t a wonderful coda to what I experienced with Cyrus.

I still sent out the demo, plus other home recordings to tons of record labels, hoping to score a deal, achieve my dream.

But all I received was rejection. Rejection letters in the mail, some saying my demo had been “confidentially destroyed,” which didn’t make me feel much better.

With each rejection letter I received, I felt the ugly sting, stomach sinking pang of rejection. With each letter it was like I was sinking in a sea of shit. Opening the letters, excited the contents might be an acceptance, the first break on my road to stardom, I’d always tear open the envelope to find a form letter, “Thank you for your interest in...”

Glaring at the impersonal letter, the shit feeling would wash over me, and I’d be down for a day or two. But then I’d move on, ready up to send my music out to another possible warm ear.

Eventually I ran out of leads, however. Every demo I’d sent out, hundreds of them, got rejected. I realized what I was doing wasn’t working. I realized that I’d failed, at least so far, in my life’s quest to be a rock star.

Around this time, I saw a “Behind the Music” about Poison. Bobby Dall, their bass player, said how his goal in life was not to be a musician. It was to be a rock star. Same with me. He succeeded, though, where I failed.

(And more power to him! Because I fucking love Poison! Those guys are legends!)