Chapter 33

When I got back to South Beach, following the storm, I began, with no help of my school, an internship I’d scored at a music label in South Beach.

The label had big name stars, mostly in the Latin music market, and, for a time, we had Pitbull signed to us.

Pitbull, then, was only big in Miami, relatively unknown in the rest of the country, let alone the world.

I met him once, found him to be a quiet, friendly guy. When he blew up, became a superstar, went from “Mr. 305” to “Mr. Worldwide,” I couldn’t have been happier for him. A local boy made good. Everyone I know who knows him, or has worked with him, only has positive things to say about him.

There was a comedy sketch show I saw not long ago, parodying him. Skewering him for being a douchebag. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He’s a kind soul, has done numerous works of charity for his community, and has established charter schools, helped greatly improve the quality of education in Miami.

Fuck you, Alternatino, and fuck you, Arturo Castro! Yes, the Pitbull douchebag skit was clever and funny, and Pitbull himself, being a chill dude, having a sense of humor, probably laughed at it. But, in honesty, it couldn’t be farther from an accurate depiction of the man…

Back to the label. That label was full of dramatic people, crazy incidents. Working there as an intern, I saw how the music business worked, from the inside, not just in books and secondhand stories. I saw it up close.

There was a guy I worked with there, another intern, called Hamlet, who I became friends with. We’d usually be assigned to work together on various gopher, intern type tasks...

Hamlet was a rosy-cheeked, slender, tall and handsome young man, nearing college graduation.

As a youngster he’d taken an interest in the performing arts, in acting, and he’d performed in local theater groups and went on to appear in a handful of television commercials airing in the Miami area.

Told he resembled a young Ashton Kutcher, a local casting agent signed him and scored him some modeling work for a local restaurant and clothing store and a gig as a dancing extra in the background of a Spanish language variety show, clapping his hands and smiling and laughing on command.

The aspiring actor/model split his time between acting/modeling auditions and gigs, bar jobs, and college classes at FIU and interning at the record label.

Hamlet had taken the internship eager to soak up its perks. Such as free entry to nightclub VIP sections, free concert tickets, and meeting famous people and getting free CDs and merch. Like me, he’d also thought of maybe using the connections from the record label to make further contacts in showbiz.

His duties at the record label were like mine, and included much of the usual intern drudgery, like fetching coffee, xeroxing, answering phones.

While I’d be on the computer more, sending emails, completing and sending out expense reports, Hamlet was usually posted to the front desk, filling in for the secretary. I think the label heads liked having his pretty face perched out front…

At the front desk he’d not only answer calls, but register visitors, many of which were uninvited artists who’d show up to the front door of the label’s office. These intruders would often barge in, immediately begin singing, dancing, rapping, strumming a guitar at Hamlet or whomever occupied the front desk or had just happened to be standing or sitting in the lobby. Our accounting department sometimes would have a mariachi band rush up to them, begin playing their guitars, accordions or whatever.

Such encounters could get weird and desperate and required dispatching security, who, sometimes with the assistance of label staff, sometimes me and Hamlet, literally dragged or pushed the aspiring artists into the street, their guitars and everything, them rapping and singing as the door slammed in their face.

It was pretty sad.

The aspiring artists would at times be in tears, too, attesting to having taken a bus for 10 hours. Claiming that they had no money for a return ticket.

But they’d always be told the same thing. Hire a manager and send us an official demo, registered mail.

I’d like to think our bosses or executives at the label were listening to the artists, gauging their talent, but I’m not sure they were. They seemed more annoyed by it than anything else.

I’d once heard that Puff Daddy listens to anyone who jumps up in front of him and starts rapping. I’m sure that happens a lot to him, that people pop up out of nowhere and rap to Puffy or yell and rap at him from a distance. Call his record label and rap into the phone when a secretary answers. And I say I know this, because this stuff happened to us…

(Our phones rang sometimes, with people singing at us when we’d answer…)

((Nowadays, artists can upload stuff to YouTube, become famous online without major label help, but back then, in the early to mid-2000s, that was less common. But I’m sure major labels still have tons of demos sent their way. Since, as cogs of media conglomerate machines, they function as gatekeepers, and do still control, dominate many media channels…)

Not every aspiring superstar showed up at our door or had a manager send their demo, though. Many demos came to us every day, mailed to the label, directly from the artists themselves. They’d often be crude home recordings, but sometimes were high quality, professional looking CDs, tapes, occasionally even vinyl, accompanied by press kits and merch.

Our label’s official policy, such as that of many large, successful record companies, was not to listen to any “unsolicited” demo, that is, one sent directly by an artist and not a reputable manager, lawyer, or industry insider.

However, the label’s A&R brass was always hungry for the next superstar who could emerge from nowhere. And we would in fact have any demo received via mail screened and any promising material forwarded to the head honchos for further review.

But screening these demos was no simple task. Thousands were received weekly. Huge piles stacking up in the corner of the low-level A&R execs’ offices.

Such an undesirable task as screening those piles was often left to interns like Hamlet and me. It was tedious, extremely so, sorting through them, hearing endless hours of what resembled Tourette’s syndrome sufferers and banshees and bathroom recordings with out of key singing (this was before auto-tune). There were animal sounds, horrid wannabe rappers and boy bands, and so on. Imagine the worst “American Idol” contestants, hearing that, again and again. That’s what it was like, listening to many of those demos.

Only maybe one of fifty demos were at all decent. Only one of a hundred actually good.

After careful, painful screening, we’d filter the demos into two piles.

One pile being the “promising” pile that we’d forward to the head of A&R. The other being the “pass” pile that’d be destroyed, either by shredder or smashed up with a blunt object before being thrown into the garbage…

The head of A&R was a character worth mentioning. She was a bombastic, voluptuous Colombian lady, 30ish, with super high cheekbones and a shiny mane of silky waist length jet black hair. She wore black everything, every day, black pants, shirts, dresses, skirts, handbags, shoes, every article of clothing, every accoutrement, black. Black as her hair. And was she ever a looker. A bombshell. Like an actress from a telenovela.

Her sultry looks, however, masked her personality. She was a dragon. She had a fiery, explosive temper and was always involved in a dizzying array of telenovela-like blood feuds with everyone in every other department. Not only that, but she’d recently had a boyfriend up and disappear and everyone gossiped about it, suspected she’d murdered him.

Her looks and reputation made her unapproachable to most, but I did my best to keep on the vixen’s good side, and she was always friendly with me. I think she appreciated that I wasn’t scared of her and that I smiled at her…

As for the demos, and why they had to be destroyed, the vixen told me the reason for destroying them was simple. It was to avoid lawsuits. So no artist could claim they sent their song to the record label and then the label stole their music, later released it without their permission.

If somehow that did happen, coincidentally or otherwise (this being the music business!), the record label wanted no proof of the demo being in its possession. No evidence portending to that could exist.

So, again, here’s where me and Hamlet came in. The label execs had been quite pleased with him and me. We were both hard-working, punctual, and polite. But most of all, we were both calm, patient. Hamlet was especially patient and mild-mannered. I never once saw him get riled up about anything. The dude was the definition of stoic.

The weekly intrusions of aspiring artists bursting into the office, singing, dancing and rapping, didn’t rattle him. Nor did the daily screaming matches between label executives that sometimes became physical; nothing got under the kid’s skin.

I must admit, as a former musician, the desperation on the faces of those artists who’d barge into our offices, that disturbed me, visibly so. But Hamlet, never. He was cool as a cucumber. Always.

Of all the interns, his physique was the best, even better than mine; dude was an aspiring actor/model, after all, but, also his demeanor, of anyone, was the coolest. Because of his build, but probably more due to his steely resolve, I guess, A&R staff figured he’d be the perfect person to take on the undesirable task of destroying the unwanted demos.

(Most interns and lower level staff dreaded doing so, as it was mentally demoralizing and physically exhausting. Literally. Shattering those tapes and CDs. Smashing people’s dreams to shreds. But Hamlet and I accepted the task with no complaints.)