Chapter 10: On the Radio

Los Angeles, California

July 2, 1992

KPID was the most listened to radio station in the Los Angeles basin. Licensed by the FCC since 1956, its format was pop music, primarily songs that were currently on the Top 100 list, with heavy emphasis on those in the Top 20. For that twenty percent of airtime in which they were not playing something from the current Top 100, they used approximately half playing songs that had been in the Top 10 in recent years but were now off the charts, and about half playing up and coming songs that were projected to hit the Top 100 soon.

KPID was but one of ninety-seven radio stations in the United States and Canada owned by the publicly traded entity known as Consolidated Radio Communications Corporation, or CRCC. Most of those stations, like KPID, focused primarily on popular music, but they owned a decent variety in other formats as well: Soft Rock, Hard Rock, Country, and even a few talk radio stations. Their headquarters was in the Library Tower Building in downtown LA, the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River, where they occupied the entirety of the 66^th Floor.

It was those popular music stations owned by CRCC and that latter ten percent of airtime in which new music was played that concerned Michael Riley, not just on this day, but on every day. Mick, as he liked to be called, was an independent record promotor, though that title—which did appear in bold on his custom designed business cards—was a wee bit of a misnomer. While he did promote music, he was not really independent, per se. He was paid by and answered to the National Records Music Promotion Department, an entity that took up the entire sixth and seventh floors of the National Records Building and carried an annual budget of forty million dollars, with access to another twenty million in emergency funding if such a thing became necessary. For legal reasons, however, Mick and those like him—National contracted with at least one independent music promotor in every major market in the nation—were not allowed to actually be employed by the record company itself.

The reasoning behind this was because of little thing called payola. It was illegal under FCC rules for a record company to directly pay a radio station or a DJ or a program director or anyone else affiliated with a radio station or radio stations to play certain music. However, if the person paying the radio station or the program director to play certain tunes was an independent contractor, well, that did not technically violate the letter of the law, though it did tramp rather ruthlessly over the spirit of it.

Mick Riley, at age forty-six, had long since made peace with the ethical concerns attached to his profession. Payola would go on with or without him. It was one of those things like police corruption, political corruption, or judicial corruption, that was just never going to go away. He considered what he did to be no different than being a corporate lobbyist who influenced congress members and senators. He was simply the conduit for delivering bribes in a fashion that was technically legal. And he made a pretty good living at it too. Last year he’d cleared a quarter million in taxable income plus another eighty thousand in under the table income. And that was not to mention the all-expenses paid trips he often made on National’s behalf, trips in which he was flown first-class, put up in five-star hotels, and usually treated to a round of golf at whatever the local country club happened to be.

He pulled his 1990 Corvette C4 into the valet parking area of the seventy-seven story building and brought it to a halt. He stepped out—after a moment of struggle to unwind himself from the low-riding driver’s seat—and stood up straight, stretching out to his full five feet eight and a half inches of height. His head was balding but he displayed it without shame, not bothering with a combover or a toupee. He had learned long ago that when one made more than a quarter mil a year, it did not really matter what one looked like to the opposite sex. When he wanted to get laid—and that was quite often, actually—he got laid, balding head, bulging stomach and all.

This was not to say that he did not display a certain amount of style. After all, in his business, image was almost as important as connections. He dressed his part well. He was currently wearing a stylish, custom fit Italian suit that had cost him four grand in a Rodeo Boulevard shop—one of six such suits that he owned. His shoes were custom fit wingtips, highly polished, that had cost him three hundred dollars in a different Rodeo Boulevard shop. In his left ear was a gold stud imbedded with a diamond. And, to complete the picture, a pair of three hundred dollar Ray-Ban Aviators were perched on his nose, completely obscuring his eyes.

Mick was here often enough that the valets all knew who he was, and he knew them. Jesus, an aspiring actor (of course) who worked the day shift, came rushing over when he saw Mick get out. He knew the record promotor was a good tipper.

“Mick, my man,” Jesus greeted. “How’s it going today?”

“Like an old man who just had a prostatectomy,” Mick replied, reaching into the car and retrieving his sixteen hundred dollar Louis Vuitton briefcase.

Jesus furled his brow a bit. “Does that mean good?” he asked.

“It means good, Jesus,” Mick assured him, holding out his hand. They had a shake and then Mick asked him about his career.

“I auditioned for a deodorant commercial last week,” he said. “Still waiting to hear back.”

“Good luck on that,” Mick told him. “Many the prestigious career was launched on the back of a good deodorant commercial.”

“That’s what my agent says,” Jesus said.

“He sounds like a wise man,” Mick said. “Now take care of my car for me, huh? I’ve gotta go talk some music with some people.”

“You got it, Mick,” Jesus told him, folding himself inside the sixty thousand dollar car. He fired it up and roared off toward the parking area beneath the building.

Mick walked to the large doors and into the spacious lobby of the building, going past the row of shops, the restaurant, and the main kiosk. He came to the primary bank of elevators. An armed security guard behind a desk guarded access here. He too knew Mick by sight.

“Welcome, Mick,” the guard greeted. “Heading up to sixty-six?”

“You know it, Jeff,” Mick returned. “I have a ten o’clock up there with Larry Justice.”

“Here you go,” Jeff said, handing him the keycard pass that would allow him into the elevators.

“Thanks,” Mick told him.

He used his keycard to call one of the express elevators and, two minutes later, he was on the sixty-sixth floor. The offices of CRCC were tastefully decorated, using primarily blacks and whites and shades of gray, the furniture and the artwork modern and incorporating the same basic color scheme. He checked in with the receptionist at the main desk—her name was Julie and, though she was friendly to him, she had rejected every offer he’d ever made to go out with him—and barely had time to sit down in one of the chairs before he was called into the office of Lawrence Justice III, the head of the music promotion department.

LJ3 was one of the higher ups in the CRCC hierarchy. Mick wasn’t sure what kind of coin he was pulling in, but he knew it had to be at least in the low seven figure range. He was a fit man in his late forties, the holder of a master’s degree in Business and Accounting and a card carrying CPA. He was also a former musician, having supplemented his family income through school by playing sessions on the drums at both National Records’ and Aristocrat Records’ studios.

There was no trace of that former drummer in his appearance now. He looked like something straight out of a Republican Party recruiting poster. His dark hair was immaculately styled and held in place by enough hair spray to constitute an explosive hazard. His suit was dark and he made a point to keep his jacket on whenever meeting with someone. The pictures on his desk were of his trophy wife and their two trophy children. It was common knowledge, however, that he was actually a fan of young men in their late teens—or maybe even a little younger?—who were willing let him into their back doors for a little game of may-I-push-in-your-stool?

“Mick,” LJ3 greeted from behind his twelve thousand dollar oak desk. “It’s good to see you.”

“Glad you had time to squeeze me in today, Larry,” Mick returned, reaching out and taking the offered hand for the obligatory shake. He then sat down in the leather chair across the desk and set his briefcase down on the Berber carpet.

“Hey now,” Larry said. “It’s you and your fellow IMPs who are the lifeblood of this industry called radio. And National is one of the bigger music producers we play at CRCC. You bet your mutual fund I’ll always make time to see you.”

Right, Mick thought cynically. It’s actually the two and a half million dollars a year I transfer from National’s promotion budget account to CRCC’s general fund that keeps that door open for me and lets me call you Larry. If it wasn’t for that, they wouldn’t let me sweep the floors in this place. Of course, he would never actually say anything like that, or even hint at it. The game here was that they had to pretend that Mick was just suggesting new music and they were just considering and then ultimately accepting those suggestions. That deuce and a half in “incidental promotion costs” had nothing to do with anything.

“I have some new material being released soon that National thinks you might be interested in,” Mick told him.

“Always happy to hear new releases from National,” Larry said with a smile. “What do you have?”

Mick opened his briefcase and pulled out four CD cases, all of which had printed papers with very specific promotional instructions and information attached to them.

“These first two,” he said, “are a couple of new acts that National has signed and that they’re getting ready to release debuts on.” He slid one of the cases across—a mostly black case with a human skull the primary feature on the front. “This is Primal Fire, a thrash metal group out of Albuquerque. Bailey over in the NAD department is really excited about this one and the promo boys are telling me that we’ve got two solid radio friendly cuts on there they would like to see given saturation airplay—assuming, of course, that you folks like the cuts.”

“Of course,” Larry said, looking at the cover with a bit of distaste. “I’m guessing this would be for our hard rock stations?”

“Correct,” Mick said. “They’re radio friendly for that genre only. We’re talking about the cut Born to Die as the first promoted and then Cut Your Wings as the second. If we get enough airplay with those two, the album sales should be good and everyone is happy.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Larry said, pushing the CD and the paper off to the side.

“This next one,” Mick said, handing him a case with a barely concealed naked woman riding a black unicorn as the featured photo, “is Immaculate Conscription. They’re an all-female pop group aimed at the eighteen to thirty-fours ostensibly, but what National is really shooting for are the teens.”

“Ahhh,” Larry said knowingly. “So, they’re a bit too edgy to officially be a teen targeted group, but you anticipate they will be the primary audience anyway.”

“Exactly,” Mick agreed. “They’re a bunch of anorexic mid-twenties chicks that look like concentration camp survivors if you see them in real life, but look like hotness personified on camera when they’re all made-up and constructed. They do a lot of four-part harmony backed by dance beat and synthesizer tracks. The lyrics are simplistic, but full of heavy sexual innuendo that will appeal to the primary demographic, both male and female. Their videos are pushing up against the very boundary of obscenity. Fucking parents are going to hate them.”

“That is never a bad thing when you’re shooting for that demographic,” Larry said.

“It is not,” Mick agreed. “The teen guys are all going to be pumping their pythons to the videos and the promo pics, and the teen girls are all going to want to be them.”

“I like them already,” Larry said. “Would you suggest playing them heavily on the pop stations during the two to seven period?”

“It’s like you read my mind,” Mick said. The 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM was the time period when the twelve to eighteen male and female demographics were most likely to be listening—a sharp contrast from the 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM slot, which was when the eighteen to thirty-fours were most likely. “The first cut we would suggest promoting is In the Park, which is suggestive about furtive sex in a car while out on a date. The second cut to be promoted should then be Go Downtown, which is suggestive about male to female oral sex.”

“Only suggestive, right?” Radio executives nationwide lived in constant fear of actually having a song legally declared obscene on some level that would set a precedent.

“Naturally,” Mick assured him. “The lyricists that penned the tunes for these chicks are some of National’s best. Everyone will know what they’re really talking about, but the verses are ambiguous enough and symbolic enough for plausible deniability.”

“Very good,” Larry said. “We’ll give them a listen and see what we can do. What else do you have?”

“These next two kind of go together in a strange way,” Mick said, picking up the last two CD cases. “They’re not really new artists at all, but members of former top-selling groups that are now solo.”

“Oh?”

“Celia Valdez and Jake Kingsley are both releasing solo albums in the next two weeks.”

“Really?” Larry said, taking the CDs in hand and looking at them. “I’ve heard some rumors floating around about that.”

“The rumors are true.”

“They’re not on National’s label,” Larry said, seeing the KVA Records emblem on the back.

“That’s correct. They’ve gone independent and they signed with National for MD&P, therefore they fall under my umbrella for this region. They come as a package deal with some very specific ... uh... suggestions for how their music should be promoted.”

“Is that a fact?” Larry said, raising his eyebrows a bit.

“It’s a fact. National agrees strongly with their suggestions and would request that they be followed, if you can accommodate, of course.” This was the polite way of saying that CRCC needed to follow the instructions carefully or their income string could take a hit.

“We will certainly accommodate you if we can,” Larry said, which was the face-saving way of saying he would make it so. He then flipped the CDs back over and looked at the covers.

As a primary homosexual—though he was confident that no one knew about this—his eyes were drawn to Kingsley’s cover first. Can’t Keep Me Down was the title of the album. There was a glossy photo of Kingsley sitting on a stool with a battered looking acoustic guitar in his hands, as if he were playing it. He was wearing a pair of ripped and faded blue jeans and a sleeveless black shirt that displayed the tattoos on his upper arms. His face looked pretty much as it always had, perhaps a bit older than his cover photo for Lines On the Map, the last Intemperance album, but still unmistakably Jake Kingsley. He still had the shoulder length hair and the slight scruff of whiskers on his face. Larry did not suspect in the least that the scruff had been put in by photographic effects over the image of a clean-shaven face and that the hair itself was a carefully matched and styled wig that Kingsley had worn just for the photo shoot.

A little old for me, Larry thought, but I’d still hit that in a hot minute.

“I assume we should play this on the hard rocks?” he asked Mick.

“Well ... yes, naturally,” Mick said, “but it is also thought that there will be some significant crossover into the pop genre among the entire eighteen to forty-nine spectrum for both sexes.”

Larry raised his eyebrows. That was a very bold statement. “Really now?”

Mick nodded seriously. “It’s not quite of the Intemp genre,” he said. “It’s rock music, have no doubt about that, but it’s not heavy metal at all. Some of the stuff in there doesn’t even have electric guitar in it.”

“You’re putting me on,” Larry said.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Mick assured him. “Kingsley’s gone experimental. He’s come up with some pretty cool stuff. National thinks it will appeal to more than just the hard rock demo.”

“It sounds a bit risky. You understand that we do have to maintain our primary goal of keeping ears on our stations, right?”

“I understand,” Mick assured him. Again, they were discussing the unwritten rules and understandings of the relationship between record company, radio executive, and promotor. CRCC was obligated to promote the music as suggested if they wanted to keep receiving their funding from National. But if that music turned out to be unappealing to the music consumer and CRCC could show that people were actually turning their radios to other stations in large numbers when one of the songs they were being paid to promote was played, they were free to stop playing that song without penalty. This was exactly what had happened with Matt Tisdale’s tunes and Larry was undoubtedly thinking about that. “National does not expect you to lose advertising revenue if the tunes turn out to be unpopular. They just ask that you give them their fair shake and let the consumers and the listeners be the judge.”

“Fair enough,” Larry said with a shrug. He then picked up the Celia Valdez CD. The Struggle was the title of album. The cover showed a full color side profile shot of Valdez that had apparently been taken in the recording studio. Her dark hair was spilling across her shoulders and a pair of studio headphones—cans, as they were called—were covering her ears. Her hands were on the outer part of the earphones and her mouth was open, showing impossibly white teeth, as she sang into a ceiling mounted voice microphone. The side profile was the perfect angle to show the side swell of her left breast in a tight maroon sweater. Though Larry wasn’t really into that sort of thing, he had enough heterosexuality and artistic appreciation within him to recognize how alluring the shot made those fabulous boobs of hers look. Celia really was an attractive representation of femininity. The profile shot was the only part of the cover that was in color. Blended into the rest of the cover was a background, in black and white, of a grove of fruit trees in full blossom stretching off to the horizon. Rising above that horizon, also in black and white, were menacing looking thunderheads that seemed to threaten Valdez with their approach.

“Good photo effects on that cover, huh?” Mick asked.

Larry nodded with genuine appreciation. “I’m impressed,” he said. “It looks like she’s recording in the middle of a dark orchard and about to get hit by lightning, and that juicy tit of hers almost looks like you could reach out and touch it.”

“That’s exactly the effect they were going for.”

“How’s the music though?” Larry asked. “I seem to remember that La Diff’s last two albums were varying degrees of failure.”

Mick smiled. He had listened to The Struggle (the album, as well as the song) several times now, and though it didn’t happen often in his business dealings, he now spoke the complete truth. “This album is going to blow people away,” he said. “She has ten extremely solid cuts here that are going to appeal to the entire spectrum from pop to hard rock and across the entire teen to sixty-five range.”

Larry looked at him in disbelief. “You almost sound as if you believe that bullshit,” he said.

Mick’s expression did not change. “I’m not bullshitting, Larry,” he said. “This album is a once in a decade piece, I’m telling you. The combination of her voice, the lyrics, and the musical composition is just ... I can’t even describe it. You’ll see what I’m saying when you give it a listen.”

“If you say so,” Larry told him. “We’ll certainly give it enough airplay for the people to let their opinions be known. After that ... well ... as long as our ears on the other side of the airwaves aren’t turning the station whenever she comes on, we’ll keep it up.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” Mick assured him. “Now ... how about we go over the specifics of how we ... uh ... that is National, wants these albums promoted?”

Larry gave a little frown. “Aren’t the suggestions written on the promo sheets like always?” he asked.

“They are. And for Primal Fire and Immaculate Conscription, I’ll just let you read those sheets and do your thing. With Valdez and Kingsley, however, the suggestions are a bit more than the normal play this and then play that in this demographic kind of thing. National wanted to make sure I went over the plan in detail with you so you can draft specific directions in your memos to your affiliate stations around the country.”

“All right,” Larry said with a sigh. “Lay it on me.”

“Okay” Mick said. “The albums are going to hit the shelves on Tuesday, the 14^th of July. Naturally, National wants to start getting some exposure to the initial release cuts before that date to build up a little familiarity in advance.”

“Nothing unusual about that,” Larry said.

“No, but hang with me for a few. They want Valdez’s initial cut to be The Struggle, the title cut of the album, and Kingsley’s to be The Easy Way. They want both of them played across the entire eighteen to fifty-four demo, with heavy concentration on the morning and evening peaks. They want no other cuts from either album to be played at all until the initials start to catch and chart.”

“Assuming that happens,” Larry said.

“Assuming that happens,” Mick agreed. “Now, for Struggle, it will only be on the pops, and they want universal mentions of the artist name by your jocks whenever the cut is played, but only after it has played. They want no artist ID beforehand during the pre-release period.”

Larry raised his eyebrows up. “You want me to tell all of the DJs in sixty-plus stations not to say the artist before they spin Struggle?”

“Correct,” Mick confirmed. “That means the cut cannot be played at the beginning of a set or in the middle, only at the end. Until the CD reaches the shelves, artist name announced every single time after the song is over. Once the release date comes, you can start going back to the normal scheduling, but always have the jock say that Valdez is the artist until the cut starts to chart.”

“Okay,” Larry said slowly.

“Now for Easy,” Mick continued, “things are a bit more complex.”

“More complex than what you just told me?”

“Correct,” Mick said. “Easy is to be heavily played on both the hard rocks and the pops. On the hard rock stations, always announce Kingsley as the artist prior to playing the cut, never after. On the pop stations, however, use the same rule as Valdez. Put the cut at the end of a set and then announce artist consistently after it has played, never before. This is to be kept up, not just until the release date, but until the cut starts to chart.”

Larry was shaking his head. “I don’t understand the purpose of all this.”

Mick gave a shrug. “It seems the plan for Valdez and for Kingsley on the pops is to let the listeners hear the song and connect with it before they know who is singing it. This will hopefully avoid having station switch occur just on name alone. On the hard rocks, however, they want listeners to know that a new Jake Kingsley tune is about to be played. That way the Intemp fans will hang around and give the tune a listen just because it’s Jake Kingsley.”

Another raise of the eyebrows by Larry. “I believe that somebody over at National is overthinking things a bit.”

“Perhaps,” Mick allowed, “but they are very insistent upon these suggestions.”

He gave a little shake of the head and an eye roll. “I’ll make it happen. Is there anything else?”

“There is,” Mick said. “There is to be no mention that Kingsley and Valdez have gone independent. Most of the listeners won’t even know what that means anyway, but for those that do, just let them go on thinking that a major label is behind the albums until they buy the CD and see the KVA logo.”

“What is the point of that?” Larry asked.

“National does not want Kingsley and Valdez to be associated with each other. They want the general public to assume that these two albums have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”

“What about when people buy the CDs and see the KVA label on both? Surely, if National thinks these things are going to appeal to a broad spectrum of the demographic, there will be people who buy both, right? Won’t that clue them in?”

“Not your average music consumer,” Larry said. “If anyone notices the KVA label at all, they’ll just assume it’s another record company out of LA. They’ll have no way of knowing that Valdez and Kingsley are the only two artists on the label.”

“I suppose,” Larry said.

“Your jocks, however, might notice something like that. That’s fine and dandy as long as they keep those speculations and suppositions off the air. No mention of KVA Records on air. No pondering of the relationship between Kingsley and Valdez.”

“Just what is that relationship anyway?” Larry had to ask. “Are they boning each other?”

“Undoubtedly,” Mick said, “but that stays privileged information. National would be very upset if one of your jocks started spouting off about it.”

“I will see to it that they are instructed to avoid any on-air speculations,” Larry promised. “What are you going to do about the independent stations though? My word doesn’t cut any shit with them.”

“Don’t worry about the indies,” Mick said. “You will not be held in any way accountable for what they do or say or play. Not under your control.”

Larry nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

“Not at this time,” Mick told him. “Once the initial promos start to chart, however, I’ll have more suggestions about what to release next and how to promote it.”

“I can’t wait to hear them,” Larry said, hardly even bothering to sound sincere.

Larry Justice did not listen to either CD. He did not actually care what they sounded like. It was not his job to care about that. Instead, he dictated a memo to his secretary that laid out the specific instructions on the suggestion form, adding a little language that made it very clear that the instructions were to be followed exactly (particularly those dealing with the speculation about KVA Records and the Kingsley-Valdez connection). This memorandum was then faxed to every CRCC station that would be playing either or both of the soon-to-be-released cuts.

The faxes, which were each addressed by name to the program directors of the stations in question and marked CONFIDENTIAL in bold lettering, went out before the close of business that day. In most cases, they were sitting in the program director’s inbox the next morning. The program directors read the memo and then compiled memos of their own that would be sent to their DJs. As of yet, however, none of the stations even had a copy of either CD. This was deliberate. The promotion instructions had to be received, understood, and acknowledged before anyone had actual access to the music.

Twenty-four hours later, the CDs began to arrive. They came in boxes shipped from National Records’ manufacturing facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, stuffed in among more than two dozen other new release CDs from other artists old and new, corporate and independent, who had music that would be released on Tuesday, July 14, 1992. In most cases the program directors had already received their promotional instructions on how/when/what to play from each one. This was a routine aspect of the business of radio in the United States.

The program director at KPID in Los Angeles was Ron Jenkins, a fifty year old UCLA alumni with a master’s degree in communications with a minor in business. Ron had been in the radio biz for more than thirty years, starting out spinning vinyl on the night shift at the UCLA station and working his way steadily up the ladder. He had enjoyed his life a lot more when he had actually been the power behind what KPID played on the air—back before CRCC had come to town and acquired the station (as the term went) from the independent owners in 1987—but he made a lot more money these days being a corporate lackey. Though he found the instructions regarding the Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez releases to be a bit overbearing and odd, he nevertheless composed his memos and even had a mandatory meeting with all of his DJs to make sure they all understood the instructions regarding these particular releases. Once he was satisfied that they did, he made note of the length of play of each tune and then got together with his staff to start working on plugging the airplay times and frequency into the schedule. Ron Jenkins did not listen to the CDs either. Being involved in the business of music had long since destroyed his ability to enjoy simply listening to it.