Hello, everyone. A quick update before I finish the tale of our trip to Hollywood. I had previously mentioned that I had not heard from Christian since he left. Well, it turns out that the reason for that is he used all his money traveling out here and was unable to pay his phone bill upon returning home. So, now I feel like a royal douche for calling him out on not returning texts... Christian, I genuinely apologize.
That is all.
THE SHOWCASE
Our time-slot was at 12:45pm. It was a three song set. At 11:30, we arrive at the venue, park, walk to the gate and take a moment to shake out any jitters.
X rings the bell.
The gate opens, we’re greeted, and we enter the building. It’s a small, but very nice, place. We’re lead to the loft area where we’re able to peer down at the guest panel.
“Just chill out up here, we’ll come collect you when you’re up.” The manager-fella tells us before toddling off.
More people start to arrive, and are brought to the loft as the next act goes before the panel. It is a rap act. They finish, the panel says nice stuff, and the next act begins. It is a rap act. They finish, the panel says far less nice stuff. The NEXT act begins... it is a rap act-- okay, you see where I’m going with this. The three of us are struck by the realization that this is an entirely rap oriented affair... not that there is anything wrong with that, but we are... decidedly not a rap group.
It is our turn at last. We approach the panel, introduce ourselves, and X begins the riff for Here’s to Eternity.
By the time our third song ends, there are... very mixed looks on the panel’s faces. They all write down notes on papers that they hand to us and let us know what they think.
Two of the panel ABSOLUTELY HATED us, but the rest were kind... very kind, actually, and we walked away with direct contact information for an A&R person and a licensing agent. Score!
And... that was that for the rest of the day. We were invited back for a “mixer” later than night, but in the meantime, we had several hours to kill. Naturally, we did this by going to Disneyland. Yep. Just three Goths in the Happiest Place on Earth. Don’t even pretend this isn’t normal.
I’m going to skip back to the mixer now because while it was fun, nothing particularly interesting happened prior to it.
We arrived at the gate and rang the bell again. The same fella escorted us inside, where the music was blaring and people were chatting at roughly the same volume. This is when Christian, X and I realized we’re much happier as wallflowers, which, at a mixer... is not so good. This is why I bit the bullet and started approaching people. We chatted about inanities. Several people asked me to produce songs for them, which was kinda cool and flattering.
“You ever think about DJ-ing?” one guy asked me.
“Eh, not really. It’s not so much my thing.”
“That’s real, that’s real.” he says.
But, a quick side-note here, this guy did get me thinking about how great it could be to DJ, and on the drive back home, I revealed to Christian and X, my hypothetical DJ career - I would be!...
DJ DISAPPOINTMENT.
No. It’s really simple. You see, what I do, is I play tons of brostep songs with these heavy bass drops and RIGHT before the bass drops, I abruptly switch into some slow, waltzy number, and right when the crowd starts getting into that BOOM! I switch the track again to some acid house beat, but ONLY FOR TEN SECONDS. Then I leave. The whole thing takes roughly five minutes.
Okay, sorry, I totally got off track there. Let’s get back to the point.
The final node of interest here is that I ended up talking to this trio of producers (who will remain anonymous for the time being). They asked if I would write some pop songs for them. Well, sure, why not?! The “leader” of their group took me aside and put a business card in my hand.
“I want you to give this guy a call, okay? I think you two will get along hella good.”
This... will be brought back up later.
And that was it! We grabbed some food, and hit the road back home.
Wasn’t that fun?!
Well, it was for us at any rate.
Anyway, until next time!
- A.D
