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| Wednesday, September 05, 2007 |
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Nowhere Fast: The Lost Tapes ( II )
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 During the interlude between Kinko's and whatever was coming next I spent a lot of time searching out Van Halen bootlegs on the Internet, and the other part applying to job after job after job.
Now rewind to 1991. When our band put an ad in Creative Loafing looking for a singer, a young teen in Sandy Springs answered the ad. The young teen who drove the singer over to audition was nicknamed "Scroll." The singer entered and left the band, but Scroll and I kept in contact. He became kind of a little brother, in that every field of entertainment I tried, he came along a year or two later and tried it, too. He was more successful, however, because by 2003 he was doing weekend overnights on 96 Rock.
So Scroll let me know that Clear Channel was looking for a part-time commercial producer. I had seen the previous holder of this job doing his work over a decade earlier when I was an intern, and was eager to apply. Recalling some advice I had gotten as a 10th grader I thought it might make more of an impression to apply in person, so Scroll told me a Friday to come down.
I figured I'd blow in and leave my demo with the receptionist, take a quick tour of the station with Scroll, then skeedaddle. However as we were touring the station I saw Larry Wachs of the Regular Guys walk by. I figured he didn't remember me at all and was probably busy, so I didn't say anything. Then we ran into Eric Von Haessler and Scroll reminded him of who I was. (Eric's a very down-to-earth guy but it feels kinda awkward meeting people you know from the radio because, by listening, you know all about them, yet they're actually strangers. So what do you say?)
Eric said Larry had been looking around for me because Scroll had told them I was coming. Oh, wow! How flattering! So we found Larry again, and he acted sincerely pleased to see me. Unfortunately this was a rare morning when I had only caught the last 30 minutes of the show, so I wasn't "prepared." However Larry was nice to talk to. It was flattering they had actually made a point to say "hello" to me; I figured I'd entered their vague memories with 90,000 other people.
We also saw program director Tim Dukes in the hall, who was collecting the ratings from the fax machine with Larry, and he also said "hello." He remembered me from the Caddy's fiasco. On the way to the elevator we saw Tim Andrews, who would later get the on-air name "The Porn Czar," and he knew me from the Regular Guys' chat page. Unfortunately Tim Rhodes, who had been giving me solid advice on my demos, was not around.
As we left the lobby of Clear Channel I almost felt a magnetic pull keeping me there. That was where I belonged! I didn't want to leave! My true calling was behind those doors!
Over brunch Scroll said, "It's so weird. I thought I'd be introducing you to people, but everybody knows you." Yeah, I had thought getting people to know I existed would have been 90% of the battle, but they were aware I was around now. So why wasn't anything happening?
Scroll said that it was likely they might already have someone picked for this producer job, but getting one interview meant your name was in the pot when things came up in the future. To my surprise I actually got called for an interview!
I thought I had looked dowdy when I came down before, so I tried to look more rock n' roll for the interview and wore my leather jacket and a black polo shirt. The lady who interviewed me seemed really uptight and tentative the whole time, no matter how affable I tried to be (I was later told she was always like that). She told me their time frame for making a decision. At this point I had a firm start date with Fitzsimmons Wireless, so she said they would try to let me know ASAP. Following the kind of stupid advice you get in career books and from college professors I tried to come across like I'd have to "think about it," like I really had a lot going on (NOTE: I said in hindsight this was some stupid-assed adviced to follow!). However I also recall motioning around to the control boards, microphones and mini-CD players around us and saying, "But this is my strength. This is what I'm good at, not telling people about their cell phone bills." It was also exciting that she asked me what I had made my demo with, and when I told her a $30 program from Best Buy she seemed truly surprised, and said, "It didn't sound small market." WHEE!
Training had already begun at Fitzsimmons and I was checking my messages every few hours to see if Clear Channel was going to rescue me from call center hell. David Crosby's line from the song "Woodstock" kept running through my head. "You know the darkest hour/is always just before the dawn."
Finally, I got a message from Clear Channel! They were hiring from within! It wasn't happening! YIPEE! So here I was, 33 and in the 15th hour of trying to get a media career going, and I was foiled once again. I hung the phone back on the break room wall, and returned to training.
They had us read out loud from the training manual, and everyone commented that, "You sound like dat Movie Fone guy! You could be da Movie Fone guy!" The girl sitting next to me said, "You're sleeping on your God-given talent!"
Later I wrote Larry Wachs to say unfortunately I was not his co-worker yet, but I would persist. He wrote back something encouraging about how he learned the value of persistence, and, "You have to persist. You have no choice."
Persisting was really over for me, though. I think I threw in the towel right there in the break room. Well...no. I still pulled it out to polish the turd a few more times, as I shall detail in our next installment. |
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Posted by Art | 9:02 PM EST |
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Anonymous said...
Art said...