The Next Step

Originally written 11/13/7

One of the by-products of all this down (in the dumps) time, is it has given me time to write. I haven’t been a “writer” all my life. I would consider myself to be ‘funny’ guy. Like a clown funny. I even got the VW and the clown shoes. All this writing is definitely an extension of me (duh). So is my self deprecating humor (duh). And perhaps my sense of recall (duh). But I never really ‘wrote’ until relatively recently.

I can trace it back to my time at Borders. I was the music manager, and had a staff of up to 12 employees beneath me. We were hardly ever there at the same time. Issues would arise that I would need to discuss with them. So what better way than a newsletter? And thus, Volume was born. Volume was my first real effort at writing, and my first experience with Word. These suckers were bare bones. The coolest trick I knew was to change fonts every 2 paragraphs. There was no set style or topics, every one was different. As I stared at my screen I thought “Shit, how can I make this worthwhile to read?” It became obvious that I had to break it up; it couldn’t all be work stuff. If that was the case, the Freaks (as we lovingly called ourselves) would stop reading it. It would have no impact, much like the last Jennifer Lopez CD. So I broke it up, and interjected humor. Off topic stuff, on topic stuff, busting on me, busting on them, busting on customers, etc. I found the Freaks would read it.

After doing it for a while, they would ask me “Hey, isn’t it time for another Volume?” There hasn’t been one for a while.” It was my first feeling of having expectations to live up to. I always made sure to copy it and put it in their mailboxes right before I left, so I wouldn’t have to see them reading it. Soon, the evil Book Dep’t caught wind of Volume. The Freaks would let the Bookers read it. All the book managers were jealous because I was doing a newsletter that was both informative, instructional and funny. They decided to get in on the action. They decided to start their own newsletter.

I was pissed. I always presented Volume as ‘The Best Damn Newsletter in the Store’ and now my monopoly was coming to an end. I immediately put out an inflammatory Volume, calling for their “presses to be burned.” In the end, they couldn’t keep up with me, and their piece of shit faded. It did feel good to have competition, and I used it as a rallying point for my staff. Missile readers might notice a trend here. I held onto all of those Volumes. I still break them out from time to time, and they still make me laugh.

Flash to WEA. It was essentially the same scenario. I was the new guy, with a bunch of stores. Many more than I could hit in a 6 week cycle. It was time to start a newsletter again. I don’t know where I got the term ‘missile’. I guess it just sounded cool at the time, and I’m sure there was a hidden cock joke as well. It took a while, but the Miss started to catch on. I couldn’t be at every store every month, and there was vital info (release dates and changes, tour dates, radio info, etc) that they needed to help sell my artists. Unlike Borders, I knew I had competition in the stores. At that time, there were many reps vying for space, instore play, face time, etc. Some of them did newsletters. And those newsletters were boring as shit. Some were just various charts. Others were basically label hyperbole. There was no heart or individuality. There was really no reward for a store staffer to read what was essentially boring or manufactured hype. I felt that was insulting. Stores were busy enough, but to send them info with the vain hopes of getting it read just didn’t make sense to me. It must not have made sense to the stores as well. They never held onto them, posted them, kept them at the register.

The Missile began to take shape. It was half info, and half BS. The first half was always the stuff that the stores needed to know. The last half was all my BS. There were certain topics that would run for a few months (like the Rock Star I hate This Month). There were other various topics that ran as I thought of them. There was always Live From Missile Command, which was just me spouting off about anything. Close with Coming Next Month which was essentially one liners to go along with certain events or the time of the year. Doing the info stuff killed me because it was so boring and tedious to put together. The BS stuff really stoked me. There were common themes that ran throughout. I always made fun of the other labels/reps. Most times, they deserved it. A side effect of that was that it seemed to unify me with the stores. For example, I would take a shot at the EMI rep one month. I would go into a store, they would mention that and say “I got a story about EMI for ya.” We’d snicker.

I also learned to be honest. I would be the first to put a snide comment in about our releases as well. I feel stores appreciated me being honest. Being honest stood out against the phony newsletters and reps. But it got me into trouble as well. I remember one specific time. My boss saw all the Missiles, and most times, he was willing to look the other way when I went off. It was the month that the Paris Hilton CD came out. In the Coming Next Month section, I wrote something like “a massive amount of returns on the Paris Hilton CD.” He called me on it. I know he was looking out for me, and I know he wasn’t doing it to antagonize me. He was right when he said if anyone from WB saw this, I could get fired. And here’s the point; no one in any store ever ratted me out. Ever.

The Missile never ended up in enemy hands. They never got wind of the website. No store ever sent it to a competing label. That’s a pretty strong bond, and something I’m still kinda proud of.

I would go into store on days they got the Miss in the mail. It was a bit unnerving to just stand there as they read it. It was like being evaluated. If they didn’t laugh, I was offended, or maybe like it was more I let them down. I would come into stores, and they would have it right by the register. Or hanging up in the back. Or in the bathroom. Ha, take that, Maxim.
I got the biggest thrill when I went on the road to places like Wilkes Barre or the occasional trip to Buffalo and Syracuse. I never got out there enough, so the Missile was vital to communicate our priorities. And when I went to those places, most of them knew me from the Missile. Other times I would be talking to the store, and it would dawn on them. “Hey, wait a minute, you’re the guy that writes the Missile. We love that!” I have a vivid memory of going to the FYE in Buffalo with my boss. I was talking to the manager, and he was just raving about the Missile. And this was a store I had never been to, and they knew what WEA had going on. I just kinda smirked to my boss like ‘yea, see?”

Writing the Missile was one of the coolest things I did at WEA. I found myself really looking forward to it. Little ideas would pop out over the month that I would hold onto to use in the upcoming Missile. It was a double edged sword. I really did wonder how much people paid attention to the actual info, but was also flattered by how many people apparently paid attention to the BS. Except for Xmas. Every year, I always made it Tara vs. me. I said she had a bunch of stupid kids to teach, and the parents would shower her with gifts as a bribe. I told my stores to shower me for all the free entertainment they got. “Don’t get beat by a bunch of 4th graders” I told them. And every year, I’d get crushed. Another life lesson learned.

It was getting to the point where I was looking to take the Miss online. I was looking at a Comcast page, when Homer entered. Homer was managing a FYE in NY. And he took it upon himself to get the domain name, design it and field my various questions. Now the Miss was online, and came with a message board. Ultimately, the message board increased my writing ‘skills’. It started out to be mostly music, but got to the point where I was writing even more off topic stuff. It was immediate. When I had the idea, I could run with it. It was the Missile, but without the BS. I found myself really enjoying it.

A few weeks before we got the ax, I finally started this MySpace page. Originally, the idea was for it to be mostly music. But since I got the ax a few weeks after it started, it morphed into off topic stuff. I found it to be an outlet, starting out with losing my job, to being unemployed, to writing about vacation, or being an opera singer, etc. I found myself to be thinking about writing more and more. I would get ideas for something while I was walking the dog, or at the gym, or trying to sleep. I found myself energized at the thought/challenge of writing out an idea. At the same time, it was the double edge sword. Nothing beats a post where it all just flows. At the same time, there is nothing more frustrating when I have an idea, and the page remains blank, or what comes out just isn’t good enough.

I worried less about keeping it music focused, and more about whatever I thought was funny and entertaining. The hits started going up. For example, last week, I had 10% of my hits since I started. In just one week. So someone else must be enjoying this as well. A little sign like that can really kick my ass. Since I have this time now, maybe it makes sense to follow it out a bit. And that is The Next Step.

I joined a writers’ website. Strictly amateurs. It’s a different venue than here. The site uses a rating system to determine how good an article is doing. I thought my recent Halloween posts were pretty good, so I decided to go with them as my first posts. This site isn’t as free as MySpace, so I had to edit. That’s a weird process. It was easy to take out some of the personal stuff. It did feel odd to edit out ‘words’; I guess no one at the site appreciates the eloquence of a well placed ‘dipshit’ or ‘motherfucker’. Chopped down the Hween party post, and submitted it to the humor section of the site. A little while later, I got an email from them saying it would be posted in the ‘memoirs’ section of the site. Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear ‘memoirs’, it makes me think of an autobiography of a first lady or prime minister or some such shit. I don’t think my stuff necessarily translates well into ‘memoirs’. So you submit it to that topic in that category. It turns out there are 40 other similar articles that I am now competing with. You start in the middle, and then people rate your story up or down.

So my first baby is out there, for the amateur writing world to see and judge. Now I’ll stay away for a few days to see how it fares. If nothing else, this will give me material to write about here. Though I realize it was probably a mistake to post a Hween story. Really, I mean it’s November 13th, who dafuck still cares about Hween now? The good thing about the old message board, and all this MySpace stuff is I have a wealth of stuff to re-edit and post.

The writing has gotten to be a bit bigger thing for me right now. I feel it’s a bit of a good day if I wrote something I liked, even if I didn’t find a job or a lead. I find random ideas for posts popping up in my head more and more now. And that’s a good thing, because I don’t hear the voices in my head as much. I really haven’t felt this excited about doing something in a long long time. I’m not saying I’m ever gonna make money from any of this, that’s pie in the sky. But it does beat workin’ for a living.