In the Still of the Night
Oct. 22nd, 2010 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eilonwyhasemuIn our last episode, stuff happened.
Cook & DeWyze: [singing] Since I’m the apple of my girl’s eye. When we go stepping on the town for a while--
DeWyze: My money’s low and my suit’s out of style. [no longer singing] Why’d you stop?
Cook: Dude. I own silver pants. Anyway, we’re here.
Tiemann: I thought we had to sing Journey to travel. This excursion into Stevie Wonder made me miss out on moose.
DeWyze: It wasn’t the kind with antlers.
Cook: Where is “here” anyway?
The room is decorated mostly in acoustic tile. It contains a battered upright piano and bench, two chrome kitchen chairs, a large box with big tape reels and many dials, assorted microphones, and a burnt orange flowered sofa. Under the slanted ceiling, one window looks out onto a dark residential street.
Fortunately, there is a door. There is also an eerie tapping sound outside it, coming closer.
Tap. Tap. Tap tap.
Tiemann: If that’s a zombie, Lee, you throw the laundry bag over its head, and while it’s distracted, I’ll go for its throat.
Tap. Tap. Tap tap.
Cook: What about me?
Tiemann: Read it the sales numbers for the Billboard Hot 200. That’ll keep it stunned while I rend it limb from limb.
Tap. Tap. Tap tap.
The door opens. Slowly.
Mysterious Voice from Behind Door: I heard you singing my song. Why were you singing my song?
Tiemann: That’s not--
DeWyze throws laundry bag.
Tiemann: A zombie. That’s little Stevie Wonder.
Stevie Wonder: I have had the occasional lady throw her undergarments on stage, but these do not feel like them.
DeWyze: I’m sorry.
SW: Or smell like them.
DeWyze: I’m so sorry.
SW: I’m told that being blind makes my other senses sharper. Hearing, taste. Smell.
DeWyze: I am so, so sorry.
SW: I’ll cut you cats some slack, what with you being a brand new writing team. The pressure of having new songs ready for tomorrow’s meeting has made you a little prankish.
Cook: Tomorrow’s mee-- [he is cut off when Tiemann throws DeWyze’s underwear at him] Ew.
SW: I’d better get back to recording. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck.
Stevie Wonder closes the door just before the basilisk escapes into the hall. With a tap, tap, tap from his white cane, his steps retreat.
Cook: What the hell was that all about?
Tiemann: Does anybody know what time it is?
DeWyze: Does anyone really care?
Tiemann: I do.
Cook: It’s 2:30 in the morning. [he checks his newspaper] On August 8, 1968. Or August 9, I guess by now. Who the hell records at 2:30 in the morning?
Tiemann: We’re the replacement for Holland-Dozier-Holland.
DeWyze: Who?
Tiemann: Holland-Dozier-Holland. The writing team behind Motown’s biggest hits. We’re in Motown as their replacement. Bands at Motown record around the clock. Tour for six weeks, record another single, get back on the road.
Cook: Richard Nixon was nominated for President today. Or yesterday, I guess, by now.
Tiemann: Every Friday morning, Berry Gordy has a meeting to decide what songs his artists will record. We’re supposed to have demos ready for it.
Cook: Even the entertainment section's talking about the war in Viet Nam.
DeWyze: Didn’t the Beatles kill off Motown?
Tiemann: Motown was still cranking out pop hits into the mid-1970s. This is real American music. Not my first choice for this era, but--
Cook: We missed Manchester United winning the European Cup Final.
DeWyze: And we have to write songs right now?
Cook: Weren’t you two just bragging about how you write songs everywhere?
DeWyze: Did we mention writing them in the studio with the clock ticking?
Cook: You know you’ve done it. How many days were you locked in a room with Toby Gad and Lindy Robbins?
DeWyze: How many days were you locked in a room with Kara DioGuardia?
Cook: I kept her safely on the other side of a large piano.
Tiemann: Speaking of which...
Cook: What?
Tiemann: Lee and I brought our guitars.
Cook sits down at the upright piano and plays a few chords in the key of E minor.
Time passes in a stylish montage of strumming, plucking, piano pounding, singing snippets, arguing over wording, and the occasional random yelp.
In mid-morning, the guys are in a conference room with Berry Gordy, six other neatly dressed dark-skinned men, and a playback device. They are the only ones with tukes and scruff.
Gordy: This is our new writing team... um...
Tiemann: Cook-DeWyze-Tiemann.
DeWyze: Cook-Tiemann-DeWyze.
Cook: Tiemann-DeWyze-Cook.
Gordy: Let’s hear your ideas first and get a feel for what hits you have in you.
After appropriate fiddling with the equipment, moody guitar playing swells into the room.
Gordy: You’re kidding me.
DeWyze: It’s hooky.
Cook: I told you the girl should have been named Candy or Susie or something like that.
Gordy: Three months ago, we had riots in major cities when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot, God rest his soul. You think white America is going to buy dark-skinned people singing about burning things?
Cook: It’s a metaphor.
Gordy: It’s a shameful, insensitive metaphor. I built Motown’s success on making my people’s music and my people’s talent palatable to the kids bopping at the sock hop. I groomed my artists--and I do mean “groomed,” right down to their hairstyles and outfits--so we could succeed in a white man’s world.
Man in Loud Tie: The world is changing.
Gordy: It’s not changing in Motown. Little Stevie may think he has a future making harmonica instrumentals, but I still have my finger on the pulse of American music, and I expect my writers to have their hands around the wrist of American taste. Listen to the hits. Absorb the hits. Live the hits. Breathe the hits. Then write more hits.
DeWyze: We’re from Latvia.
Gordy: While you are in Motown, you are from Motown. We define the hits.
Cook: What about the British invasion?
Gordy: Repelled, just like 1776. The ones that didn’t fade got all artsy like those Beatles--
Man in Loud Tie: Those Beatles cite me as an influence.
Gordy: Smokey, that’s the only smart thing they’ve done. The world’s not looking for sitar solos and lyrics in which every third line is about drugs.
Smokey Robinson: The world’s not looking for The Miracles, either, these days.
Robinson: This week’s number one single is from The Doors. They’re not reassuring.
Gordy: And disaffected white kids who don’t cut their hair can’t drive pop radio for long. Soon they’ll be back in college and busy protesting the draft they’re hiding from.
Robinson: Before that, it was an instrumental noticeable mostly for its cowbell part.
Gordy: Anomaly. In a couple of weeks, the charts will be back to songs you can clap along to, and Motown will right on top. Speaking of which, what else do you gentleman have to offer?
A bouncy, clicking, poppy beat is followed by--
Gordy: No. No critiques of the music industry, the U.S. government, foreign policy, pesticides, air pollution, rush-hour traffic, or anything teenagers do while not dancing a regulation 18 inches apart on American Bandstand.
Cook: How about this?
Gordy: Now that’s what I call music.
Robinson: That’s the kind of song that gets the colored kids and the white kids up dancing and holding hands.
Gordy: We could finish putting together that album for the Velvelettes.
Robinson: It’d be perfect for them.
Tiemann: [to Cook] Wanna bet that album never gets made?
Gordy: Young man, when I say an album gets made, it gets made.
Cook: I like that in a record label exec.
Tiemann: [to DeWyze] Get a grip on that laundry and be ready to sing. I want to try something.
DeWyze: What something?
Tiemann: If we’re gonna hone our songwriting skills in the past, I know who I want to learn from. And I think I know how to get there. [Tiemann strums.]
DeWyze: [sings] I was born by the river in a little tent, oh and just like the river, I’ve been running ever since. It’s been a long, a long time coming--
Cook: [sings] Up, up, come on get up off your street. If you can only make it from your hands to your knees, I know you can make it to your feet.
Tiemann: [hissing] What the f**k are you doing?
Cook: Mash-up. Fans love 'em.
DeWyze: [singing] But I know a change is gonna come, yes it will--
There is a flash of light. The guys find themselves in the back seat of a flashy red convertible driven by a dude in a tuke.
Cook: I think we’re back among our own people.
Tiemann: I think we’re f**ked.
Mike Nesmith: [singing] Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees! And people say we monkey around--
TO BE CONTINUED
Cook & DeWyze: [singing] Since I’m the apple of my girl’s eye. When we go stepping on the town for a while--
DeWyze: My money’s low and my suit’s out of style. [no longer singing] Why’d you stop?
Cook: Dude. I own silver pants. Anyway, we’re here.
Tiemann: I thought we had to sing Journey to travel. This excursion into Stevie Wonder made me miss out on moose.
DeWyze: It wasn’t the kind with antlers.
Cook: Where is “here” anyway?
The room is decorated mostly in acoustic tile. It contains a battered upright piano and bench, two chrome kitchen chairs, a large box with big tape reels and many dials, assorted microphones, and a burnt orange flowered sofa. Under the slanted ceiling, one window looks out onto a dark residential street.
Fortunately, there is a door. There is also an eerie tapping sound outside it, coming closer.
Tap. Tap. Tap tap.
Tiemann: If that’s a zombie, Lee, you throw the laundry bag over its head, and while it’s distracted, I’ll go for its throat.
Tap. Tap. Tap tap.
Cook: What about me?
Tiemann: Read it the sales numbers for the Billboard Hot 200. That’ll keep it stunned while I rend it limb from limb.
Tap. Tap. Tap tap.
The door opens. Slowly.
Mysterious Voice from Behind Door: I heard you singing my song. Why were you singing my song?
Tiemann: That’s not--
DeWyze throws laundry bag.
Tiemann: A zombie. That’s little Stevie Wonder.
Stevie Wonder: I have had the occasional lady throw her undergarments on stage, but these do not feel like them.
DeWyze: I’m sorry.
SW: Or smell like them.
DeWyze: I’m so sorry.
SW: I’m told that being blind makes my other senses sharper. Hearing, taste. Smell.
DeWyze: I am so, so sorry.
SW: I’ll cut you cats some slack, what with you being a brand new writing team. The pressure of having new songs ready for tomorrow’s meeting has made you a little prankish.
Cook: Tomorrow’s mee-- [he is cut off when Tiemann throws DeWyze’s underwear at him] Ew.
SW: I’d better get back to recording. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck.
Stevie Wonder closes the door just before the basilisk escapes into the hall. With a tap, tap, tap from his white cane, his steps retreat.
Cook: What the hell was that all about?
Tiemann: Does anybody know what time it is?
DeWyze: Does anyone really care?
Tiemann: I do.
Cook: It’s 2:30 in the morning. [he checks his newspaper] On August 8, 1968. Or August 9, I guess by now. Who the hell records at 2:30 in the morning?
Tiemann: We’re the replacement for Holland-Dozier-Holland.
DeWyze: Who?
Tiemann: Holland-Dozier-Holland. The writing team behind Motown’s biggest hits. We’re in Motown as their replacement. Bands at Motown record around the clock. Tour for six weeks, record another single, get back on the road.
Cook: Richard Nixon was nominated for President today. Or yesterday, I guess, by now.
Tiemann: Every Friday morning, Berry Gordy has a meeting to decide what songs his artists will record. We’re supposed to have demos ready for it.
Cook: Even the entertainment section's talking about the war in Viet Nam.
DeWyze: Didn’t the Beatles kill off Motown?
Tiemann: Motown was still cranking out pop hits into the mid-1970s. This is real American music. Not my first choice for this era, but--
Cook: We missed Manchester United winning the European Cup Final.
DeWyze: And we have to write songs right now?
Cook: Weren’t you two just bragging about how you write songs everywhere?
DeWyze: Did we mention writing them in the studio with the clock ticking?
Cook: You know you’ve done it. How many days were you locked in a room with Toby Gad and Lindy Robbins?
DeWyze: How many days were you locked in a room with Kara DioGuardia?
Cook: I kept her safely on the other side of a large piano.
Tiemann: Speaking of which...
Cook: What?
Tiemann: Lee and I brought our guitars.
Cook sits down at the upright piano and plays a few chords in the key of E minor.
Time passes in a stylish montage of strumming, plucking, piano pounding, singing snippets, arguing over wording, and the occasional random yelp.
In mid-morning, the guys are in a conference room with Berry Gordy, six other neatly dressed dark-skinned men, and a playback device. They are the only ones with tukes and scruff.
Gordy: This is our new writing team... um...
Tiemann: Cook-DeWyze-Tiemann.
DeWyze: Cook-Tiemann-DeWyze.
Cook: Tiemann-DeWyze-Cook.
Gordy: Let’s hear your ideas first and get a feel for what hits you have in you.
After appropriate fiddling with the equipment, moody guitar playing swells into the room.
Burn, burn, you make me burn.
You make me burn;
Burn to ashes, burn to dust.
Dear Gabrielle, you’re the torch;
You’re the flame. I’m the pyre.
You level me with every thrust.
Gordy: You’re kidding me.
DeWyze: It’s hooky.
Cook: I told you the girl should have been named Candy or Susie or something like that.
Gordy: Three months ago, we had riots in major cities when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot, God rest his soul. You think white America is going to buy dark-skinned people singing about burning things?
Cook: It’s a metaphor.
Gordy: It’s a shameful, insensitive metaphor. I built Motown’s success on making my people’s music and my people’s talent palatable to the kids bopping at the sock hop. I groomed my artists--and I do mean “groomed,” right down to their hairstyles and outfits--so we could succeed in a white man’s world.
Man in Loud Tie: The world is changing.
Gordy: It’s not changing in Motown. Little Stevie may think he has a future making harmonica instrumentals, but I still have my finger on the pulse of American music, and I expect my writers to have their hands around the wrist of American taste. Listen to the hits. Absorb the hits. Live the hits. Breathe the hits. Then write more hits.
DeWyze: We’re from Latvia.
Gordy: While you are in Motown, you are from Motown. We define the hits.
Cook: What about the British invasion?
Gordy: Repelled, just like 1776. The ones that didn’t fade got all artsy like those Beatles--
Man in Loud Tie: Those Beatles cite me as an influence.
Gordy: Smokey, that’s the only smart thing they’ve done. The world’s not looking for sitar solos and lyrics in which every third line is about drugs.
Smokey Robinson: The world’s not looking for The Miracles, either, these days.
Gordy: Miracles are exactly what the world’s looking for. People want reassurance that everything’s going to be fine. And they want that reassurance with a tambourine backbeat, tightly harmonized vocals, simple and memorable lyrics, and a beat you can dance to.
Robinson: This week’s number one single is from The Doors. They’re not reassuring.
Gordy: And disaffected white kids who don’t cut their hair can’t drive pop radio for long. Soon they’ll be back in college and busy protesting the draft they’re hiding from.
Robinson: Before that, it was an instrumental noticeable mostly for its cowbell part.
Cook: [to Tiemann] Didn’t I tell you that our album needs cowbell?
Gordy: Anomaly. In a couple of weeks, the charts will be back to songs you can clap along to, and Motown will right on top. Speaking of which, what else do you gentleman have to offer?
A bouncy, clicking, poppy beat is followed by--
Now the confetti's landed and the air is getting thin;
I'm saddled with low expectations, but
Somebody had to win.
Somebody had to win--
That's how we play the game.
Somebody has to win--
My guitar is not to blame.
Gordy: No. No critiques of the music industry, the U.S. government, foreign policy, pesticides, air pollution, rush-hour traffic, or anything teenagers do while not dancing a regulation 18 inches apart on American Bandstand.
Cook: How about this?
You have me lost
You have me tempest-tost
In your sweet circle of lies.
Sweet, sweet, sweet circle of lies.
Sweet, sweet, sweet circle of lies.
Gordy: Now that’s what I call music.
Robinson: That’s the kind of song that gets the colored kids and the white kids up dancing and holding hands.
Gordy: We could finish putting together that album for the Velvelettes.
Robinson: It’d be perfect for them.
Tiemann: [to Cook] Wanna bet that album never gets made?
Gordy: Young man, when I say an album gets made, it gets made.
Cook: I like that in a record label exec.
Tiemann: [to DeWyze] Get a grip on that laundry and be ready to sing. I want to try something.
DeWyze: What something?
Tiemann: If we’re gonna hone our songwriting skills in the past, I know who I want to learn from. And I think I know how to get there. [Tiemann strums.]
DeWyze: [sings] I was born by the river in a little tent, oh and just like the river, I’ve been running ever since. It’s been a long, a long time coming--
Cook: [sings] Up, up, come on get up off your street. If you can only make it from your hands to your knees, I know you can make it to your feet.
Tiemann: [hissing] What the f**k are you doing?
Cook: Mash-up. Fans love 'em.
DeWyze: [singing] But I know a change is gonna come, yes it will--
There is a flash of light. The guys find themselves in the back seat of a flashy red convertible driven by a dude in a tuke.
Cook: I think we’re back among our own people.
Tiemann: I think we’re f**ked.
Mike Nesmith: [singing] Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees! And people say we monkey around--
TO BE CONTINUED
