You can call me selfish if you want to
May. 26th, 2011 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eilonwyhasemuSo just a couple minutes ago, Shamere got on my case for embarrassing David Cook and... oh, forget it. As soon as Brianna's mentoring session started, Cook sent me to remind Nigel Lythgoe about their lunch date.
When I got back to the studio, Cook was alone, working out a tune at the piano.
"Ms. Soo!" He turned his laser-intense attention on me. "I was just thinking how great it'd be to have a diet Coke with light ice and a slice of lime. If it wouldn't be too much trouble--"
"I'm sorry," I said before I had time to reconsider.
"What? Oh, is Pepsi the new sponsor? Pepsi's fine."
"It's Snapple now. But that's not what I mean. I'm sorry I was... was..."
"Unable to find Cheez-Its? No big. I'm not as obsessed with them as my fans think. Now if we're talking Snapple--"
"I'm sorry I was such a bother that you had to send me on a fake errand to get rid of me. Mr. Lythgoe had never heard about lunch with you. He was making a rack of lamb with Gordon Ramsay." I wasn't going to cry. I was not going to cry.
"Somehow, I'd never thought of Ramsay as having a great rack," Cook said.
"I'll act professional, I swear it."
"It's okay. I'm used to my fans getting a little overwrought. I remind them that I'm just an ordinary dude who makes noise for a living--"
"I'm not a fan." Oops. That came out wrong. "I mean, I like your music and everything--"
"And right now, I'm here to do a job."
"So am I. And you can't be distracted by someone fussing at you over Cheez-Its because you're supposed to be giving your full attention to--"
"Robyn Hardesty," said Robyn from the doorway. She was holding a guitar and looking as twitchy as I felt.
"David Cook," he said, stepping up to shake her hand.
"I'm the one who thought she was smart to pick Lee DeWyze when you're, like, the Idol I most admire. So think of me as the dumb one."
"Guys!" Steve the camera man shouted as he slid into the room. "I need to be filming this!"
"Maybe we should do that intro differently," said Cook.
Robyn smacked her forehead with her non-guitar-holding hand. "I'm acting like a stupid fangirl."
"No, no. But after Nigel snubbed Lee over the season 10 finale, do you trust anybody to not edit so he sounds like a loser?"
"Oh shit."
"So why'd you choose Lee's songs anyway?"
Robyn looked at me, then at Steve the camera man, then at the floor, then at Cook. Then at the floor again.
When she spoke, it was in the tiniest voice I'd ever heard from her. "I want to get a broader audience to appreciate his work."
"In other words, you surmised that you possessed the capability to devise a substantially superior arrangement?"
"What? I mean, yes. But I thought--"
"Too many polysyllabic words. It'll never make the edit."
"So we can speak freely if we only use two dollar words?"
Oh great. I wasn't going to be able to understand half of this convo.
"Something like that. What song did you choose?"
"'Me and My Jealousy.' I figured it..." She looked at the floor again. "I figured with that Journey-style chorus, it'd be a breeze to... it'd strip down well. Acoustic."
"Good call. I'd have asked Zac Maloy what he was thinking with that chorus--"
"I know, right? The Nixons, and then all this big-hair 1980s-style stuff--"
"But then I'd have to nail him on 'Come Back to Me,' and the last time I tried, he threw me in the swimming pool--"
"Oh lord, I've done it again, haven't I? I mean, I mostly like your second and third albums better anyway--"
"With my fucking tuke on! And then he wanted me to pick it off the bottom of the pool so it wouldn't clog the fucking drain--"
"Guys!" Steve yelled. "I can't use it if you're saying 'fuck' all the time."
"Fuck that," Robyn said.
"So are you going to just use Lee's stripped-down acoustic version?" Cook managed to ask on the third try at controlling his laughter.
Robyn's giggles stopped as if a switch had been thrown. "His only acoustic EP is the one from Wuli last year. It doesn't have songs from the Live It Up era."
"Youtube?"
"Fuck. I went to iTunes--"
"Guys!" Steve gestured frantically.
"How did you get through an entire season without getting bleeped?" Robyn asked Cook.
"How do you get through a three-week tour in an eight-passenger van with four other guys... four other people, none of whom has enough quarters for a laundromat?"
"Iron self-discipline and intestinal fortitude. Ah. Got it."
"So check this out." Cook did something to his iPhone, and a scowling voice poured out, supported by only bloopy-bloopy keyboard noises and then a guitar.
Robyn smacked her forehead again. "That second chorus... that works. I'd slow down the fourth line of the chorus, but his modulation from verse to chorus is better than mine."
"Well, he did have the advantage of having written the song. Now, are you planning to start out playing the guitar?"
"What I was thinking... it's kind of imitating you, but you never did it on the show..."
"Imitation's the sincerest form of flattery. Unless you're insincere, of course."
And I thought Robyn was hard to understand. Even when I knew all the words, Cook was a little obscure.
He and Robyn went off into musician-speak, which was really obscure but had to do with keys and strum patterns and making eye contact with the camera.
Afterward, in the corridor, Robyn leaned her forehead on the wall and moaned. "I have just made a complete fool of myself."
No way could she beat me in that department. It was probably my job to build her up, too. Professionalism and all that.
"Mr. Cook didn't seem to think so."
"I thought I was so smart and so clever and so prepared and I didn't even know there was an acoustic version of the song."
"You had less than a day to prepare. No one could have expected--"
"David Cook would never have made that mistake."
"You're not David Cook."
"That's all too painfully clear right at this moment."
"What's clear?" Charlie asked. He had his guitar, too.
"Robyn's not David Cook," I explained.
"Well, duh. David Cook's a dude. And he already won this show."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," I said before I remembered that the strictest standards of PR professionalism probably ruled out talking to a client that way. But geez--
"Come on, Máire," Charlie said. "Let's haul my priceless ass in there, and I'll show you how it's done."
We hauled. "Mr. Cook, this is Charlie Conner."
"Dude," Charlie said.
"Dude," Cook said.
"Dude."
"Dude."
"Is this how it's done?" I asked.
"Guys!" Steve yelled. "We need some dialog here."
"So you're doing Fantasia."
"Not literally."
"Guys! No double entendres."
"How about triple entendres?" Cook asked.
"No one on the editing staff can understand those."
"You want to do a Fantasia song," Cook said to Charlie, who had dropped onto the piano bench with his guitar in his arms. "What's with you folks this year? Why not just sing one of Scotty McCreery's hits?"
"'Cause my chitlins turn to water at what my fans would think if I promised to 'love them this big.'"
"They'd feel you were making a hard push on the tight, sticky path to success?"
"Well, I didn't pick 'How Deep Is Your Love' for disco week, now did I?"
"Guys!"
Cook did a "sorry" gesture at Steve. "Every year, there's somebody who gets that reaction."
"I don't get it. I'm not any hotter than I was back in Texas, and I wasn't beating girls off with a stick. Or off my stick."
"Good music pushes a lot of buttons."
"Right. Like it's the music."
"I caught a couple episodes. You've got real musicality going."
"Right. I mean, thanks." Charlie looked down at his guitar and fiddled with a tuning key. "Last week, six separate Idol recappers did the thing about how my fans only vote for me because I have a dick and a guitar. I didn't even play guitar that week."
Maybe it was unprofessional, but I had to say it. "You're the one who was asking them to kiss your ass at the heart-signing yesterday. All that lipstick all over your jeans--"
"I didn't think they'd do it!"
Cook looked at Charlie with an expression even more obscure than his vocabulary. "You really asked--"
"I thought they'd be embarrassed. There'd be some kind of limit, and they'd say 'oh, no, we can't do this to ol' Charlie, he doesn't really mean it.' And hell, was I wrong."
"Does your insurance cover if one of the fans gets over-excited and bites you?"
"How would I know? Then they have all these ideas on who I'm dating and who I should date--"
"You don't have to read the message boards."
"They tweet me nude photos."
"Dude. Never click a shortened link."
"Of their daughters. They're pimping out their daughters to get close to me."
Cook made like he was rolling up his sleeves, but they were already rolled. "You have to be careful with that. Some of them think the act is an event to be recapped."
"Already happened."
Charlie looked over at me. I blushed. Yeah, I'd read it. Then Reg had kept us up-to-date on the blogosphere reaction, which basically split on whether Charlie was a guitar-playing stallion with a right to romp in the meadow with as many mares as possible or whether he was a monster of depravity who should be thrown off the show as a horrible role model for our children. The recapped events hadn't struck me as that exciting either way.
"So you see, no one believes it matters what I sing. Do you know how shitty that feels?"
Cook looked over at Steve, who didn't interrupt. "There's a lot of emotion surrounding an Idol journey--"
"So I'm going to find out the truth."
"That's a Kris Allen song."
"I'm going to sing the most absurd song choice possible. Either I get voted off or I know that cynicism's the way to go."
Cook shook his head. "You're putting the best opportunity of your life at risk for a fit of pique."
"For a principle! I write songs. I play songs. I'm not a walking dick. I'm not the answer to a maiden's prayer. I'm here for the music. And if it's not about the music, I'm going home."
"Think out ten years from now--"
"Dude."
"If you're still playing dive bars, are you going to regret this?"
"I just want to call my ass my own. I wasn't even going to tell you... look." Charlie settled his guitar on his lap and strummed. "Why don't we just do the happy talk for the camera and let ol' Charlie settle his own fate?"
TO BE CONTINUED
When I got back to the studio, Cook was alone, working out a tune at the piano.
"Ms. Soo!" He turned his laser-intense attention on me. "I was just thinking how great it'd be to have a diet Coke with light ice and a slice of lime. If it wouldn't be too much trouble--"
"I'm sorry," I said before I had time to reconsider.
"What? Oh, is Pepsi the new sponsor? Pepsi's fine."
"It's Snapple now. But that's not what I mean. I'm sorry I was... was..."
"Unable to find Cheez-Its? No big. I'm not as obsessed with them as my fans think. Now if we're talking Snapple--"
"I'm sorry I was such a bother that you had to send me on a fake errand to get rid of me. Mr. Lythgoe had never heard about lunch with you. He was making a rack of lamb with Gordon Ramsay." I wasn't going to cry. I was not going to cry.
"Somehow, I'd never thought of Ramsay as having a great rack," Cook said.
"I'll act professional, I swear it."
"It's okay. I'm used to my fans getting a little overwrought. I remind them that I'm just an ordinary dude who makes noise for a living--"
"I'm not a fan." Oops. That came out wrong. "I mean, I like your music and everything--"
"And right now, I'm here to do a job."
"So am I. And you can't be distracted by someone fussing at you over Cheez-Its because you're supposed to be giving your full attention to--"
"Robyn Hardesty," said Robyn from the doorway. She was holding a guitar and looking as twitchy as I felt.
"David Cook," he said, stepping up to shake her hand.
"I'm the one who thought she was smart to pick Lee DeWyze when you're, like, the Idol I most admire. So think of me as the dumb one."
"Guys!" Steve the camera man shouted as he slid into the room. "I need to be filming this!"
"Maybe we should do that intro differently," said Cook.
Robyn smacked her forehead with her non-guitar-holding hand. "I'm acting like a stupid fangirl."
"No, no. But after Nigel snubbed Lee over the season 10 finale, do you trust anybody to not edit so he sounds like a loser?"
"Oh shit."
"So why'd you choose Lee's songs anyway?"
Robyn looked at me, then at Steve the camera man, then at the floor, then at Cook. Then at the floor again.
When she spoke, it was in the tiniest voice I'd ever heard from her. "I want to get a broader audience to appreciate his work."
"In other words, you surmised that you possessed the capability to devise a substantially superior arrangement?"
"What? I mean, yes. But I thought--"
"Too many polysyllabic words. It'll never make the edit."
"So we can speak freely if we only use two dollar words?"
Oh great. I wasn't going to be able to understand half of this convo.
"Something like that. What song did you choose?"
"'Me and My Jealousy.' I figured it..." She looked at the floor again. "I figured with that Journey-style chorus, it'd be a breeze to... it'd strip down well. Acoustic."
"Good call. I'd have asked Zac Maloy what he was thinking with that chorus--"
"I know, right? The Nixons, and then all this big-hair 1980s-style stuff--"
"But then I'd have to nail him on 'Come Back to Me,' and the last time I tried, he threw me in the swimming pool--"
"Oh lord, I've done it again, haven't I? I mean, I mostly like your second and third albums better anyway--"
"With my fucking tuke on! And then he wanted me to pick it off the bottom of the pool so it wouldn't clog the fucking drain--"
"Guys!" Steve yelled. "I can't use it if you're saying 'fuck' all the time."
"Fuck that," Robyn said.
"So are you going to just use Lee's stripped-down acoustic version?" Cook managed to ask on the third try at controlling his laughter.
Robyn's giggles stopped as if a switch had been thrown. "His only acoustic EP is the one from Wuli last year. It doesn't have songs from the Live It Up era."
"Youtube?"
"Fuck. I went to iTunes--"
"Guys!" Steve gestured frantically.
"How did you get through an entire season without getting bleeped?" Robyn asked Cook.
"How do you get through a three-week tour in an eight-passenger van with four other guys... four other people, none of whom has enough quarters for a laundromat?"
"Iron self-discipline and intestinal fortitude. Ah. Got it."
"So check this out." Cook did something to his iPhone, and a scowling voice poured out, supported by only bloopy-bloopy keyboard noises and then a guitar.
Robyn smacked her forehead again. "That second chorus... that works. I'd slow down the fourth line of the chorus, but his modulation from verse to chorus is better than mine."
"Well, he did have the advantage of having written the song. Now, are you planning to start out playing the guitar?"
"What I was thinking... it's kind of imitating you, but you never did it on the show..."
"Imitation's the sincerest form of flattery. Unless you're insincere, of course."
And I thought Robyn was hard to understand. Even when I knew all the words, Cook was a little obscure.
He and Robyn went off into musician-speak, which was really obscure but had to do with keys and strum patterns and making eye contact with the camera.
Afterward, in the corridor, Robyn leaned her forehead on the wall and moaned. "I have just made a complete fool of myself."
No way could she beat me in that department. It was probably my job to build her up, too. Professionalism and all that.
"Mr. Cook didn't seem to think so."
"I thought I was so smart and so clever and so prepared and I didn't even know there was an acoustic version of the song."
"You had less than a day to prepare. No one could have expected--"
"David Cook would never have made that mistake."
"You're not David Cook."
"That's all too painfully clear right at this moment."
"What's clear?" Charlie asked. He had his guitar, too.
"Robyn's not David Cook," I explained.
"Well, duh. David Cook's a dude. And he already won this show."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," I said before I remembered that the strictest standards of PR professionalism probably ruled out talking to a client that way. But geez--
"Come on, Máire," Charlie said. "Let's haul my priceless ass in there, and I'll show you how it's done."
We hauled. "Mr. Cook, this is Charlie Conner."
"Dude," Charlie said.
"Dude," Cook said.
"Dude."
"Dude."
"Is this how it's done?" I asked.
"Guys!" Steve yelled. "We need some dialog here."
"So you're doing Fantasia."
"Not literally."
"Guys! No double entendres."
"How about triple entendres?" Cook asked.
"No one on the editing staff can understand those."
"You want to do a Fantasia song," Cook said to Charlie, who had dropped onto the piano bench with his guitar in his arms. "What's with you folks this year? Why not just sing one of Scotty McCreery's hits?"
"'Cause my chitlins turn to water at what my fans would think if I promised to 'love them this big.'"
"They'd feel you were making a hard push on the tight, sticky path to success?"
"Well, I didn't pick 'How Deep Is Your Love' for disco week, now did I?"
"Guys!"
Cook did a "sorry" gesture at Steve. "Every year, there's somebody who gets that reaction."
"I don't get it. I'm not any hotter than I was back in Texas, and I wasn't beating girls off with a stick. Or off my stick."
"Good music pushes a lot of buttons."
"Right. Like it's the music."
"I caught a couple episodes. You've got real musicality going."
"Right. I mean, thanks." Charlie looked down at his guitar and fiddled with a tuning key. "Last week, six separate Idol recappers did the thing about how my fans only vote for me because I have a dick and a guitar. I didn't even play guitar that week."
Maybe it was unprofessional, but I had to say it. "You're the one who was asking them to kiss your ass at the heart-signing yesterday. All that lipstick all over your jeans--"
"I didn't think they'd do it!"
Cook looked at Charlie with an expression even more obscure than his vocabulary. "You really asked--"
"I thought they'd be embarrassed. There'd be some kind of limit, and they'd say 'oh, no, we can't do this to ol' Charlie, he doesn't really mean it.' And hell, was I wrong."
"Does your insurance cover if one of the fans gets over-excited and bites you?"
"How would I know? Then they have all these ideas on who I'm dating and who I should date--"
"You don't have to read the message boards."
"They tweet me nude photos."
"Dude. Never click a shortened link."
"Of their daughters. They're pimping out their daughters to get close to me."
Cook made like he was rolling up his sleeves, but they were already rolled. "You have to be careful with that. Some of them think the act is an event to be recapped."
"Already happened."
Charlie looked over at me. I blushed. Yeah, I'd read it. Then Reg had kept us up-to-date on the blogosphere reaction, which basically split on whether Charlie was a guitar-playing stallion with a right to romp in the meadow with as many mares as possible or whether he was a monster of depravity who should be thrown off the show as a horrible role model for our children. The recapped events hadn't struck me as that exciting either way.
"So you see, no one believes it matters what I sing. Do you know how shitty that feels?"
Cook looked over at Steve, who didn't interrupt. "There's a lot of emotion surrounding an Idol journey--"
"So I'm going to find out the truth."
"That's a Kris Allen song."
"I'm going to sing the most absurd song choice possible. Either I get voted off or I know that cynicism's the way to go."
Cook shook his head. "You're putting the best opportunity of your life at risk for a fit of pique."
"For a principle! I write songs. I play songs. I'm not a walking dick. I'm not the answer to a maiden's prayer. I'm here for the music. And if it's not about the music, I'm going home."
"Think out ten years from now--"
"Dude."
"If you're still playing dive bars, are you going to regret this?"
"I just want to call my ass my own. I wasn't even going to tell you... look." Charlie settled his guitar on his lap and strummed. "Why don't we just do the happy talk for the camera and let ol' Charlie settle his own fate?"
TO BE CONTINUED
