Week 49: Accountant to the Stars

I started to write part two of my Summer Vacation post at work, but then forgot to email it to myself at home. At home, while pondering whether I should try to rewrite what I wrote at work, or wait until tomorrow and post very late, I remembered that all week long, behind the scenes, we NAP people, have been tossing around the idea of a NAP label of some sort. I really don’t know if we can ever agree on anything long enough to pull anything resembling a label, but having had attempted in the past to do something that resembled a label, I figured it was time to tell that story.

It was the end of the century, and I was living in NYC, after having left Houston in a cloud of drugs and the cheapening of much of what I had considered special about music. But I had sacrificed a lot for the bitch, so I wasn’t about to give up. A new town meant new opportunities to make music, but I was soon to discover that making music in New York was a little different from what I had grown accustomed in Texas.

After settling the basics of home and job, I spent about a year working on a band, something that in New York (at least for a non-local) felt about as difficult as it might have been trying to start a symphony orchestra in kindergarten. I met many musicians, but trying to get more than two people in a room at the same time in a city ripe with every possible distraction was nearly impossible. I’ll call you and maybe you can call your buddy who plays bass and I’ll see if the drummer I know can get off work and maybe his friend can find a room and we can all take the subway there, carrying our guitars on our back so we can play for about five minutes before someone has to go. So after a year, we had a band, we had a few songs, and we had practiced maybe ten times together. And I was exhausted, and thinking maybe we are ready to play some crappy gig in some basement, and just then some big Latin band with a weekly payroll offers our piano player a regular gig.

Granted, Orlando Fiol, our piano player, was slumming with us. A Columbia music school graduate and son of famed Latin band leader Henry Fiol, he could’ve been playing with just about anyone. He remains one of the best piano players and arrangers I’ve ever played with. We were lucky he hung around as long as he did, and I can’t blame him for trading us for a steady paying regular gig in front of people. But when he left, the drummer left with him, and although we tried to keep the band together as a three piece, it didn’t work out.

So while recovering from this crash with reality and trying to figure out how to get back on the music horse again, I read the The Manual or How to Have a Number One the Easy Way by the Timelords. I’ve mentioned this book before, and again I highly recommend it. First and foremost it's hilarious, but it also demystifies any relationship that you might still think there is between music and making a hit record. The post-Nirvana musical landscape of the late 1990s was filled with crappy bands that “meant” every note they wrote, bands who would OD on drugs for their music, and who didn’t “care” about all the thousands of records they were selling. In that musical environment and with me pissed off about the year I had spent on a band that broke up before we even had a gig, The Manual also made it apparent that the best thing for me to do was to start a label, and put out the cheesiest, least thought about, biggest sellout piece of crap I could conceive. With the guidance of The Manual, I couldn’t go wrong.

After studying the book closely, I understood the plan. From what I remember, it boiled down to this. 1. Quit any band, stop playing any instrument and forget about music altogether. 2. Get a name for the label. 3. Listen to the top five charting dance songs of the day and steal a bass line, then write an inane chorus to go with it. 4. Convince a lawyer and an attorney to be on board for the project without having to pay them. 5. Find a studio to record the song without having to pay them (basically everyone gets paid when the record makes money). 6. Get a few test pressings of the song, and find some DJs to play it at the clubs. 7. Sit back and watch the record go to #1. At the end, even if the record is a hit, you will still be broke, and you’re still not going to be getting laid anymore than before, but your 'fuck you' to the system will be forever recorded on the hit record lists for future generations to wonder how such a crappy song every got to be at the top of the charts. Something like that. And at the end, if you follow these steps the Timelords will give you back the money you paid for the book if you don’t get a number one hit, in London.

I had a friend at the time who worked in artist development for a major label. I told him about the idea and he was into it. I was glad to have him join me, since I didn’t know the first thing about clubs or DJs or promoting a record, but he did. So we decided to go at it together. We would name the label together, we would steal the bass line and write the cheesy chorus together, then I would find the accountant, the lawyer and record the song, hand him the finished recording and he would make sure the record got pressed and into the hands of the right people.

And off we were to steal some of Ricky Martin’s money. Cause Ricky was taking all the money back then with La Vida Loca. And since I was Puerto Rican, we felt completely justified stealing a Latin bass line, and getting a Latin girl to sing the song in English. And after hours of thinking and drinking we came up with the chorus of the song: “It’s the Moment to Move.” And off I went to do my part.

The studio was easy and the best part of the whole process, until I met the Accountant to the Stars. Watching the engineer put together a song from a stolen bass line and a chorus was just amazing. The song really sounded as cool as anything the Spice Girls might have put out, and to give it some street cred we added some scratching by a DJ.

I had recently met the daughter of Miss Universe 1971, the first of several Puerto Rican Miss Universes. The daughter was a young student at Columbia, and even though she had no musical training, had never sang outside of the shower, and had no interest in any kind of singing career, I convinced her to sing for the song, and do a photo session so we could use her cute Miss Universe Junior looks to convince the DJs to play the record.

The lawyer was the most boring part, and the one that actually got some money from me. Somehow he convinced me that we needed to incorporate so we did, all at once forfeiting my book refund from the Timelords for not following their simple instruction of not paying anyone any money up front.

Finally we needed an accountant to count the money when it started rolling in. And this is how I met the Accountant to the Stars. The way I found him had more twists and turns that trying to score drugs with no money in Alphabet City. This guy calls me out of the blue 'cause he heard I was working on a record and he thought he might be able to offer me some of his connections because he knew a lot of people in the biz. He asked me were I was with the record and I told him all I needed at that point was to get in touch with an accountant. Perfect he says, I know the Accountant to the Stars, meet me at the deli on the corner of Columbus and 67th and I’ll give you the info. I had been in NY long enough to actually do crazy shit like this. So I meet the guy at the deli during my lunch break.

He looks exactly like one of the preppy guys who are singing at the Country Club in the movie Trading Places. He has a pink alligator shirt, a cricket sweater thrown over his shoulders and tied into a knot in front, and top siders with no socks. He tells me he can get me a 10-minute meeting with the Accountant to the Stars, who is not only Accountant to the Stars but also runs a record label. He would get me the 10 minutes for $40. I would give him $20 up front and the other $20 after the meeting had been scheduled between us. And you’re thinking, what a con man right? But no, that is not what I was thinking, I was thinking, I got to see what the hell this is all about, I’ve got to meet the Accountant to the Stars. So I give preppy boy a twenty, and he goes off and makes a phone call. He comes back and gives me a business card with the name and number of the Accountant to the Stars, then he gives me his cell phone and tells me to call and set up the appointment. I call, say who I am and make the 10-minute appointment. I come back and give preppy guy the other twenty, and before I know it preppy guy is gone and I have to pay the lunch bill.

Well, after all that I was going to go to that 10-minute meeting. So I dress up as best as I could with my one dusty suit and head for the address listed on the card, which is right on Broadway and fifty-something. A fancy address. I go up the elevator of the skyscraper to the forty-something floor and immediately upon getting out of the elevator I realize I am going to meet the Accountant to the Stars.

The elevator doors open into a large reception area, and the walls are covered from top to bottom with gold records. I cross the room to the large reception desk that not only ran from one side of the room to the other, but it was also slightly elevated so that I had to look up to talk to the receptionist. I’m here for the 1:20 appointment, and she directs me to some couches arranged around a coffee table with a giant digital clock built into it. The giant numbers on the clock read 1:18. I’m early. So I sit there and watch the clock. As soon as the clock changes to 1:20, the receptionist comes to me and asks me to follow her.

We walk through a long hallway. The gold records are now interspersed with things like an old Yankees baseball shirt, some boxing gloves in a glass box, and other sports and music memorabilia that I didn’t recognize.

Finally we enter through some very heavy wooden doors. Right to the left of the door the receptionist guides me to sit in the chair in front of a woman sitting behind a desk, the Accountant to the Stars’ secretary. And she says to me, please have a sit he will be right with you. But the thing is, he was right there next to her. His desk was right next to hers almost touching side by side. And he was behind his desk, not sitting at his desk, but standing up behind the desk, looking out the window away from me, in a Gordon Gekko kind of way. I think he might have even had his hand under his chin, contemplative. There is no way he could not have known I was there, I was about three feet from him, but his secretary behaved like he was in a different continent so I played along.

It was a little weird to say the least, but it gave me time to check out the office and chit chat the secretary a bit. The office was gigantic, there was a pillar in the center that wasn’t a pillar at all, but a floor-to-ceiling circular fish tank. Far away behind it, there was a table in semi-darkness where some people looked liked they might have been counting money or dissecting a cat. The office extended in all directions and it was hard to tell where the ends of it where. At one point a little Chihuahua dog ran through the room with a woman chasing after it. The secretary explained that it was Mr. Accountant to the Stars’ dog and its caretaker, on call 24/7 to take care of the tiny dog’s needs. I wondered if it could poop anywhere it wanted.

Then I noticed the walls of the office, which were covered from top to bottom with photographs of Mr. Accountant to the Stars with every possible star you can imagine, there he was with Madonna, and over there with Mike Tyson, and over there is a baseball glove signed to him by Derek Jeter, and a picture of him with Prince, and over there he is wearing a Knicks shirt standing next to Patrick Ewing. He knows a lot of people says the secretary; he’ll see you know. And she walks out from behind her desk and walks me the two sideways steps to the chair in front of his desk where I sit down. But he is still doing the Gordon Gekko bit and looking out the window. I wait for an interminable minute before he turns around and with an expression of friendly surprise, he takes the one step to his chair shakes my hand and sits down, and like in those Hollywood parodies he says, ok, you got 10 minutes, give me the pitch.

I’m just looking for an accountant I say, but then I realize how stupid that sounds at this point, so I tell him what I’m doing, you know, putting out a record, the Latin… And at the word Latin, he rudely interrupts me. I still have about 7 minutes by my count. Wait, he says, there’s someone that needs to hear this. He picks up the phone and calls this guy who instantly appears as if from behind a fake wall. And he really looks like a car salesman, nice suit, fake hair, leading with a smile full of teeth and a handshake.

Mr. Accountant to the Stars introduces us and tells him I’m working on a Latin project. Mr. Car Salesman gets visibly excited and begins to tell me about this project they are putting together. As he talks Mr. Accountant to the Stars ushers us to another part of the office. Out of the dark this part of the office shapes up with a pool table, a pinball machine and a soda machine. Mr. Accountant to the Stars points to a comfy couth and tells us to sit here and talk, and then he turns to his secretary and says to her, give him a book before he leaves. And he disappears back towards his desk where I pressume he continued looking out the window until the next 10-minute appointment arrived.

Well, Mr. Car Salesman was apparently hot on Ricky Martin’s tail and desperately looking for the next big Latin singer. When he heard I was working with a Latin daughter of a Miss Universe I could swear he came in his pants. He immediately wanted me to bring her over, and that they would “take her off my hands.” Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you’re well compensated, he said. And suddenly I realize the suit I’m wearing is my pimp suit. He wanted her to come and sing for them, they have a piano player on call, and if they liked her they would sign her and I could go back to wherever I came from. Can you be here with her in an hour? I really was just looking for an accountant, I said, trying to imagine the poor girl singing for the first time in her life in front of this guy. I’ll call you, I said, and just like that my 10 minutes were up.

As the secretary walked me out, she stopped by a closet. It was filled with copies of Mr. Accountant to the Stars’ poetry book, self-published, hard cover, four color printing with photos on every glossy page. The book was filled with a lot of the same photos that were hanging in his office, with Madonna, with Mike Tyson, with Toni Braxton. And also a lot of letters he’d received from said stars. Mr. Accountant to the Stars likes to give one to everyone, and the secretary gives me a copy.

On the elevator I read “Time for a Change”, a sad ode to the day one of Madonna's staffers told him that Madonna would be switching accountants.

“Then suddenly without warning
Shock, dismay, and death to me
Your decisions came across
Not from your spoken
Word,
But from another.
Why?”

Without an accountant, I knew we were doomed. So I wasn’t surprised when I took the finished recording to my label partner, and he didn’t do anything with it and pretty much stopped returning my calls. Apparently something major was going on with his major label job. I don’t blame him. He had the sense to see that if the record had been a hit, we too would’ve ended up self-publishing our own poetry in glossy color pages and giving them away to anyone who walked into our office.