Radio Daze

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It's 1994 -- post-Liz Phair, mid-Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin takes a hard look at herself and gives "making it" one last shot.

It works. Trynin sparks one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vie for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamor for her attention. The moment she signs with Warner Bros., they re-release Jen's record Cockamamie with the full rollout: TV, radio, videos, features in Rolling Stone, Interview, People. Billboard puts her on the cover. Everyone knows she's about to become the Next Big Thing . . .

Below is an excerpt from Jen's book, Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be (Feb. 2006, Harcourt). It's a few weeks into her first tour and "Better Than Nothing," Jen's really-looks-like-it-might-be-a-hit single, is going gangbusters at radio (even though everyone thinks the song is called "I'm Feeling Good"). It's 6 a.m. and Jen's grumbling around her hotel room, wishing she didn't have to do yet another too-early-for-any-reasonable-person radio show.

My only shot at coffee is from one of those mini Mr. Coffees in the bathroom, complete with packets of nondairy creamer, which I just can't take. I light a cigarette and sit naked on the toilet while I smoke it, staring at a little pink message slip -- another Call-me from Warner Bros. Head Honcho -- which has somehow ended up on the side of the sink. Am I going to throw up? I realize, post-shower, that I've washed my hair with hand cream. Yes, definitely still drunk.

Noncaffeinated, I make my way down to the lobby. I'm resigned to the fact that my hair is going to be plastered against my skull all day, and I'm wearing the same smelly, smoky clothes from the night before because all my clothes are smelly and smoky and these were handily strewn on the floor. I scan the lobby for Peg, this city's Warner local.

Not seeing anyone who looks like a Peg, I slump down in one of the overly stuffed lobby chairs and close my eyes. Suddenly there's a frighteningly bright-eyed, blond-haired, chipper woman in front of me.

"Jennifer?"

"Peg?"

"Hi! I wasn't really sure it was you, I mean, I've seen your pictures but your hair is longer or you look different sitting down but I'm new, I mean, I just started three weeks ago and I've had the flu and I wasn't sure but now I am -- so, hey! How are you? Jeez, it's early! Isn't it early? I don't know how anyone could sing this early! When'd you get in? Have you slept? How're you feeling? Are you ready to go? Do you need coffee? Is this your guitar?" She's staring at me, grinning broadly, panting lightly, probably because this is the first time she's drawn breath.

A wave of hangover nausea sweeps through me and I stupidly say "yes," which seems to answer for Peg every question but the one I'm focusing on, which is: Can I jump over hill and dale to bring you a cup of coffee with actual cream, the kind that comes from an actual cow?

"Great," she says, grabbing my guitar and walking out of the lobby, her hair bobbing about like Happiness itself. I assemble my soggy body parts and hoist myself up, following her out into the morning like she's a carrot dangling at the end of a long stick, thinking coffee coffee coffee.

Peg drives like a maniac, albeit a slow-witted maniac -- not terribly fast but very, very incautiously. No blinkers. Active lane wandering. She's telling me about Andrew, the guy she left back in Tampa because he was a "friggin' control freak."

"I mean it," she's saying, abandoning the steering wheel to gesticulate with both hands. "Complete. Everything. What sweater I should wear." I get the blow-by-blow of the last twenty minutes of their relationship. "Then he throws the newspaper across the room . . . So I go, Laundry? I'll give you laundry! . . . But you know how some guys are sexy when they're mad? . . . I mean, it was his apartment . . ." Peg runs a second red light and we narrowly miss being sideswiped by a Ryder truck.

"Friggin' moron!" says Peg.

"You just ran a red light," I say.

"What?"

"You just ran a red light."

"What light?"

The lobby of KRCK (pronounced "kay-rock") is freezing. There are no windows anywhere and all the surfaces are either black or white, which on top of the milky, post-alcohol film encasing my body is making me feel like I'm in a space pod. The reception area has all the telltale signs of a recent format shift from Rock to the more hip-and-happening Alternative Rock. There are tons of framed and carefully hung posters of old-school bands (Aerosmith, Def Leopard, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts), signed and inscribed -- KRCK rules! or KRCK fucking rules! or KRCK can kiss my ass! or just Kiss my ass! -- but there are also unframed posters of much more trendy bands tacked and taped all over the place, sometimes right on top of the framed posters of the old-school bands. The whole scene reminds me of that book Alive!, where the survivors of a plane crash eat their dead friends.

As usual, I end up looking everywhere for any sign of me and my band, hoping and anxiously praying that we're seen as accessories to the station's determined pursuit of Cool. But as usual of late, I don't see a thing. No huge poster of me splayed and staring at a big red chair, no smaller cardboard replicas of my huge poster, no head shots or band photos, not even a fucking sticker.

Nothing.

In fact, I haven't seen hide nor hair of anything remotely to do with me up anywhere since that lowly Cockamamie sticker on the back of a folding chair leaning against a wall in the hallway of that station where the AC was down.

I do, however, spy with my little eye a poster of a band from back home, a band I'd opened for and later let open for me, a band composed of people I loosely labeled Friends -- a gigantic poster of their grinning unsigned-to-a-major mugs hanging from two black thumbtacks above the water cooler. I'm breathing deep, trying not to fall down my personal hole of hell. I think about my really old grandmother and how great it is that she's still alive and smoking and drinking and kicking all the other old ladies' asses at gin rummy. I think about how lucky I am that I'm young and healthy and living in one of the most advanced countries in the world -- that I'm not one of those half-limbed, barely clad victims of land mines hobbling around on one crutch through the muddy streets of Bosnia or Lebanon or some other place I imagine is chock full of land mines --

Fuck it. How about I sweep all the Rolling Stones and Spins and Details off the shiny black coffee table, climb on top of it, stamp my feet, and raise my fists to the cruel, cruel gods -- WHERE THE HELL IS ALL THE PROMO SHIT I KNOW IS UNDER SOME PILE OF CRAP IN SOME MORON'S OFFICE AND WHO THE FUCK PUT UP MY FRIENDS' BAND'S POSTER INSTEAD OF MINE? Then I'll whip out my semi-automatic gun-of-some-kind and point it at the girl behind the reception desk (Was it you?), at the little backwards-cap-wearing, goatee-donning intern dude (Or you?). Then I'll let a few bullets rip into the cooler and water will spray everywhere -- all over the wall-to-wall, all over the framed posters of old-school bands, all over Desk Girl and Intern Dude, and last but not least, all over my friends' band's gigantic poster, bleeding their red scribbley script down the paper, down the wall, and puddling like a murder on the stain-retardant off-white carpeting.

I slump myself down into the black leather love seat behind the coffee table and take another deep breath. I want to be happy that my friends' band's poster is up, but I'm not. What I am is (in no particular order): jealous, angry, insecure, petty. Note to self: Grow the fuck up.

Desk Girl, who looks like she's twelve, is busily trying to jam a furry pink ornament onto the end of her pen. Her hair is purple and her eyeglasses are purple and her lips are purple. And her fingernails. Peg explains that we're from Warner Bros. and when she says my actual name, Desk Girl suddenly perks up and screams at me in a rather accusatory and scary fashion: "'I'm Feelin' Good!' You're the 'Feelin' Good' chick! I LOVE that song!" She darts around from behind her desk, clutching a Sharpie in her fist as if she's going to stab me, asking me to sign something cool on her coffee cup (of which I'm very jealous because it has coffee in it). I write "K-RoCK lives!" and immediately feel like an idiot, but Desk Girl screams, "That's perfect!"

Peg's beaming at me like I'm her baby, like she's been with me every step of the way for the past seven years and this moment is her triumph too. She leans over and pinches me lightly on the shoulder. "See? You're gonna be a friggin' star."

A white guy with dreads suddenly materializes via skateboard, stopping right in front of Peg. "Ciao," he says, one foot still on the board.

"Oh," says Peg, startled, like someone just whacked her on the ass. "You must be Dirk!"

"Derek," he says, glaring at me like I'm the idiot who just screwed up his name, like if only I were more talented, better-looking, fuller-figured, I'd have better people working for me, people who didn't screw up his name.

"Derek. Of course," says Peg, smiling. "Do you think you could take Jennifer back to the studio?"

Derek flips his skateboard up under his arm with one deft flick of his foot. "I guess," he says, still glaring at me. That's right. I don't like you or the little pop song you rode in on.

I've been getting this kind of vibe a lot from the young interns and assistants at the big stations. They're generally white, upper-middle-class college-educated kids whose daddies subsidize the free time they have to sit around discussing the nuances of the guitar tones on the latest Guided by Voices disc. In the current Po-Mo (Post Modern) climate, there are legions of these high-heeled boys (and girls) who are into bands called Fuk Er Raw or Hill O Beans -- bands who can't play or write or sing worth shit but by indier-than-thou consensus are more real than "sellout" bands who dare to practice or promote themselves or simply try a teensy bit. Never mind that the high-heeled boys and girls who work at stations like KRCK get paid with the money advertisers pony up for airtime, the biggest bucks going to the stations that attract the largest demographic, which are generally those that play the purest pablum.

I'm suddenly feeling rather chummy toward Peg and thinking about keeping her between me and Derek as much as possible, but she's already walking down the hall with her arm around the shoulder of some guy who I think is the program director, having neglected to introduce me. Very auspicious start.

A roly-poly woman walks in holding a clipboard. "Hey babe," she says. "Can I get you anything?" She's late thirties, early forties, and is stuffed into black jeans and a very tight David Bowie Glass Spider concert T. It's clear that, having consolidated her musical identity in the previous decade, she couldn't give a flying fuck about me or my music. She's simply doing her job. After Derek and his attitude, she's a huge relief. "Are you into Bowie?" she asks, because I'm staring at what she thinks is her shirt. But in fact, I'm looking at the nipples standing mightily erect beneath it, thanks to the full-blast AC. "I'm like a die-hard," she says. "You know he's being positioned for a major comeback and I don't want to jinx it or anything but I got the advance and it's amaaaazing. It's going to be massive. Huge. Isn't this the coolest shirt you've ever seen?"

"Yeah," I say. "Is there any coffee around here?"

"Anything you want, babe. All the trimmings. Cream? Sugar?"

"Is it real cream?" I say, and now I feel like a total dweeb, as if I just asked her whether the bean sprouts were organic.

"Oh, sure," she says, "whatever. It's that Carnation stuff? Flavored I think -- vanilla?"

I know it's stupid -- so what if I can't get a good cup of coffee? But suddenly all I can think of is what time it is back home and my bed and my boyfriend and my cat asleep under the big red blanket.

The Bowie woman leaves me standing in the hallway with Derek and I'm wondering if I look as shitty in the fluorescent light at 8 A.M. as he does. He's wearing army fatigue shorts that come down to his shins, black combat boots, and a dirty muscle shirt. His skin is white white white. He has a complicated tattoo that begins on his neck, just below his right ear, and travels down to his shoulder, exploding into something I can't quite make out and continuing down his arm, all the way to the tip of his middle finger.

"Nice tattoo," I say.

Derek cranks his head to look at his shoulder, as if the tattoo erupted on his skin spontaneously, like a spectacular rash. "It's getting there," he says.

"Did it hurt?" I say, which is the only question I ever ask about tattoos, because I think the pain is intrinsic to the machismo of the whole ridiculous thing.

"Yeah," he says, and he grins.

Then he wants to know if he can carry my guitar but he's asking like he has to, not like he wants to. I conjure the nicest smile I can manage sans cafe and say, "Oh, no thanks, you don't have to carry my guitar. I mean, that's not your job." Maybe I'll get him to think I'm okay, a good kid, a team player, not some major-label pop-song princess he's supposed to wait on hand and foot.

Derek actually looks me in the eye. "That song you did, all the oohs and everything, 'I'm Feelin' Good' or something. That's your song, right?"

"Yeah," I say. "'Better Than Nothing.'"

"I guess," says Derek. "It's pretty rad, you know, for a pop song and everything."

"Thanks," I say, trying to smile.

He gives me something back that I tell myself is a very small smile. Then he reaches out and takes my guitar. "I got it," he says.

I never know what's going to happen at these radio gigs. A couple of days ago, at a college station with a signal strong enough to reach maybe the campus cafeteria, the DJ greeted me by telling me how he'd been up all night writing a paper on the similarities between Henry IV, Part I and Reservoir Dogs -- a topic he proceeded to veer from not once throughout the entire interview.

Another time I was interviewed by a little guy dressed like a clown -- the big floppy shoes, the red nose, the whole shebang. He referred to himself as Mack Bozo and squirted water at me from a trick pen.

Last week, at a commercial station not unlike KRCK, the DJ, Svenlotta, was convinced there was a fruit fly in the studio. She kept waving her hands and swatting at imaginary insects while she fired basically the same question at me, over and over: "How long have you been on the road? When do you get off the road? Do you like being on the road? What's your favorite thing about being on the road?" I answered, "Uh, well, you see, um --" while she stared right through me, rubbing her nose over and over. Then she said, "Well, okay then. Let's have a song!"

So I played my song, rather deftly for me in that I remembered all the words and hit basically the right notes over the right chords at more or less the right time. There were even a few moments when I was actually having fun. Then it was over.

Silence.

I looked up.

No Svenlotta.

I looked through the studio-door window.

Nobody.

So I clapped. I gave myself a few woohoos.

Still no sign of Svenlotta, or anyone else for that matter. So I decided to fill the dead air by asking myself a few questions.

"Tell me, Jen," I said. "May I call you Jen?"

"Only if I can call you Jen," I said.

"Sure you can!"

"Great!"

"Knock yourself out!"

"I will!"

"Okay then. So, Jen. What's the name of that little jewel you just played for us?"

"It's called 'Better Than Nothing,' Jen."

"Hey, terrific! Catchy number. You know, I thought that song was called 'I'm Feelin' Good.'"

"Yeah, well I'll tell you, Jen, that's been a point of some confusion for people. Sometimes I think I should've called that song 'I'm Feelin' Good,' since that seems to be what everybody thinks it's called."

"Well, you know, Jen, I hate to say this, but I think that would have been a top-notch idea. Tell me, who's the moron who called it 'Better Than Nothing,' anyway?"

"Well, that's the funny thing, Jen, because that moron would be me."

I laughed a little -- heh heh -- but I knew I was flailing.

"So Jen, about how long do you think we're supposed to be doing this solo interview thing?"

"That's a mighty good question, Jen. Tell me, how often do you find yourself interviewing yourself?"

"Not very often," I said, craning my head around, hoping that someone, somewhere in the station, might actually be listening to the broadcast and come help me out. "In fact, it's getting a little spooky in here."

"Is it?" I said. "How so?"

"Well," I said, "I'm feeling a little like I'm in the end of that movie Westworld, like this station is run by machines who just look like human beings and they're all short-circuiting somewhere out in the back, and any minute now Yul Brynner is going to come crashing through that plate-glass window and kill me."

"Wow," I said. "That is spooky."

And this is when my little gremlin of desperation took over.

"You know, Jen, I'm beginning to wonder whether Svenlotta's general jumpiness and then her sudden disappearance might suggest that she's in the ladies' room having, perhaps, a Coke."

"Really, Jen? You think she's jammed into one of those little stalls having a Coke?"

"Yeah, I do. A Coke."

"What kind of Coke? A Diet Coke?"

"Maybe."

"A Classic Coke?"

"Perhaps. You know, Coke!"

"Coke?"

"Coke!"

"Coke coke?"

"Yeah, coke coke!"

I was growing frantic and confused, chirping and spitting coke coke coke like some spastic bird, until finally Svenlotta burst through the door, rubbing her face in her hands and slamming her headphones back on her head.

"Well," she said, out of breath. "That was awesome! What was the name of that tune?"

"'Better Than Nothing,'" I said.

"Great! Well, it was great having you here. And tonight, you're playing at . . . at . . ." She shuffled through a stack of papers. "Where're you playing tonight?"

"The Ballroom," I said.

"Right! The Ballroom! And, so, um, what time?"

"Doors are at eight," I said, not finding Svenlotta's presence particularly different from her absence.

"Okay, okay. Eight o'clock. Tonight. Make sure you all get out to the Ballroom to see --" And then Svenlotta's face went blank. She went so white, I actually felt a little scared.

"Jennifer Trynin," I said.

"Jennifer Trynin!" screamed Svenlotta. "Well, thanks, Jennifer Trynin, for stopping by! Have a great rest of your tour! And, yeah, good luck!" And with that, she popped in a cartridge, her headphones clunked back onto the console, and she was gone.

When Derek and I enter the studio it's dark and cold, with one bright spotlight shining down on the DJ, who's wearing headphones and humming with his eyes shut. He's maybe forty-five and nearly bald, with wisps of long gray hair hanging off the edges of his skull like tinsel. He has silly-looking muttonchops, a thick neck, and purple fingernails, making me wonder if he's doing Desk Girl.

Derek is situating me in a chair behind a big, fat microphone on the other side of a console that takes up most of the space in the room, like a brain in a skull. It's hard to move without bumping into something. The room is very quiet and stuffy, as if it's been ziplocked. It feels even more like a space pod than the lobby -- like a smaller, night-trip space pod.

I take out my guitar and begin tuning, but the DJ snaps his fingers at me, like Who the hell are you and why aren't you shutting the fuck up?

The Bowie woman finally comes in with a cup of coffee, nondairy creamer, whatever, it tastes fabulous.

The DJ is playing air-drums to whatever he's hearing in his phones. Then he settles back down, rapping his fingers on the console until his face scrunches up and he takes a huge breath. Then he raises his right arm, index finger fully extended, freezing in this position for three, two, one -- his finger darts down, hitting a button as he bolts into the air with "Hey hey HEY! It's 95.5 and you're listening to the Boneman back at ya with tickets tickets TICKETS! You be the tenth caller to 555-9555 and guess where you and a buddy are going?" He clangs a cowbell. "You be over eighteen and you're going to Soul Asylum this Saturday at the way-out Way Out! I'm talking two free tickets. I'm talking two backstage passes. I'm talking kick-ass rock and roll from some of rock and roll's newest and best! And next up, we got ourselves a treat. But first, something I know you can't live without because I know I sure can't. We got a little band we like to call NIR-VA-NA!" He hits a button, flips a switch, twirls a knob, and bounces back in his chair, whipping off his headphones and looking right at me: "And you are?"

"Jennifer Trynin?" I say, like it's a question, because even though I'm pissed that he doesn't seem to know who I am, I'm mostly confused. Is this guy for real? He talks like those old DJs on WPLJ from the 70s.

"Of course you're Jennifer Trynin!" Big smile. "Who else would you be?"

"Vanna White?" I have no idea where this comes from.

"Vanna White?" Bigger smile. "Vanna White? Hey baby, if you're Vanna White, you're gonna have to show me your letters." He waggles his eyebrows as if this is a remarkably clever and lewd suggestion.

"I can't. I forgot them at the hotel," I say, making the Boneman laaaaaugh and laaaaaugh. He actually slaps his knee.

"I see we've got a live one here!" he says, giving me a wink and sliding the headphones back over his ears, reimmersing himself in the console, sucking any frivolity we'd managed to muster right out of the room.

I lean down until my ear is almost touching my guitar strings and continue trying to tune, as quietly as possible. Suddenly the big, fat microphone clunks me on the head. It's holding me down like a yoke and I'm afraid to move until Derek comes over, tilts it back in place, and screws it tight.

I smile at him. "Hey, thanks, Dirk," I say.

Derek whips around and glares at me, igniting the tiny ping of a headache somewhere above my right ear. Tell me I did not just call him Dirk. I barely control the urge to jump up and grab him as he's leaving the room, force him to turn and face me. "Let me make it up to you," I'd plead, caressing his dreads, looking deep into his eyes. "I could know you. Let me know you."

The door suctions open and closed with a shwump and Desk Girl is standing there, smiling and waving at me. Peg is next to her, also waving. Then I see two teenage girls sitting in the corner, giggling and waving my CDs in the air like shiny plastic flags. I figure they must be contest winners. I wave back.

"Do you know Alanis Morissette?" says one of the girls.

"Who?" I say.

"Hey, you got ten seconds," says the Boneman, and he winks at me.

This is when my heart begins racing and my palms begin sweating. I tell myself for the millionth time that I've done this a million times, that I won't black out and fall to the floor, requiring ambulances and tracheotomies, that I won't die in a third-rate hospital in this lousy city with bugs in the bed and no one to comfort me but Peg, who'll pat my hand over and over, whimpering, "But you were s'posed to be a friggin' star . . ."

The face scrunch, the big breath, the extended index finger, three, two, one -- "Hey hey HEY! We are 95.5 and you're back with the Boneman and we're here live with Jennifer Trynin. Tell me, Jennifer, how's the world of rock and roll been treating you?"

"It's treating me pretty well, Boneman," I say.

"Hey, that's great. I bet you been havin' a blast out there on the road, goin' crazy. You're goin' crazy, right?"

"Completely bonkers," I say. The Boneman keeps looking down, reading from what I can only assume is my Warner Bros. bio. I'm afraid he's going to zoom straight to The Bidding War Question, which I've come to dread.

"Great, great. So, I hear there was a pretty major bidding war for you. Tell me, Jennifer, what was that like?"

"I don't know," I say.

I realize that, as a DJ, if you don't know anything about the artist you're interviewing, the easiest thing to talk about is the most obvious point of interest in the artist's bio -- which for me is, admittedly, the bidding war. I mean, I wasn't married to Kurt Cobain, there's been no naked dancing or extreme drug-taking in my past, and so far the release of my record hasn't caused the deafening KABOOM in the marketplace that everyone seemed so sure it would. This is becoming very embarrassing. I wish I could scribble out the whole bidding-war section of the bio and write, Let's talk about my music. But that would presume he's actually listened to my music.

"Aww, come on, Jennifer. I've heard you had every label known to man trying to sign you!"

I remind myself that not everyone knows things aren't going quite as well as expected. In fact, so far, it's like no one seems to know it. No one but me, and I don't even know it for sure. It's just something I feel -- in the air, in the pit of my stomach.

"Actually, Boneman," I say, "it was pretty amazing. I mean, label after label flying me from coast to coast and boy are my arms tired."

"What?" says the Boneman.

I take it up a notch.

"My wife is so fat that when she sits around the house, she really sits around the house," I say, in my best Steven Wright deadpan.

"Your wife?" says the Boneman. "Your wife? Is there something you're not telling us, sweetheart?"

"Boneman, there's a lot I'm not telling you," I say, finally realizing that this interview is heading south. I go for the cheap thrill. "Like for instance, the other day we found a dead body outside our hotel."

It's true a dead body was found outside our hotel, although I never saw it, as I always claim. It's also true that the lyrics to the new song I'm working on, "Washington Hotel," are about me imagining that I come to a hotel and hang myself. But it's not true that it happened in Washington, though it was an honest mistake -- I thought we were in Washington. SoundBoy got up early and went out to check on the van. There was a field on the other side of the parking lot, and he decided to go on a little hike. But when he hoisted himself over the fence, he discovered it was quite a drop to the other side, and when he landed he found himself face to face with the body of a large black man wearing a red Nike running suit.

Lately I've been using the dead-body-outside-the-hotel story to distract people from The Bidding War Question, and it's been working like gangbusters. It's certainly working on the Boneman, leading to some lengthy and witty repartee about all kinds of gruesome matters including the Boneman's appendix, which he keeps in a jar on his kitchen table.

I manage to play through "Happier" and "Better Than Nothing" without passing out. I even remember to slur the word "fuck" in the choruses of "Happier," which is a major achievement.

As I'm walking back down the hallway, Derek glides by on his skateboard.

"Thanks a lot, Derek," I say, but he doesn't even turn around.

When I get to the reception area, Peg is laughing it up with the Boneman and Desk Girl. She jingles her keys in the air. "Ready to go?"

Desk Girl gives me a thumbs-up and the Boneman turns around, smiling and telling me he wishes he'd realized I was the "Feelin' Good" chick, because he loves that song.

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