12 Step Program, part two, chapter thirty-four

12 Step Program, part two, chapter thirty-four
Whatever happened to Marty Leven and Majestic Wax
Marty Leven kept A-Side up to date.
Eight track led to 16 to 24 and computer mixing. He hired a chief engineer, Doug Presley, that all the musicians invariably, predictably called Elvis.
The day is coming when everything will be on computer, Marty knew. Portable, too. Records will be made anywhere cheaply.
Marty didn’t want to think about that. It could mean A-Side, his effort and learning could be bankrupt overnight.
Abe continued to send him Barb’s acts but he’d never had a big hit with them. The Hi-Steppers and Grantchesters came close and he thought The Joss might have one with its version of Expressway To Your Heart, but The Soul Survivors got there first. Its Expressway wasn’t huge but it handily eclipsed The Joss’s. After Abe died, The Joss moved on; Marty never really knew why but assumed the decision was prompted by Abe Jr.’s and Bob’s steadfast obedience of their dad’s will..
Marty also was given Running On Empty but he preferred not to remember this episode. His pop and rock leanings jarred with Running On Empty’s desire to be more country. Abe told him it was country rock but the band was more country than rock. Marty wanted to bring the bass and drums to the fore, and make guitar more prominent, more aggressive, more electric. Running On Empty recoiled. It wanted the rhythm section to be more a suggestion, wanted weepy harmony and preferred to swamp the tracks in pedal steel guitar. Marty and the band clashed frequently. It was no surprise to Marty when it also left the label.
His studio kept busy. Ray Bedouin frequently recorded his jingles there., for instance.
Over the years he had heard all the musician jokes.
How do you know there’s a drummer at your door? The knock slows down.
Background singers at your door? They never know when to come in.
What do you call a musician without a girlfriend? Homeless.
How does a guitarist turn away a girl? With his personality.
What do you throw a drowning guitarist? His amplifier.
How many drummers to screw in a lightbulb? They’ve got machines that can do that.
How many producers to screw in a lightbulb? I don’t know, what do you think?
And so on. Marty grinned. He’d been around long enough to know there was truth there.
He wasn’t prepared, though, for the return of Majestic Wax. This was no joke.
Majestic Wax’s days as a functioning label were numbered.
It was slow to capitalize on the albums market and just as slow to exploit the compact disc.
It had made it’s name and fortune on hit singles, but the hits were no more. The place to be was FM not AM. The artists and repertoire men – A&R – seemed to be floundering. All they knew for certain was that radio wasn’t playing their records.
The fake Hi-Steppers album was a sign of Majestic Wax’s desperation. The inclusion of What Is Love and the three other tracks would have been more honest, which is saying something for Majestic Wax. It wouldn’t have to doctor the studio tracks. The thugs asked Marty why didn’t you give us the tape of What Is Love?
I’d forgotten all about it, Marty answered as truthfully as possible. He didn’t want either his legs broken or the studio burned to the ground.I didn’t even see it in the A-Side vault.
That was true, too. The tape was in an unmarked box. All it said in felt pen was that it was recorded by The Steppers. Curious, the rep from the big label pulled it off the shelf and had Marty play it.
Ah, Marty exclaimed. Now I remember. The label was happy and Astral Freaks were jumping around as if it had discovered gold.
You should’ve given it to us, one of the heavyweights said.
But I didn’t know, Marty wailed. I’d forgotten. To his relief, they turned and left. There was nothing they could do. Break his legs? Too late for that.
Too late to save Majestic Wax.
Louis Legato had made a lot of money for the mob and was wealthy himself.
As a kid growing up in New York, he’d made friends with a couple of guys whose fathers were in the mob. As he got older, Louis saw them bend and break the rules. They were part of a gang and he wanted in. So, he bent and broke a few rules himself. He was accepted, got a little hard and learned their devious ways . To lie, to cheat. When he let it be known that he wanted to own and run a record label, his friends helped him to get set up. He owed them, and the mob knew it. It would come in, take what it wanted and left the newly formed Majestic Wax enough to pay its acts and continue to operate. For his own well-being, Louis learned plagiarism, the art of payola, lying to his acts, but, most importantly, how to hide his money.
His wealth aroused the curiosity of the federal government, which did an audit on Majestic Wax. Nothing. The label was adept at accounting in such a way that it could verify all the checks and balances. It cooked the books, in other words, as much for its acts that felt it were owed more money than they had received from Majestic Wax. It was prepared, therefore, when the internal revenue agents came sniffing.
Unable to pin anything dishonest on Majestic Wax, they turned their attention to Legato. The mob, ever shy of the bad publicity that would arise as a result of being accused of an association with Majestic, backed away. Legato was on his own. The IRS got him as a tax fraud and sent him to prison, where, unlike Bob, he died. This, too, was kept quiet. The prison didn’t want anyone to know that someone had died on their watch. Even if it was from natural causes.
That was the end of Majestic Wax.
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