The Business Meeting

Group

We sat there in the studio around the big table, our first of many business meetings. I admit this is the part of being in the group I enjoyed least of all. Every time we used to have one of these meeting with the guys from Jive, I felt like my head was going to explode by the time it was over. I would literally have to get up and leave sometimes. Not even bother to excuse myself and just walk out the door before I said something I would regret. The ‘guess how long it will take before Kevin gets angry and leaves the room game’ was very popular back in the day. Of course it was Nick that invented that one. I would stay just long enough for him to lose, just to piss him off. They had no idea that Howie had told me about this little game. We worked it out so that I would leave to benefit Howie’s chosen time. They would get so peeved that he was always winning. In the end the two of us would split the money and go to dinner.

I have always had a great sense of humor, just not so much when it came to the business side of things. Unfortunately when the fans saw me, especially right before I decided to leave, all they saw was me reacting to all the horrible business decisions being made on our behalf. I wasn’t stupid. I always saw what they were saying about me. I never smiled. I always seemed to have a sour puss look on my face. I was unhappy; I hated the other guys, blah blah blah. None of that was true. I just hated this business and I still do! Our fans have always been observant but they’ve also always been ready to jump to conclusions that weren’t there.

This would be our very first business meeting with just us! No one else, would pipe in. Management would be here, but they weren’t going to participate. This was one of my big requests before I decided to officially rejoin the group. I insisted we take over creative control completely. That we wouldn’t leave any of the big decisions that affected this group to anyone else but us. If we made the wrong choices and sank our ship so be it. I would rather go down because of something stupid we did, then something someone else did. Luckily we all had the same train of thought about that.

I think we were all also a little worried about that as well.

We avoided having this meeting before we left for London but once we got here, we knew it was inevitable. We needed to really all get on the same page and start figuring things out.

So here we were all ready to go. I wonder if there’s a new game I need to be aware of?

~*~*~*~*~*~

They all looked over at me as if I was in charge of this thing, weird, but okay. I’ll be the boss.

“So, should we get started then?”

All of them just kind of shrugged and nodded, “I guess, whenever you’re ready go ahead, Brian.”

When did I become the boss of them? Excellent! Leighanne would be so proud. She wouldn’t believe it! I almost want to call her right now and tell her about this, but we had a no phones policy in here, so that was out of the question. She warned me before I left that as much as I loved my cousin, not to let him take charge of every little thing like he used to. I promised her I wouldn’t allow him to do that, but once we were here, it was pretty clear he didn’t want to anyway.

Win/win.

“What do we want to talk about first?”

Howie grabbed his notes and started reading them. I knew I should have taken notes. Some boss I make. I wish I had a gavel. That would be cool if I had one of those things!

“How about promotion?”

“Sounds good to me!”

I looked around the table and saw nods of agreement and one sigh of ambivalence. Nick just loves these meetings, he always has. I couldn’t help but smile at some of the memories of him sitting through these things when he was a kid. Good lord, how did he do it? Oh that’s right, he didn’t. He used to be the biggest baby when we had to attend these meetings. It used to drive my cousin nuts! But I guess he really was a baby, and who should expect a teenager to sit through these things, although, he didn’t act much better when he got older.  

“I really like the idea of a press conference or something. Maybe an announcement on one of the morning shows.”

“Probably makes sense to do Good Morning America since we’re singing there.” I added to what Kevin had just said.

“I think that’s a better idea than a press conference. More like an announcement, Backstreet’s Back and all that jazz.”  Howie always with the jazz hands.

“Do we want to milk Kevin for all he’s worth?”

“Am I a cow now, AJ?”

“Well, you were wearing a cow on your head the other day.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“I think it wouldn’t hurt to emphasis the fact that we are a five person group again.” Howie said bringing us back on track.

“Next comes the inevitable question, what made you all come back together.” I said in my best generic news guy voice.

“I hate when people assume we have been gone this whole time. It annoys the crap out of me.” AJ said under his breath.

“It actually might be a good thing in this case.”

“How so?”

“Well, think about it…what draws more attention? A group who has been around this entire time but not drawing the crowds like they used to, or a group that decided to come back together after time apart for their 20th anniversary?”

They all looked at me surprised I would even make this kind of suggestion but it made good business sense. Everyone loves a good old fashioned reunion. No one loved a good old fashioned has been. Not that we were losers or anything, but unless you were truly a real fan of us, until we did the combined tour with New Kids, everyone thought we had broken up anyway.

“I don’t know how I feel about that, lying to our fans.” Howie said quietly.

“How about this then, we don’t lie as much as just don’t correct what’s being said. I mean, they all tend to think we have been gone anyway, so let them.” I shrugged hoping to make my point.

“As far as the fans go, they already know the truth.”

I gave Howie a hopeful look.

~*~*~*~*~*~

I was letting what Brian said sink into my brain. He was right, actually. It made sense, but for some reason it just felt wrong. I’m not sure why people always just figured we were gone. I mean we always had tours and CDs and it’s not like we were hosting game shows or judging vocal competitions and thankfully none of us were dancing with any stars of any kind, but still, we were written off just as easily as any of the others. This industry was so fickle.

So, I sighed, “Maybe that is a good idea.”

“That’s going to drive the fans bat shit crazy, you know they’re all going to start angrily tweeting about it to everyone.” Nick, the first time he’s spoken since we started this meeting.

“That would only give us more attention.” Kevin said; taking Nick’s phone away from him as if he was twelve when he was caught texting instead of listening to what was going on.

“No phones, remember?”

He gave a one eyed wink and placed Nick’s phone just out of his reach.

“I was just tweeting the fans to let them know what we were doing!”

“Well, you can wait til we’re done.”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Whatever!”

“Guess little brother wins this round, Nicky.” I joked.

“Shut up D!”

No one knew what the hell I was talking about so I moved on, “Anyway…I like the announcement thing. That’ll get our names back into the media.”

“And we have that Mixtape thing, that’ll help too.” Brian said as he pointed to the table as if that was the festival he was referring to.

“What about this documentary thing?” Kevin asked without looking up.

“So many….things!” Nick muttered amusing himself.  Kevin answered with a friendly whap to the back of his head.

“I think the documentary idea is pretty rad!”

“Did you just use rad, AJ?”

He looked up, “Uh yeah.”

“AJ 19 like 88 called and they want their catch phrase back.”

“Well Fuck called and he wants his you back, Carter!”

“That made no sense!”

“Anyway…” I said trying to get us back on track… “I like the idea of a camera crew following us around. When is the guy coming?”

“Tomorrow I think.” Nick answered right before Kevin had a chance.

“See? Notes….” He gave Kevin his own look and nodded really proud of himself and pointing to his notebook.

Kevin opened his mouth as if to say something and then just closed it and gave me that ‘I guess I have nothing to say’ look.

~*~*~*~*~*~

I want this meeting to end now so I can get back to work lalala…

Yes, I’m singing in my head and yes I hate these things. Don’t you hate it when you are in the middle of something great and then you have to stop? I was working on the best idea for this album when Howie motioned for everyone to stop what they were doing and come into the meeting. I begged them to wait. I mean it was only the five of us. It’s not like we had to really keep a tight schedule but they insisted, so here we are.

I swear if I could just live in this studio I would. It’s all I wanted to do morning, noon and night. Get my hands all over the equipment, become one with the consoles and mics, and instruments. I couldn’t wait to sing and experiment with everything at our disposal. It all sounded terrific so far. I just wanted to keep going!

“Yeah, that’s true. Okay so how do we vote on this then?”

I looked around at everyone and saw their hands go up in the air so I just did the same. I figured we weren’t sacrificing our first borns or anything so I was safe.

“Okay that was easy enough…” Howie said before moving on.

I started moving my head from side to side because it was getting stiff. I wonder if this is what it felt like to slowly turn into a zombie. Sure it’s supposed to happen with a bite but how does the first zombie turn into a zombie? Maybe it starts with a stiff neck. It’s not like the FCC is going to tell us that for real, right? The last thing they want is for people to start worrying they’re turning into zombies the second their neck gets a little stiff. Is it the FCC? Maybe it’s another agency. FCC sounds right though. Although what the hell does FCC stand for? Foreign Frog Control? What the hell would that have to do with zombies?  Hrmm…I feel like having a tuna melt.

“Nick?”

I looked up at AJ since he was the one that said my name.

“I think it’s a great idea man.”

“I knew Carter would like it!”

I nodded and smiled at him as both Brian and Howie rolled their eyes. Wonder what I just agreed to?

Where was I? Oh yeah, stiff neck. I think I slept on it okay, although I haven’t really been sleeping well at all. I don’t know what it is about the room, although it’s probably less about the room and more about the empty bed. I was so used to not sleeping alone that having an entire bed to myself was hard to adjust to. That reminds me; call Lauren when I get my phone back from stupid Kevin.

“Ouch, what the hell!”

“Sorry man.”

Yup, I totally just kicked Kevin. Mission accomplished.

I glanced at my watch, Ugh! Let’s GO!!!!

God I hate these things!

~*~*~*~*~*~

We were getting a lot accomplished during this meeting; promotion, touring ideas and locations and finally the CD itself. This is where I felt myself wanting to get more vocal. I loved the stuff we were coming up with and it was going to be really hard trimming down the list of things we had been working on. Usually when we record there are a few that at first sound like great ideas but then once we start to really work them out, it is quickly evident that they are not quite as grand as we thought. This time though, everything we were laying out was pretty stellar! We were going to be bringing in our first producer tomorrow so we really were hoping we’d have a more definitive set list for him to work with. So far it was way too big and we needed to get rid of a bunch of these songs. It was rough, but I think we all had the mind set of not giving in when it came to our favorites and I was ready to fight tooth and nail.

“So, about the songs…”

They all looked over to me so I continued, “How are we going to cut them?”

“I say we don’t cut them.”

I looked over at Howie, “Really, D? That’s a hell of a lot of songs.”

“I know, but they’re all good. It’s not like any of them are crappy.”

“I agree. I think we should keep them all for now.” Kevin said looking at his notes and then glancing in my direction.

“But how are we going to manage to work on them all?”

“No idea…”He said with a slight smile on his face, “But we’ll figure it out as we go along.”

This was so not the Kevin we were all used to. The old Kevin would have probably thrown ten fits by now about some of the things we were talking about in the meeting and would have never gone for the idea to leave all the songs in. He would have wanted us to pick a maximum of twelve and have them recorded almost to near perfection before a producer even had a chance to get their hands on it.

“Works for me.”  And it did. “All in favor?”

I asked glancing around the table. All hands went up, except Carter who was clearly zoning out.

“Nick?”

“CDC!”

What the fuck? Is what I was thinking but “Huh?” is what came out.

His eyes grew big like we had all caught him masturbating or something and yes I have caught him, and yes more times then I’d like to admit.

“Um for zombies…it’s the center for disease control not…foreign…um….frogs….” As he said that incredibly weird line his voice got quieter and quieter so that by the time he said the word frogs, he was almost muttering to himself.

He’s weird, that one.

After that sent a ‘what the fuck did Nick just say’ kind of hush through the room, Brian shrugged and said “Okay then, how about we call this meeting adjourned? I don’t think there’s really anything more to say after that.”

“I agree Rok!”

We all got up from the table and went back into the studio to record.

Foreign, zombie frogs, Should I even ask?

Nah!