Belinda’s POV
I get to meet the guys in our favorite haunt – La Taverna de Havana – and they’ve already been through some shots of tequila.
“Ron cubano” I yell to the bartender.
I get my glass of rum and signal to the guys to open their eyes and ears.
“Guys, do you really wanna be pros? I mean, a real studio, real promotion for our music and stuff? Are you willing to work your butts off to achieve this?”
“Uh, huh! Sure” says Hank.
“OK…here’s the deal. We have to leave the record label we’re working with. Someone opened my eyes today. We’re being robbed, brothers, I mean, really, really robbed and fucked up. We can let them have this album…although it bites, Shoot the Sun Down is my soul, you know…but I’ll let them choke on it and we can move on to something better.”
“Will you talk names and numbers?”
“Names? OK, one name and that should shut you up: Michael Jackson. Yep, THE Michael Jackson, he wants to sign us on his record label.”
“Get outta here! He ain’t listening to our shit!”
“If you wanna know, Jeff, he was in the audience like 2 years ago…and after we finished performing in some obscure talent show…he asked me to be his back-up singer in his Bad Tour. And I said no…for you, guys, for our band. And yesterday he was at Hard Rock Café…and today I was with him in the studio showing him how to sing rock style.”
“You started sniffing stuff?” asks Fred suspiciously.
“Nope. I am totally sober. This is the best offer we can hope to see in our entire pathetic lifetimes. But…we need to clean up our act a bit.”
“Sing like him, ya mean? No thanks!”
“Shut up, Hank! I mean we gotta stop with the cussing and stuff and be professional about it. Do you wanna do it? Or you wanna sit around and get fucked up by every two-bit record label and be nobody….really nobody?”
“OK…no more cussing…we’re going pro.”
“Alright then. I’m working with Michael tomorrow on his rock song and I’ll tell him.”
6 months later
Thing have been going really great for us. First of all, Michael had his lawyers look at the agreement we had with our previous record house, and it was full of holes. So, in the end, we got to keep our album. We got to remix it in that top of the art studio I drooled about the first day when I did the voice training with Michael and really you can hear the difference. Now we’re working on our first short film, for Shoot the Sun Down! It is amazing. The guys are all nice and clean… carefully brushed hair and beards, clean leather jackets…I mean we can compare to the likes of Metallica, or Guns’n Roses, really.
Working with Michael is really exciting, but also energy draining. He’s such a perfectionist with everything. But he never asks us to do stuff he doesn’t do himself. Like right now, as he is wrapping up the video shoot for Give In To Me. It’s 2 a.m. and we’re up next to shoot a few scenes in the location used for his video just to save time. I chug a coffee down, as I look on straight at him, looking as sexy as hell in the black shirt and black trousers, shooting the last poses for the short film.
“OK, that’s a wrap!” yells the director and I stand up to congratulate everyone.
Michael’s POV
