Aw hell, who am I kidding right?

More often though, I spent my days trying my best to fly under the radar, and dodging the corporate ax that was sure to fall once the folks at Def American realized that the kid from Seattle was pretty much in over his head. One particular boss I had there (who shall remain nameless here), sat directly across from me in the office and would spend entire mornings staring a hole right through me.

Every once in a while though, I would come up with a great marketing idea that would save my ass for that particular week.

Like the time I thought of doing a "concert kit" for the seventies styled "boogie-rock" band Raging Slab, and their album Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert. We had to nix a few items — like the bong, the bottle of Ripple Wine, and the tube of glue. If we shipped these things together, it would have been prosecutable by law as a bomb. We finally did ship a "concert kit" to retail though. It included the CD, a T-shirt, some rolling papers, and a dime to call a cab. It even made promo item of the week in Radio & Records magazine.

Cool, huh?

So like Dan Kennedy in his book, I arrived for my own dream-shot in the big-time music business of nineties L.A., just in time for the whole corporate shenanigans that had everybody ducking for cover. The firings and layoffs that came in the wake of a downturn in business that hadn't quite yet become the tidal wave it is now still had everybody in full-on "cover your ass" mode. The fact that even at thirty-something years old, I was still a wide-eyed, somewhat green, starstruck kid in the biggest candystore on Earth didn't help matters much either.

But the other — and probably most curious — thing to me about my two years in the big-time record biz, was how little so much of what actually went on there had to do with actual music.

One of the things that sticks out to this day in my mind, was this weird trend happening at the time where it seemed the coolest thing in music — at least at our label — was self-mutilation. Now, I'm still to this day trying to figure out what sticking things through your skin actually had to do with making records. I just can't seem to make the connection between sticking pins and studs through your face, your tits, and worse and a good guitar solo. Go figure.

But at my label, we were all over it.

For starters, we had the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow signed to a video deal. For those who don't remember, Rose led a traveling sort of freak show during the grunge era, where they would do things like eat glass, hang weights from their nipples, and regurgitate various items through their noses at rock events like Lollapalooza.