this is a post about a specific motherfucker. i’m not going to name his name now, but one day, when i’m rich and famous, i’m hoping i can drop it and start a little bonfire that destroys his career. perhaps it is petty and cruel of me to say this. but considering the procession of events i feel that i did due diligence to be a fair and decent person to this human being, who felt he shouldn’t have to be the same for me. and thus he is now on my shit list. and thus now if people ever ask me, what do you think of him? i shall extremely acidic vitriol to share, so unbridled it shall eat through the floor when i’m done saying it.

we shall call this asshole RE. one day i shall spell out those letters.

here is the turn of events.

intro

i was taking voice lessons from a professional singer who worked with a well-known band and was more well known in the 70s. he is an established “old schooler” to the bay area. he saw my joy and love of singing. he recommended i go make an album, or a demo. he referred me to producers. the first set were extremely lacking in skill, but pleasant. they overcharged me immensely, then insured that we had no written contract for the songs, and insured that they “owned them.” thus making me their bitch for a lot of money. i went back to the singer. he referred me to another person, more professional, and apologized for the initial referral. he said, this cat is really good, i use him for mixing. he’s in LA.

i went to LA. RE the cat was pleasant. the cat was filipino, with long hair, with a son from another woman and married to a new woman. both women were white. the guy’s best friend also appeared to be his assistant, running his errands like his bitch.  over time i learned that his best friend also had a day job as tech lead at a studio. his best friend was extremely nice and sweet. he had another friend who apparently was making an album for him. this guy worked for a hotel chain.

RE named his price. he offered a 25% discount. he told me all that i would get for the money. he said, the catch was he’d need 50% up front. 25% at 75% progress. the final 25% on delivery of files.

he asked my time frame. i said i wanted to get the album done by the end of the year, but was not in a real rush. i said, i’ve taken taken 3 months off from work and have dedicated a whole month to just this, i will make multiple trips down to LA, whatever it takes, to get this album done.

he said, cool, he said, i can help you do anything you want, from song writing, lyrics, melodies, just engineering, whatever works. i said, i’m new to this, so you’ll have to bear with. HE AGREED.

i said cool. i met him in february. sent him a check in march or something. he cashed the check right away.

part two – the work

three months roll by. in the meantime, he’s had, and probably spent the money. we get to working. we’re pleasant and friendly and really enjoying each other’s company. some red flags go up. he’s super flirty, kind of forward, a little crazy with the lecherousness. i asked for another voice teacher referral, he referred me to a friend of his living up in the bay. when i saw her, she joked that he’s a real horndog, kinda out of control. she wasn’t kidding. because when we start working in the summer 2007, he’s a little crazy. but it seems harmless.

i notice a habit. he starts inviting friends over to hang out with us while we work, and literally tries to surround himself with activity – distraction – while we’re supposed to be working in his home studio. his son is hanging out during the summer and he loves his son – to the point it becomes clear this son is clearly a projection of himself, and he idolizes his son because he’s hapa, looks like a model, breaks girls’ hearts, and will clearly have a blessed life of social ease. his son literally hangs out in the room, next to me, next to his dad, messing around, hanging out, in the studio area.

i try to tolerate this. i say nothing. i want to be respectful. i realize it’s his home studio, we’re in his home. while we work, his wife will come along and literally interrupt the sessions. she’ll apologize, but it doesn’t matter, it’s the house, the studio is in it, so all she has to do is push some curtains aside and voila, there she is, hugging him, poking at him for attention, asking what he wants for dinner, nagging him about chores.

the son doesn’t apologize. when the son gets really aggressive (playful) RE will get irritated and say, hey, go out to the living room area we’re working. only then, when the kid really really gets out of hand.

he is good about taking phone calls and saying he’ll have to call someone back because he’s in a session. however, he will pick up. he will also text. he will also joke and goof of with his friends – whom he asked to come over – and try to get them to stay LONGER so they’ll surround him with noise and fun longer.

note i’m paying him to do a job.

he’d do stuff like never define when he wanted to start/stop working, not tell me in advance he needed to end the day early, get antsy and suddenly want to break to go get lunch which would take 2 hours out of time i’d allotted for me to be there working with him, or go to the chiropractor, or go get pinkberry, when i was PAYING to be in LA to work on this album! paying to go down there to LA, flying, car rentals, hotels!

part three – the weird stuff

the flirting is one thing. friendly flirting never hurt anything. but RE starts getting kinda crafty. he starts playing PORN on one of his computer screens to help me “get in the mood” while i try to get ready to sing in the booth for a sexy song. the kid and the wife are IN THE HOUSE when he does this, in the back. he has the volume low and everything and when his kid comes out to kitchen he clicks it off.

it’s demented. it’s like, look how much of a god i am, i can play porn with my kid in the house, and my wife too, and they’ll never know it!

he starts showing off. want to hear an audio file of me having sex with these two women oh my god they were so fucking hot, yada yada yada … and he plays the audio file. this was on another day, we were alone.

i’m mortified. of course, i could say, OMG YOU FREAK STOP. which would affect our working relationship. so i just stay quiet and weather the little storms.

he’d make a point to kiss me on the lips - briefly – but rather than on the cheek. he started to hint, things happen on business trips and he travels a lot so he likes to meet up with friends and have fun and what his wife doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

basically he could meet up with ME on a trip to the bay, where he likes to go often, he says, he has friends and family up there, and we could hang.

um. yeah.

i’m mostly silent and passive, making “uhuh” noises through all these sorts of episodes, thinking, oh my god, this horn dog is like, really crazy! i’m not offended, i’m flattered, but i’m also like – what kind of guy is this? who clearly loves his wife and son and brags about them both (he talks about how he’s really proud of his wife doing grants business work and finally making $50K a year out of a job she had to create) and yet turns around and behaves – LIKE THIS? with no respect for them? showing me porn in the next room? why does he even still have audio of himself having sex with other people? why does he invite people over, and have his closest friends pick up his dry cleaning, and make cash deposits, and get his oil changed?

how do they turn to me and go, this guy is amazing, this guy is talented, i love this guy, he’s my greatest friend, i really love him, isn’t he awesome? they WORSHIP him? why?

EGO.

i will say during the first part of our time i had a broken foot and had to maneuver myself around his home. he was totally nice and sweet and helpful about it, giving me whatever i needed to get around, beverages, etc.

part four – the legal trouble

in our second week of work i start talking logistics. so, we don’t have a contract, how are we going to handle things?

uh, he says, casually, his back to me as he works. “we usually split it 50/50. we don’t get lawyers or contracts involved.”

as in, i pay him $30K for an album, to produce, write, etc., all the stuff involved, and he turns around and says he wants HALF of anything i make in the FUTURE for the album.

i take exception to this. i don’t answer. i immediately get online and research an entertainment lawyer. he says, all is negotiable, it depends on what you want to do. we draft up an agreement. i say to RE, so, let’s finish out our work this week and finalize this contract before we go any further.

he doesn’t fight it. but he gets a little agitated. as we’re working, however, having spec’ed out 10 songs but not completed even ONE of them, he goes, i need the next 25% hon.

which raises a flag for me. so without thinking, i give it to him.

on top of which – throughout our usual working sessions when i’d ask him questions about legal logistics for the album in general, not my work with him, he’d say “you really need a music lawyer.” he’d literally SAY IT HIMSELF. but when i asked him for a referral to one, he wouldn’t give one. he’d say, well the one i use is in NY and is really busy, but maybe … and then he’d conveniently not follow up on it.

so now i got one, see, and he’s not really happy.

then, i go back to the bay. legal emails ensue, back and forth, back and forth. he pulls in his own lawyer. we start negotiating. this is the part where i think he began to hate me. what he didn’t get was he was charging me UP FRONT for the creation of an album for being a producer, which included song writing. He was then asking me for FIFTY PERCENT of my shit in the future. that was ludicrous.

what i realized was, he got all flirty, buddy buddy, easy easy, chummy chummy, thought i was digging him hard, then turned around and wanted me to take it up the ass with a baseball bat and no lube and THANK HIM FOR IT.

and i wouldn’t. and now he was pissed. and I was pissed he would have behaved in this way, all the unprofessional shit plus the legal shit, and have the nerve to try to shaft me! get mad at me that i would want a contract and get a lawyer in advance!

he himself said “that’s the music business” when i said, isn’t 30K a lot to be charging up front but i’ve got to go do all the merchandise, the legwork, the marketing, the selling. he shrugged, he said, that’s the way it is, you take it or leave it.

so from what i got, it’s the music business for people to get shafted. well, i’m not here to let myself get shafted by you. we can play fair, or not, it’s up to you, but it’s not going to be me with the bleeding asshole.

so finally we worked out something. he stopped through to see me on a trip up north. he came to my place. i was still really offended by his having gone that route with me. so i was cool to him. he said, are we good? i said, yeah totally. he said, we doing this? i said, yeah, totally.

part five – the souring

next trip down to see him, he was barely civil. he was actually rude. he made snarky comments, backhanded comments. i wasn’t rude, i was polite, i remained well behaved, i was trying to keep it business, keep it respectful.

there were large gaps between days i could make it down there. note, he was making no effort to come up to work on my end even though he’d said this was totally possible at the beginning. he asked why i couldn’t just come on weekdays and why i had to make it weekends.

i explained that i don’t get many vacation days and could only claim a Friday here and there. he had the nerve to ask me for my weekdays but showed no sympathy for the fact i was FLYING to see HIS ass, paying for back and forth, hotel, car, and he’d made NO effort to come up to me though he’d totally made it out like he was able to be mobile and flexible. no offer from him.

the gaps got bigger – i explained that my father had a heart problem and prostate cancer and was staying with me and i needed to focus on family right now. i apologized but said i knew it was holiday season anyway and he probably wanted to focus on his own family for vacations and things. he showed no sympathy whatsoever and instead said “i went through something similar with my dad.” he said this via email and inperson, and in person was totally unfeeling about it, no “ohmy god i’m sorry, oh yes i can understand.” didn’t give a rat’s ass.

we get into spring 2008. i say let’s schedule musicians, are we ready for them? he says yes, we’ll start lining them up.

then the other shoe drops. i said in the beginning, and it is clear in the contract, that musicians must be paid by me, from the funds for the album of $30K. when it’s time to move forward, he wants to just have them come in and sign a little release and have it be that.

i follow back up with the lawyer. lawyer says, nuhuh, you have to pay them, they need to sign language that says something specific, i will prep it for you.

RE gets agitated. writes me his longest email ever. which must mean he’s mad. basically saying this is how the business works. ie, that basically people get paid under the table, stuff isn’t recorded, and they sign a little release, or they do work for trade, and so, apparently these people are supposed to be on my album, with a credit, and there’s no paper trail other than “yeah i did it for you and i sign away the rights to the song.” there’s no real specific language about those rights or the performance.  and he makes it clear – he doesn’t want another long back and forth like 2007 with the main contract.

i make it clear he will have something short and sweet to work with. we prep the contract. i send it to him. he’s apparently OK with it and starts setting up musicians.

part six – the end approaches

i make it clear, having conferred with the lawyer and the contract, that i’ve got to pay the musicians from the remainder of your balance since the cost of 20 musicians pieces is supposed to be on my album. you can work out the price with them to maximize how much you keep but I need to be paying them. he doesn’t fight it.

so i manage contracts, checks, signatures for each artist. he arranges the sessions. i am nice to all artists. i am respectful. all my checks cash. everyone is happy.

except RE has an attitude. he won’t acknowledge or speak to me in the session unless i make him. he won’t care that i’m outside waiting to be let into the building and have been texting and knocking and he’s apparently late since he’s not letting my ass in.

as a sign of niceness i offer to pay for their lunch when his best friend and servant goes off to get lunch and offers to get me something. the friend offered, not RE. the friend thanks me for paying for the group, RE doesn’t. i bring drinks and offer them. RE declines, and won’t drink my beverages, but drinks the bevs provided by the studio.

we’re using a studio from a close friend, who is also the employer of RE’s best friend. RE’s best friend is the tech lead, correct? so this is studio time, professional, for free.

which is fabulous. i appreciate it. it wasn’t in my contract. it didn’t have to be done there. i meet great musicians, truly talented. they seem far more well behaved and professional than RE.

one, a pretty important famous musician, makes jokes toward RE during the session when RE acts up. the musician, because he’s famous and has pull, see, has RE drooling over him, kowtowing to him, bragging about him whether he is in the room or not. ass kissing and brown nosing really really hard. and then he’ll distract and bounce around like a 3 year old instead of focusing and working, cuz he’s so excited.

the musician says, “children.” and shakes his head. he says it several times. RE never takes the hint.

it is apparently all about RE.

it becomes clear the musician went out of way to miss his SON’S baseball game to come do 5 songs for our session. RE is fucking around and wasting this musician’s time when he is clearly a family man and clearly eager to be out there watching his son play ball. he has done us all a favor by being here at this time, this day. the musician is beautifully respectful and kind to me. i like him immensely. a musician or two of RE’s were not so professional, not so good of character. but this man is. i can tell he was raised right. it is clear in his comportment. he is truly “good people.”

ironic, because all of RE’s referrals, for services, and his friends, and talents coming in to work on the album – they call HIM good people. from what i saw, i don’t think so.

part seven – the end

a last couple trips down there and the sessions are over. RE now needs time alone with the album to clean up the files and make minor tweaks we’ve discussed. i ask how long he’d need. in the past, he’d said “at least a month.” this time he says “i’d like to be done in a couple weeks, wrap up in about a month.”

i say ok. let me know. keep me posted. i’ll follow up with you re: a mastering referral. he says ok.

the last couple visits i make an overt effort – i greet him warmly, and directly, and look him in the eye. i hug him hello and goodbye. initially i tried to give him a friendly peck on the cheek and he literally turned his hair into my face, so obviously he didn’ t like that. the following times, i made no effort to do that at all and gave him “fake hugs” the kind you give people you’d rather not hug, for show.

at this point, we agree – i will come back down to get the file transfer and then set up the mastering session with his referral, another sound engineer.

over two weeks later, he sends me an email saying he’s almost done, he’s loading files to my server and he’d like to be done with this within the next week. wtf?

i am travelling at the time and write back that i have a dialup connection and can’t download the songs but i will listen to them when i get back. because i’m preoccupied with a wedding, i don’t check his follow up email until i get home, a week later.

his email states that he is going out of town on the 27th – not the actual end of the month – and he’d like this wrapped up and to get payment by that date and can i finish up with the files by then?

i spend sunday night downloading, listening. i discover that he’s done additional things to the songs we did not talk about. so i have to send him a list of changes. he gets on it that night. we do back and forth til 1 am.

he starts hounding me. from that night on, via email and text message, we’re pinging back and forth. i need the files, and he wants his payment. i need the FINAL files, for mastering, which MP3s are not.

he literally bends over backwards to get the files to me, and i know it’s not to help me, it’s to get his money.

now he wants it SO bad – before this “month” he mentioned is even over, rushing me, when he had half the project money – A HUGE chunk of money – in his hands THREE MONTHS before we even started working. i NEVER complained. i was prompt and flexible. i gave him his next 25% before he even did 75% of the work.he tried to shaft me with the 50/50.

part eight – prologue

i send an email to confirm he’s been sent an electronic payment. i include warm, friendly thanks, appreciation for his hard work and dedication “despite our different working styles, my broken foot, and father’s illness, and it’s been a rough year but it’s over!” AND – i say, I rounded up to give you a bonus, I hope this helps. I was extremely professional and making an effort to resolve things on a good note and close the door to the bridge but not burn the bridge entirely. I asked about obtaining copies of song charts that he’d made, halfassed and at the last minute, for the session musicians, which he’d said – verbally – he gives clients as they need them. He did not say he charged for them.

this was his response:

Thank you for the bonus and timely payment.  It does appear that you experienced a challenging year and I am glad that you were able to complete the project. 

As for for updating and forwarding the charts, this is a service I can provide.  For clients paying full price, charts are included in the package.  Your agreement received a 25% discount, which is why charts are outside of our contract.  I charge $100 per chart, and would be able to give this my attention in 2 weeks upon my return from vacation.

[his standard signoff, which is philosophical and has nothing to do with thank yous or goodbyes]

[his name]

After my very warm message AND BONUS he thanks me for both, does not respond to anything i said about appreciating his hard work and hoping that he was proud of the album, and gives me the above.

it does appear? IT DOES APPEAR? my father had a fucking STROKE and a positive diagnosis for prostate cancer and had to have it removed and stayed with ME and i took care of him and i broke my fucking foot and i flew down to YOUR city and went out of my way to work on YOUR turf and put up with YOUR bullshit and YOUR ego and YOUR porn and YOUR unbelievably bad behavior and when I try to resolve in a civil and positive way that shows respect for the time effort and work you put into the project -

that’s how you talk to me?

FUCK. YOU.

i wrote to my friends about it …

he seriously thinks *I* am a problem client! he’ll probably talk shit to all his friends and tell everyone how evil and micromanaging i am! how hard to work with i am!
 
he’ll never tell them how he tried to shaft me, didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself, had friends over to party while we were supposed to be working, played porn in the SAME HOUSE as his son and wife while they were THERE for me, played audio of him having SEX with someone, told me explicit stories of all his sexual escapades and made it clear what his wife doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her when he goes “travelling” and “enjoys himself” in the music scene on the road in other towns (ie, HAS SEX WITH WHOEVER THE FUCK) and implied we could do the same if he came to visit me in the bay!
 
DISGUSTING you guys. i’m really pissed. i was really trying to be civil. i think now if anyone asks me how working with him was i won’t bother holding back for his sake.
 
perhaps something like, he’s a talented musician of limited scope. he also has a terribly large ego that is difficult to work with and a questionable character that added to an unprofessional working experience.
 
SO ironic. the people he refers me to say “RE is good people.” they have no idea what a little shit he can be!
 
i guess if you kiss his ass and suck his cock and stroke his ego he’s the sweetest guy you ever knew.
 
FUCK. sorry, i’m pissed off right now. MEN! thanks for listening …
 

the fucking END.