Music Meets Prose: The Meeting (Part 2)

Music Meets Prose is our weekly bite-size prose feature on fictional stories inspired by real life behind-the-scenes events in the music industry. 

Our prose this week is entitled The Meeting - a three-part short story. Look out for our prose features every Friday.

The Meeting

Written by Bemi

Abstract artwork by Zaahira

Click here for Part 1

Part 2 (after the cut)

The 10:00 am meeting was with Jason Mint a.k.a. Jay Mint – that was his stage name. Max was not looking forward to this meeting. Jason Mint was an artist who spent more time uploading ‘selfies’ on social media than churning out music. This guy thought he was the best thing since Usher and Chris Brown combined. Truth was he was just another up and coming artist and didn’t stand out. You know the average looking guy in a boy band who can’t really sing, but just got stuck in the band to roundup the number – that was Jason. Hence, Max had to make the not-so-difficult decision of letting Jason go.

The terms of Lache Record’s contract with Jason stated the record company reserved the right to terminate the contract at any time. Nevertheless, Max felt uneasy. He always struggled with dropping artists and made sure he did it in person to soften the blow. In the music industry, it was not uncommon for artists’ contract to be terminated via mail or email correspondence. Heck, some artists even found out their contract had been terminated on the news or social media. Max preferred the direct approach; he treated the artists he represented fairly or at least he liked to think he did.

The time was 9:45 am. As he watched the clock tick, his mind wandered off again. He was incapable of getting any real work done until this meeting was over.

In the last few minutes prior to the meeting, Max reminisced about the events leading up to the meeting. He had been patient with Jason Mint, but now his patience had worn thin. Jason’s mum (Mel Mint) was also part of the problem; she was the stage mum from hell with a diva attitude and endless list of demands.

Mel Mint was once a promising singer. She got pregnant at the peak of her music career. After the birth of her son, her record label at the time couldn’t quite figure out how to sell her new image - mum meets pop princess or pop princess turned mum – either may have worked. Nevertheless, the record label couldn’t risk financing the marketing campaign to transform Mel’s new image. That was how Mel’s career ended. Now it seemed she wanted to live vicariously through her son. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Jason was talented, but he wasn’t – he was unpredictable and inconsistent. He had auditioned well, however it was downhill from there. A client had described Jason’s gig at his club opening as “flat”. There were many other complaints from clients and he had no decent fan base. Jason’s career was on the decline and that did not reflect well on the record label.

The last straw was when the other four artists signed to Lache records approached Max and played a mobile phone recording to him. They had secretly recorded Jason making a lot of negative comments about Max and Lache Records – all of which were false. Apparently, Jason had attempted to turn the other artists against Max and Lache records. His plan was to convince them that signing with Lache records was a bad career move, hoping they would leave the label and Max could focus all the resources on one artist – him. Max recalled the numerous occasions Jason had thanked him profusely for all he had done for him - via text, phone calls and in person. This was the ultimate betrayal. But that was the music business – it was cold and even if you tried to be the good guy, backstabbing was inevitable. Listening to the recording sealed the deal - Jason had to go!

 Many thanks to our volunteer abstract artist Zaahira. Lookout for Part-3 next Friday (Oct 10).