It’s 1994 — post-Liz Phair, mid-Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin takes a hard look at herself and gives “making it” one last shot. It works. Trynin sparks one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vie for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamor for her attention. Eventually she will sign with Warner Bros., which will re-release her album Cockamamie with the full rollout: TV, radio, videos, features in Rolling Stone, Interview, People. In the excerpt below from Trynin's new memoir Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be (Feb. 2006, Harcourt), she's still in the middle of the buzz hurricane. During a gig that takes place at a thinly-disguised Middle East club, label reps compete for her attention -- as do her soundman/boyfriend "Guy" and her flirtatious bassist "Buck," even if the late Mark Sandman does not.
YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!
BAM BAM BAM BAM.
YAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!
BAM BAM BAM BAM.
BOOM boom BOOM boom BOOM boom BOOM boom.
Electrotube is soundchecking and the lead singer is stomping all over the place, making rock faces.
Tonight’s gig is at the Frontload, a sprawling club with a restaurant and three bars with stages spread out into four different areas on two levels. It’s Boston’s premier place to play and to see and be seen. Our guest list is ridiculous: eight A&R people, two label presidents, five managers, three booking agents, four journalists, and eleven people I don’t know who the hell they are.
It’s finally our turn to check. I lean over to adjust a knob on a pedal and when I stand back up, I can feel it happening again — my blood falling through my body like hot, dry sand. And now come the stars, swirling and blinking in the corners of my eyes. My heart, knocking like a car about to stall. I shut my eyes. Take a deep breath. Another. Put my hand on my chest. I’m okay. I’m okay. About the last thing I want to do is die of a heart attack in the middle of a show.
“You’re being crazy,” Guy always tells me.
“Just because I’m crazy doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen,” I always tell him back.
Soundchecking, I’m trying to come to terms with two things: (1) everything sounds like shit, and (2) I’m not going to be able to hear myself singing at all. When I lean into the mic, it smells like beer and breath, and when my lips actually touch the metal, I get a shock that blasts me backward about three feet.
“Ow,” I yell, then wish I hadn’t. House soundmen are notoriously touchy about this kind of thing and if they think you’re being a baby, they’re going to do an even worse job than they normally do.
“Is your amp grounded?” yells the soundman.
People are always asking me this and I never really know what they mean. I do know that there’s some switch on the back of amps that you can flip, making all the rampantly coursing current go in some direction other than from the socket to the amp to the guitar strings and up from your fingers through your body and out through your lips connecting to the microphone, sending the jolt whipping its way back through the mic cord to the sound board and into a second wall socket, thus completing the circle and causing semi-electrocution for, in this case, me. I reach behind my amp and flip that switch. Touch my lips back to the mic. Get zapped again.
“Fuck!” I yell.
“Just keep your lips away from the mic,” says the soundman.
Thanks.
We’re playing through one more song as another band, dressed generic college-style in ripped jeans and T-shirts, loads in their gear. Each guy is cuter than the next, and they have girls with them — pretty girls, like the kind you check out at football games in their tight sweatshirts cut off at the bottom. The kinds of girls who clean up nice with their dyed blond hair and buffed fingernails. But the guys aren’t looking at their girls. They’re looking at me. Especially the big guy with the bandana. It’s like he can’t take his eyes off of me.
“JEN!” yells Buck, pulling his finger across his throat. I’m the only one still playing. I stop.
We’re loading our gear offstage as quickly as possible, lowering everything from the side of the stage onto the floor and shoving it into Instrument Alley by the bathroom. Suddenly, a hand grabs the back of my belt and gently tugs. Then Buck’s leaning over me from behind, his chest against my back, his mouth at my ear.