The Brick Wall

After I left WCCC, I knew I had a major mess to deal with. I quickly set up appointments with some of the other radio stations. Within a few days, I became aware of the fact that none of the stations wanted to risk playing this song. We had hit a brick wall. And not one of them offered to just play the "B" side, which at least would have allowed us to keep our momentum, give the public a new Avalanche record, and give us the time we needed to pay off the studio bills, and record a different record. I never got an explanation as to why that was true...and I never asked. I guess the stations just weren't excited enough about the B side to add it to their playlists. And paying off the studio bills was taking longer than I wanted, because I still had to pay salaries, and cover the costs of keeping the band and crew "happy"...even though now, we were rarely playing out.  No bookings were happening through my brother...and so there was the added frustration from that to deal with too. And I owed the studio a lot of money for recording sessions that were now, pointless. I was still making a lot of money...but I was spending it a lot faster than I was able to make it. I called the studio, and explained what was happening, and asked if it was possible to stop the pressing of the new batch of records. I was grateful when I got the call back saying that the pressing plant hadn't started that process yet, and it had been cancelled. At least I wouldn't have to pay for two thousand records that could be used as targets for skeet shooting, for all they were worth now. I dreaded having to tell the guys what was happening...since everyone had been totally pumped up about this new record...but there was no getting around it. After I broke the news to the guys at a band meeting I called at my house, everyone was really quiet...and the disappointment and doubt about what to do about this was really evident. This was one of those times I had to assume responsibility as the band-leader, but this time, for the first time, I had to admit a major miscalculation. Although I felt I had been a victim of circumstance, I still had to own it...and it was up to me to "fix" it, too...but I wasn't really sure how to do that. I knew it was going to take some time to generate the funds I needed to get us back into the studio, so all I could do was to encourage everybody to just shake it off. That was a lot easier said than done. But we had a huge show coming up in a few days, and so I tried my best to get everyone to just focus on what was right in front of us...the next gig. The best thing we could do...was to try to continue to be the best we could be...on stage.