Do they mention this John Vanderslice story? This encapsulates everything I ever imagined about Stephan Jenkins:Semi Charmed Life was just hilarious. I mean, out and out gut bustingly hilarious. If you spent an entire day just listening to that episode on a loop, life could be worse.
So he comes in, and he takes a chair. I will never forget this. This was like one of the golden moments of Tiny Telephone recording: He takes a folding chair and then flips it around backward and then puts it uncomfortably close to me, considering we’re in a large room, and sits face-to-face with me, sitting backward in a chair. And he says, “Okay, what are we going to do about this rate? We’ve got to get this rate down.”
Now, Tiny Telephone is known to be one of the cheapest studios in the country. We are so under market that we shouldn’t have even allowed a major-label band in there. You know what I mean? It was like a subsidy to them. I think he imagined that I would have been flustered. He was doing like 101 intimidating negotiating tactics or whatever that he Googled the night before. I don’t know what he was doing. And so I said, “Honestly, we’re sold out every day, and I really think there’s a disincentive to me to book six weeks for you because I’m going to push out my normal clients,” etc. He didn’t respond to anything. I also said, “Hey, we’re way under market,” gave him all these reasons. He didn’t respond to anything I said. He stood up with his helmet, and he started pacing the live room. All the other crew, they know just to be quiet because this is his mode of whatever douchebaggery. I don’t know. He paces the studio, and then he just blurts out, “Okay, let’s do it.” Then he walks out of the door, fires up his motorcycle, and leaves.
Now the punchline is that I never saw him again, ever. They rented the studio, and they were there for a really long time, and I never saw him in there. Now, maybe he was there one day or one night on an off-hour, but I never saw him again, and I’m at the studio all the time.