Free Rock On by Dan Kennedy

announcements about how kids shouldn’t bring guns to school — which kind of seems like a given, but whatever. These little announcements will feature the band saying something to the extent of, “Hi, we’re the Donnas, if you hear about something or see something out of the ordinary” — namely, your peers toting assault rifles —
and we’re guessing that would strike you as out of the ordinary
— “let a teacher or your principal know. Check out our new album,
Spend the Night
! at a record store near you!” or something along those lines, and the world will be a better place. They’re really cool about it; their attitude is pretty much, “If it stops one kid fromdoing something horrible, then it’s worth it” type of thing. And I guess the label’s stance is more like, “If one person, plus five and a half million other people, hear this public service announcement, possibly prevent a tragedy, but more important, head to retail to buy your album, then it’s worth it. . . .”
    The in-house studio is basically two little rooms hidden behind a sort of James Bond blue vault door, and the door just looks like a part of the long, high-tech, space-age hallway here on floor twenty-eight until you realize there’s a little handle tucked away that turns part of the wall into a door. It’s crammed with racks of preamps, boards, monitors, and about seventy-five other high-tech flashing, blinking, slim, and impressive things that I have no idea how the engineer operates.
How much did this place cost
? is my first thought. The studio is used mostly for recording things that it seems you could just record on your laptop — like these public service announcements we’re doing today, or what they call “drops.” Drops are when you get an artist to say, “Hi, this is ARTIST NAME and when I’m in CITY , the only radio station I listen to is NAME OF STATION THAT LABEL HAS PERSUADED TO PLAY RECORD REGULARLY .”
    I’m standing in the first room of the studio, next to a leather designer couch that exceeds my station in life and a mixing console manned by today’s engineer. I hand each Donna the little scripts I wrote; there are a few different versions of each one. I’m a little nervous about the fact that they’re so attractive, although — and I’m sure unveiling the following ruse isn’t breaking news, but: no star looks quite as gorgeous or handsome in real life as the five or six-figure photographer’s version of what they look like. The first time I saw Jewel at the office it took me ten minutes to recognize her even withfour huge posters of her new album cover on the wall of the hallway we were both walking down. I was shuffling down the hall that day thinking, “Who’s this attractive blonde woman walking toward me? Think. She . . . looks . . . very . . . familiar, but I can’t quite . . . Connie, maybe? From accounts payable? Yes! That’s her. That’s who does the expense checks! Wait . . . is it?” And I kind of nodded hello as we passed in the hall and as soon as I was ten yards past my brain made a positive ID and I was thinking, “Wait just a minute. That was Jewel. But with pores. And a normal, human-sized waist.” Enough time, money, lighting, film, and Photoshop airbrushing, and you can make America fall in love with the oddly tiny, slightly hooked little toe on my left foot. Yep, give me the standard budget of one to three hundred grand for a shoot with the right photographer, stylist, and art director, and I’ll show you an unsightly little toe that gets e-mailed marriage proposals and has legions of gushing fans bringing that photo to plastic surgeons and hair stylists, saying, “I want to look like this.” Still, the Donnas are very attractive. I’ve walked into the studio from the control room to hand them their scripts, and am hoping