Intern Chick

When I got to work I started working on the same boring project I've been working on for the past month, which involves a lot of Adobe Photoshop and a lot of googling how to use Adobe Photoshop (and a lot of cursing).  After a few hours, Vin* e-mailed me a list of A&Rs grouped together by what record label they worked at, and asked me to figure out if they were based in New York and LA.  It sounds easy enough, except that all the listings of A&R's on the Internet are about a year old and in today's record industry, people hire and fire new staff as if it was just a matter of changing their shirt.  After a while, I started to feel like a stalker--trying to find out if these people were on Myspace or Facebook, and then wondering to myself..."I wonder if I could get their phone numbers...and then be able to tell from the area code."  

I was almost done with the list when the A&R strolled in.  Its been about two weeks since I've seen him, and from our conversations on the phone, it seemed as if he turned mean while he was away.  Or was just extremely nice that one day.  Either way, I was dreading him coming into the office, and when he came up to our floor, I didn't even turn around to face him.  But I was surprised when he came up to me and said:

A&R: "Intern Chick, right?"

Me:  "Yep, how are you?"

A&R:  "I'm good, how have you been?"

Me:  "Just fine, thanks"

A&R:  "I'm back, did you miss me?"

Wow, a "how are you" and a small joke from him, maybe this wouldn't be so bad.  About 10 minutes after he arrived, I received an e-mail with another list, this time of songwriters and producers (many of whom I have never heard of) and was asked to compile a final list with every songwriter and producer and their three biggest hits (the part about their three biggest hits was added after I compiled about 10 songs for the first 5 artists, what a waste of time).  This sounded way easier than the A&R list I was working on, and I jumped on working on it.  Then, around 4:00, I realized most of these producers were unknown and it was going to take some serious searching to find them.  That was fine except that at 4:30, Vin let me know that A&R guy needed this list by 6:00 to present to the big CEO.  Great.  I wasn't even halfway done at this point, and my computer kept freezing, not to mention that while I was typing with one hand, I was calling and making appointments for my other boss for my other job I wrote about yesterday.  Some producers I would spend about 20 minutes researching, and then he would stroll over and say, "Woops, you don't have to do him, he's one of my artists, so I know all his tracks.  Sorry about that!"  After the 3rd time, I couldn't even pretend to smile anymore.

I was done except for three people, and was fearing walking into his office and saying, "Hey, A&R, I'm sorry, I'm past that silly little deadline you set for me, and woops, some of these people are unable to be found!"  I just went in there and said it really fast, waiting for him to jump over the desk and bite my head off.  He was quiet, then he lifted his hand up high, and I winced as he slammed it down on the desk.  Then he smiled and said, "Its okay, just send me what you got."  He filled in the rest of the list and sent it back so I could print it out and give him the final copy.

Maybe he knows I've interned for a long time and that if I couldn't do it, it can't be done.  Maybe he saw the look of horror on my face as he slammed his fist down on that poor desk.  Who knows.  He was actually very kind to me today, but now I'm scared he'll turn mean again as soon as I least expect it, just like everyone in the music industry loves doing.

As tedious as the day was, it was nice to feel like a real intern again.  All the multitasking and the stress of completing a really hard project before the deadline made me remember why I love working in the music industry so much.  I live for that feeling when you slap down that project that was thought impossible on your boss' desk, and all that pressure and stress is instantly gone as soon as your boss mumbles a "yea, thanks," because secretly they thought you couldn't do it.