Chapter 33:
Crossover
“There’s
no place like the studio!” Justin said cheerfully, bouncing through the door
ahead of his four band mates. Today was the day they were to meet with the
Backstreet Boys to record their song together.
“Justin?”
Lance asked, rubbing his temples.
“Yo!”
“Just
how much sugar did you have before you came here?”
Justin
grinned at him and patted his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
Joey
appeared behind them, with a contemplative look on his face. “Hey Chris?” he
asked.
“What?”
“Do you
think if we watered that boy’s fro, it would grow? I mean seriously, he just
looks too much like a Chia Pet. I swear, he must be
like, some lab experiment gone wrong. Really, really wrong.”
“Oh,
and you’re volcanic head of hair is a fashion marvel, right” Justin retorted.
“At
least I don’t have to cut it with a hacksaw.”
“We
could change that,” Justin suggested.
“Not on
your life, poster boy.”
“Poster
boy?” Justin placed a hand over his heart. “I knew it. You are jealous of the
booty. I knew it. You want my body.” He put a sympathetic hand on an
incredulous Joey’s shoulder. “I hate to break it to you buddy, but not everyone
can be the very image of perfection. I hope this won’t change our friendship.”
Joey
glanced over at Chris, who nodded. Together they pounced on the youth, grabbing
his arms and feet and hoisting him up into the air. He started screeching in
protest.
“Guys?
Fellas? Holy shit, don’t you dare drop me. Lance! Cut it out, I’m not
kidding. Oh for- J.C.! Help me! What the hell did I ever do to you?”
At that
very moment, Brian and Nick walked through the door. Nick raised his eyebrow at
the scene before him. J.C. noticed their presence, and gingerly stepped around
the fighting trio to greet them.
“Don’t
mind them. Tour’s getting to them.” He cracked a grin. Brian smiled back at him
and offered his hand.
“It’s
been awhile. Good to see you J.C.”
“Same
to you. I’m glad we’re doing this.”
“Come
off it, J.C.,” Lance said with a groan. “You just love the studio. You don’t
care why you’re here, as long as you’re here.” He offered his hand to Brian and
Nick, who both shook it.
Kevin
showed up a moment later with Howie and A.J. in tow. The latter two looked deep
in conversation about something that, judging by the pained look on Kevin’s
face, was very, very trivial. By that time, J.C. and Lance had managed to
separate the other three, and hellos were said all around.
“Well,
we’ve got today and tomorrow to do this if we need it,” Lance said once they
got down to business. “So there’s no need to rush this. We’ll keep at it until
we’re satisfied.”
“Great,”
Brian said.
“I’ve
come up with a few ideas if y’all want to hear them,” J.C. spoke up.
“Why
does that not surprise me,” Justin said with a grin.
“Let’s
hear what you’ve come up with,” Kevin said.
“Well,
I’ve been listening to your stuff a lot, trying to get a really good feel for
your voices and what might work best with this song.”
“We
have kinda agreed that all of us want to sing lead at one point at least during
the song,” Brian said quickly. We want this to be a unifying thing for us.”
“Yeah,
I kind of figured you’d want something like that when we started talking about
it a little bit. This is actually a very nice song to incorporate all of us.”
Lance
and Joey both snorted.
“I’m
not gonna say anything. Are you, Lance?” Joey said, looking innocent.
“Nope
not a thing,” Lance replied.
J.C.
shot them a dirty look.
“What?”
they both exclaimed. “We’re not complaining,” Joey continued. “I for
If J.C.
had had something to throw at their grinning faces he would have. He
contemplated hurling Justin, but it was too far to reach. “Well, I think that
as far as the verses go, whatever we keep for lead, we won’t change.”
“Toldja,” Joey said mischievously. He and Lance high-fived.
“Useless!” they shouted in unison.
J.C.
shot them a killer look. “You are not useless,” he said flatly.
“We
know,” Joey said fiendishly. “But you should see the look on your face right
now man. It’s classic J.C., and we just seem to find this perverted pleasure in
seeing how many ways we can get it out of you.”
“Dude,
Joe. If looks could kill,” Lance said solemnly. “You and I would be under a
whole garden of daisies. We need a camera. It’s the best one yet!”
J.C.
chose to ignore them. Chris and Justin seemed to think it was funny as hell.
They
began discussing how they wanted the harmonies to work, and after a brief warm
up they began to tinker with their voices, deciding what worked and what
didn’t. All were surprised at just how well the song seemed to fit them. Brian
was ecstatic, although not surprised, to discover that ‘NSYNC’s
work ethic was as strong as their own. They weren’t satisfied until it was
perfect. If at all possible, J.C. was even more of a perfectionist than Kevin.
“Justin,
you’re flat,” J.C. said.
“I am
not,” he said indignantly.
J.C.
responded by playing back what he had just sung.
“Ooooh, ouch!” Joey snickered. “Slam! You weren’t just flat,
you were…”
“Okay,
shut up,” Justin said.
J.C.
smirked. “What do you have to say now, JuJu?”
“That’s
it. Screw you guys. Chris, I’m switching groups. I’m now a Backstreet Boy.”
“I
dunno man,” Nick said cautiously. “If you’re a Backstreet Boy that means you
gotta accept Kevin as your almighty High Commander and kiss his feet and stroke
his ego. It’s the price we pay, anyway.”
“Whoa,”
Lance said. “J.C., Kevin just outdid your ‘Eat-Shit-And-Die-Face!”
“You’re
slipping man!” Chris hooted.
“Kiss
his feet, ‘eh?” Justin mused, considering his options.
“He
doesn’t make me do that,” Brian said innocently.
“Me
neither,” Howie agreed.
“Don’t
look at me,” A.J. said with a shrug. “Methinks it’s just you, Kaos.”
“And
you ain’t seen nuthin yet,” Kevin said with a look of
pure evil.
They
broke into laughter.
“All
right y’all, let’s do it again,” J.C. said once they had calmed down. Justin
sang his lyric a few more times until everyone was satisfied. Then they moved
on to part of the chorus.
“I’m
not so sure about that one,” A.J. said, his brow furrowed. “The sound isn’t
quite right. Howie, you take it. See what you can do with it.”
Howie
obliged with the lyric, and J.C. clapped his hands.
“That’s
it. Good, let’s go with that. I like it.”
“Okay,
let’s try it again,” Justin said. “From the chorus.”
“We’re
missing something. Joey, you and Nick try that section there together. Let’s
see what it sounds like,” J.C. said. He and the others listened carefully, and
had them try the lyric in question several different ways. After playing it
back a few times, a broad grin broke out over J.C.’s
face. “This is going to be really good,” he said with a chuckle. “Really good.”
During
a break for lunch, Joey found himself sitting beside Nick, watching the blonde
youth pack away the food. He thought for a moment about whether or not to ask
the question that had been tugging at the back of his mind, and then decided
the hell with it.
“So
Nick, was it true about replacing your knee cap?” he asked suddenly.
“Yup,”
he said with a nod, as he shoved another bite of food in his mouth. “I
completely shattered it. They said the surgery to clean it all up took
forever.”
“Wow.
And the new one it works just as well?”
“Well,
I’m still in therapy to get my range of motion back up to what it was. I’m
almost there, but the dance practices we’ve done have been murder. There is so
much I have to do to be able to keep up and make sure that I take care of it.
It’s a pain in the ass, but soon I shouldn’t notice a difference. At least
that’s what they say. God, it’s hard work.”
Joey
nodded slowly. “That would freak me out, having to have something like that
done.”
“Oh, it
did.”
“So
what exactly did they do?”
Nick
began to tell him about the process that had gone into repairing the damage
done to his knee. He pulled his foot up to his chair and pointed to a few
things, and used his hands to demonstrate what he was describing. Brian watched
him from another table, and was delighted to see how freely he spoke about it.
He had come such a long way since that day in the clinic when he had finally
confessed his fears. Brian was proud of him.
Following
another recording session, the ten of them took a quick break. Chris and Howie
were about to wander off when some familiar music played over the speakers
followed by a voice that neither of them was suspecting.
“I’m
doing this tonight, you’re probably gonna start a fight
I
know this can’t be right hey baby come on.
I
loved you endlessly, then you weren’t there for me,
So
now it’s time to leave and make it alone.”
Justin’s
voice picked up where A.J. left off.
“I
know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie
I
wanna see you out that door baby bye bye bye.”
As the
others listened in disbelief, the two sang the entire song.
“Oh
boy. Curly’s at it again,” Chris said with a burst of
laughter. Howie groaned.
“I
think this is going to be a long day, don’t you?”
At the
end of the day, the song was just about done, and only a few finishing touches
needed to be taken care of the next day.
“Hey
Brian,” J.C. said thoughtfully. “Have y’all done any more work on that demo you
sent to Lance?”
“Yeah,”
Brian answered, suddenly excited. “We’ve done a lot of work on it. We’re gonna
lay it down next week.”
“Do you
want to perform it during the ABC thing?”
“We
would love to,” Brian declared.
“Cool.
Would you mind a quick performance right now? We’d like to hear it.”
“Fellas?”
Brian asked, looking around him.
A.J.
nodded, looking pleased. “Sure thing. We’ve got it down.”
“I
don’t mind,” Howie said with a smile. “Not at all.” Nick nodded in agreement.
“Kevin?”
Brian asked hopefully. “This okay with you?”
He
looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then he shrugged. “Why not?”
The
five of them stood together in a half circle. “Ready?” Brian asked.
“Take
it away, B-Rok,” A.J. replied.
Brian
began to sing, and they performed the song a capella. They didn’t miss a beat.
When they finished, the other band was quiet for a moment.
“Wow,”
Justin said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah,”
J.C. echoed. “Wow.”
“I hope
you don’t mind me saying, but I do believe that is your best yet,” Lance
informed them.
The
five of them grinned. “Thank you. Whew,” Kevin said with a nervous laugh. “You
have no idea how worried we are about this comeback.”
“You
shouldn’t be,” Chris said. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Thank
you guys,” Brian said. “I mean it. Thank you.”
They
called it a day in the studio after that.
“Anybody
need to unwind?” Nick asked as they gathered their things.
“What
did you have in mind, Kaos?” Howie asked.
“There’s
a basketball court real close to here.”
“Hell
yeah!” Brian yelped, jumping to his feet. “I need to play me some b-ball.”
Four
out of five ‘NSYNC members groaned loudly. The fifth looked miffed.
“What
was that for?” Justin said, exasperated.
“We are
really in trouble now,” Chris said. You said the ‘B’ word around Justin. Big,
big mistake.”
“You’re
just mad ‘cause I can toast you,” he said smugly.
“Not a
chance, brother. We’ve had this argument before.”
“I
don’t know about y’all,” Nick interjected. “But B-Rok here didn’t get his
nickname for nuthin.”
“Oh
ya?” Justin said, standing toe to toe with Nick. “You are ON.”
In
record time, the ten of them gathered on the court, and prepared to pick teams.
“Ok,
how are we gonna do this?”
“Nick
and Brian play the best out of us. They are monsters out on that court,” Kevin
informed them.
“Justin’s
the best we got,” Joey said.
“Please
don’t feed his ego,” J.C. muttered.
“Then
whichever two wind up on the same team gets Lance too. That should even things
up,” Chris said.
“Hey!”
Lance yelled, smacking him upside the head. “That was uncalled for.”
After
some friendly bickering, the teams were picked, and they got around to playing
a game. The rush that Brian got from it was one he hadn’t had in awhile. He was
very aware of what a gift it was to be able to play at all anymore. None of
them were as slick as they had been before the accident, but they were close to
it. It was a refreshing feeling, and seeing Nick running around with his huge
grin slathered all over his face made him want to laugh out loud.
When
they finally departed, all of them were happy, but exhausted. A.J. noted it was
the greatest feeling he’d had in a long time, and the other four agreed with
him.
***
