And There She Was

And There She was
Chapter 1
The room was silent.
No one dared say a word, not after what they had just
witnessed.
All that work. All that time. Sweat. Brain storming.
Genius. All the sleepless nights, the time away from
spouses, the time away from kids, family. For what? A
jumbled, tinny, cheap sounding mess.
The man who had been sitting on the floor, face in his
hands for the better part of the presentation, was now
slowly rising up out of his half-lotus position. He looked
as if he may burst into tears at any moment. All the
nervous anticipation, excitement and relief of finally
getting to experience what he KNEW was a
masterpiece, had dissolved into a broken heart.
Frustration. Confusion. The man stood up, said not a
word, and with slumped shoulders and a depressed
shuffle, slowly made his way out of the now suffocating
room that once held all that hope.
“Mike, we’ll fix this,” a voice said.
He didn’t answer, as the door quietly shut behind his
long, lean frame.
Bruce Swedien, an older man with a wise visage and
shiny eyes, looked at his producing partner Quincy
Jones and sighed deeply.

“I don’t want to say I told you so…but. I told you so. You
put that many minutes of material on a vinyl record, the
grooves get too close and the sound quality is reduced.
I’ve been doing this too long. I told you we had too much
track. Nobody wanted to listen. Now look.” His rant
started off calm enough, though the more he spoke the
more his voice showed his frustration. He couldn’t help
it. Michael was the artist, Quincy was the conductor, but
he was the engineer. The scientist. He couldn’t sing his
ass off like the kid, and couldn’t put together a string
section like Quincy, but by God, when it came to the
mechanics of a record, there was no one better! And
they didn’t listen to him!
Quincy wasn’t in the mood to argue, especially when he
knew that Bruce was 100% right. “Alright guys, it is what
it is. We gotta fix it. Look, what we...