Cris Isaak Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Cris Isaak - move ExampleAfter three albums that didnt sell, his career was going nowhere fast. Then a movie gave in the buff life to his single, Wicked Game, and suddenly he was on his way to the big time. Welcome to the club. Bruce Springsteen was calling for tickets. So was Madonna. And Sean Penn. And Sylvester Stallone. And Laura Dern. And Rickie Lee Jones. And Mickey Rourke. And some of the cast from Twin Peaks. They all wanted to see one of the closely compelling rock & roll acts to hit the Top Ten in years Chris Isaak. Bruce called about tickets? says Isaak, each inch the Fifties-style rocker in his tight black jeans, pointed shoes, white T-shirt and brown leather motorbike jacket, as he looks up from his plate of noodles at a cheap Thai restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. In a few hours he will headline a sold-out portray at the Wiltern Theater, in Hollywood. Adopting the voice of a rube, Isaak, who grew up in Stockton, California, drawls They gonna give em free tickets? Th ey git in for free? Hes grinning now. Come on, Bruce, he says. You sittin on a big ol pile uh loot. Git up off it ... Fingering a wooden tiki head that hangs around his neck for good luck, he says louver years from now, it could be like Oh, man, him Plays a guitar. Everybody else has got keyboards, hes til now got guitars. Or in ten years Oh, those guys still actually try to sing. Its boring. They sing. You never know. Isaak adjusts a pair of wraparound shades that look like something Jean-Paul Belmondo wore in the Jean-Luc Godard chaste Breathless. As if he were quoting from some official music-business rule book, he says, Usually, right after you make it, you endure count about seven years until people go, How totally square. The ship has sailed, one Warner Bros. executive told Isaaks manager-producer, Erik Jacobsen, in the summer of 1989. The ship has already sailed. The meaning of those words couldnt behave been clearer. Heart Shaped World, Isaaks third album, was deadene d the company had no interest in spending another dime promoting it. Jacobsen contends there was never practically enthusiasm at Warners for Heart Shaped World. Executives from the company had flown up to San Francisco to hear it that spring. Not a affirmative word was spoken, he says about the awkward playback session. It was just the most deadly reaction that I have ever seen to anything in my life. As for getting it on the radio, all they said was Tough, very tough, extremely tough. For Isaak, those were unrelenting days. Although he was loved by the media when his debut album, Silvertone, was released in 1985, his songs didnt get on the radio and his videos never make it onto MTV in any kind of meaningful rotation. No less an authority on authentic American rock & roll than John Fogerty described Isaak as being like a skyscraper against the