Prime Time Wishes And American Dreams

Primetime wishes - Undefined Section

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/ne...

College Publisher Network Join the College Publisher Network Advertise Across the Network View Network Affiliates

Music Jobs Top National College News Money

Home > Undefined Section

Primetime wishes She's an up-and-coming starlet seeking more exposure for her talent. He's a fast-talking manager wanting the fortune that comes from his client's success. Together, they are trying to negotiate the low-stakes world of Chicago entertainment Patrick Michels Issue date: 10/11/02 Section: Undefined Section Component 1 -----------------------------------------------------------------Coming at Joanna as she leaves the audition room, somewhere between the camera lights flashing in her face and the lenses that capture her blinking eyes for network TV, is Ken Robinson. Just ahead of the crowd and ready with advice, he throws his arm around her, telling her not to get discouraged. He can read the judges' decision in her eyes. Just seconds before, Joanna was up in front of Paula Abdul -- a legend in this business not too long ago -with a shot at fame, national television and California. So Joanna sang, barely making it through the chorus of "What a Feeling" from the movie "Flashdance," before Abdul cut her off. She sent Joanna packing, said, "You're a 'no' for Hollywood" and offered no explanation of what that meant. Joanna's nervous giddiness disappeared, and she walked straight out of the room. Ken won't let Joanna leave the lobby of this Chicago hotel just yet, though, because the "American Idol" audition is only one piece of this equation. Outside the Paula Abdul room, Ken has been meeting other managers, chitchatting with producers, and showing off his alligator-skin boots and his high-collared, houndstooth-print shirt with miniscule pinup girls

1 of 6

8/11/08 9:22 AM

Primetime wishes - Undefined Section

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/ne...

on each button. Out here is where the handshakes happen, where the real business gets started, so when he spots Joanna about to shove past the cameras and make for the revolving door, he gives the reins a tug. "Sing for them," he says, and Joanna, 24 years old and only a few years removed from writing music to go with her high school poetry, obeys. She sings, just as she did in her audition moments ago, but this time the collective "Wow" hangs in the air long after the crowd has finished congratulating her. The same song that drew a rejection from the network judges has earned her five more auditions and a modeling interview. It took a little coaxing from Ken, but this, of course, is what Joanna lives for. BIRDS AND BEASTS What follows is the story of an oxpecker bird and a rhinoceros. Somewhere in Africa right now, one of these yellow-billed songbirds is perched high on the back of a rhino, and as they lumber across the savannah together, each is thankful to have the other around. The oxpecker gobbles up the little ticks and insect eggs it finds along the enormous hide. The rhinoceros stays healthy, and the bird stays well-fed. At its best, the manager-artist relationship operates on the same dynamic: mutualism. The manager watches out for his client, keeps trouble away and, as a reward, takes a fraction of what the artist accumulates. What develops is a deeply personal business relationship, almost as much about trust as about money. The artist needs the manager, and the manager needs the artist, and though they can piggyback their way into the glowing spotlight together, they can just as quickly turn brutally against each other. "They want the fame," says another manager, Johnny "Smoke" Robinson, "but me personally, I just want the fortune." Joanna and Ken met eight months ago, and already such a symbiotic relationship has taken shape. Between these two, no money is involved yet. He doesn't have her under contract, but this is clearly not a friendship because every day, both wonder whether they would be better off without the other. Ken cares how Joanna is feeling, and Joanna hopes business is going great for Ken, but only because a good day for one is a good day for the other. CAN'T TOUCH THIS "I feel pretty good for a Monday," Ken tells me as we walk down the steps of his apartment building in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood. It's no great mystery why. He is the noisiest of all songbirds, a professional talker, and I have spent the past few hours asking him to tell the world what Ken Robinson has done with his 36 years on the planet. He rambles freely, moving from one topic to the next, completely at ease as he revisits his childhood and his early career, drumming his fingers against his freshly shaven head and stroking his close-cropped goatee. A black man, dressed in all black -- coat, jeans, leather boots and scarf -- he takes his time across Dearborn Street, interrupting himself to shout hellos at the neighbors he recognizes, and I wonder if he ever just forgets to breathe. Of course I know how to get to the El station. I had walked from the train to his apartment building earlier this morning -- but Ken insists on walking with me, making sure I get there safely. From the first time we spoke, he has also insisted on finding me a job. "I'll pull some strings over (at the Chicago Tribune), see if we can't do something for you," he promises. More than once during our interview, he compliments my professional mannerism and my posture, and I realize that as much as I throw the spotlight in Ken's face, he's judging me right back. This is Ken's nature, though, always looking to take young idealists under his wing and help them get started, because he knows they will remember who did them the favors early on. Wherever he goes, he keeps one eye out for business possibilities. "I live my job," he says, "and my job lives me." So man and business are inseparable. Born in Tampa, Fla., Ken earned a marketing and management degree from Tulane University in 1988 and worked his way through college with one of the greatest tests of a man's persuasive powers imaginable: selling subscriptions over the phone for USA Today. In 1990, Ken broke into the entertainment business as one of M.C. Hammer's back-up dancers after meeting the hip-hop icon backstage at a show. He spent the next two years touring the country until he decided to settle down, though he still had the itch to work in the music business. "Once you're behind-stage, or even onstage, you'll never want to go to a concert again and sit in the

2 of 6

8/11/08 9:22 AM

Primetime wishes - Undefined Section

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/ne...

audience," he says. "You're like, 'Aw hell no, this is boring.'" He broke into the management side -- the "back end," he calls it -- 10 years ago with a small music festival he produced himself and moved into talent management shortly after. Since 1992, he has worked with 50 artists, half of whom he represents right now. JEWEL IN THE ROUGH Joanna Szczesny (pronounced 'Sez-nee'), the blonde, remarkably beautiful immigrant daughter of a divorced couple of drunk Polish parents, is doing her best to lose her last name. Around Chicago and suburban karaoke bars, on her Web site and across the audition circuit, she is Joanna S., or just Joanna. Who can she expect to remember a name like Szczesny? Joanna was 11 years old and malnourished when she crossed the Atlantic on Jan. 27, 1989. With her older brother, she left her parents behind and came to live with her stepmother in Skokie. She hasn't been back since. Still, her dream of singing professionally and being on television, and her feeling that she has something to prove, trace their roots right back to her mother. "She could have made it, but she ruined it for herself," Joanna says. "She just decided to get married instead." She just moved into her own apartment and has been working as a dental hygienist since October 2001 to pay the bills. "Of course we all have our dreams, but we have to think of plan B," Joanna says. And while she does have a stable day job, now she also has a stable night job, as a karaoke jockey in two Chicago bars, where she not only has steady work but also the chance to sing her own songs when the crowd hits a lull. Joanna began writing her own lyrics as poetry in high school and then gradually began setting them to music. She has made a demo album of her own music, which she says draws heavily from artists like Mariah Carey and Jewel, with a folk-pop crossover sound. Mostly, though, Joanna has been singing at karaoke bars lately. "I don't want to sing other people's songs," she says, yet she keeps returning to the karaoke bars for the prizes -- she just won a karaoke machine of her own, with a 7-inch screen -- and the exposure. Thanks to one such winning performance, Joanna was asked to appear on a cable karaoke show called "Glamour Productions," on a public access channel somewhere in the mid-60s on the dial. STARLET SEARCH Ken Robinson gave up late-night parties years ago. "Nothing good is out there after two in the morning. It's just ugly," he says, which is why he's asleep by 9 each night. At 6 in the morning he begins his rigorous television-watching regimen, and with a new day comes a new divot to dig into his sofa cushions. MTV, BET, VH1 -- watching these is market research for Ken. But in the evenings, after a few hours of quality time with his cell phone, he flips into scouting mode and sends his remote into the mid-60s, where public access television lives. This is where Ken found Joanna in February, and he liked what he saw. Ken called up the television station, then the producer of "Glamour Productions," and finally got through to Joanna, who agreed to meet with Ken about working together. The Fox audition with Paula Abdul was the first audition Ken found for Joanna, so he was on the spot outside the judging rooms, trying to prove his help was worthwhile. "I couldn't do all the talking," Joanna admits, "so it was good to have him there." Two more of Ken's artists were auditioning at the same time, both of whom Abdul and the Fox judges invited back for a second round of callbacks, but Ken spent the bulk of his time with Joanna. "I try to check up on (my artists)," Ken says. "If they're stressed out, it's going to affect our relationship. You keep that rapport with your people, you're okay." Still, Joanna is very vocal about the fact that Ken has yet to accomplish anything for her that she couldn't have done on her own. Even after just a few years in the business, she has developed a healthy skepticism toward managers who are out to eat her alive, or even toward those who simply lack the influence to be of any help to her.

3 of 6

8/11/08 9:22 AM

Primetime wishes - Undefined Section

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/ne...

"I don't think he's as big as he claims to be," Joanna says of Ken. "I told him I've busted enough balls in this business to be able to tell. So he might just be another 'ball,' or he might not." After the auditions, Ken and Joanna spent a while talking about the audition at his apartment, a point that he proudly chalks up to his commitment to each of his artists. But while Joanna is glad Ken was at the auditions to help her with meeting people and talking to producers, she was less interested in spending time with him afterward. "I don't want him hanging out with me," she says. "He doesn't know where I live." WHAT IT TAKES I knew before we had spoken at length that Ken makes his living by talking, but I am nevertheless astounded by the dexterity with which he wraps the English language around his fingertips at will, weaving a vast and elaborate tapestry of grandfatherly wisdom, quasi-celebrity name-dropping and some of the most mind-numbingly irrelevant trains of thought ever let loose on this planet. For the past few hours I have had the privilege of hearing a master at work. Ken Robinson's tongue is his brush, the rippling sound waves in the air his paint and the ears of all humanity his canvas. Ken Robinson on the cutthroat side of his business: "Competition, man, it's just like you got a Johnson & Johnson product and you got another product over here, you know, you got Clorox Bleach and you got Johnson & Johnson and you got a generic product over here. Which one you want? Which one you gonna buy? It's a nasty business. It's lucrative, but it's nasty." Like the African oxpecker, the one on the rhino's back, Ken spends his day in song, sermonizing as if were being paid by the word, persuading distributors to work with his artists, organizing concerts. Ken makes his living making entertainment, and every now and then, when things work out really well, he will bring one of his artists closer to her dreams. "My favorite thing is --" Ken blurts out before quickly starting again. "The greatest gift to me is to see somebody going down that right narrow path that I've shown the right way -they going that way. Deviate if you will, but at least I've shown you where to go." And there are indeed many artists who deviate. Drugs, of course, take the largest toll even on the smaller artists, because they record one song and suddenly they're handed one lumpy paycheck and all sorts of free time to spend it on. Tom Hayes Jr. of Krunchtime Productions, Inc., a Chicago-based event planning and management firm, knows all about squandered potential, now that he's spending his free time finding work in the business for all his old friends who gave in completely to drugs years ago. "You see a lot of them that had it all and lost it all," he says. "I admired them, and now they've hit rock bottom." The manager's job is far from over, then, once he discovers a talented young dancer at a little neighborhood festival. In the wild landscape of the entertainment business, the managers are on their artists for the long haul. Even if some artists, like Joanna, are hesitant to take their help, most managers take great interest in their artists' well being. "A lot of these people get involved, and they living the life like it's something to be played with," Ken says. Johnny "Smoke" Robinson has operated Infinite Sounds Recording Lab in Skokie for the past four years but branched out into artist management just a month ago. Robinson, along with one or two of his studio staff members, regularly visits local middle school and high school career days to tell students that the entertainment business isn't the kind of elite society it is often portrayed as. He stresses the importance of staying focused. "Everybody wants to be a star," he says, "so I always get a great response." Ken agrees, "It's not as hard as people think to get into the business. Staying in it, yeah. But getting in it's not that hard." With the revolving door of the entertainment industry spinning so fast, and with long-term success so elusive, young singers are constantly looking for opportunities to fall into favor with the industry's higher ranks.

4 of 6

8/11/08 9:22 AM

Primetime wishes - Undefined Section

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/ne...

"There's a lot of people in this world," Joanna says. "It's not the best that make it, it's the people who want it the most." And by "want it the most," Joanna really means the ones who will sleep with managers, producers and anybody else with the power they need. She has seen first-hand that many talent agents are all too happy to take advantage of their power and trade management and auditions for sex. Not long ago, Joanna was considering an exclusive seven-year contract with one manager, who had spent months assembling a singing group called "Epiphany." The manager had been hosting the band's rehearsals in his basement for two months when he took Joanna aside. The 30-something man, with a wife and two children living upstairs, told her he loved her, was in love with her and wanted to make her the group's lead vocalist. When Joanna told him off and said she wasn't interested, he stopped calling her for rehearsals. The contract fell through, of course. Joanna will never be sure how Epiphany might have performed, but she is unapologetic. "If I wanted to make it that bad, I'd be there by now," she says. Ken recognizes that many managers are only out to serve their own interests and "don't even care crap" about their artists' careers. That is why he believes it is even more important for him to work hard and earn his artists' trust early, to show them he wants them to succeed. "It's extremely hard for women," Ken says with great importance, "because of the fact that they're women, and that's just the way it is. It's hard for women, because the first thing a man sees: 'Oh, this is a woman.' So it's really hard for them. A lot of women get exploited." GOLDEN TONGUE, GOLDEN FUTURE? Ken Robinson tells his artists not to hang around in karaoke bars. Joanna regularly works in two of them, though, and is unfazed by his warnings that they will hold her back. She may very well succeed without Ken and has started singing with a local group called How You Prefer Entertainment, or HYPE for short, after an audition she was offered outside the "American Idol" tryouts. Ken has her slated to work a Polish-American pageant this month, though, and says he plans to keep her around for a while. They will stay together as long as they both need each other, or at least as long as Ken sees the potential to make money off Joanna's success, and as long as Joanna feels that she needs Ken's know-how -- and his voice. Ken continues to polish his golden tongue now, working with Carl King -- Don King's son -- on a weekly event that is half boxing and half music. He's also working out a record deal with Russell Simmons, a fairly prominent New York music and clothing entrepreneur. He is still managing more than two dozen young artists' business and personal interests, and he might just pick up and fly to Florida, or to Vegas, if he decides he doesn't like the way Chicago tastes. He is a busy enough man, picking a living from so many different places. But the management business has taken him on one hell of a ride. "The best is really yet to come," Ken predicts, then continues with his trademark mix of profundity and nonsense, "Who knows where I'll be next month? And when I say next month, I mean like next year." nyou

Page 1 of 1 Article Tools Sha re :

Facebook Blogger del.icio.us digg newsvine

5 of 6

8/11/08 9:22 AM

Primetime wishes - Undefined Section

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/ne...

Subscribe:

My Yahoo! Google Send a letter to the editor National College Advertising and Marketing | Privacy Policy (8/15/07) | Terms of Use (4/28/08) Content Submission Agreement (8/23/07) | Copyright Compliance Policy (8/25/07) | RSS Terms of Use Front Page PDF

College Publisher powered by mtvU and MTV Networks

6 of 6

8/11/08 9:22 AM