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Linda Jacobson: her story continues

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Sparky:
So the "CJDL Story" now switches from Dianne over to Linda.

There was a short "Linda story" a bit ago, not quite sure which storyverse that happened in. It might have been this one, either sometime between the past and now, or maybe it's in the future, I'm not sure. It was a very short relationship with a guy that Linda had met at the supermarket, so doesn't have a major effect on this story..

So, the four members of CJDL are all now braced: they just got their ligs changed, and are currently sporting some bright neon-blue ones. The girls are working hard on songs for the new album, and Linda's story will follow them whilst recording the new album, plus working with Northern Girls, preparing for their big European tour.

The first thing the new story will be covering will be their copyright issue with Fiona Lewis... if you remember, Dianne 'stole' several lines of lyrics for Fiona's song, and as well as simply recompensing her, have suggested some 'joint ventures' to boost Fiona's singing career.

Sparky:
Chapter 1


The original plan had been to postpone their TV appearance until after they had finished recording their new album, but that wasn't to be: a major weekend talkshow had approached them. Knowing that they would be getting busy with tour preparations, they wanted to make sure to get them on the show before that. As a result, the day before the show, Brian and Stuart, the two managers, had put out a joint press release, which many of the paparazzi had found odd, as normally the four girls would have held a full press conference for such things. The press release did, of course, highlight that the full story would be revealed 'within 48 hours'.

So, tonight, there were 7 of them waiting in the green room: Brian and Stuart, the two managers, Carol, Jenny, Dianne and Linda, along with Fiona. Grayson Malton - the talkshow host - had been told the back-story for the copyright issue, and prior to the rehearsal they had explained to Grayson that getting Fiona onto the show, to give her some exposure, was part of their 'copyright payment'... but that was not to be made public knowledge.

----

"So, did you see the news yesterday? It seems that the girls from CJDL have been a bit naughty, and apparently 'stolen' some words from a song by Fiona Lewis. Oooh, bad girls! You shouldn't steal! So we thought we should find out the REAL story about what happened... would you welcome to the show: Carol, Jenny, Dianne and Linda, the four members of CJDL". The girls were all suitably dressed up for TV, and bounced onto the set, joining the 2 other guests already on the settee.

Of course, they smiled widely!

"Oh my goodness, I'm being blinded" said Grayson, jokingly holding his hand up to stop the 'glare' from the girl's braces. "I mean, all FOUR of you have braces, and they are all shiny and blue too! Now, I remember Jenny getting braces last year, but now you ALL have them! What *IS* going on there?"

"It's called 'providing support for a girl in need'!" replied Linda

"Pardon?"

"Well, Dianne here had a problem: she had braces when she was at school, and ended up with lovely teeth. But her nasty wisdom teeth came along, and started to make her teeth all crooked again. But she was embarrassed about getting braces again, as an adult." explained Carol.

"So, it was no biggie for Jenny to have braces, but it was for Dianne. Ok, go on...."

"So I was having some minor treatment already, and was wearing retainers, so Linda and I suggested that we would get braces to support her..." continued Carol.

"So you and Linda don't actually NEED braces?"

"Actually, I DO need braces" replied Linda. "I have a minor issue which I had decided not to bother doing anything about, but when a band-buddy needs support...."

"So, I guess I'm the only one who doesn't ACTUALLY need these sort of braces." said Carol. "But you have to admit, the matching braces do look good, don't they?"

"I guess so. So there's going to be four of you onstage in braces when you go on tour?"

"No, there will be eight of us! All the four girls in Northern Girls have braces too... same reasoning..."

"Now THAT is going to be a sight to behold!" There was a little laughter from the audience. "Anyway, you were in the news yesterday, for being naughty girls?"

Dianne raised her hand. "Entirely my fault, I can not tell a lie!"

"Oh, ok... so what happened?"

"Well, Jenny had come up with a nice song melody, and asked me to write some words for the song. So I remember relaxing, trying to think up some words. I had already written the first verse when these words came into my head... I mean, they just fitted the song perfectly, they sounded so right. We called the song 'Get Working'... we recorded it as part of our album, and the record company decided to release it as a single."

"And it's your current single that was at number one just a couple of weeks ago!" said Grayson, to applause from the audience.

"Yeah, if you're gonna screw up, you might as well do it with a number 1 hit! Who wants to mess around with anything less?"

"So you had no idea that you had used someone else's words?"

"We always check the lyrics of anything we write" explained Jenny, "there's a couple of big online database with all the song lyrics in. Except it seems that it's NOT quite all: Fiona Lewis' 'Escape the City' wasn't in it. To some extent I can understand that, it was never actually released as a single. But that's still no excuse for what happened. You know how I feel about music copyright."

"Yes, I remember you came on the show some time ago, when someone had used some of your music: it's so refreshing to hear someone being so honest about a mistake..."

"Oh, you should have seen Dianne's face when we found out" said Linda, "she was absolutely gutted!"

"I can imagine. So how DID you find out?"

"We received a letter from Fiona's solicitor, pointing out 'the error of our ways'..." replied Dianne.

"Well, let me just pause you there, and bring on our next guest, it's Fiona Lewis!"

Fiona came out, and the girls made a gap for her in the middle of the four of them, making it very clear that there was no animosity between them.

"Hello Fiona, nice to see you again! So, these ladies 'stole' some of the words from your song. I'm assuming you heard their song, and recognised your words, and took action?"

"To be honest, it wasn't me, it was my manager who had organised the solicitor's letter. The first that I knew about it was when Linda called me."

"Linda called you? She just 'happened to have' your personal phone number?" A few of the audience laughed.

"Oh, Linda and I know each other. Before she joined CJDL, she was a session musician, and she came on a short tour with me. We shared a few meals... and a few drinks too!" Another laugh.

"Ok, so Linda called you. What did she say?"

"Well, after exchanging pleasantries, she passed the phone over to Dianne, and the first thing Dianne did was apologise for what she had done. To be honest, I knew nothing about it at the time, so guessed my manager had done something. But hey, you hear stories about solicitors talking to solicitors, and managers talking to managers when these things happen. But not these girls, they skipped all that, and called me directly!"

"And what then?"

"Well, in a matter of a few sentences, it was clear to me that they wanted to 'put things right'. They could have just offered to give me what was due to me, but they felt they could do more than that... Maybe one of the girls can explain?"

Grayson looked at the girls. "Well" said Jenny, "in this game, money isn't everything. And I had a few instant ideas of things we could do to repay Fiona. So, we invited her and her manager over, and had a chat. And, of course, being musicians, we also went and played music together..."

"So I'm assuming that was a few days later?"

"No, we invited them over the same afternoon. I mean, why waste time?"

"So, am I allowed to ask what sort of an agreement you have reached?"

"Well, whilst much of the detail is clearly confidential..." explained Jenny, "we have acknowledged Fiona as co-writer on the song, and will be paying her suitable copyright fees. But we have also asked Fiona to come and be a guest at some of the performances on our upcoming tour. And you never know what else might happen!"

"That definitely sounds 'above and beyond'. So, Fiona, are you looking forward to joining these girls on stage?"

"Oh, yeah! When I visited them, I quickly discovered not only how much they enjoyed music, but that they are not your normal 'girl band'. They enjoy having fun, and I'm all for that. It's actually been a while since I've played live on stage, plus I've never performed at the O2, so that's going to be quite an experience for me!"

"The O2: isn't that where you are starting your tour?"

"Yes, that's right, we'll be starting with two nights at the O2 - we've never been there either yet - and Fiona, and maybe some others, will join us there!" explained Linda.

"So, what can you tell us about the tour?" asked Grayson.

"Not a lot to be honest, especially in terms of the content. We're about to go into the studios to record our new album, and straight after that, Northern Girls are coming over, and we'll be working out the details of what we'll be doing. But, I can tell you where we're going: we start with 2 nights at the O2, then we're going to be doing something like 20 nights all around England, Wales, Scotland, and I believe we're also going over to Belfast too! Then we're over to France, Germany, Austria, a couple of nights in Milan, Italy. After Poland we're going up to Finland, Sweden and Norway. Finally, we'll be finishing off with two or three performances at Wembley Stadium."

"Any plans for any of the festivals?"

"Yes, we'll definitely be at Glastonbury - I'm looking forward to that, and we're waiting to hear about a couple of others too."

"Sounds like you're going to be busy!"

"Yeah, I'm planning to have a long holiday afterwards, to recover!" said Linda.

"Me too!" added Jenny!

"So, I believe all of you are going to sing for us? So while you go over and get ready, let me just tell you what else we have lined up for you later in the show...."

A minute later, and the four CJDL girls, along with Fiona, were ready, and they started to perform CJDL's recent hit, 'Get Working', with Fiona leading the vocals. They had sung the song the day that Fiona first came to see them, but Fiona had come over earlier in the day, to rehearse for tonight.

As they finished the song, the audience clapped enthusiastically!


"Very well done, girls!" said Brian when they returned to the Green Room. "And Fiona, thank you too!"

"No, I should thank you guys: as Jenny said that first day, it's NOT just about money. I suspect today will help give me a nice boost, and I'll never complain about that. And I'll tell you what, performing with these four just now, that was fun... it's actually the first time I've performed as part of a group, and it felt good. So I'm looking forward to the guest appearances on the tour!"


The TV show was, of course, recorded, so the girls used social media to encourage people to watch, posting pictures of the 5 of them before and after performing.

The response they got after the show was aired was incredibly positive: their fans supported the way they had admitted to their wrong-doing, and thought the joint performance was excellent, with comments like 'I hope my tickets are for the night she's with you!'

Sparky:
Chapter 2

So, the tour dates have been pretty much fully worked out, and the tickets for the UK, being the first of the dates, already went on sale. As promised, the fan club members had tickets reserved for them, allowing any of them who wanted to go (and could afford it, tickets weren't cheap!) to go. It goes without saying that there has recently been a large number of new fan club members!

It's a couple of days later, and they've all just had breakfast together.

"Linda can you spare a minute?" asked Brian.

"Sure...". Linda went with Brian into his office.

"I've actually got a few bits to chat with you about."

"You sound like the headmaster, about to tell me, one of your pupils, off!".

Brian laughed. "No, nothing bad. It's probably closer to an 'informal annual appraisal'." he replied, smiling. "So why don't I start by asking  how thing are with you, the girls, the band, the rest of us...."

Linda thought a moment. "You know, things are actually pretty good! We all still seem to get on well, despite how much time we spend together. There's no nastiness, and I really feel part of the group, and not like a 'new girl'."

"I think they feel good about you too: you've definitely contributed your share over the last few months. So, you should have got your 'back-pay' from the girls by now, is that all ok?"

"Very much so, it's actually quite a bit more than I expected!"

"Yes, we did quite well on the last tour, despite it being a short one. By the way, if you need help with finding suitable 'wealth management' consultants, then do ask. To be honest, you need to look after whet you earn now carefully, it may need to last you a while. Got any plans for it yet?"

"Yes, I'm seriously looking for a new flat, or maybe even a house. Where I am now is rented, and while it's nice, I could do with a slightly bigger place."

"Well, again, if you need recommendations for solicitors and so on, ask. Which actually brings us nicely to the thing I really need to talk to you about..."

"Oh yeah, what's that?"

"Well, as you know, this house is jointly owned by Jenny, Carol and Dianne, along with me and Lisa. We were wondering if you were at all interested in 'investing' in the house too?"

"You think I'm THAT rich?"

"No, not yet, but this next tour is going to bring in quite a bit of money, for all of you, probably more than you realise. And I'm not suggesting a massive lump sum. Whilst we own this house outright, the girls actually have mortgages on their own houses."

"So what you proposing then?"

"Well, as you know, we currently use one of the bedrooms as an office for Callum and Paige. We'd like to turn it back into a bedroom again, so we'd like to build an outside extension, with office space, plus some storage space. If you're interested, then you would pay for that work, and use that as your first investment. In addition, the fund we have for property maintenance is getting a bit low, so you can also contribute to that..."

"And how much would you be talking about?"

"Not really sure yet, for now I'm just asking if you're interested. Clearly we'll need to get the place valued, so we can fairly decide what your share will be, but we'll get that all checked by a solicitor, and we can be very open about all the costs. There's no real rush, I'm not really going to have time to pursue it properly till after the tour, but if you're interested, then I can get the ball rolling on getting the new offices designed and then costed. So take your time, think about it. Maybe have a chat with the others."

"Yeah ok. In principle I do like the idea, but I do need to have a proper think about it."

"Sure. Hey, by the way, thank you for your help with that copyright issue: your knowing Fiona was so useful!"

"Yeah, I feel really bad for Dianne, it's a writer's worst nightmare! You know, Fiona made a comment on the show, about solicitors and managers speaking, almost ignoring the artists: in so many cases it feels like the only people who REALLY make money out of copyright issues are the lawyers. Ok, yes, I can understand that sometimes things can be very 'grey', but when you've simply screwed up, why don't more people just admit to it, and work out a solution. Dianne had a lot of guts to own up on the chat show you know, with so many people looking on - she has my respect for that!"

"Couldn't agree more! So, you looking forward to the tour? I know there's still a lot to do!"

"Yes, it's gonna be a lot more work than the last tour. I'm really looking forward to working with Northern Girls again. And, of course, Yu-Eye arrives tomorrow. It will be interesting working with someone new, but we got on well over in Korea, and we've exchanged a few emails since too. I think she'll do us a lot of good. Is anyone going to collecting her?"

"Callum was going to go. Join him if you like!"

"Sure, that could be fun, as long as I don't get spotted."

"If noone is expecting you to be there, then you're less likely to be seen! Just don't smile too much, or you might give the game away: there can't be THAT many people with blue braces!"


So the following afternoon, Linda and Callum went up to Heathrow late afternoon to meet Yu-Eye. She was staying at 'the mansion' with the girls for the next two to three weeks, while they worked on then recorded their new material. After that, she was planning on being a tourist for a couple of weeks!


[1/487]

Sparky:
Chapter 3

The four girls had been in the recording studios for a couple of days so far: they had booked the studios for 2 weeks, although they reckoned that they could probably be done within the week.

Yu-Eye had come over to England just over a week ago to produce their new album, and had spent some time with them rehearsing at 'the mansion'. Already they had recorded six of their songs, and the girls seemed to be getting on really well with Yu-Eye, liking her ideas: they weren't particularly radical ideas, but her small suggestions had made the songs better.

They had just finished laying down the instruments for their seventh track, and were taking a break before moving on to over-dubbing the vocals. Linda was browsing through her contacts on her personal phone: like the others, she had two phones, one was her 'official CJDL' phone that she had been given whilst in Korea, that she would use to get official band emails, and to post pictures and videos online; the other was the phone she had before joining the band, and it was the one she used to contact family and friends.

There were loads of old and now-irrelevant contacts in there that needed to just be deleted, and that was what she was doing. She had just finished on the 'L's, and had moved to the 'M's, where she found 'Mary Robinson'. It had been several months since Linda had spoken with Mary, one of her friends from back at college. So she broke off from doing the deleting, and called her.

"Hi Linda... it's been a while!"

"Yes, it has, Mary, and I'm sorry that I never managed to return your calls. My life has kinda changed this last year..."

"It has, hasn't it? How's it going for you?"

"Whilst there's a few down-sides, there's a lot more good things happening..."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I used to be a session musician, so I was always playing other people music. But I've started writing some of my own stuff now, which I'm really enjoying."

"Oh, that is really cool! Any of your stuff been released yet?"

"Sort of... I helped to write 'Braces Buddies', but there'll be a couple of my songs on our new album."

"CJDL have ANOTHER album on the way already?"

"Yeah, we're atually in the studios right now, recording it, so it should be out soon... and what a surprise, just in time for our European tour."

"Yeah, I saw about that: it looks like it's a long tour."

"It is. I mean the last tour - when I wasn't quite a full band member - was just a UK one, and was about a month, but this one is a bit over three months, all around Europe, with a festival or two thrown in too. Anyway, look, I was going through my contacts, and came across your name, and realised it's been absolutely ages since we got together, so I was wondering if you, and maybe a couple of the others, fancy getting together? A drink, or maybe a meal... my treat of course!"

"Well, funny you should say that: there's a group of us meeting up on Thursday. We're going to start at the pub, then go on for a chinese, why don't you join us?"

"I would absolutely LOVE to!"

"So, I'm guessing you're free then?"

"If I'm not, I'll MAKE myself free! To be honest, shouldn't be a problem. As I said, we're in the studios recording, so I don't think anyone will complain if we have an early day!"

"It's gonna be really good catching up with you! So the plan is to meet at The Ship - you remember that one? - between 6-30 and 7-00, then go on to the restaurant after that."

"Yes, I remember The Ship, we got drunk there far too many times!". Linda and Mary talked a bit more, before ending their call.


[2/627]

Sparky:
So far, the 4 CJDL girls have had pink and now blue ligatures. When they go on tour, there will be EIGHT of them in braces.

The big question is: how will they do their ligs?

- everyone in the same, single, colour?
- each has a single colour, 8 different colours for 8 different girls?
- some sort of mix of colours?
- rainbow?

Whilst they are performing, there will be cameras able to do great closeups, so they clearly want to show off their braces to their fans.

(Of course, they'll be in England for a couple of weeks at the start of their tour, giving them a chance to visit their ortho and change their ligs before moving on to Europe)

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