OBS Chapter 37 Casablanca's Marketing Tactics
Chapter 37 Casablanca's Marketing Tactics
Back at the cliffside cabin, Zeke first called his family in New York to tell them that he had arrived safely in Los Angeles, found a place to stay, and left his new phone number so they wouldn't worry.
He then called Holly to chat about the latest situation in Los Angeles, since she had lived there for several years before, and also told her his new address there.
Holly even warned him to stay away from Sunset Boulevard, saying it was "a real zoo," a place where all sorts of people mingle.
Zeke chuckled inwardly, wondering if Holly would be utterly astonished when she arrived at the Casablanca headquarters on Sunset Boulevard.
Finally, he dialed Marco's number: "Marco, everything's settled. Get your ass ready and get over here right now. Call me as soon as you've booked your flight, and I'll come pick you up."
"Zek! You really did it?"
Marco on the other end of the phone was so excited he was incoherent, repeatedly agreeing and eager to set off immediately.
After a busy day, Zeke was a little tired. He assembled a few sandwiches with ingredients he bought from the supermarket and ate them with milk for dinner. Since there were no tables or chairs at home, he had to stand by the bar to finish his meal.
After dinner, Zik turned on the huge 27-inch color TV in front of him, sat cross-legged on the carpet and changed the channel. A commemorative program caught his attention.
On the screen, Elvis Presley, dressed in a pure white stage costume, is violently twisting on a stage in Las Vegas.
The voice-over solemnly murmurs: On August 16, 1977, the King of Pop passed away in the bathroom of Graceland Estate at the young age of 42.
The rock god who once made countless girls scream died on the toilet, his body filled with various prescription drugs, suspected to have died from a drug overdose.
"It's ironic," Zeke muttered to himself. "The bloody lessons of drug abuse are right before our eyes, so why don't these Americans see them?"
He shook his head, finding those people utterly unreasonable. Surely they didn't really think they could get to heaven by sucking themselves dry? If that were the case, even God would probably be furious.
His tailbone started to ache from sitting on the floor for so long. So he went downstairs and lay down on the soft waterbed.
As his body sank in, he suddenly felt that the lifestyle Larry recommended wasn't so bad.
Without superfluous furniture or trivial social interactions, this minimalist solitude seems to be more conducive to his focus, waiting for the revelation that may come at any time.
Over the next few days, Zeke completely let loose. He slept until late morning, then drove his Mercedes around the so-called "City of Angels."
Santa Monica Beach wasn't as idyllic as he'd imagined. Even in winter, the sun was still blinding. While strolling along the pier, he saw several homeless people burning trash on the beach's edge, a stark contrast to the scantily clad, affectedly dressed young men and women around them.
When the sea breeze blew, the smell of sunscreen oil mixed with some unknown herb, along with diesel fuel and rotting seaweed, was really unpleasant.
The famous carousel looked old and worn, with peeling paint, far less romantic than depicted on postcards. Nearby, rampant motorcycle gangs made it clear this was a place rife with gang activity. He only glanced at it from afar in his car before stepping on the gas and driving away.
In comparison, Griffith Observatory was somewhat better. He drove up the winding mountain road, watching the urban grid stretch into the distance below. But once he actually reached the observation deck, that sense of desolation behind the prosperity returned.
In 1978, Los Angeles was already heavily polluted, with the distant horizon shrouded in a layer of brown smog. He looked down at the myriad lights below, but felt no warmth or human connection; he only felt the city's overwhelming size.
As for the Hollywood Walk of Fame, it was a disaster. He parked there, hoping to find the names of those legendary stars, but he always had to carefully avoid chewing gum crumbs and dog poop on the ground. The streets were crowded with vendors selling cheap goods and street performers dressed as cartoon characters.
The famous Hollywood sign, viewed from the cliff where he lived, was even more appalling. Due to years of neglect and vandalism, the sign was dilapidated, the white paint peeling off to reveal a gray-black wooden frame, the first "O" had turned into a "u", and the third "O" had even collapsed, looking like a row of rotten teeth, utterly devoid of any aesthetic appeal.
The newspapers were buzzing with reports that Hugh Hefner, the owner of Playboy, was organizing a fundraising auction for the wealthy to rebuild the thing.
Zicker scoffed at this: "Los Angeles's financial situation doesn't look much better than New York's, which just went bankrupt a few years ago."
He also tried to sneak into Los Angeles discos a few times at night. Because he drove an expensive Mercedes, even though he looked a bit young, the security guards turned a blind eye to his age.
After all, a young person with money is always better than a penniless hoodlum.
The deafening bass, the slowly rotating giant mirror sphere, and the pungent, icy dry ice smoke that made his throat tighten – that was his first impression.
The men wore bell-bottoms with open collars and huge wide ties; the women wore sequined dresses and had their hair styled in huge afros.
Everyone is dancing because they need to release stress and let loose.
Everyone was flashing because their clothes were covered in reflective strips.
The air smelled not only of smoke, but also a strange sweetness. This was also the golden age of Cocaine; restrooms were hardly for relieving oneself, but for "touching up" makeup.
He saw someone in the corner with vacant eyes but unusual excitement. It was the effect of Quaalude (a tranquilizer, commonly known as "disco cookies"). There were dozens of empty bottles in the cliff cabin, which Larry proudly displayed in his house, like a child lining up matchbox cars to show his friends.
People downed strong liquor, and under the influence of drugs, they twisted, spun, and kissed wildly in unison.
Honestly, Zeke didn't quite understand what this meant.
These people were like they were possessed, desperately burning money on alcohol and that white powder. Donna Summer was singing "I Feel Love" over there, but to Zeke they looked more like "I Feel Dead."
Maybe I'm just too lucky to have experienced those so-called "adult pains".
Holly's answer to him was: "If you haven't been through this kind of life, you naturally won't understand why they have to get drunk and high just to stay in this damn city."
He has never gone bankrupt, he doesn't like men, his wife has never swindled him out of a penny, and he has never spent three years in the quagmire of the Vietnam War.
That's fine too; he doesn't want to experience that kind of suffering.
Of course, the apocalypse they had been waiting for never came.
There's not much that can be done. Apocalypse is unpredictable; whether it comes or not, and when it comes, is beyond our control.
However, what really made him restless was that because he looked young and wealthy, many people tried to strike up conversations and get close to him.
Some girls wanted to hitch a ride home with him, while others saw him as a rich second-generation prey, and his targets were not limited to women.
He had to stay vigilant at all times and put on a cold, indifferent face, as if he were a regular customer.
In short, this experience was far from fun; it was more like a dangerous temptation.
"Coming to a place like this by yourself is just asking for trouble." Zeke took a swig of his drink and hurriedly left the noisy dance hall.
In his view, Los Angeles is a city that appears to be all sunshine, luxury cars, and ever-burning neon lights, but in reality, it is a city of dilapidated signs, polluted air, and a group of madmen escaping reality with drugs.
It wasn't as good as rumored; in fact, it left a strange sense of emptiness, even more so than the chaotic New York.
It's worth mentioning that, through these few days of brief glimpses, Zeke also witnessed Casablanca's brilliance in marketing.
Selling disco music these days presents a major challenge, one that plagues the entire industry:
Unlike radio DJs, club DJs play one song after another without announcing the song titles; disco music is mostly formulaic and sounds similar, so customers have no idea what they are listening to.
Casablanca's solution was to flood the nightclubs with GG (a type of slang term for something else).
They printed massive quantities of cocktail napkins, posters, coasters, matchboxes, and condoms, all adorned with artists and logos, and distributed them everywhere through the disco network.
While these things can't tell you which song is playing, they make the name Casablanca ubiquitous and incredibly popular in nightclubs.
Record stores were even more outrageous; a song could be sold simply by printing "Casablanca" on it, even if it had never been on the radio.
Customers going to record stores no longer ask about "so-and-so's new album," but instead directly ask, "What new stuff has Casablanca released lately?"
In Zeke's view, this was undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, as the scale of the European and American record market at that time was astonishing.
Especially rock music, which was fiercely competing with disco, was full of sexual innuendo and nudity. Many album covers even featured nude photos of women and were openly displayed on shelves. Bands and record companies used this as a selling point.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were probably the pioneers of this trend. In the 60s, the sexual liberation movement was in full swing, and on the cover of their 1968 album "Two Virgins," one side featured a full-frontal nude image of the two of them, while the other side featured a nude photo of their backs.
(P.S.: They weren't good-looking. Lennon later joked that the public was angry because they looked like "two slightly overweight former drug addicts," not because they were naked.)
Although it was met with widespread criticism at the time, it attracted a large number of imitators in the 70s. These imitators' lyrics and live performances were even more outrageous, and it was not uncommon for them to run naked on stage or even have in-party with the audience.
This has directly led to a decline in rock music, which had almost been incorporated into mainstream culture, once again. It has been widely criticized by scholars as "immoral," and the media has referred to this type of music as "sex rock."
Black civil rights activist Jesse Jackson held the first anti-sex rock convention in Chicago early last year. At the convention, he declared that his goal was to try to persuade record labels to stop producing "that garbage and filth that corrupts the minds and morals of young people."
The meeting passed a resolution to compile a list of "sex rock" and "other obscene content" from the 20 most-listened radio stations and create a blacklist.
This attempt to prevent capitalists from earning dollars was naturally extinguished by the heavy siege of the record industry, and after 77 years, it barely made a ripple.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the disco label Casablanca didn't do the same. Donna Summer, despite singing disco, was considered by Time magazine to be a prime example of "sex rock," and it was her song "Love to Love You Baby" that sparked the "sex rock" craze.
However, this can be considered a case of bad intentions turning into good results. Because Time magazine described in detail her moaning sounds that simulated orgasm in the song, more people went to buy the record.
They also have another disco group under their label. The cover of their self-titled debut album, "Love and Kisses," features a close-up of a woman's partially exposed breasts, with a T-shirt bearing the group's name torn apart by several hands. The eroticism was so irresistible that young people couldn't resist paying to take her home.
Zike didn't need to buy it; he could just get it from the company. This group was also the singers of the theme song for Casablanca's highly anticipated movie, "Thank God It's Friday."
One morning, a knock on the door woke Zeke from his sleep.
"Who is it?" Zik jumped out of bed, grabbed a kitchen knife, and asked, barefoot, while pressing himself against the door.
He couldn't help but be on guard. He had only been living here for a few days, and the place was remote. Where did this visitor come from?
"Damn, could it be robbers?" Zeke's heart skipped a beat. "Or worse, the police?"
My case has been filed? The NYPD can't be that efficient! I haven't received any news.
If it's LAPD... Zeke suddenly turned around and glanced back.
Damn, his terrace is still full of Western leaves!