Reborn in America

Chapter 40: First Ascent

As soon as the weekly rankings for the fourth week were counted, Rudy couldn't wait to call to ask.

Rudy shouted into the phone in surprise: "What! "Yourfriend" singles weekly sales charts and weekly popular charts are ranked first!"

Rudy immediately called and told the Carpenters family, everyone was stunned when they heard the good news. They thought that this record would be popular, but they didn't expect it to be so popular. People like the Carpenter brothers' records, and they are very interested in Alex's new singing method.

"Wow! The Carpenter brothers reached the top! What a miracle!" Many people in the music industry exclaimed, they had never seen anything like this before.

A newcomer who has just debuted, going from obscurity to No. 1 on the weekly record chart, that's too fast. In addition, the two main members of this band are not yet 10 years old. Alex is 8 years old and Richard is 6 years old. Both are children and are about to sell gold records.

Their first record nearly sold a gold record, and now they have only bought 950,000 copies, which is 50,000 less. Sooner or later, I can become a gold record, it's just a matter of time.

Rudy vowed to say: "This time I will definitely be able to sell a gold record! Based on my years of work experience, I can sell a million copies in less than three months."

He has the basis. The sales volume of this record in the first month has reached 600,000 copies, and the number of sales each week is increasing. It can be seen that people are becoming more and more interested in the Carpenter brothers' records, and the popularity of the two of them is also increasing.

This record rushed to the first place on the weekly chart! Many people like it, but some people hate this kind of song that combines jazz and country music. They think this is playing the piano, no one likes this kind of randomly written songs.

Someone specially wrote in the news paper: "The Carpenter brothers' songs are just a mess, and they adapted Jimmy Davis's classic songs so childishly. Is this kind of song for kindergarten children to sing? Very incompetent! I don’t know why everyone pursues these brothers so much."

Some people also said: "Alex's "yourfriend" is really bad. It is neither blues nor full of country style. It is said that the teacher who taught him to sing is an amateur singer in a tavern. No wonder it is so nondescript. , No art at all."

Some people even questioned that Alex was not the original author of the song. They said: "Alex is only 8 years old this year, but he has accomplished something that most adults have not done! Write a best-selling book, Sing a pop song! Please note that he did all the lyrics and music of this song alone! Who does this remind you of? Mozart or Beethoven? Or a little liar?"

They didn't make it clear that they were accusing Alex of being a liar, or being used by someone who wanted to. It's just that they deliberately or unintentionally lead people to think about this.

People who hate, people who like, and neutral people are all talking about it. Even people who have always been indifferent are attracted. They were talking, talking about the Carpenters, talking about Alex, talking about Richard, talking about the Carpenters. As long as there is anything related to them, it will attract everyone's attention.

The Carpenters are in the whirlpool of news, but they don't care about it, and they don't give any excuses. Bart is not the kind of person who is related to newspapers, and Angel is busy with housework as usual. As for the Carpenter brothers, the two of them didn't know these things at all.

The Carpenters are concerned about a very important thing, they want to move. The reason for moving is not because they want to move, but because they have to move. Because as the fame gets bigger and bigger, people are also curious about them. They came to visit the Carpenter brothers one after another.

Alex felt that there was a lot of excitement at home, and people who knew and didn't knew all came over as guests. Let's see what the Carpenters are like. They are curious about everything about the Carpenters.

Once, when Richard was practicing guitar in the house, a woman walked in and walked in beside him.

"I was sent by God!" She said in the first sentence.

Richard looked at the woman in a puzzled manner. He really didn't know who she was and why she came here.

The woman continued, "God asked me to tell you that you and your family are blessed. God blesses you, and you must be in awe of God."

Seeing that Richard was silent, she said: "God has a mission to send you down!"

Richard asked suspiciously: "What task?"

The woman said solemnly: "It is for love and peace! God wants you to eliminate hunger and war, and fill the world with love and peace!"

At first Richard thought the other party was a bit interesting, but after a few conversations between the two, he felt more and more scared.

The other party's words are inverted, very strange, and they are not people in their place.

Richard was afraid that this woman would hurt him or hurt other people in the family.

During this time, Bart went out to work, and Angel also went to the market to buy groceries. Even Alex didn't know where to run, and only his sister Karen and Richard were left in the family.

The fear was getting deeper and deeper, just when Richard couldn't stand it, and when he was about to jump up and flee, someone came in and took the woman away.

It turns out that this woman is a mentally abnormal patient. When she is not sick, she is almost like a normal person, but when she has an attack, she will call herself "God's messenger"!

I don't know how she got in. In a word, after listening to the songs on the radio, she learned about the Carpenter brothers. She thinks that the Carpenters are angels sent by God, and she has the responsibility and obligation to meet them so that the angels can fulfill their mission on earth.

As a result, something like this happened, which made Richard a false alarm. But because of this, Bart and Angel began to attach importance to family safety. They plan to move away from this small place and move into a big city!

Angel decided to ask her sons for their opinions. She said: "We are going to move in, children, which city do you want to go to?"

"It doesn't matter, as long as I can still sing a record!" Richard has no more opinions on this matter.

"Moving? Of course it's moving to New York!" Alex wanted to see New York in this era. When he recorded the record last time, time was so tight that they didn't taste the "big apple" (the big apple). !

"New York? The pace of life there is too fast." Bart was the first to express his objections. In his opinion, it would be better to move to Tennessee to be a farmer.

"Why move to New York? Alex, tell me the reason." Angel asked thoughtfully.

"Richard and I will have to develop in music in the future, and the US record companies are in New York, so I think we move to New York is the best choice." Alex explained in this way.

Bart and Angel were a little moved after hearing this, and they also knew that if they wanted to truly master the "Teana" company, they had to move to New York. Now that the company’s debts have not been paid off, the lawyer suggested that they should pay back the money owed to the bank first and change the company’s name.

"When will the company's debt be paid off?" Angel asked, and she continued: "We have to change the company's name quickly. The current name is not good."

Bart said very embarrassingly: "I am afraid that the company's debt will not be paid off within this year. You have to know that the money for the records we sold has not been fully collected."

The Carpenter Brothers’ first album has sold 950,000 copies. Since the payment has not been paid so quickly, only about 600,000 albums have been paid. That is to say, excluding cost fees, the company’s account has remitted a total of 360,000 US dollars. According to the agreement signed by Rudy and the Carpenter brothers, they can get 216,000 US dollars and the company can get 144,000 US dollars.

The money distributed by the company can just pay off the interest on the debt owed to the bank before, and the remaining tens of thousands of dollars are used for the daily operation of the company. Now 90% of the record company's shares belong to the Carpenter family, or to be correct, belong to Bart and Angel. Because the Carpenters were underage, only the two of them had to bear the record company’s two million dollars in debt.

Originally, Bart intended to use the money allocated to the Carpenters to pay off the debt, but Alex was strongly opposed to him, and he believed that the respective accounts must be separated clearly. Don’t mix company money with your own money. At the same time, Rudy is reluctant to do so because he fears that his shares in the company will be reduced.

At present, it still takes some time to pay off the record company's expenses. Especially when the money earned by the Carpenters can't be used to pay off debts, they can only pay it back bit by bit.

The money for the second record has not been confiscated. If all the money for the record sold by the Carpenters is collected, it is estimated that the company can pay off at least one-fifth of the debt. Now that the company has formally signed a contract with the Carpenters brothers, their share conditions have been changed, and they are calculated by way of copyright tax. The Carpenters can get a 15% copyright tax. This condition is already excellent for them, but it is still not as high as the first picture.

The first record was because Rudy was desperate, and they were able to get the equivalent of 30% copyright tax. Now, if they were to be their own bosses, they reduced the conditions by half, so that they would be more in line with industry regulations.

Alex thought for a while, he said: "We have no way to make money? For example, hold a concert, tour or something."

As soon as he said this, Angel immediately objected: "You are so young, how can you work so hard! Concerts and tours are very time-consuming, besides, we don't need you to work so hard to earn money to support the family!"

Alex also knew that his opinion would be rejected, but he was not angry. He knew that it was Angel for his good.

"Okay, okay! Let's talk about moving back." Bart immediately came out to make the rounds, and he brought everyone back to the topic.

Richard asked, "Does our family have the money to buy a house in New York?"

Bart and Angel both laughed. They settled Richard's account. The income from the first record plus the income from Alex's book made them more than half a million dollars in total. Enough for them to buy a big house in New York.

Alex didn't know about housing prices in this era. He thought to himself that if this amount of money were to buy a house in Beijing in 2013, it would probably be just enough for the down payment.

The most important thing is that their money is constantly being collected. With the golden sign of the Carpenters, they don't have to worry about running out of money.

"Isn't half a million dollars too little? It doesn't seem to be enough!" Alex thought to himself, and he suddenly asked, "How about my diode patents? Is there any income?"

Bart frowned and said: "The income of those patents won't be known until the end of the year, but some big companies want to buy your patents. They offer very high prices, and some open up to three million US dollars."

Alex smiled disdainfully: "I want to buy all these patents for only three million dollars? I won't sell them, let's put them aside."

Having said that, he still wants to make some money from these patents. He suddenly thought, since there are already diodes, why not just make some electronic products to sell?

Thinking of this, he immediately went to Dr. Shockley. I don’t care about moving anymore.