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Before we had a television show, and I mean way before, we had a pilot.
Actually, at first it wasn't even called that. It was called a
"presentation tape," which is a step below a pilot and means we had no
money to spend, which was fine because we thought no one would ever see
it. Because we thought no one would ever pick us up. Because we thought
no one would like it. Because we'd never done this before.
Turns out we were wrong. The pilot is now the first episode, but back
then it was just a presentation tape, so when it came to placing music
for it, I just put together a CD of our favorite tracks from the radio
show and gave it to Jenny Golden, our editor. And she loved it and used
it all, and it turned out great. And we went back to making radio like
normal people.
Fast-forward six months, and OH, NO, WE ARE A TV
SHOW! So exciting! What are we wearing to the Emmys? Ira goes on a diet!
We've never done this before! So fun!
Except for the part where
you have to learn new things and make tons of mistakes and apologize to
people constantly for what you just did or didn't do or didn't know you
had to do. Like license songs. On the radio, you can pretty much use
whatever songs you want without licensing them because there are
royalty-paying copyright collectives like ASCAP and BMI that make sure musicians get paid. All we ever had
to do was report which songs we played on the radio and then go back to
having fun while they doled out the dough. Not so with TV. To use a song
on our television show, I had to get, like, 500 people's permission and
ask them all how much money they wanted and get them to sign contracts
and on and on and on. This is not news to TV people. But we were new to
TV. And since we had already edited an entire episode and used a lot of
tracks from super-famous musicians, and since most of them would be
impossibly expensive or simply not available to us, we were pretty much
screwed.
Some old friends of the radio show, like Jim Ward Morris and Bexar Bexar (aka Brian Sampson), were totally cool about it. Jim makes album art for lots of bands and once put out a CD of his own guitar instrumentals called doublemranch. I have no clue where our copy came from, but now it's so rare, the two used copies on Amazon.com will run you more than 50 bucks.
But then there were songs from Sigur Ros, Calexico, Gustavo Santaolalla
(this one was owned by HBO...oops!), and many others that were just way
out of our price range. Even Ghosts of Pasha, a band we really like and whose story
we tell in Act Two of the show, wanted a full 20 times the budget we had
for individual tracks. We ended up licensing the songs the band plays
live in the video clips, but sadly, couldn't afford to use them to score
their own story.
We needed to do something. Our options: find
songs we could afford and re-cut the entire episode using all new music
or "score to picture" (That's right: I'm using TV jargon. And what?),
which means taking out all the music and asking a composer to write new,
original stuff to match the edited show. We decided to go that route
rather than ask our editor to work, I dunno, 80 hours a week for another
six months. Probably a sound choice, as we only had two weeks to turn
the whole thing around.
Luckily, this was something we had experience with. Finally! I called
John Kimbrough, a friend of the show, formerly of Walt Mink, and now an
Emmy
Award-winning composer. He's done original scores for our radio
shows "I'm
from the Private Sector and I'm Here to Help" and "Somewhere
in the Arabian Sea." He was in the middle of making music
for the MTV Video Music Awards when I called, but still said what the
heck, who needs sleep, right? And now, most of the music you hear in
this show, particularly in Act One, is John's. And he made it just for
us. Thanks, John!
Those few weeks were totally insane. Lots of
calls and tweaks and long hours. We needed a game plan for this whole
music thing if the series was going to work. I learned pretty quickly
that TV programs have only a few, standard options. Most shows use stock
cue libraries. I've listened to a few, and some are good, but most are
made up of literally thousands of 30-second loopable tracks with names
like "Hip-Hop Beat #307—Club Bangerzzz" or "44a DEEP HOUSE" or
"Unusable Genre Stereotype 22b." (Check out just about any reality TV
show, and you'll hear what I'm talking about.) Other shows hire a
composer, as we did with John. But if we didn't use lots of different
kinds of songs and artists, it wouldn't feel like This American
Life. Besides, our editors prefer to have the music in hand when
they start cutting because it can influence the pacing and mood of a
story, something we totally understand because it plays the same role on
the radio show. The third option, which only a few shows end up going
with, is to have huge piles of money lying around and a staff that's
best friends with Clive Davis or something, so you don't have to sweat
it at all. But that's just not us. So we had to decide—considering
our small budget and big opinions and strong feelings about
music—what we, as beggars who want to be choosers, were going to
do. I'll tell you next week. (That's called a cliffhanger. I am so
TV.)
Music used in this episode, in order of appearance:
Prologue
• Tim O'Ellis—Original Composition
Act One
• John
Kimbrough—Original Compositions
• Aerial
M—"Aass"
• John Kimbrough—Original Composition
• Jim Ward
Morris—"Tarantula"
• Infernal Bridegroom Productions—"Robert Zucco
Untitled 3"
• John Kimbrough—Original Compositions
• David
Byrne—"Canal Life"
• Sasha Frere-Jones—"Stitch," from Standing Upright on a Curve
(Sub Rosa, 1998)
• John Kimbrough—Original Compositions
• Bexar Bexar—"kt"
Act Two
• Radian—"Kilvo"
• Aerial M—"Wedding Song No. 2," "Compassion for M"
• Ghosts of
Pasha—"One"; "New York, New York"; "Home of the Grand Union";
"What about the Shut-Ins?"; "New Doom"
• Tim O'Ellis—Original Compositions
Credits
• Honeycut—Shadows Instrumental
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