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This week we have a guest blogger: associate producer Mary Ann Casavant. She dealt with the big music issue in this episode: licensing a music video from Frank's band OXO and a few of Frank's own songs. As you can imagine from watching the episode, this was a huge pain in the ass.
Here's Mary Ann:
Here's the deal with OXO: by the end of their whirlwind rise to fame, they had all grown to dislike each other—or at the very least, Frank. (G.J. reports that they have all gotten back into contact and are thinking about reuniting in the wake of their appearance on our show. Another great contribution to culture from This American Life.)
Everyone agreed on one thing about our version of G.J.'s documentary: we had to have both the song "Whirly Girl" and its music video. It's just one of those songs that stays with you, whether you want it to or not. Getting a clean copy of the video was easy because we had some connections at MTV (they shall remain nameless) who went back into the archives and found it for us. They slipped it out of the building. We had it dubbed. They slipped it back in. But finding the material is only 2% of the work. The other 98% is trying to figure out who owns it or who claims they do.
"Whirly Girl" was written by Ish "Angel" Ledesma about his wife. Angel is a fairly prolific songwriter whose hit record "Get Off," with his previous band Foxy, hit #9 on the Billboard charts. He had sole credit. Sadly, I must report that Frank had nothing to do with the writing of his one hit. So publishing rights were easy enough.
But the master rights to the song were a mess. Try to follow me here: the song was originally put out on David Geffen Records, which was sold to MCA in 1990. For a brief period in the '90s, some of Geffen's catalogue was distributed through Dreamworks. But most of it was owned by MCA. Then, MCA was sold to Universal Music Group (or became Universal Music Group, one of the two), which merged Geffen Records into Interscope. In 2003, MCA was actually folded into the company it bought, Geffen Records. So Geffen now owns the company that once owned it. All of these shenanigans were the work of about six office buildings worth of lawyers, so we had to hire some of our own just to figure out who owned the song. They looked into their magic ball, figured it out, and started negotiating.
But we were only halfway done. Licensing a music video is complicated. With something that aired on CBS News, you call up CBS, find out what they want you to pay, make a counteroffer, and hopefully end up somewhere in the middle. But with music videos, it's hard to know if it's the record company or the director who owns the copyright. MTV has blanket use of all the videos in their library because everyone wants their video on MTV so badly that they'll sign away all their rights. But we're not MTV.
We had two things we wanted Geffen to license to us: the music video and a promotional video Frank still had lying around the house. Luckily, Geffen (or the multi-national music conglomerate that now call itself Geffen) said they owned both. So we folded the licensing cost for the video into the same deal as the music. What the...? Does this even make sense?
As for Frank's music, G.J. and I went through the segment and spotted all the potential songs we might use (including "improvs #1, #2, and #3"—the songs Frank plays on his electric guitar or piano while G.J. is trying to film). We drafted a contract, and G.J. had Frank sign it. How G.J. did this I don't know, but I hope he filmed it for the sequel.
To hear more of Frank's music, check out his MySpace page.
Music used in this episode, in order of appearance:
Prologue
• Bobby Johnston—"Rules of Space"
• John Kimbrough—"Evan Signs Away"
• John Kimbrough—"Empire and Light"
• John Kimbrough—"Romania Cue"
Act One
• OXO—"Whirly Girl"
• Nate Tucker—"Hando Hand"
• Frank Garcia—"Welcome Aboard"
• Frank Garcia—Guitar Riff
• John Kimbrough—"Dark Open"
• Jon Autry—"June 26 (for Jill)"
• Lineland—"Planeta Igreja"
• Bexar Bexar—"Los Muertos"
Credits
• Tommy Guerrero—"Tomorrow’s Goodbye"
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