Recording - September 2014 - 57

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correctly, I got a hold of him-and he's now 90.
And he says, "Hello, this is who? Michael what?
License? Driver's license, what?" And he said, "Look,
I'm very old, my hearing is shot." I said, "But there's
a guy named Jeff calling. He's a really good guy, his
company does amazing stuff; he's been trying so
hard to get a hold of you."
For three years. I called him for three years.
So finally I got Peter Sivo to get his son to get on
the phone with Jeff, and they made the deal.
Yeah, and we signed him to a five-figure deal.
His music was literally sitting in a closet since
1946, and nothing had ever happened with his
music. So it's blessing that...

There's something about that that we are not
always so comfortable with. So if it's a really
amazing song, maybe I'll talk to the person
before I sign and say, "Look, you've got something here. We're not going to add any new
instrumentation." Because that would make it
less valuable, it's not really vintage anymore; it's
kind of like semi-vintage. But maybe we would
cut something down...maybe. I'm not so comfortable with touching other people's art. But
maybe if it was really, really awesome.
What if it had like a 45-second intro and you know
that the music supervisors are never going to get
to the vocal. They're gonna think, "Oh, this is an
instrumental. I wanted a vocal." In that case would
you call the artist?
There were some instances where if they're

really great songs... I'm almost hesitant to say
this, because I don't want people writing 45-second intros on their songs. But it can be valuable
because most people don't have non-vocal mixes
of their period music. So if you do have a 45second intro, maybe they'll just use the
instrumental because the vocals are getting in
the way of the dialogue. So there can be times
where it's advantageous, but having said that, I
would hate for people to walk out of the room
and say, "I'm gonna write 45-second intros so
that it increases my chances of getting a cut,"
because that's not necessarily good songwriting.
You know, it worked for Pink Floyd. But that's
the rule-breaker, it's not the rule.
Read Part 2 of this interview in next month's TAXI
Insider!

He actually said to me after talking to you something to the effect of "My hearing is shot, my eyes
are shot, and I know I don't have that much longer
to live. You have no idea how incredible this makes
me feel that somebody out there wants to hear my
music...not to mention write a check for it." It'll go
to the grandkids.
So this next one is a tune from 1979 by a guy
named Jason Heckman, who lives in Colorado.
We signed this song and three months later
placed it in the first season of The Carrie Diaries
on the CW. I don't know if he got performance
royalties this quarter, or it will be next quarter.
But he'll be a happy man when this comes in. So
this is from 1979; it's called "Heartless."
[Music plays.]
I mean, it's the Ramones, right? It's like clearly
these guys played Max's Kansas City and CBGB's in
New York, and they were right there in the thick of
it. Nothing happened.
It's really good!
Yeah, the song kicks ass. And, you know, the
things we look for in songs are-and hopefully
you guys know this, because you've been going
to the seminars and the classes-but, first of all,
"Heartless," a great song title, right? And, you
know, most of the songs that we play today you
are going to hear that the total center of the chorus lifts, it's higher than the verse, and the lyrics
are visual, and the melody is distinctive, and
there's a riff or some kind of instrumental hook
that we can sink our teeth into and sing it back.
And it wasn't a 64-bar intro into the song, right?
It was an eight-bar intro and he gets right into it.
What if it did have a 64-bar intro? Would you edit?
We'd consider it. I mean, technically if you
looked at our contract, we have the right to do
that. And actually we need that right, because
the music editors on TV shows will cut it down.
But we don't really like to revise people's work.
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Recording - September 2014

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