After 20 years in commercial music production I know one thing: Music is cooking.
This burst of clarity struck me in June as I turned 50. My partner, Bobby Crew, also turned 50 this year and had the same realization: that our 40 years of collective experience in postscoring and composing original music are worth maybe 10 shares of napster.com in the environment of today’s music business.
Our acceptance of this fact has been wonderfully liberating. We now see that music is cooking.
No longer encumbered by the intricacies of scoring, we gleefully slap a hip-hop underpinning to every track we write. In this era of being "groovic," we then select a few tasty, mondokool ethnic instruments to spray randomly on top like so much whipped cream. We add a tortured 1.5 seconds of backward vocal as the cherry on top.
As a small music house, we have to think big. In developing our secret recipe to combat Big Label Syndrome (one of four spots uses a recognizable tune), we have turned away from traditional approaches to the mixing bowl of music and sound.
We claim to be the first to have successfully inserted subdural (under the skin, for those who actually like working for Disney) sound chips that are placed directly under tattoos. Picture an arm tattoo like "Mom," which, when gently pressed, plays "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (public domain!).Or a back tattooed with a Harley that blows your doors off when slapped.
Think of the fun you could have in an elevator. And we customize all our sound chip music to our clients’ specifications. We are currently working out a few touchy issues with ASCAP and BMI, but we are good to go.
In January 2002 we will release our direct drip-feed (DDF) cable, which enables a chip bearer to directly download music and SFX from a computer to his or her subdural sound chip. Called the Like Dat Music IV, it accommodates all known music formats. Our plans to co-market sound-enhanced pacemakers ("With a Song in My Heart") are well underway with major manufacturers, and are an integral part of our Music in My Soul (MIMS) collection.
And forget the tattoos—when Fritz the Cat passes on, a gentle press of the belly button will bring your pet seemingly back to life with a happy "meow." Get ’em while they’re hot!
Somebody stop me.
So music has become a food fight—or, more accurately, a chopped salad. Anything goes, and does. Whether the fare is edible, only time and a microwave will tell.
