Recording - May 2016 - 51

MAY 2016
TAXI Road Rally 2015

Succeeding in the New Music Industry, Keynote Interview, Part 4
Michael Laskow, Moderator
PANEL MEMBERS:
John Rudolph, Chairman, Elias Arts
Jeff Freundlich, COO, Wired Whirled Music
Brian McNelis, Sr.Vice President of Music and
Soundtracks, Lakeshore Entertainment
I want to switch gears and go to Jeff on something.
We have a lot of baby boomers that are TAXI members. These are people that were in garage bands
as teenagers, and then they started life. They went
to college, they got married and now they are
heading toward retirement, and they are really
getting back into their music. And they build a
home studio, they are a little tech-challenged-
some of them-but the tech is getting easier, and
they're becoming more confident with the whole
package. Your company has become the go-to company when people need authentic, vintage music
that dates back to a previous era. You saw the
niche, you held it to very high standards, and more
or less cornered the vintage music market as far as
film and TV placements are concerned. A lot of the
music in your catalog has come from our members,
and a lot of them have demos from the '60s, '70s,
and '80s sitting in dust-covered boxes on shelves.
Tell them what you look for, because we get this
question all the time: "When they say vintage, can
I submit a demo? Would that work? Do they need a
16-track master?" Please give them the rundown
on what works, why it works, and how it gets used.
Jeff: We're looking for music that's quintessential to a specific era. So we have a ton of
Rockabilly music from the 1950s, because that's
when Rockabilly really mattered. And we have a
ton of Psychedelic Rock from the late '60s,
because that's when people were tuning out and
dropping, or whatever that whole thing was. I
mean, that's when it really mattered...
John: When we were born.
Jeff: And I think like if you're talking about the
1990s-like the quintessential eras of music in
the 1990s might be like Grunge, New Jack Swing
was still really important then. You can kind of

The Keynote panelists take a moment to pose form a group shot after they finished their panel. (Left to right) John Rudolph,
Chairman, Elias Arts; Jeff Freundlich, COO, Wired Whirled Music; Michael Laskow, CEO, TAXI; and Brian McNelis, Sr.Vice President of
Music and Soundtracks, Lakeshore Entertainment.

look at these eras and say, "This is when this
music really mattered." So it turns out that most
music supervisors or directors or producers, if
they had their druthers, they would use a hit
song if they had the budget-a lot of times they
don't-maybe they'd look at [music] libraries,
but they don't necessarily want somebody that
writes music in a cubicle that sounds like it came
from 1973. They are not using the same micing
techniques; the vibe is kind of like half-baked.
It's just hard to do that really, really well. And,
honestly, I've written stuff like that and it's gotten played, so I'm not knocking it; it's a viable
market to do that. But really, at the end of the
day, isn't it right to use music that's from that
time period, because it's quintessential and
because it matters and it's the real thing? I
mean, libraries get a knock. I get music requests
every day, and they say, "I need a real artist
bucket, and I need a library bucket." It's like
there's a perception in this community that if it
was done a long time ago that maybe it has a
little bit more value and they are interested in

using it.
I don't really care if it was a demo, I don't care if
it was released or not released, I just want to
hear it. We use the same software that the
Smithsonian used to clean up-only if it's not in
the vocal where the hiss pops out-most
cassette hiss is in a frequency above the vocal,
and as long as it's not in the vocal range, we can
clean up a lot of that stuff and make it sound
really good.
And there's so much great music out there that
deserves to be heard, and the stories deserve to
be told. I mean, there are a bunch of people in
this room that we've signed music from, and
they've got amazing stories. They were managed
by the guys that managed Three Dog Night; they
got ripped off by Frankie Valli. And it's like I
want people to hear that music, and I want these
guys making some money, and we've found an
effective way of doing that.
Continued on page 52
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