Well, okay, but — well, who wrote the version you heard first? And are you sure they weren’t compensated? Or weren’t the same people who wrote the Futurama theme?
Pierre Henry wrote the first version, called Pysche Rock, and released it in 1967. Pierre was a pioneering artist in the musique concrete movement which started in the 1940s and explored music making with “real world” sounds and new technology. These were the first dudes to make tape loops! Matt Groening was still riding his Sit ‘n Spin when this tune came out.
Well, the InterWeb tells me that Groening & Co. attempted to license the original and couldn’t get the rights, so they asked Danny Elfman to compose a sound-alike. This is interesting to me, since this is what I do for a living. When my firm is asked to “compose” something that “sounds like” something else, it is implicitly understood that it can’t sound too much like any one thing in particular, for fear of copyright infringment (and a perfectly reasonable, well intentioned fear it is, too — for the record, I don’t wanna rip anybody off for a living!) But these two numbers are *so* alike… I want to know how Elfman and Groening avoided getting sued. (Mind you, the publicity has probably resulted in more Pierre Henry music being sold than ever before — though he woulda made a lot more by just licensing the thing. Anyhow.)
So, yes, interesting.
I should point out, BTW, that as soon as negotiations open up on rights to a track — should those negotiations fail, the need to *not* sound like the track in question is even more imperative. So this is doubly inneresting.
I sense a Pince Nez moment, with an RTH nerd scrambling to Google the date the Sit ‘n Spin first hit the market!
I figured Elfman or Mothersbaugh was behind the Futurama theme song. Interesting backstory, Hrrundi. Groening owes our band bigtime for having a character on that show named after us without permission or compensation!
I should point out, BTW, that as soon as negotiations open up on rights to a track — should those negotiations fail, the need to *not* sound like the track in question is even more imperative. So this is doubly inneresting.
I assume everyone knows by now not to try to sound like Tom Waits. Hasn’t he won large settlements more than once for this kind of thing?
awesome;)
Well, okay, but — well, who wrote the version you heard first? And are you sure they weren’t compensated? Or weren’t the same people who wrote the Futurama theme?
Pierre Henry wrote the first version, called Pysche Rock, and released it in 1967. Pierre was a pioneering artist in the musique concrete movement which started in the 1940s and explored music making with “real world” sounds and new technology. These were the first dudes to make tape loops! Matt Groening was still riding his Sit ‘n Spin when this tune came out.
Well, the InterWeb tells me that Groening & Co. attempted to license the original and couldn’t get the rights, so they asked Danny Elfman to compose a sound-alike. This is interesting to me, since this is what I do for a living. When my firm is asked to “compose” something that “sounds like” something else, it is implicitly understood that it can’t sound too much like any one thing in particular, for fear of copyright infringment (and a perfectly reasonable, well intentioned fear it is, too — for the record, I don’t wanna rip anybody off for a living!) But these two numbers are *so* alike… I want to know how Elfman and Groening avoided getting sued. (Mind you, the publicity has probably resulted in more Pierre Henry music being sold than ever before — though he woulda made a lot more by just licensing the thing. Anyhow.)
So, yes, interesting.
I should point out, BTW, that as soon as negotiations open up on rights to a track — should those negotiations fail, the need to *not* sound like the track in question is even more imperative. So this is doubly inneresting.
I sense a Pince Nez moment, with an RTH nerd scrambling to Google the date the Sit ‘n Spin first hit the market!
I figured Elfman or Mothersbaugh was behind the Futurama theme song. Interesting backstory, Hrrundi. Groening owes our band bigtime for having a character on that show named after us without permission or compensation!
HV- Do you, or does anyone here, know who made this video and when? I couldn’t find any info on it anywhere. Granted, I didn’t look very hard… but…
I assume everyone knows by now not to try to sound like Tom Waits. Hasn’t he won large settlements more than once for this kind of thing?