Boombox Serenade

Music Supervisor Brian Chin Reveals His "Secret Weapon Songs"

A seasoned music journalist and historian, Brian Chin documents popular music and its impact through writing, A&R work, and fabulous reissues. He's the producer of Rhino's The Disco Box and annotator of Universal Motown's The Supremes Box. He's also co-producer and annotator of dozens of reissues by Dusty Springfield, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Barry White, Rick James, Chaka Khan, and a dozen others. More recently Brian added music supervision to his credits, and Boombox Serenade had a chance to chat with him about his work on Black Magic, a Dan Klores documentary about basketball at black colleges during Civil Rights-era America, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson.

Boombox Serenade: How did you learn about Black Magic and what appealed to you about the project? Brian Chin: Black Magic was my fourth project with the documentary filmmaker Dan Klores, whom I met through my research work for Craig Kallman, the CEO of Atlantic Records. All of Dan's films were compelling stories and astonishingly rigorous works of journalism -- "Ring of Fire," which was the story of boxer Emile Griffith and his fatal knockout of Benny Paret; "Viva Baseball," about the emergence of Hispanics in the sport, and "Crazy Love," the true story of a woman blinded by her jealous boyfriend, whom she married when he got out of jail. I was desperate to do that one.

That Black Magic traced the emergence of integration in the NCAA and parallel civil rights movement made it an obvious opportunity to also trace the history, artistic development and emergence of black music. Wonderful opportunity to celebrate music. And a pleasure for me to delve into my collection which I've built through 30 years of record reviewing and A&R research. I'm kind of sorry it didn't turn out to be a 10-hour series after all. Could have put many more records in! There were 51 over four hours, as it was.

I've really loved the musical breadth and period nature of all Dan's projects. Most folks in the music business associate me with dance music and rap because I wrote the Billboard dance column and signed the Rob Base party record "It Takes Two" when I worked for Profile Records.  So I love knocking people back with a reel of pre-Beatles top 40, or total easy-listening stuff.

Boombox Serenade: What's your favorite music moment in Black Magic and why? Brian Chin: I have two. The opening song, "We the People" by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers I used to hear on the radio when I was a high-schooler, and it's one of the original underground club records that started the disco movement in the early Seventies. The brass in the record went with the images of marching bands and the raw excitement of the rhythm track was great to explode off the starting block. It's one of many R&B and early disco records that are proven hits in the underground of the past, but are undiscovered, fresh and exciting on the first listen. The songs parallel the creative and personal breakthroughs of the individuals in the film.

I've been privileged to write a lot of pop history in CD reissues, and I often write for Universal's Motown reissues. So the instrumental of the Temptations' "I Can't Get Next To You" was something I knew should be in a crucial moment on the court. The rugged Sly Stone influence of the track and the unrelenting drive, and the great changes, it's a wonderful thing to cut to, and the perfect period signature to a 1970 championship game. There's a whole CD of special instrumental rhythm tracks in the deluxe edition of the soundtrack of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" and they are unbelievable.

I also love the two selections by the Stovall Sisters, who made a fantastic R&B/gospel record after singing back-up on the classic "Spirit in the Sky." In the clearance process, our great legal eagle, Marlies Dwyer, of Grubman, Indursky contacted one of the sisters through myspace, and it was a thrill and an honor to send them a Japanese reissue of their album, which they never knew existed. That's a favorite music moment, too.

Boombox Serenade: You mentioned that you had to make some soundtrack changes mid-stream with Black Magic. Can you explain why those changes had to be made and how you went about doing that? Brian Chin: Dan made a deal with Rhino Entertainment, the catalogue division of Warner Music, that gave us almost unlimited pick of the Atlantic, Warner Bros. and Elektra catalogues. That was wonderful. A very talented and knowledgeable Rhino creative staffer, Tarik Bradford, who has now just joined Universal, came to New York from Los Angeles to view the film and help evaluate how many Warner tracks could replace what had been temp-ed in, over the previous several months of editing. It was great to work with another record nerd.

There were songs that in the end were irreplaceable, and in any case, an overall master deal like that didn't account for the publishing. So clearances were still pretty far and wide, although a good many of the Atlantic and Stax oldies had common publishing owners.

Boombox Serenade: Were there any tracks you had to ditch that were hard to let go of? As a music supervisor, how do you typically deal with "temp love?" Brian Chin: I won't lie. Dan had picks in the film, of course, and so did the three editors, David Zieff, Michael Levine and Eliza Kurtz. They were provided with some of the comprehensive R&B boxed compilations from Atlantic's catalogue, and you couldn't really argue with any pick made out of them.

That said, I think the heartbreaker was a track that Dan picked from Sam Moore's recent album, "None of Us Are Free (Till All of Us Are Free)" that everyone loved as the finale song. We got caught in the holiday break and could not get the writers to sign off in time. That said, Dan picked "Wake Up Everybody" by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and I picked Aretha Franklin's version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and both are in the end, and have the kind of bittersweet but strong vibe that's appropriate.

I try my best to foresee difficult or expensive license holders. I used to clear samples for my label's rap albums, so that gave me a hard lesson in who to walk a big circle around. One close call was "The Champ," by the Mohawks which was not in the Warner catalog although I had a European compilation that indicated it was. I would have hated losing that because it is such a strong hip-hop signifier. Luckily, Marlies was able to negotiate with the British owners over the holiday break.

I also did the major portion of music supervision for the Weinstein Co.'s "Factory Girl," which was re-done in the last month leading up to release date. When I saw the cut, it had Rolling Stones and Kinks songs in it, and two other supervisors had already worked on it! So at 11:59, I was able to come up with a slate of early-to-mid-Sixties rock and pop that set the period, commented on the action and cost far less. I actually enjoyed the challenge of that.

Boombox Serenade: What would your advice be to music supervisors who are told mid-project that they will need to work within a specific catalog or label? Brian Chin: It's like any outcome you have to dissociate yourself from. It would bring out the record geek in you to drill down into your own collection, or Rhapsody, and make new discoveries. I've got two rooms full of vinyl and CDs, so I should do something with them. In this case, Tarik's favorite secret-weapon songs and knowledge of the catalogue dovetailed with mine. The creative part of that was painless.

Boombox Serenade: Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett are, of course, fantastic, but I was also grateful for your inclusion of artists like Arthur Conley and Professor Longhair in the Black Magic soundtrack. In general, which artists from the 60's and 70's are your favorite to share with people who may not know about them? Those you feel are underexposed in proportion to their talent and contributions? Brian Chin: I came to music supervision relatively recently and most of my career has been in the music industry -- A&R, journalism, research, publicity. So it's a joy to see many of my favorite records used in this way, as they were the songs that accompanied my childhood and adolescence and early adulthood. I remember back to being 3 years old and watching records spin and learning to read from the label names and song titles.

So from listening to radio and the top 40 countdowns and going to clubs as a youngster, there are so many things that weren't massive mainstream hits that were for me the mood-setters of my life, and sure enough, they create compelling musical and emotional signatures in the films. Twice in Dan's previous docs, we used "Free Your Mind" by the Politicians, which was made by Holland-Dozier-Holland after they left Motown, and that was another song I heard on the radio because I didn't have the money to buy records as a child, and listened to every different music station to compensate.

As a journalist, and choosing to work in black music and dance music, which were outcast in the mainstream media prior to rap taking over, I always felt I was an advocate of music that wasn't getting prime time, and part of my specialty is knowing thoroughly the early pre-crossover records of star producers, songwriters and singers.

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The Black Magic Soundtrack, available on Amazon

1. "C'mon Children" - Earth, Wind & Fire
2. "Sweet Soul Music" - Arthur Conley editor's pick
3. "Boot-Leg" - Booker T. & The MG's
4. "Land of 1000 Dances" - Wilson Pickett
5. "Teasin'" - Cornell Dupree editor's pick
6. "Hey Little Girl" - Professor Longhair editor's pick
7. "Mess Around" - Ray Charles
8. "Morning After" - The Mar-Keys editor's pick
9. "Ghetto" - Graham Central Station
10. "Love the Life You Live" - Black Heat
11. "What is Hip?" - Tower Of Power
12. "Soul Finger" - The Bar-Kays
13. "Pick Up the Pieces" - Average White Band / AWB

Interview with "Blindsight" director Lucy Walker

Best known for her Independent Spirit Award winning documentary about Amish teens, Devil's Playground (2002), Lucy Walker has more recently been scrambling up the sides of a mountain to make films. Blindsight is a doc in which she follows six blind Tibetan teenagers as they climb the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri peak on the north side of Mount Everest. Walker recently took a few minutes to chat with us about the music she used in Blindsight, including the "outrageously charming" moment (above) that she captured for the film's credits sequence.

Boombox Serenade: First off, can you describe your overall approach to the soundtrack for Blindsight and the role that music has in the film?

Lucy Walker: I love music, grew up obsessed with it, buying vinyl and passing around mix tapes and CDs, became a DJ when I lived in NYC, and performed everywhere from SoundLab to the Limelight, and always want my films to have the best possible music. Obviously music and film are wonderful collaborators. Music can make or break your film.

Boombox Serenade: How did you choose the composer Nitin Sawhney to compose the music for the film and what was it like working with them?

Lucy Walker: I have always loved Nitin's work. We both grew up in London, and I used to watch him live in the 90's whenever he played in NYC. We have lots of mutual friends from the music scene, and I fought hard to have him be the composer. Actually I listened to him non-stop when I was driving around Amish country making Devil's Playground. I remember driving from Indiana to Florida listening to Prophecy and Beyond Skin the whole way... I'm a huge fan and I knew he'd be perfect for this movie. It's sometimes tough when you fall in love with your temp tracks, as you invariably do, even when your temp tracks are by the exact same composer, but I am very grateful for his beautiful contribution to the movie.

Boombox Serenade: Can you just run down some of the other music/artists you used in Blindsight?

Lucy Walker: I listened to as many Tibetan artists and tracks as I could, as well as all the Silk Road ensemble work, and picked our favourites for each scene, very organic. I always like to license tracks in addition to having a composer. Maybe it's the DJ in me but I sometimes prefer cutting existing music to picture than starting over. My friend Richard Blair-Oliphant contributed one track to the movie, which plays all throughout the climactic Ice Palace scene, and that's probably my favourite track in the movie. He wanted to be considered to compose the movie and wanted to demonstrate he could work with traditional Tibetan instrumentation, which was my idea for the music for the movie, and so I showed him a couple of scenes and he went off and came up with one demo track, and that track blew my mind it was so lyrical and beautiful. In the end we wound up going with a more famous and more Asian-rooted composer in Nitin, but I put Richard's demo track right in the movie, it's the perfect frosting on the cake of our soundtrack, if you forgive the awful metaphor (i've just gotten off a long plane ride...!)

Boombox Serenade: During the trek, one of the teenagers starts singing "Happy Together" by the 1960's American band, The Turtles. Can you describe that moment and why you chose to include it in the film?

Lucy Walker: All Tibetans love music and love singing. It's fantastic to behold, everywhere you go in Tibet you can see people singing in all sorts of circumstances, but mostly the Tibetan traditional ballads, occasionally the couple of new young Tibetan rock bands. And of course learning and singing songs is a terrific language tool, and also a particularly enjoyable activity for blind people, so at Braille Without Borders there is a lot of learning and singing Tibetan, English, Chinese, and German songs. "Happy Together" was one of many songs that the kids knew and sang on the mountain, and so is included in those scenes up Everest. And one student at the school named Kyumi was an especially talented and keen singer, and I heard him sing it one day at the school and instantly knew we had a credit sequence, as he is so outrageously charming, for me it was a no-brainer that he'd bring the house down if we finished the movie with him. I grabbed the camera and shot it myself on the spot, straight through three times with three different lens lengths, and voila, there it is in the movie.

Boombox Serenade: I have to say, when I saw that credits sequence, I immediately wanted to own a copy of the film, so that I could keep it around and play that scene whenever I'm feeling depressed.

Lucy Walker: It's on MySpace! Pass it around!  And we donate a penny to Braille Without Borders every time it gets played, so there's another reason to keep on listening!

Boombox Serenade: How easy or difficult was it to clear that moment with the publisher and the label?

Lucy Walker: The manager was very helpful and I am very grateful for that. It helps when you have a group of such inspiring people doing such incredible work as we have in this film - people are so moved that they want to contribute.

Boombox Serenade: Finally, have Sabriye (the school founder) and her students experienced the film yet and if so, were there any observations by them about the music in it?

Lucy Walker: They absolutely love it, which makes me very happy. Kyumi is now a music scholar and I have high hopes for his music career as well.

Interview with "Sliding Liberia" director Britton Caillouette

One part surf film, one part social documentary, Sliding Liberia follows four intrepid surfers as they travel through the war-torn West African nation of Liberia. In addition to featuring some of the most poetic surfing footage this side of Big Wednesday, this film has a great soundtrack and I had a chance to ask the film's co-director, Britton Caillouette, how he went about crafting it.

Boombox Serenade: First off, can you just run down some of the music/artists you used in Sliding Liberia?

Britton Caillouette: In no particular order: Brian Jonestown Massacre, Six Organs of Admittance, Piers Faccini, Antibalas, Califone, The Congos, Todd Hannigan & The Heavy 29's, Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, Babba Ken & The Afro-Groove Connexion.

Boombox Serenade: You mention that with Sliding Liberia it was your partly aim to "restore humanity to a genre that seemed to have lost it." Do you feel like music aided in that goal? If so, how?

Britton Caillouette: Yes. Surfing and music are intimately connected. In many ways both are abstract expressions of human experience. The best surfers will describe wave riding with almost the same language as any great jazz player––style, speed, power, finesse. As a drummer and a surfer, I've experienced the energy of both. I believe great music and great surfing both have the power to mesmerize and transcend. Like music sometimes, representations of surfing can become disconnected from their human element and evaporate in their self-reflexivity––chops for the sake of good chops. Surf filmmakers like Chris Malloy and Thomas Campbell have worked in recent years to interpret and reveal the human joy of surfing, and their effort is reflected in their soundtracks. With Sliding Liberia we chose to turn the camera toward shore in order to complicate the notion of "surfer's paradise." We wanted local individuals represented on camera, speaking for themselves. Surfing would act as a catalyst for greater social awareness. The soundtrack had to represent this hybrid of genres on another level––and we didn't need to look much farther than West Africa itself. With such a rich history of cultural exchange, you hear everything over there––highlife, funk, afrobeat, reggae, hip hop, acoustic, surf guitar, it's all there.

Boombox Serenade: What kind of budget were you working with on Sliding Liberia overall and what percentage of that budget went to music?

Britton Caillouette: Our budget was relatively low for this type of film and about 20 percent went toward the music.

Boombox Serenade: Your film used both score and licensed tracks. Why did you decide to use both types of music?

Britton Caillouette: I knew from the beginning that our film needed both. Again, it goes back to the fact that we were striving to accomplish something fresh and different. At the beginning of our editing process, Nicholai and I put a note up on the whiteboard that said "Complicate Everything." Images of tropical paradise are juxtaposed with shots of urban squalor. Moments of pure joy are interlaced with harsh memories of terror. If the licensed tracks contributed to the positive flow of the journey, the score was the reality check. With much of Liberia's past intimately tied to the slave experience of the antebellum south, I wanted the score to be infused with the blues. We thought about hiring an old blues musician, but that didn't work out. Dobro, lap steel, hammond organ––these things fade in with the interviews, constantly stirring up the past.

Boombox Serenade: You mentioned that Nick Ferrall did your music supervision. How did you go about finding and working with him?

Britton Caillouette: I've known Nick Ferrall for years. I used to play in a band with his fiancé in high school and have always respected his musical taste. He runs a music blog called rewritablecontent.com that reviews indie bands and always seems to be on the cutting edge of what's happening. Our work together was a true collaboration, more of a learning experience than anything. We'd get together and just have fun. He'd show me some stuff, I'd show him some stuff, and then we'd figure out who we needed to get in contact with. We really seemed to be on the same plane. Funny story, we were searching for months for our "ending song" that would really wrap up the film. On day I called him and said, "Dude! I got it! Have you heard "Sunday Noises" by Califone?" Nick laughed and responded, "Don't you remember? That song was on the first mix I gave you."

Boombox Serenade: On a scale of one to ten (ten being the most difficult), how difficult was it to find and license the non-score tracks that you wanted for the film? Do you feel like you were generally quoted fair prices for the tracks? Was there a lot of back and forth? Describe the process.

Britton Caillouette: I love finding new, obscure music. Trying to license it is a different matter. I'll be liberal and give the experience a 7. Many of the artists we used are either unsigned or on small indie labels. To me, the process of tracking down all of these individuals and getting them to read, sign, and return contracts was semi-nightmarish. Nick and I worked together to stay on top of people, but even then it was a struggle. Each band was a different experience and a different set of parameters. I'm not a great negotiator by nature either. I do think we got fair prices for most of the tracks, though some of the bigger companies were able to leverage us more than I would have liked. My advice to other filmmakers would be to contact the labels and get the contracts signed as early as possible––preferably before you've even decided on specific songs. You can always decide to not use a track before you've cut a sequence to it. It's good to have that option if negotiations go south.

Boombox Serenade: Eveyone's talking about how radically distribution is changing these days. How does this affect a filmmaker's approach to music licensing? Did you negotiate for festival-level licenses or ones that would cover broader distribution (i.e. Internet) in anticipation of the new distribution landscape?

Britton Caillouette: We negotiated all rights in perpetuity for everything that we licensed. You never know these days where your stuff is going to end up. I had someone contact us that controls some internet niche, where he buys content to bundle with advertising while sending users from one place to another. Best to be prepared. Also, for us negotiating festival-only rights would have taken away all of our bargaining power. Many companies will give you festival rights for free or very minor compensation. If you accept you're basically telling them, "we're locking picture with your song, so if we do get distribution, name your price and we're going to have to pay it." A small-time filmmaker can usually find much better deals by negotiating for everything up front and using things like step deals or benchmarks in case certain types of distribution do happen.

Boombox Serenade: During Q&A at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, you said that your film has some "harsh juxtapositions" in it, with "a surfers' paradise in one shot and urban squalor in the next." Can you describe how you approached that disparity in terms of the music choices in your film?

Britton Caillouette: I spoke to this a little above with my discussion of the score. The soundtrack flows back and forth between score and non-score elements, and whereas the non-score tracks tend to drive the journey forward the score is a constant subtext. The clash really comes to a head during the Piers Faccini song "Uncover My Eyes"––where everything I wanted to do with the film is condensed into a 3 minute montage. For me the poetry of this song worked on many levels, and in may ways Piers accomplishes with his music what I wanted to accomplish with our film. Described as "a geography of a thousand melodies", Piers' Tearing Sky album weaves together European folk ballads, Mississippi blues, West African strings, Middle Eastern rhythms, and mystical chanting. It becomes almost too perfect when you learn that the record was produced by surf-world familiar, JP Plunier (Jack Johnson, Ben Harper), and that members of Ben and Jack's bands appear on the record with other world music greats.

Boombox Serenade: Todd Hannigan composed and performed the original music for Sliding Liberia. How did you go about finding and working with him?

Britton Caillouette: I've also known Todd for a long time. When I was 15 I lost my left leg to bone cancer. I make a brief appearance in the surf film Shelter by Chris Malloy, surfing for the first time since my amputation surgery. Todd scored the music for my part in the film––a song that has literally become part of the soundtrack of my life. That trip was also my first glimpse into filmmaking. I've always loved Todd's music and thought working with him would really bring things full circle for me. Never mind that his post facility, called Brotheryn Studios, is located on the sprawling and historic Rancho Casitas in the rolling hills of Ojai, CA.

Boombox Serenade: It was really nice to watch the surfing footage in your film with something other than California-style surf music behind it. Did you anticipate how well afrobeat and reggae would go with that footage?

Britton Caillouette: People have used reggae in surf films before, but to my knowledge no one has used afrobeat. I've been a big Fela Kuti fan for a while and knew it would fit incredibly well with surfing. Afrobeat is hands down the grooviest music in the world, but it's also political music. If you listen, Fela was singing about things many Africans still deal with on a daily basis––war, poverty, corruption. Besides transcending suffering, the music was also intended to unite people in overcoming strife. It doesn't get more appropriate that that for what we were trying to do. Also, my co-director, Nicholai, and I happened to go to school with two members of Babba Ken & The Afro-Groove Connexion––a band that's at the center of a thriving San Francisco Afrofunk movement. I thought it would be cool to use modern bands who are bringing the style back.

Boombox Serenade: What's your favorite film-music moment in the film and why?

Britton Caillouette: The majority of people who have seen our film will tell you that their favorite part is the Piers Faccini sequence. Personally, my favorite musical moment happens right after that, when the old storyteller begins playing his traditional three-stringed instrument again and says, "Now the sound you are listening to, it's used to tell the children how the water moves. It calls to the imagination the waves from the sea. You know...music has a message, a universal message." He strums his instrument at the edge of a darkness, surrounded by relics of the past. His voice and strumming are asynchronous with the image. While working on this film I read a lot about ancient storytelling and mythology. When we met this man, I had kicked around the idea of presenting Sliding Liberia as a parable. In his interview he launched into the story about the sea virtually unprompted. He grabbed the three stringed instrument and began playing. It was the same instrument his grandfather used in the village. I immediately knew we were in the presence of something timeless, and held onto the microphone with my dear life. For me this moment in the film proves the transcendent power of music. With only three notes the old man calls us into the story, poetically expresses the divine mystery, and lifts us above the suffering of war. What more could a filmmaker ask for?

Britton Caillouette co-directed and produced Sliding Liberia with Nicholai Lidow. The documentary is currently screening at both U.S. and international film festivals. Check the schedule here: http://slidingliberia.com/screenings_window.html