Friday, September 17, 2010

The Man Behind the Music of HBO's "True Blood," Gary Calamar, Part 2 "True Blood" music supervisor, Gary Calamar, talks Led Zeppelin, record stores and spooky music.

Creatively speaking, where do you draw from other than the script itself, do you have a wall of records you talk to or how do you generate your ideas?
Yes. Sometimes I actually do that. My last resort, I just stand next to the wall of music and just sort of close my eyes and hope for a miracle. But, yeah after I read the script and we see a rough cut, different scenes just kind of reach out and kind of call out for different types of music. You know, a fight going on at Merlotte's or if there's some sort of party at Lafayette's or whatever it happens to be. I have that idea of what the overall sound of "True Blood" is so I... find the right songs. Then I'll play them for Alan Ball and he'll kind of make the final decision of what he thinks works. And then the next step for me is actually clearing them, and getting the license and negotiating the deal and all that.
Right, the glamorous part?
Yeah, it's not that bad but I guess you could say it's less glamorous, but definitely a huge part of the job.
I suppose your other job, DJ'ing at KCRW must help with your approach to finding the right songs.

Yeah, I've been at the station for a good, not quite 15 years yet, but probably 13 years or so. I'm always listening for new music to play on the show. The big difference between the radio show and the TV work is that I don't have to work by committee on the radio show. I'm the DJ, I can play what I want and suffer or get praised by that. With a TV show it's much more of a collaboration and the song that I might think is perfect may get shot down and vice versa. But yeah KCRW is an amazing thing for me to have been doing all this time. On "Six Feet Under" there was a song that got a lot of attention by Sia called "Breathe Me," the final song on the final episode. That was actually a song that I had been playing on KCRW for a good 6 months before we used it in "Six Feet Under."
Is your process with "True Blood" any different from what it was with say, "Weeds" or "Six Feet Under?"

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