Bob Thiele leads The Forest Rangers, a band that was spawned by the "Sons of Anarchy" TV series; comedian Andy Kindler takes no prisoners when he gives his annual State of the Industry speech; a filmmaker is challenging the copyright claim to "Happy Birthday to You," which keeps the song out of many TV shows and movies.
'Sons of Anarchy' is no more, but the band plays on thanks to The Forest Rangers
The hit TV show “Sons of Anarchy” was a favorite not only for its gritty storyline that followed the operatic lives of a fictional biker gang, but also for its music.
Thanks to music supervisor and composer Bob Thiele, and the show's creator, Kurt Sutter, “Sons of Anarchy” had album-length soundtracks that accompanied each season. Not your typical TV soundtrack, Thiele pooled the talents of artists such as Leonard Cohen, Alison Mosshart of the band The Kills and several in-demand studio musicians.
Even though the “Sons of Anarchy” show is no more, the music plays on. Thiele "got the band back together," as it were, to form a group called The Forest Rangers. Their first album, “Land, Ho!” was released July 10.
Bob Thiele recently came into The Frame's studios and spoke with John Horn.
Interview Highlights
How did The Forest Rangers come about?
It was happenstance. We really didn’t have a clue where this was going. We didn’t set out to have a band in the beginning. I think towards the end of the first season, we had a couple of episodes where songs became very important to the narrative. It was completely unexpected and it was really Kurt's vision where we could play a song for five minutes without any dialogue and that it could carry the story. And I think it was after that first season we said, You know, there should be a band. We could call ourselves The Forest Rangers. Actually, it was my friend Dave Kushner, who’s in Velvet Revolver — we wrote the theme song together — who came up with the band name The Forest Rangers and that’s how it kind of evolved.
The Forest Rangers seems like an idea you could have dreamed up over beers later at night. How does that What if...? question actually come together into the dedication it takes to write and record and produce a record?
I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. I always liken The Forest Rangers to almost like a Wednesday night poker game with really good friends. You’ve been playing this game for years, we all get together, but we’re not playing poker. We’re just sort of saying, Hey, what are we going to do now? We’re just all throwing ideas out. And I remember one time we were recording "House of the Rising Sun" and I thought, My God, this might have been the first song any of us learned when we were 11 years old, and here we are recording it so many years later in a garage... So there we were, a garage band, playing a song that was probably our first ever learned. You know, A minor to C. And we were able to just be together, enjoying it, without any real agenda.
The album has several guest musicians. How did Audra Mae come to be on the album?
Audra is a great story because she really was the first artist. She did the [Bob Dylan] "Forever Young" cover in season one. Kurt said, "We want something to begin the episode with a sort of lullaby." So I had heard Audra, she was signed to Warner Chappell, and she was pretty much unknown. Audra came in, she sang "Forever Young." It was so powerful that we ended up closing the episode with the same song, but just her voice... This was back in the day of MySpace. And she would get like 25, 30 hits on MySpace. The Wednesday after the show aired, she was getting 10, 15, 20,000 hits a day.
Your father, Bob Thiele, Sr., was a prominent jazz producer and a label owner who worked with John Coltrane. And one of the guest artists on “Land, Ho!” is his son, Ravi Coltrane. I suppose that’s not an accident?
I had never met Ravi. I was in New York, my kid was going to college and I happened to be there and I [thought], I’m gonna call Ravi and just say, "Hey man, you got any time today?" Eight hours later we were in a studio and he was playing the horn.
You are a second-generation musician and your son, Owen, is a musician as well. What’s the best advice that your father gave you, or that you can give to your son, about the music business?
My father... he was a guy who never made any money in the music business. Which is really kind of amazing. It was towards the very end of his life that "What a Wonderful World" became a hit. He had [co-]written it in 1968, but it wasn’t until 1988 that the song really grew into the copyright that it is today. And that was because of "Good Morning, Vietnam." My dad was always kind of like, I just want to make records. I just want to be around music. I love it. He made bad, bad business deals all the way through. He left a legacy that’s, wow — I’m not sure that if the eyes were on the money he would have had that same thing. Now that the music business is — God knows what it is — I’d say, Let’s do what we love. You know, there have been a couple of times where I’ve made decisions based on the job and money, and I can tell you that they were the worst decisions I ever made.
Andy Kindler: 'It's a great time for comics,' except if you're Adam Sandler
The Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal is the biggest of its kind. Patton Oswalt, Chris Hardwick and the new "Daily Show" host, Trevor Noah, were among the comics who performed last weekend.
One of the most popular events at the festival is the annual “State of the Industry” speech by comedian Andy Kindler. It’s basically a critique of what’s happening in comedy now — and a roast of the biggest names in comedy. Audiences and peers love and hate it for Kindler’s brutal honesty.
Andy Kinder "State of the Industry" speech 2015
Kindler was invited to perform at the Just For Laughs festival in the early '90s after he wrote a satirical article for National Lampoon in 1991 titled, "The Hack's Handbook: A Starter Kit," which argued that comedy is easy if you avoid being original. Kindler was invited by the director of Just For Laughs to do a version of the article live. His performance was a hit and the next year, Kindler came back with the "State of the Industry" speech.
The Frame's John Horn talks with Andy Kindler about this year's speech and why it's a great time to be a comedian now — except if you're Adam Sandler:
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
How does the comedy scene today compare to when you first started giving the "State of the Industry" speech more than 20 years ago?
Well, back in the '90s, when there was the comedy boom, a lot of it was the same club owners who did the urban cowboy craze in the '80s. They never [promoted] the comedian because they never wanted the comedian to think that they were drawing people. So they basically said, Come down to the comedy club! — as if someone would say, Come down to the movie theater! Well, what's playing? What do you care? You like movies! So [comedy] very much appealed to the lowest common denominator.
Also, along with society — you know, with Ellen DeGeneres couldn't say she was gay — there's a much bigger climate now where people say they're gay. There's not as [many] problems revealing who you are as there were back then. So, for a lot of different reasons, right now I would say it's the most exciting time to be a comic.
There's the expressions, "Shooting fish in a barrel," "Kicking a dog when it's down." Could we put Adam Sandler in that category now?
I've been making fun of him for years, just for the fact that his movies are never reviewed. He doesn't even put them out to be reviewed. And just [consider] the "Pixels" movie — it doesn't sounds like he listens to a whole pitch.
Let's talk about his career. Does it make you a little bit sad that somebody who might have had a little bit of talent has become so unfunny?
I used to be a huge Adam Sandler fan. I loved his stand up. I loved his stuff on "Saturday Night Live." So many times I go after people that — on a certain level — I feel could be doing better, but for some reason decided to go with the money. Who knows? I can't get inside his head. That prompted me because I've gone from being a big fan to these movies, I couldn't understand them. Like the [upcoming] one, where the Native Americans [walked] off the set.
It's obviously not funny, the names of these characters. But what is it about what he's saying that, to you, that might have crossed the line about political correctness?
I think it's just the fact that after all these years, going after such obvious jokes about Native Americans ... basically I said that Native Americans who walked off the set of the movie said they would prefer another genocide. They would prefer once again to be slaughtered by the white man than to stay on this movie.
Wait, so genocide is funny but Native Americans ...
What you bring up is a very interesting point. It speaks to this whole thing that comics say: Anything I say on stage is fine because I'm a comedian. I don't think that's true. I do have to think, Is it worth me getting the laugh on that joke to bring up the genocide? And I think that's always an open question. I was happy with it because I think the movie seems so insulting that it required that kind of response.
In your speech you referred to an article in Deadline Hollywood about how diversity in Hollywood might be keeping white people out of sitcoms. What did you want to say about this story?
I just wanted to say that I could go into a studio now and say, Hey, guess what? They're all black people in the show! Just the idea that this was now a wonderland and that somehow whites were squeezed out. I used to make a joke about how whenever they would have a show that had all black people in it, and it didn't work, [network executives] would always say, Well we tried the black people and it didn't work. But all the millions of shows with all white people, they never said, You know what the common denominator is? These people are white! So I just thought it was funny that they were writing an article saying, You know what you should do? You should make yourself into some kind of transsexual — because then the doors are open.
Lawsuit claims 'Happy Birthday' song should be in the public domain
For the 1994 documentary “Hoop Dreams,” filmmaker Steve James had to pay $5,000 to Warner/Chappell for the privilege of using a very brief rendition of “Happy Birthday To You."
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For a low-budget movie such as “Hoop Dreams,” that’s a lot of money. The fees for using the song can go much higher for big-budget productions. It’s one of the reasons why you’ll often hear people singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” at birthday parties in movies and TV shows, because that song is in the public domain and can be used for free.
Now, a new class-action lawsuit filed by documentary filmmaker Jenn Nelson argues that “Happy Birthday to You” should also be public domain. (Don’t worry, you can always sing it for no charge at your kids’ party.) The case, being argued before a federal judge in Los Angeles, puts New York-based Good Morning to You Productions against Warner Music Group publishing.
Nelson was charged $1,500 to use "Happy Birthday" in a documentary she was making about the history of the song. During research for the film, she happened upon a 2010 paper by George Washington University Law School professor Robert Brauneis that argued the copyright was actually invalid. Nelson found the paper so convincing she took the issue to her lawyer.
"In the film industry it's a bit of a joke to have to pay for the song," Nelson said on The Frame. "People think it's ridiculous, but they do it anyway because the fee ... doesn't hinder you from doing it. It's just sort of inconvenient and annoying. I took it to my lawyer, Randall Newman, and we decided that we actually had a good case and we decided to file."
Evidence submitted by the prosecution argues that the song really entered the public domain as early as the 1920s, and that music publisher Warner/Chappell's 1935 copyright is not valid. The firm currently collects an estimated $2 million a year in licensing fees for the song.
An attorney representing Warner/Chappell could not be reached for comment on this matter, but you can read their full counter-argument below.
New evidence — which Nelson's calling the "smoking gun" — is a 1927 songbook that published "Good Morning and Birthday Song" apparently without any copyright notice. Her lawyers argue that, in accordance with the 1909 Copyright Act, the publication of that song without a copyright makes it fair game.
"If we win, our goal is to release the song into the public domain where it belongs and where we think its been all along," Nelson said. "It's the people's song, it belongs to the people. We think people should be able to use it however, whenever, wherever they'd like. Hopefully, once we get the decision, people will be able to do that. The monetary part of the equation is sort of step two of the lawsuit."
The judge is currently reviewing the 200 pages of new evidence and Nelson expects a decision within months.
Happy Birthday lawsuit - Original Complaint
Happy Birthday Lawsuit - Warner/Chappell Music Response