In the last 20 years there is no denying that the music industry has greatly evolved because of streaming services and new technology. Because of this, a new appreciation has been placed on certain aspects of the music industry. Two of those many, many aspects being the vinyl business and the art of music supervising. Vinyl accounted for an estimated 9.7 million album sales last year, says an annual music consumption report from BuzzAngle. That’s up roughly 12% from 8.6 million in 2017. The importance of music in our favorite tv shows has also been heightened. With numerous social media channels now available to the masses, fans who like the same things are quick to share/comment about scene stealing songs and soundtracks. Creating emphasis not only on the story and characters, but on the music that accompanies it. Quickly making chart topping hits. Examples being soundtracks for Stranger Things, Empire and Big Little Lies.
Two experts in these musical fields are Los Angeles based couple, Kerri and Todd Drootin. Kerri is an Emmy-nominated music supervisor whose credits include The Office, Master of None, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place to name a few. Todd has been working in specialty vinyl for the last 13 years and recently started www.LPGuru.com, a boutique shop and service finding premium vinyl pressings for audiophiles and collectors. His main goal, making available his expertise and services to a wide audience so that music lovers and audiophiles can find exceptional pressings of their favorite albums; those that will perform at distinctively higher levels than those simply picked out of a bin. We spoke with them more in depth about their respective areas.
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KERRI
KERRIYou have been the music supervisor on Brooklyn Nine-Nine for six years now. Do you think the musical tone of the show changes from season to season or stays pretty consistent?
I would say that it stays fairly consistent. There are always visual vocal gags written into the season (the songs that you hear cast members singing on camera), there is always super buried background music at Shaw’s Bar and there’s always some big musical moments in featured montage scenes in each season (chase scenes, etc.). The only difference that I have seen in the last season or two is that we’re using a bit more eighties hits for these moments and not just sticking with classic hip hop, which had been the previous M.O.
How would you describe the musical vibe for The Good Place?
That’s a tricky one. I think David Schwartz’s score is way more important to the vibe and story of The Good Place than any third-party licensed music, and his score is just so good. We don’t use a lot of licensed music in this series and when we do use music it’s very much on a case by case basis for what’s going on in that particular scene and episode. It’s not the type of show that I have a set sound for where I can start pulling tracks that I think would be good for the season and send them over to the producers and editors beforehand to pull from throughout the season. All the work I do for this show is as it comes up and addresses that particular need. I do have a really good time finding EDM tracks for Jason though.
You have worked on every genre from comedy to drama. Do you have a favorite? How different are the song selections from each genre?
I really love all of it but I’ve always been a comedy gal first and foremost and have definitely done the most in that genre and at this point feel really comfortable doing 30 min, single camera sitcoms. Dramas are a totally different beast but I love digging into those too. Heartfelt, dramatic moments that need music tend to take me a little more time to work on since they’re just not as secondhand nature to me. I find myself having to really focus on lyrics, especially in the more emotional, slower songs. I tend to let my mind wander and since I’m a drummer I listen to rhythms and beats first. I’m always up for the challenge though and it lets me dig into songs that I love that don’t necessarily work for comedies. My favorite drama that I ever worked on was Bates Motel. We used so many cool oldie tracks and it was fun to get really creepy with those songs. I have a couple of new dramas coming up this season though that I’m excited about – an adaptation of Brave New World and Briarpatch, both for the USA Network.
What would you say is some of your most memorable work?
I feel very lucky that I have gotten to work on some really iconic shows, like The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place and of course, Master of None, which I co-music supervised with Zach Cowie, which lead to our Emmy nomination. We have a blast working together on that one.
Personally, I’m really proud of the work I’ve done recently on AP Bio and I am so excited that we got saved and got a season 3 pickup after initially getting cancelled. Mike O’Brien is the executive producer on this one and we have such a fun time working together on music. We’re about the same age and grew up on a lot of the same music so a lot of the stuff we use is near and dear to my heart. There’s a lot of old school punk, indie rock and vintage country. My favorite use from AP Bio is “The Fire That Keeps You Warm” by Dolly Parton that opens up the penultimate episode of Season 2 where we see Lynette looking super foxy, walking in slo-mo in a sick 1970s get up.
What would you say was your big break into television?
My first big break would have to be getting to music supervise Psych. That was the second or third show that I got to work on, it was the first one that became a hit and I was really starting to get the hang of the job at that point. Psych was such a great show and everybody on the crew were just lovely to work with. It was so fun and easy going and we got to use so many great 80s and 90s tunes. Psych was the first comedy I got to work on and it all just clicked for me. I did all 8 seasons of Psych and just wrapped up Psych Movie 2, which should be airing soon. The other turning point of my career was getting to jump in during Season 5 of The Office. That was a game changer. The Office then led to Parks and Recreation, which lead to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and then The Good Place and now Sunnyside, the newest Mike Schur show that will be airing on NBC this fall.
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TODD
TODDHow did your vinyl business www.LPGuru.com come about?
I started working in audiophile vinyl back in 2006. I had always been a huge record nerd but to that point I did not understand a ton about sound quality and the way it could vary between pressings. It’s not information that was really available to an average person who just wanted to collect their favorite albums on vinyl. Even many people who consider themselves audiophiles may not realize this. A lot of people just assume that the original pressing is the best, or maybe most recent one pressed on heavy vinyl. But there’s no hard, fast rule for what version or what pressing will sound the best. My mind was absolutely blown when I was first shown that identical looking records could have very different sound. Having an especially great sounding copy of an album I loved completely changed the listening experience. I started LP Guru because I wanted to share that experience with others.
Where do you tend to find the majority of your vinyls?
Everywhere and anywhere. I make the rounds of the local stores regularly. People find out about my line of work and contact me with collections. I travel whenever I get the chance and have a lot of favorite out-of-town spots that I’ll drag my poor family to. We should probably take a nice tropical vacation one day instead of just going where the records are. The good news is both my wife and daughter enjoy shopping for records too. So we make the most of it.
What would you say is the best vinyl you’ve ever heard?
This is of course a tough question for someone like me so let me go with a few favorites. I have a gorgeous original mono pressing of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue that is not even the best sounding copy I’ve ever heard, but there’s just something romantic about hearing it the way so many people first heard it so long ago. I was lucky enough to go to a mastering studio recently and an engineer cut for me on the spot an obscure record direct from the master tapes that blew my mind. I’m a huge free jazz fan so I’m constantly blown away when I find great versions of avant garde stuff. I’m constantly being knocked out by records. It’s one of the highlights of my job.
But my standard answer to this question always comes back to a specific copy of Led Zeppelin II I heard years ago. The first pressings were originally cut by a well-known mastering engineer named Robert Ludwig who, in my opinion, just completely nailed it. But the bass and the dynamics were so powerful that when the head of their record label gave a copy to a young relative, their kiddie turntable was unable to track it and the needle was thrown from the grooves. So they had the record re-cut and it never sounded as good again. The original pressings are killer. But they also vary in quality just like any other record. It was cut at different plants and some are just beyond. There was a white label promo version I found for a client that I just keep remembering. I’ve had (and have) a lot of these “RL” pressings but that one took things to a different level.
In the 90s a lot of companies stopped pressing new vinyls. Why was that? Was there just not as much of a demand?
CDs took over and vinyl was almost forgotten about. CDs were cheaper to make and easier for both the record labels, the stores and the average consumer to deal with. So a lot of great ‘90s albums are very tough to find on vinyl since they were pressed in relatively limited numbers if at all. It makes finding a copy of a great album like Tom Petty’s Wildflowers a real drag. You might pay $400 for a clean one if you can even manage to find one!
What are your top most requested vinyls?
People still love the classics and especially when it comes to getting a great sounding copy, which is my specialty. So I get asked about Dark Side Of The Moon a lot. Which is great, because it’s still super fun to hear that album on a killer pressing. Lots of Zeppelin, Stones, and of course The Beatles. Audiophiles tend to love Steely Dan because they were generally very well recorded. Classic jazz artists like John Coltrane and Miles Davis will always be in demand, and that’s great because I absolutely love that stuff too. There are other people who specialize in the rarer stuff, but when someone reaches out to me it’s most often for something widely loved. But I can’t deny that I just love getting a stranger request, like when people ask for a great sounding copy of a later Captain Beefheart album. And believe it or not, they are out there.