Music on TV

An October story on reported that several Nirvana tracks would be an integral part of the Nov. 27 “CSI: Miami.” Yet the episode aired on that date -- while I was actually in Miami, hunting around for the shop that sells the Sunglasses of Justice -- with no Nirvana tracks.

Despite being on vacation, I had to ask a CBS rep what happened to the . A spokeswoman for “CSI: Miami” said that there were no Nirvana tracks on the episode because the show’s producers “felt that creatively it didn’t work for the episode.”
I find that curious.

In the Forbes story, the show’s music supervisor, P.J. Bloom, said that the episode, which was about military recruiters and the suspicious death of a soldier, was written with the Nirvana songs in mind.

“Once I had that exclusive opportunity on paper, I was able to go to the producers and ask, 'Hey, what about writing an episode around Nirvana songs?' Bloom told Forbes. And they bit.

So the producers wrote an episode around those songs, then decided the rarely licensed songs of one of the most famous rock bands in the world “didn’t work”? Strange, to say the least.
You have to wonder if the surviving members of the band, Courtney Love or their representatives decided that Horatio and company weren’t the ideal venue for Kurt Cobain’s musical legacy.

But there’s no way to know that, since Larry Mestel, head of Primary Wave, the music firm to whom Courtney Love sold a portion of Cobain’s publishing, didn’t return an e-mail asking him what happened to the “CSI: Miami” licensing.
As I reported in a I did several months ago, Nirvana songs have been used in “Six Feet Under” and “Jarhead,” but the TNT drama “Saved” was denied the opportunity to use “Come As You Are.”
“CSI: Miami” had been planning to use “Come As You Are” as well, according to the Forbes story.

But for Nirvana and television -- this time anyway -- there was something in the way.
A few weeks ago, television critics were mailed copies of a new TNT show called Saved. The opening notes that greeted a viewer who loaded the show into a DVD player were the somber chords of Come As You Are, a classic Nirvana track.

The surprising thing about the soundtrack for “Saved,” the story of a troubled emergency rescue worker (starring Omari Hardwick and Tom Everett Scott, left), was not that the drama’s music supervisor chose such an iconic song -- but that the move almost worked.
Representatives for the Nirvana catalog, it turns out, would have been happy for “Saved” to have used one of the band’s tunes -- just not that one.
“It wasn’t a monetary issue, we just felt that maybe a different song would be more appropriate,” said Larry Mestel, head of Primary Wave Music Publishing, a firm that recently purchased a stake in Nirvana’s publishing and has begun a concerted campaign to license the band’s music in a host of new ways, including possible use in films, television shows and commercials.

As it turned out, “Saved” didn’t end up using a Nirvana track, but the final version of the pilot for the show, which aired June 12, did feature, among other songs, a remix of the Doors’ “Break on Through,” the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and two Jimi Hendrix tracks.
Television’s role in helping new bands get noticed has been widely discussed in the last few years, and its influence in that arena continues to grow. When the song “Chasing Cars,” by the UK band Snow Patrol was featured in the closing moments of the “Grey’s Anatomy” finale in May, the song rocketed to the top of the iTunes singles chart within days, and the band’s label began going after radio airplay with renewed vigor.

“Just from that one usage, it’s amazing what’s gone on,” said Tony Seyler, vice president of film and television marketing for Interscope/Geffen/A M/Dreamworks, the band’s American label.
But in the last year, musicians of all stripes -- especially older artists and established bands who want their music to be relevant to new generations -- have sought out television opportunities as never before. Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin and the Dixie Chicks are just a few of the artists who have actively embraced television’s prominent use of their music in recent months.

And Nirvana, long seen as off limits for film, television and commercial licensing, is no longer a rare exception to that trend.
Though a couple of compilations and one boxed set of the band’s music have been released in the last few years, during the last decade, Nirvana’s music has been largely absent from the pop-culture scene, especially in films and on television. As Charles R.

Cross, author of the Cobain biography “Heavier Than Heaven” as well as books on Hendrix, Springsteen and Led Zeppelin, points out, Kurt Cobain (left) may just be a name to someone who was a toddler -- or not yet born -- when the Nirvana singer died in 1994.
“Rock is not as important as it once was,” Cross said. “Nirvana’s reputation was helped by the fact that there wasn’t a lot of marketing of the band [after Cobain’s death].

But now it’s been so long and there has been so little marketing that there is a chance that there will be a younger generation that doesn’t know Nirvana.” Still, the band’s custodians “need to be very careful with this legacy,” Cross said. “They could damage it.

This music -- the album 'Nevermind' -- it’s more than a record. It stands as part of our cultural history.”
Licensing of the Nirvana legacy began in a small way a year ago, when “Six Feet Under” used a Nirvana track, “All Apologies,” in a flashback scene in which Nate Fisher talked about Cobain’s death.

And “Jarhead,” a 2005 film directed by Sam Mendes, was allowed to use “Something in the Way.” (Mendes wanted “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” too, but was turned down).

• June 1, 1999: Moby releases “Play,” which ends up being licensed for dozens of TV commercials, film soundtracks and TV shows, including “The Sopranos” and “The X-Files.

  ”

• Oct. 6, 2000: “CSI” debuts with the Who’s “Who Are You” as the theme song. When CSI: Miami arrives two years later, its theme is the band’s Won’t Get Fooled Again.

  The theme of “CSI: NY,” which arrives in 2004, is “Baba O’Riley.

• June 11, 2002: “American Idol,” which launches the careers of Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Carrie Underwood and Fantasia Barrino, arrives on the TV scene. It also sends many new and old songs up the pop charts, including (most recently) “Bad Day” and “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.

  ”

• Sept. 16, 2003: First use of a Death Cab for Cutie track on “The O.C.

  ,” the show that launched, or at least greatly assisted, the careers of many emerging musicians, including Death Cab.

• February, 2004: A tour is launched of artists heard (and seen) on “One Tree Hill,” including Gavin DeGraw, cast member and musician Tyler Hill and Michelle Branch’s new band, The Wreckers.
• Oct.

  24, 2004: “Cold Case” airs an excellent episode built entirely around the music of Johnny Cash. Later, the show gives the same treatment to the song catalogs of John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.

• Aug.

  7. 2005: Two versions of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” are heard on the “Six Feet Under” episode “All Alone”; the “In Utero” version is heard in a scene in which Nate Fisher cries about Kurt Cobain’s death; the “MTV Unplugged” version, over the show’s end credits. It’s the first major use of a Nirvana song on a TV show since “Beavis and Butt-head” positively commented on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1993.

• July 31, 2005: “Entourage,” which uses a hip mixture of hip-hop, pop and rock tunes (everything from T.I. to Kings of Leon to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”), integrates a U2 concert into an episode, in which Bono wishes Johnny Drama a happy birthday from the stage of one of the band’s L.

  A. concerts.

• Aug.

  21, 2005: An extended version of Sia’s “Breathe Me” is used over the final scenes of “Six Feet Under,” thus launching the singer’s career overnight. Too bad the song was only available as part of a “Six Feet Under” full-length album for months after it was heard on the show.

• June 4, 2006: Leonard Cohen’s great song “Hallelujah” is heard on the soundtrack for, of all things, “Falcon Beach,” a witless new ABC Family summer show.

  “Hallelujah” - most often the Jeff Buckley cover of the tune - thus officially becomes the most overplayed TV soundtrack song of the last decade.