Well, on the flipside of that argument, you pretty much have the market cornered for that kind of music.
Yeah, it would seem so, pretty much. I mean, there are a few “hobby groups” around the world that play the music for fun and as amateur volunteers. But as far as seriously digging in there and playing hundreds of performances around the world, that’s what we do. So I guess you could say that the market is cornered, and it seems to actually be growing!
Well, I think that has something to do with this trend in the 21st century where everything retro is in vogue.
Yeah, I think it’s because people are always searching for meaning and searching for reality…and stuff that resonates and gives us a reason to get up in the morning. And as we walk deeper into the 21st century, we are finding a lot of things that are scary and perhaps not really good for us - like computers.
[Laughs] You know, they’re fantastic; I have one, but I can see what it is doing to my kids. They don’t go out in the yard to throw a ball or a Frisbee or anything anymore; they’re glued to a machine. And I think that there is going to be a point where people re-discover that going outside into the sunshine and doing things outdoors is more meaningful than sitting in front of a computer. Of course, as I say this, I’m sitting in front of a computer, by the way.
But I think that’s the direction we’re going. We’re at a time where we need to make comforting connections to our past to help tell us where to go next. And I think a lot of what is on Main Street USA is based on that, as well. It shows a confident America; that’s the entire aesthetic – this year is great, next year is going to be better! And the Disney people do a great job of capturing that feeling in the air on Main Street USA.
One of the things I often think about when listening to the music on Main Street USA is what the composers may have been thinking or feeling when they were writing that music 100 years ago. I’m sure many of their lives weren’t that great.
Some of them, yes, but some of them, no. This was a new business back then; working in the music business in the early 20th century was just becoming a profession, so a lot of people did well and made money. And some people, who weren’t commercially savvy, like Scott Joplin, didn’t do so well.
But what we see in that music from that time is that people were trying to express emotion instead of concerning themselves with sales. Scott Joplin would walk down the street with manuscript paper in his pocket, and when he would hear these beautiful sounds in his mind, he’d stop and write them down, and that’s how he composed! He didn’t really care if four million people would love this thing he just composed; he was doing it, because it was meaningful to him. And that seemed to be the general trend of the composers of that time – they were interested in artistic expression, and if they could make some money with it; that was great, too.
Things are very different now. I’m involved in the modern recording world and television, too, and everything is very focus-group-driven – how many units of this can we sell? That’s how you decide whether to do something or not. And there is a very plastic, hollow feel to that, when it comes down to creepy, commercial ideals. And when you are off the beaten track, which we are, and do things for non-commercial reasons, you get this effect of more meaningful stuff.
Are you saying that you are not monetarily compensated for the Main Street USA music?
That is actually true. They are using our recordings, and we are enjoying it, but we have never gotten paid by Disney.
Is that one of the reasons why you cannot physically purchase that specific music in the park?
You know, for a while back in 1990, they did sell the CDs in the park, and I’m not sure why they don’t do it now. When they were available, they were moving thousands of copies, and from that, we did see a little bit of income. I don’t really know why they stopped doing it, because the orchestra and I do not control the copyright to those sound recordings.
Lo and behold, though, the two recordings that make up that loop are still in print, believe it or not! One is called THE WHISTLER AND HIS DOG and the other is called ON THE BOARDWALK. There are about 16-18 cuts from those discs that make up a large part of the loop, and you can pretty much get those CDs anyplace.
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