We triangulate a solution. I feel like normally with a Super Tech Support, someone comes to us with a problem. Whats This from The Nightmare Before Christmas.The Nightmare Before Christmas at this year's Adelaide Festival, along with a selection of other tracks from his collaborations with Tim over the years That'll be on the 14th of March, the day before the festival ends If you're going to see it, be sure to comment Furthermore, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a year closerALEX: And it's not your average super tech support. On such Tim Burton films as Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
He lives in Savannah, Georgia. Do you, do you want to wear like a professor jacket with tweed elbow patches?ALEX: I was actually thinking in the tradition of the classic philosophers, I would wear a toga and one of those rings of like leaves that they wear around their ears?ALEX: So we heard from a listener named Brian Dean who got in touch with us just after Christmas. And I basically come out on the other side believing two contradictory things, simultaneously, which is absolutely painful for my very linear brain which is incapable of abstraction of any kind.Soddenly Soundtracks is show where host Chris Clark and his panel judge a film solely based on the soundtrack that it provides a track by track analysisThi.ALEX: Um, so my hope is, if I tell you the story, you might be able to help me come closer to understanding where the truth lies.PJ: Okay, I can't promise that I will like insightfully find the truth, but I'm excited to — I’m excited to see if I have an opinion.ALEX: Think of this less as a super tech support and more as a philosophical journey on the nature of truth.PJ: Alright. This one is much more confounding because the more I worked on it, like the less certain I became of the answer.
With a piano part that feels very familiar.BRIAN: The first thought that went through mind mind was, "Oh, I thought I made up that piano lick on 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas', but I must have stolen it or heard it from somewhere because here it is playing," and then as I listened a little more, "Oh my god, I didn't steal this lick, this is me."ALEX: Brian is convinced that the version that he heard at Kroger is the EXACT one that he made in his living room.ALEX: And what's going through your mind when you hear yourself on the speakers at the Kroger?BRIAN: I mean, just complete disbelief, just shock. This is December 31st.ALEX: He stands there staring at the speaker that’s above him because it’s playing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”. And sort of like midway down the aisle, he stops and looks up.BRIAN: I was in the, like, frozen food department and they were playing Christmas music. And then, this past Christmas, Brian is driving back from a family visit to Chicago and on the way back their daughter has to pee.So they stop in Macon, Georgia, which is about three hours from their house, at a Kroger because um—and I didn't realize this but Brian is like, "The grocery store is the best place to go to the bathroom because no one is ever in the bathroom."PJ: Love a fucking grocery store bathroom.ALEX: So they get out of the car, they hustle into the grocery store. So we recorded a Christmas album in my living room.PJ: That's such a wholesome friend activity.ALEX: I know, right? So that was back in 2016, and he uploaded to Youtube, he burned a couple copies for family and friends, and he basically forgot about it.
And it's—that sounds bad.ALEX: And it is so much worse than you can possibly imagine. So it's like the grocery store is either pirating his music off of YouTube or one of his friends stole the music and sold it to the grocery store?ALEX: I mean, I have no idea but, right after he used the bathroom he rushed over to the customer service desk and was like, "What's going on here?"BRIAN: And they were friendly but just kind of just came up with a, leaned over and yelled to someone else, "How do we play music?", and they said something like, "I had some muzak," and I kind of—I kind of got the feeling, "These people, I'm not sure I'm gonna be able push this with them."PJ: What I want it to be is that 99% of the time they just use like some paid for legitimate music licensing thing, but then this one time just like somebody at Kroger just heard this and they loved it so much that they needed to hear it in the store every single day.ALEX: I used to—do you know the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums?ALEX: Mannheim Steamrollers is like a Prog Rock Christmas stuff. The other thing you should know is that this is view number 37, of this song on YouTube and at least five of those views are us.ALEX: Looking at it in preparation for this.PJ: I was wondering how he would be able to recognize it was his but I feel like it is, actually, distinctive enough that I would recognize it.PJ: That's so weird. Or anything like that?ALEX: Alright, here we go. This is crazy, but I did this in my living room."BRIAN: I think he actually said something like, "Well, that's, that’s cool man."How could this possibly happen that, one, I'd be playing there, and two, I'd literally be there to hear it? It was — it was a bizarre experience.PJ: So he is hearing his own version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" in a Kroger.PJ: But he didn't publish it or sell it to Kroger Corp.
And I don't know that I gave it to anybody who lives in Macon.ALEX: And then there was John's son, Zach.ALEX: and he was also like “no, it wasn't me.”ZACH: I did not pass it on to anyone. I have a CD tower that I can dub and I think I've made about fifty copies, gave them out to six or eight people and that's it. So I wanted to like get in touch with all his bandmates.And Uh, I got in touch with this guy John, who played—ALEX: Can you think of any reason why it would be there?JOHN: I can only attribute it to someone's impeccable taste.ALEX: But you weren’t sending — you weren't like secretly uploading this to Spotify or sending it to industry executives or anything?JOHN: No, no no. You can't just take some people's music and play it.So the first and most obvious thing that I wanted to look into was Brian says that the only place on the internet he put this song was on YouTube but he's just one of four members of the band that recorded this so one of those people could have, you know, published it somewhere or given it to someone who worked at the Macon Kroger. The first One, obviously,is like how did it get there?ALEX: And the second is like, if this is being piped into Kroger grocery stores all over the country.ALEX: Like are they due any money and how much?PJ: They're definitely due some money. It was the worst.PJ: Yeah, I worked at a Halloween Adventure where they played like this one cassette tape that I swear to god only had "Monster Mash" and "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", and that was it.ALEX: So he has asked me to answer two questions for him.
I mean, I'm assuming they have their own radio station they use. So I’m pretty sure it wasn't him who leaked it to Kroger.ALEX: So if Brian and his bandmates didn't know how the song ended up in a Kroger, maybe the people that work at that Kroger might have some idea.KROGER: Floral department, may I help you?ALEX: We called the floral department because our belief was that it wouldn't be so busy and they would have a moment to talk.ALEX: do you know where the music that is played over the speakers at Kroger's comes from?PERSON 1: Oh, no. I'd almost forgotten that we'd done the project to be honest.ALEX: So there was one last possibility, which is this guy named Miguel who played the drums on the track, but he didn’t even remember ever recording it in the first place.
I started sending emails to people at Kroger Corporate, and in the meantime I was just calling Kroger employees all across the country, just trying to get a sense of how music in the store even works.
0 kommentar(er)
