I’m talking Whopner era People’s Court, Complete with Doug Llewlyn spray hair.
Is the music that would play as the ‘litigants for our next case’ would enter, in the public domain?
I’ve heard Spongebob Squarepants (The Show) use the same exact riff on more than one occasion now. (Incidentaly, both having to do with a court scene)
I think I heard it elsewhere recently as well.
It would not surprise me if it was public domain, as Spongebob tends to like stock music (And yes, even film footage). I am just looking for confirmation.
Bonus points if you can link me to a download of it. (Im not sure I want it, but the link would be nice either way).
I doubt that it’s public domain, but it’s probably licensed very cheaply. Music is often licensed for reuse at a rate set by the artist or label. For example, in the opening of the movie Contact, there’s a brief snippet of a Nat “King” Cole song that the studio had to pay $60K for, in the film Boys Don’t Cry, they originally wanted to use a Boston song for the rollerskating scene, but quickly had to find something else when they found out that the usage rights would be $500K. Whomever controls the rights to the music wisely figures that they’ll make more money by licensing it for next to nothing and letting everyone who wants to use it, use it, instead of charging a small fortune for it, and only getting one or two people to use it, if ever. BTW, it’s also in the soundtrack to at least one porno (Never So Deep).
I haven’t heard the music in question. But there are a lot of music riffs that come in collections specifically for production. BBC has one. These are usually 30 or 60 second musical snippets that are set up for TV intros and outros and/ or musical stingers. These collections sometimes are sold with reproduction rights for most uses as long as you own the disc. Typically this include use in any artistic project including film, tv, radio, stage plays, dance concerts, etc… (One of the few things you can’t do is sell just the piece without it being part of a bigger project.) These discs can be quite costly. One BBC collection I bought for my college theatre dept ran 600 dollars for ten discs. (Probably be a grand or more now.) The music tends to be cheesy, but there are a few good tracks. But a lot of it is perfect for filling dead air such as when people are going in and out of court.
Most of the music from SpongeBob Squarepants is licensed from an outfit called Associated Production Music. According to Wikipedia, The People’s Court theme song was composed by a British composer named Alan Tew and was taken from a stock music library. Apparently, the original title was The Big One, since it’s listed in the APM library as “People’s Court (AKA The Big One).” APM won’t let you download their music without becoming a licensee, but they will let you listen to it online. So no, the music is not in the public domain- it’s stock music. (The publisher is listed as Keith/Prowse/Maurice, a British stock music house which uses APM to distribute its music in the United States.) It’s not the only familiar theme song in the KPM/APM library- A piece called Stop Gap was used as the theme for the old Truth or Consequences show, and Heavy Action is better known as the theme to ABC Monday Night Football. (I’ve heard both of these pieces used in cartoons, too- in fact, Stop Gap is currently being used in a Wal-Mart spot which runs on Nick.)
:eek: Oh, my. I knew SpongeBob used a lot of production music with a few original compositions mixed in, but it’s stranger than I thought. That song at the end of “Band Geeks?” Production music.