Here's what my friend wrote up about getting Trans Am to do the soundtrack for Afterburner:
hello game forums.
My name is Trevor Grimshaw and i was lead artist on the Afterburner project, my friend reads this forum and told me that people were interested in Trans Am. So I thought I'd relate an anecdote to those Trans Am fans out there.
Without getting into to much detail, we were not happy with the music that was originally slated to be in the game. i don't want to go into a rant, but allot of game music is pretty bad and i usually mute it the first chance i get. We simply didn't want to treat the music like an afterthought in our game. We wanted some genuinely good music that felt afterburnery, and we wanted to include something that we genuinely liked and enjoyed instead of second guessing the consumer.
The project lead asked me to see if any of my "rock and roll buddies" as he calls them could create or license music for our game. since I know some various guys that are in some bands I started to ask around. I brought in about twenty or so different CD's from some different friend's bands and record labels in San Francisco. We couldn't make it through half the songs without turning the CD player off in disgust. Most of what i got was terrible. Awful. Sort of like butt-rock redux performed by sweaty thirty year olds trying to relieve their stoner rock high school band fantasies, or that dreadful whiny emo crap that passes its puerile and derivative crappyness off as punk rock.
after a few weeks of this i was ready to give up.
"i though you were hip!" the project lead yelled at me." with your tattoo's and your black clothes, your nothing but a fat liar! clean out your desk!"
later that week I was at my friend Jens house to watch Deadwood and I started complaining about what a load of crappy bands we had as potential game music. she says.
"why don't you ask my boyfriend, he's in a band".
I've never met the guy before and assume she's dating some blowhard doorman or bartender in some lame local rock band. like every other San Fransisco mission hipster. but, to be honest, I didn't know what the whole story on this character is so couldn't say for sure. why not? i say. she calls him on the phone and says
" my friend Trevor is here, yeah, that one, he needs some music for a game he's working on do you want to talk to him? ok. " she hands me the phone.
"so Jen says that you are in the music business or in a band or something" i say.
"yeah i guess you could say that" he replies.
" well, so, were making this video game with some jets in it, and we want some decent rocking tunes that doesn't sound like nu-metal whiny crap. we need a relatively inexpensive band that's good, but not huge so we can afford it, i don't know, someone sort of hip, but that doesn't totally suck, i mean, someone instrumental, like trans am, i guess , have you ever heard of trans am?"
"yeah" he says.
Jen is looking at me with this expression on her face like I'm a huge jerk.
I continue. " yeah, someone like trans am, but not trans am because nobody knows who the hell they are, i mean, they're cool but they're totally obscure. I like them, but they basically don't exist as far as mainstream music goes."
Jen is now glaring at me.
" i mean, besides the metaligensia record store clerks at Aquarius records and some math rock sweater nerds, who's heard of them? nobody. "
"what is wrong with you!" she yells and tries to grab the phone from me "give me back the phone"
"oh, do you know someone in trans am?" i ask him.
"um, yeah" he says. " I'm in Trans Am"
I accused him of lying, or being some session guitarist or something, or of just joining them. Jen was convinced i was just screwing with everyones head and knew it was him all along. but, no, it turns out he really was in Trans Am and is a cool guy. I stuck by my guns however and argued with Jen that, seriously, aside from a few people, no one has ever heard of them. I even made a bet that absolutely no one in my office will know who they were.
I walked into work on Monday.
" hey guess who we can get to do our soundtrack!" i exclaimed. " Trans Am!"
the Project Lead stared blankly at me.
"Who's that?"
and that's how we got Trans Am to let us use some songs for the soundtrack of Afterburner PSP. I'd like to point out that this is where my involvement ended. Others picked it up from there and worked really hard to get them in our game. In fact, everyone on the team grew to like them. we even rigged a special device so the project lead could listen.
I am actually a big Trans Am fan and I was really happy that we got to include them in the final product. I'm even more happy that someone actually knows who they are and appreciates them enough to comment on the forums.
