Gary Calamar
Encyclopedia
Gary Calamar is an American
DJ and Grammy Award
-nominated film and television music supervisor
whose credits include Six Feet Under, House
, True Blood
, Dexter
and Varsity Blues
. He also hosts a long-running program on the influential radio station KCRW
in Santa Monica
, CA.
, Pete Fornatelle, Allison Steel 'The Night Bird' and Dave Herman
. I was listening when John Lennon
surprised Dennis Elsas
on the air and guest DJ'd."
Calamar migrated to Los Angeles in the early 1980s. His intense interest in music eventually led him to manage Los Angeles-area boutique record stores Licorice Pizza, Moby Disc and Rhino Records. It was at Licorice Pizza that he met musician Jeff Davis. Calamar was enlisted to manage Davis' band, The Balancing Act, who went on to release three critically acclaimed albums on IRS Records.
station KCRW
in the early 1990s, opening mail and filing CDs.
He quickly made his way on to the airwaves. He described his transition from volunteer to DJ to Tony Pierce: "I got to know Chris Douridas who was music director and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic
at the time. One day he casually mentioned that they were looking for a Saturday-Sunday overnight DJ... I dropped to my knees and begged Chris to give me a shot...and he did."
Calamar's Sunday night radio program (known as The Open Road until a KCRW policy change in 2008 eliminated music show names) features a blend of contemporary and classic rock, pop, and folk music. He calls it "adventurous pop music both timely and timeless". He has also conducted on-air interviews with iconic musical figures including Brian Wilson
, Lucinda Williams
, Jeff Tweedy
from Wilco
, Wayne Coyne
from The Flaming Lips
as well as film composers Elmer Bernstein
, Thomas Newman
, Lalo Schifrin
and Danny Elfman
.
as his first major break in the world of music supervision. The following year he co-supervised the number one hit movie Varsity Blues
. Both films were co-supervised with G. Marq Roswell whom Calamar has called a mentor. In 2001, he and then-professional-partner Thomas Golubic were given the opportunity to work on an HBO series called Six Feet Under, created by American Beauty
screenwriter Alan Ball
. The show became hugely influential, as did its soundtracks. Calamar and Golubic were nominated for Grammy Awards for volumes 1 and 2 of the Six Feet Under soundtracks that they produced. The final scene in the last episode of Six Feet Under featured the track "Breathe Me" by Sia Furler
. The singer often credits this placement as a major event in her career, leading her to both a record deal and wider fame.
In 2006, Calamar founded Go Music to manage his various music supervision projects and continues to run the company with long-time colleague Alyson Vidoli.
The success of Six Feet Under brought Calamar wide recognition as a music supervisor, leading to his work in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows on television; House
, True Blood
, Dexter
, Weeds
, and Entourage
. He has also continued his work in film, music supervising the Sundance Award-winning documentary God Grew Tired Of Us: The Story Of The Los Boys Of Sudan (2006) as well as the Jim Carrey
/Ewan McGregor
film I Love You Phillip Morris
(2009).
In 2008, Calamar began work on the Alan Ball HBO series, True Blood
, a vampire drama set in Northern Louisiana. The soundtrack albums he produced for the series have been nominated for Grammy Awards in both 2010 and 2011. Volume 3 of the True Blood soundtrack album is slated for release in the fall of 2011 and will include a cover of the Zombies classic “She’s Not There” by Nick Cave and Neko Case, which Calamar put together with producer CC Adcock. Other shows he is currently working on include Peabody Award winner Men Of A Certain Age, Wilfred (with co-supervisor Alyson Vidoli), and Death Valley (again with co-supervisor Alyson Vidoli) as well as continuing work on House and Dexter.
In the spring of 2010, Calamar's first book was published by Sterling Publishing -- Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again -- co-authored by music journalist Phil Gallo. The lavishly-illustrated volume features a forward by R.E.M.
's Peter Buck
and tells the story of the development of record stores.
In 2011, Gary Calamar was honored as “Music Supervisor Of The Year (Television)” by his colleagues in the Guild Of Music Supervisors.
area of Los Angeles
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
DJ and Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
-nominated film and television music supervisor
Music supervision
A music supervisor is an individual who combines music and visual media. In the musical theatre industry, a music supervisor is often responsible for managing a team of music directors working on any number of musical productions.-Description:...
whose credits include Six Feet Under, House
House (TV series)
House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...
, True Blood
True Blood
True Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...
, Dexter
Dexter (TV series)
Dexter is an American television drama series, which debuted on Showtime on October 1, 2006. The sixth season premiered on October 2, 2011. The series centers on Dexter Morgan , a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer...
and Varsity Blues
Varsity Blues
The Varsity Blues is the name for the intercollegiate sports program at the University of Toronto. Its 26 athletic teams regularly participate in competitions held by Ontario University Athletics and Canadian Interuniversity Sport. The Varsity Blues traces its founding to 1877, with the formation...
. He also hosts a long-running program on the influential radio station KCRW
KCRW
KCRW is a public radio station broadcasting from the campus of Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, carrying a mix of National Public Radio news, talk radio and freeform music format. The general manager of KCRW is Jennifer Ferro...
in Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
, CA.
Early life
Raised in Yonkers, NY, Calamar developed an early fascination with music and radio by listening to WNEW-FM. He told journalist Tony Pierce in a 2007 interview: "I …was the kid who kept a transistor radio under his pillow. I was a big fan of WNEW-FM and their amazing staff of DJ's. I remember Scott MuniScott Muni
Scott Muni was an American disc jockey, who worked at the heyday of the AM Top 40 format and then was a pioneer of FM progressive rock radio.-Biography:...
, Pete Fornatelle, Allison Steel 'The Night Bird' and Dave Herman
Dave Herman
Dave Herman is a former American collegiate and professional football offensive tackle. He played collegiately for Michigan State University and began his professional career with the American Football League's New York Jets, for whom he played from 1964 through 1969 and for the same team in the...
. I was listening when John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
surprised Dennis Elsas
Dennis Elsas
Dennis Elsas is a New York City disc jockey whose radio career has spanned well over thirty years. He currently hosts an afternoon show on WFUV and a morning show on Sirius XM Satellite Radio's Classic Vinyl channel....
on the air and guest DJ'd."
Calamar migrated to Los Angeles in the early 1980s. His intense interest in music eventually led him to manage Los Angeles-area boutique record stores Licorice Pizza, Moby Disc and Rhino Records. It was at Licorice Pizza that he met musician Jeff Davis. Calamar was enlisted to manage Davis' band, The Balancing Act, who went on to release three critically acclaimed albums on IRS Records.
KCRW
In addition to his record store work, Calamar volunteered in the music library of highly influential NPRNPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
station KCRW
KCRW
KCRW is a public radio station broadcasting from the campus of Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, carrying a mix of National Public Radio news, talk radio and freeform music format. The general manager of KCRW is Jennifer Ferro...
in the early 1990s, opening mail and filing CDs.
He quickly made his way on to the airwaves. He described his transition from volunteer to DJ to Tony Pierce: "I got to know Chris Douridas who was music director and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic
Morning Becomes Eclectic
Morning Becomes Eclectic is a three-hour adult album alternative radio program first aired in 1977 and broadcast live every weekday from KCRW in Santa Monica, California. The show's name is a play on the Eugene O'Neill trilogy of plays, Mourning Becomes Electra.The show is hosted by Jason Bentley,...
at the time. One day he casually mentioned that they were looking for a Saturday-Sunday overnight DJ... I dropped to my knees and begged Chris to give me a shot...and he did."
Calamar's Sunday night radio program (known as The Open Road until a KCRW policy change in 2008 eliminated music show names) features a blend of contemporary and classic rock, pop, and folk music. He calls it "adventurous pop music both timely and timeless". He has also conducted on-air interviews with iconic musical figures including Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group The Beach Boys. Within the band, Wilson played bass and keyboards, also providing part-time lead vocals and, more often, backing vocals, harmonizing in falsetto with the group...
, Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams is an American rock, folk, blues and country music singer and songwriter. She recorded her first albums in 1978 and 1980 in a traditional country and blues style and received very little attention from radio, the media, or the public. In 1988, she released her self-titled album,...
, Jeff Tweedy
Jeff Tweedy
Jeffrey Scot "Jeff" Tweedy is an American songwriter, musician and leader of the band Wilco. Tweedy joined rockabilly band The Plebes with high school friend Jay Farrar in the early 1980s, but Tweedy's musical interests caused one of Farrar's brothers to quit...
from Wilco
Wilco
Wilco is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. The band was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of alternative country group Uncle Tupelo following singer Jay Farrar's departure. Wilco's lineup has changed frequently, with only singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John...
, Wayne Coyne
Wayne Coyne
Wayne Michael Coyne is the lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter for the band The Flaming Lips.-Early life:...
from The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips are an American alternative rock band, formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983.Melodically, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles—such as "What...
as well as film composers Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
, Thomas Newman
Thomas Newman
Thomas Montgomery Newman is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores. He is one of the more respected and recognized composers for modern film and has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.Newman has received a total of ten...
, Lalo Schifrin
Lalo Schifrin
Lalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations...
and Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman
Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...
.
Music Supervision
Calamar cites the 1998 film Slums Of Beverly HillsSlums of Beverly Hills
The Slums of Beverly Hills is a 1998 motion picture, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. Its hero is a teenage girl struggling to grow up in a lower-middle-class family that moves every few months in the late 1970s....
as his first major break in the world of music supervision. The following year he co-supervised the number one hit movie Varsity Blues
Varsity Blues
The Varsity Blues is the name for the intercollegiate sports program at the University of Toronto. Its 26 athletic teams regularly participate in competitions held by Ontario University Athletics and Canadian Interuniversity Sport. The Varsity Blues traces its founding to 1877, with the formation...
. Both films were co-supervised with G. Marq Roswell whom Calamar has called a mentor. In 2001, he and then-professional-partner Thomas Golubic were given the opportunity to work on an HBO series called Six Feet Under, created by American Beauty
American Beauty (film)
American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela...
screenwriter Alan Ball
Alan Ball (screenwriter)
Alan E. Ball is an American writer, director, actor and producer for film, theatre and television.-Early life:Ball was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Frank and Mary Ball, an aircraft inspector and a homemaker...
. The show became hugely influential, as did its soundtracks. Calamar and Golubic were nominated for Grammy Awards for volumes 1 and 2 of the Six Feet Under soundtracks that they produced. The final scene in the last episode of Six Feet Under featured the track "Breathe Me" by Sia Furler
Sia Furler
Sia Kate Isobelle Furler or simply Sia, is an Australian pop, downtempo, and jazz singer and songwriter. In 2000, her single, "Taken for Granted" was a top 10 hit in the United Kingdom. Her 2008 album, Some People Have Real Problems peaked in the top 30 on the Billboard 200...
. The singer often credits this placement as a major event in her career, leading her to both a record deal and wider fame.
In 2006, Calamar founded Go Music to manage his various music supervision projects and continues to run the company with long-time colleague Alyson Vidoli.
The success of Six Feet Under brought Calamar wide recognition as a music supervisor, leading to his work in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows on television; House
House (TV series)
House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...
, True Blood
True Blood
True Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...
, Dexter
Dexter (TV series)
Dexter is an American television drama series, which debuted on Showtime on October 1, 2006. The sixth season premiered on October 2, 2011. The series centers on Dexter Morgan , a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer...
, Weeds
Weeds (TV series)
Weeds is an American television comedy created by Jenji Kohan and produced by Tilted Productions in association with Lionsgate Television. The central character is Nancy Botwin , a widowed mother of two boys who begins selling marijuana to support her family after her husband dies suddenly of a...
, and Entourage
Entourage (TV series)
Entourage is an American comedy-drama television series that premiered on HBO on July 18, 2004 and concluded on September 11, 2011, after eight seasons...
. He has also continued his work in film, music supervising the Sundance Award-winning documentary God Grew Tired Of Us: The Story Of The Los Boys Of Sudan (2006) as well as the Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey
James Eugene "Jim" Carrey is a Canadian-American actor and comedian. He has received two Golden Globe Awards and has also been nominated on four occasions. Carrey began comedy in 1979, performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, Ontario...
/Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor. He has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. McGregor is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting , young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy , and poet Christian in the...
film I Love You Phillip Morris
I Love You Phillip Morris
I Love You Phillip Morris is a 2009 American romantic comedy-drama film based on the 1980s and '90s real-life story of con artist, impostor, and multiple prison escapee Steven Jay Russell, as played by Jim Carrey. While incarcerated, Russell falls in love with his fellow inmate, Phillip Morris...
(2009).
In 2008, Calamar began work on the Alan Ball HBO series, True Blood
True Blood
True Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...
, a vampire drama set in Northern Louisiana. The soundtrack albums he produced for the series have been nominated for Grammy Awards in both 2010 and 2011. Volume 3 of the True Blood soundtrack album is slated for release in the fall of 2011 and will include a cover of the Zombies classic “She’s Not There” by Nick Cave and Neko Case, which Calamar put together with producer CC Adcock. Other shows he is currently working on include Peabody Award winner Men Of A Certain Age, Wilfred (with co-supervisor Alyson Vidoli), and Death Valley (again with co-supervisor Alyson Vidoli) as well as continuing work on House and Dexter.
In the spring of 2010, Calamar's first book was published by Sterling Publishing -- Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again -- co-authored by music journalist Phil Gallo. The lavishly-illustrated volume features a forward by R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
's Peter Buck
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck , is an American rock guitarist who is best known for playing in and co-founding alternative rock band R.E.M....
and tells the story of the development of record stores.
In 2011, Gary Calamar was honored as “Music Supervisor Of The Year (Television)” by his colleagues in the Guild Of Music Supervisors.
Personal life
Gary Calamar lives with his wife and daughter in the Laurel CanyonLaurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California
Laurel Canyon is a canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was first developed in the 1910s, and became a part of the city of Los Angeles in 1923 ....
area of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
External links
- True Blood Official site
- http://www.kcrw.com
- http://www.GaryCalamar.com
- http://www.Laist.com