Grinning in the Dark

“We got some national airplay last month on the new FOX TV cop show The Good Guys,” says Heavy Glow singer-guitarist Jared Mullins. “They used about a ten-second clip of the song ‘Grinning in the Dark,’ off the first [2009] EP. The song fit fairly well. They chose an instrumental section for a segment in which the two main characters, both policemen, are hell-bent on busting an illegal car-smuggling operation, held in a secret garage. The song is used much like the Rocky theme, in the sense that it’s meant to heighten the intensity of the scene, which is bad-ass cops on the verge of busting the bad guys.”

So how does an unsigned band sell music to network TV? “FOX consulted our publishing company for a song for the show’s second episode.... It was by far the most lucrative ten seconds the band has ever worked.”

“Grinning in the Dark,” produced by famous former neighbor Stevie Salas (Justin Timberlake, George Clinton), is available through iTunes and Rhapsody. “Currently, there are a few other placements in the works,” according to Heavy Glow manager Blair Kodman. “The most promising thus far is the upcoming Robert DeNiro/Edward Norton crime thriller Stone. The band’s Australian record label CEO is the music supervisor for the project.”

Other local unsigned bands can land their music on TV or in movies, even without an agent or manager, according to Escondido native Susan Smithson at SoCalMusicSchool.com. “A network show will pay an unknown artist anywhere from $500 to several thousand dollars,” she says, “and anyone can get the ball rolling on Google. Most all TV shows and movies have websites that list the music supervisor, or [the information is on] IMDB [Internet Movie Database]. So, go ahead and send them your CD. They don’t want to pay ten thousand bucks for some famous band’s song. So you put your music into their hands and they just might hear something they’re looking for.”

The Heavy Glow track “Hot Mess” is included on a CD sampler being distributed with the July issue of Classic Rock magazine. An accompanying writeup on page 85 describes the band as “steeped in psyche-soaked proto-metal, gutbucket garage rock, and bone-deep ’70s blooze.” They appear August 5 at the Soda Bar.