By John Pellegrini
Drops. They are the boon and the bane of our existence. (Betcha didn’t think you’d see boon and bane in a sentence this week). Use of drops is so wide spread we’ve even seen pleas from people in the industry to back off a bit. But the main reason for those criticisms of using the drops is that everyone always seems to be using the same twenty or thirty. Homer or Bart Simpson, Agador from the Bird Cage, and maybe something from the Three Stooges. That’s understandable. After all, finding the right drop is a colossal pain in the patoot (another word you probably didn’t expect to read this week). Renting movies, video taping every dang thing on TV, then sorting through it and cataloging them! Now there’s the biggest pain.
There are some show-prep services that supply drops, but good luck getting them cross-referenced. Unless you have a photographic memory, the chances of finding just the right drop for any given moment is nearly impossible. Mostly you just get a lot of, “Oh… wait… what was that… there’s the perfect line….” And then you spend the next hour or so trying to find what you’re looking for—don’t even get me started on trying to find special drops for specific occasions.
Well, the answer to your prayers has arrived. Grab Bag from Brown Bag is the first ever comprehensive and fully cataloged collection of drops that has ever been assembled. Plus this has to be the largest collection of drops that I’ve ever seen. Every one of them, including the old ones from audio sources decades past, have been cleaned up and remastered for maximum sound quality.
Grab Bag is a subscription barter service from Brown Bag. You get an initial kick off library of two CDs consisting of 193 total tracks—166 drops and 27 sound effects and music beds. Then, you get update discs with an average of 74 cuts including drops, old time commercials, effects and rhythm tracks. Plus there are montages for different categories such as holidays, seasons, and featured artists. The montages have music beds under them. Then you get music free mixouts, as well as the isolated cuts by themselves. What do they mean by featured artists? One CD might have a whole collection of Jack Nicholson drops. Another might have a collection of Tony Soprano or Jerry Seinfeld. Then maybe Jack Webb, Irene Ryan (Granny), W.C. Fields or Jimmy Durante. All are totally clean, especially the old ones. Some of the categories of the drops are, Party, Show Drops, Hosts, Beer, Introductions, Training/Educational, Rude, Attitude, Work, Good Morning, Music References, Fun, News, Sports, Novelty, the list goes on. There’s even montages and drops for Monday Night Football (featuring old cuts of Don Merideth, Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell, and Alex Karas- the classic lineup).
But here is the incredible part. Each CD comes with a complete LARGE TYPE reference guide (not a one sheet, but three sheets) that lists the full text of each drop and exactly how long it is down to the hundredth of a second. And each drop is its own separate track on each CD. No indexing!!!
Another feature that makes this collection valuable is that it’s timeless. There is absolutely no topical references whatsoever. That means you can use these cuts this year, next year, next decade, next century, whenever. Also, apart from some cuts from Tony Soprano, there are virtually no cuts that need to be bleeped. Those that do, you get two copies, a bleeped version, and uncensored versions in case you want to do your own bleeping. These drops can transcend any format—Newstalk, Alternative, Urban, Jazz, Easy Listening, Sportstalk, CHR, whatever... even NPR.
There’s also a sampling of great old commercials from the ‘50s and ‘60s that your morning show will love to throw in to mix it up a bit. Many of them haven’t been released in other collections before, including a hilarious one for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes featuring George Reeves as Superman from the original TV show. And to round things off, you get a sampling on each CD of great Brown Bag rhythm tracks, music beds, sweepers, stingers, zaps, and sound effects.
There’s not enough room to detail everything, so the best thing to do is get the package for yourself. As I mentioned, it’s a barter package subscription, so obviously check with those who schedule your commercials for your trade options. For more information, call (972) 239-6220.
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