DJ Ron Slomowicz: From the beginning, what has been the musical focus of Queer as Folk?
Michael Perlmutter: There's never been an actual musical focus, I
think what we've tried to do is to support the story and the set the
moods and emotions of the scenes. We know that we were
going to include some very, very serious dancing because there were a
lot of scenes that were obviously in the dance clubs.
But in addition to that, we knew that our audience is straight
females, because it's turned into a relationship story, and the gay
audience. So we wanted to make sure that we were really loyal to our
audience in terms of music and really sound different kinds of music.
I think, if I were to sum it up, we didn't want to put top ten hits or
top forty hits on it, we wanted it to be eclectic, we wanted it to be
powerful, we wanted it to be sexy, we wanted it to be masculine, and
all at the same time we wanted to reflect, you know, all the moods and
the emotions of the scenes.
RS: So it's not just like say music as background, the music is
helping tell the story.
Michael Perlmutter: I don't know if it helps tell the story, to be
blunt, but I think it supports the story. I think that we let the
writing tell the story and I think that this is, that music may help
convey a mood and a bit of the story.
RS: Very cool. How does the music for the US series differ than
the UK series? To me, the US version's music seems more about finding
songs to fit the scene.
Michael Perlmutter: I don't know if Almighty (the record label
handling the UK version's music), was, you know, the only songs they
used were from their roster, I think they probably used outside tunes,
but I know that it seemed to be there were a bunch of covers that they
did and they put them in the soundtrack and they put them in the show.
In our case we, you know, we tried to be very, very far-reaching
around the world with our music and we're getting hundreds of CDs a
week now because we're starting the fifth season and we're noticing
that we're just getting lots of different styles and lots of real cool
independent music.
RS: Yes, I think part of it was that with the UK, when they did
the first season they didn't expect it to be as big as it was going to
be.
Michael Perlmutter: No, that's true, and I don't even think they
expected it to be that big here in North American in the first season.
I know that they knew they had a groundbreaking show, they knew they
had a really interesting show that touched on a lot of different gay
storylines that had never been touched on before. And when the
reviews came out and The New York Times and The LA Times and various
other magazines, they were totally thrilled, and that just increases
the value of the show and the value of the music.