This was my first exposure as a composer to a studio-backed film. I was at an Irish Pub in Toluca Lake when I met a woman who roomed with the film’s unofficial music consultant. She and I got to talking about this edgy new animated film that Ralph Bakshi was working on. She put me in touch with the right people, and I submitted a short demo (on cassette!) of some of my wackiest material, most of it written the night before I submitted it. Thus began the zany process of landing a very small piece of the score for this film. Ralph said he wanted “Carl Stallings with industrial rock orchestration.” I said, “Sure, I’ve got that.” Who has that?!

As a fresh-off-the-turnip-truck newcomer to L.A., getting this job was both an exciting and intimidating turn of events. I wrote my cues with my tiny synth rig, a Roland MC 500 sequencer (no Mac), a stopwatch, and a large stack of computations and formulas for achieving the hit points. I think the music editors thought that was quaint. I never even got final mixes of my cues! It was a great welcome to Los Angeles for me, regardless of how odd the whole experience was.

The moral of the story — be nice to folks you meet in pubs. You never know with whom you might be talking!