Music on TV

Forbes.com reported that several Nirvana tracks would be an integral part of the Nov. 27 “CSI: Miami.

” Yet the episode aired on that date -- while I was actually in Miami, hunting around for the shop that sells the Sunglasses of Justice -- with no Nirvana tracks. Despite being on vacation, I had to ask a CBS rep what happened to the Nirvana songs. A spokeswoman for “CSI: Miami” said that there were no Nirvana tracks on the episode because the show’s producers “felt that creatively it didn’t work for the episode.

” In the Forbes story, the show’s music supervisor, P.J. Bloom, said that the episode, which was about military recruiters and the suspicious death of a soldier, was written with the Nirvana songs in mind.

“Once I had that exclusive opportunity on paper, I was able to go to the producers and ask, 'Hey, what about writing an episode around Nirvana songs?' Bloom told Forbes. So the producers wrote an episode around those songs, then decided the rarely licensed songs of one of the most famous rock bands in the world “didn’t work”?

Strange, to say the least. You have to wonder if the surviving members of the band, Courtney Love or their representatives decided that Horatio and company weren’t the ideal venue for Kurt Cobain’s musical legacy. But there’s no way to know that, since Larry Mestel, head of Primary Wave, the music firm to whom Courtney Love sold a portion of Cobain’s publishing, didn’t return an e-mail asking him what happened to the “CSI: Miami” licensing.

As I reported in a story I did several months ago, Nirvana songs have been used in “Six Feet Under” and “Jarhead,” but the TNT drama “Saved” was denied the opportunity to use “Come As You Are.” “CSI: Miami” had been planning to use “Come As You Are” as well, according to the Forbes story. But for Nirvana and television -- this time anyway -- there was something in the way.

in CSI, Music on TV | Permalink | Comments (1) The surprising thing about the soundtrack for “Saved,” the story of a troubled emergency rescue worker (starring Omari Hardwick and Tom Everett Scott, left), was not that the drama’s music supervisor chose such an iconic song -- but that the move almost worked. Representatives for the Nirvana catalog, it turns out, would have been happy for “Saved” to have used one of the band’s tunes -- just not that one. “It wasn’t a monetary issue, we just felt that maybe a different song would be more appropriate,” said Larry Mestel, head of Primary Wave Music Publishing, a firm that recently purchased a stake in Nirvana’s publishing and has begun a concerted campaign to license the band’s music in a host of new ways, including possible use in films, television shows and commercials.

As it turned out, “Saved” didn’t end up using a Nirvana track, but the final version of the pilot for the show, which aired June 12, did feature, among other songs, a remix of the Doors’ “Break on Through,” the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and two Jimi Hendrix tracks. Television’s role in helping new bands get noticed has been widely discussed in the last few years, and its influence in that arena continues to grow. When the song “Chasing Cars,” by the UK band Snow Patrol was featured in the closing moments of the “ ” finale in May, the song rocketed to the top of the iTunes singles chart within days, and the band’s label began going after radio airplay with renewed vigor.

“Just from that one usage, it’s amazing what’s gone on,” said Tony Seyler, vice president of film and television marketing for Interscope/Geffen/A M/Dreamworks, the band’s American label. But in the last year, musicians of all stripes -- especially older artists and established bands who want their music to be relevant to new generations -- have sought out television opportunities as never before. Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin and the Dixie Chicks are just a few of the artists who have actively embraced television’s prominent use of their music in recent months.

No longer out of bounds And Nirvana, long seen as off limits for film, television and commercial licensing, is no longer a rare exception to that trend. Though a couple of compilations and one boxed set of the band’s music have been released in the last few years, during the last decade, Nirvana’s music has been largely absent from the pop-culture scene, especially in films and on television. Cross, author of the Cobain biography “Heavier Than Heaven” as well as books on Hendrix, Springsteen and Led Zeppelin, points out, Kurt Cobain (left) may just be a name to someone who was a toddler -- or not yet born -- when the Nirvana singer died in 1994.

“Rock is not as important as it once was,” Cross said. “Nirvana’s reputation was helped by the fact that there wasn’t a lot of marketing of the band [after Cobain’s death]. But now it’s been so long and there has been so little marketing that there is a chance that there will be a younger generation that doesn’t know Nirvana.

” Still, the band’s custodians “need to be very careful with this legacy,” Cross said. “They could damage it. This music -- the album 'Nevermind' -- it’s more than a record.

It stands as part of our cultural history.” Licensing of the Nirvana legacy began in a small way a year ago, when “ ” used a Nirvana track, “All Apologies,” in a flashback scene in which Nate Fisher talked about Cobain’s death. Forbes.

com reported that several Nirvana tracks would be an integral part of the Nov.