naming names and the name namers who name them
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notbored says of Townshend... "Both common sense and personal experience indicate that only someone who hates himself and consequently has no respect whatsoever for the value or quality of the songs he's written -- only a musician who has nothing but contempt or hostility for his fans and admirers -- could do such things.".... and he hits the nail on the head. Thing is, the guy has always hated himself and its always come through in his music; a conflicted, brutal, emotional mess (ie: great f*cking rock and roll).
Earlier in the essay notbored says, "It was obvious that Bowie was never attached or committed to the various personae, singing styles, lyrical concerns and musical forms that he'd pick up, use for a while and then dispose of. It was all a put-on for him. And so there's no sting, no resentment, no anger, when Bowie sells anything he's got to whomever wants to buy it (as long as the price is right)." ...That's true, though more interesting than phrased here. It's not that Bowie didn't care, its that the sellout was already inherent to the work itself. Same with Townshend's self-loathing. The shoot-yourself-in-the-ethical-foot ethos was always part of his music's intrigue. And, as I said (and mis-spelled) elsewhere, Townshend's embarrassing public statements aren't really a shock either. But what is a shock is our loss.
A song (like an artwork) is a gift, and these elements of emotional detachment (Bowie) and depravity (Townshend) were initially given to us listeners to turn over in our hands and examine, interesting artifacts that resonate with our own weird internal shit. Car commercials, on the other hand, are not gifts. And worse, they take back the gift. Townshend reclaims ownership over his song, extracts it from all the resonant connections it made in our brain, and, by giving it to a car company, effectively also removes it from the public sphere. It's his, he can do what he wants, but its still a loss. And sad that he can't then rise to the new situation and "give" a song to Michael Moore instead, or even I'd settle for "as well", as a car company. Townshend has always been self-centered and myopic. And he always talked too much. Part of his charm, but it looked better on the young, hot rock star than it does on the old, fusty millionaire.
so i was pretty busy not feeling toms pain on his HNM post and wondering why. it occurred to me (duh), thats just it, it was his unique transaction (and not mine) with a not so unique piece of vinyl. by is very nature the vinyl impression is a multiple, a reproduction, obscure perhaps, but not unique.
as sally mentioned, so bonded are we with our albums/cds that we feel they were (almost) gifts from the artists. we bought these records and made them our own. we bought other albums to keep them company. a community of experiences with friends and associates on our record shelves.
when reintroduced as a marketing tool, a song (which retains the charged resonance of personal bonding) cannot be effective on core followers. fictional response dramatization : "judas why have you betrayed me! ", "i was there for you when no one else cared for you, now this!" as a core follower of more than a few music makers, i'm certain that we cannot be commercially re-seduced. and sure as hell wont be conned by a corperate ploy using my song to seduce myself into buying nikes. it just doesnt add up for us. witness the strong negative reflex response by core beatles fans to the (mis)use of revolution number whatever. outside of the core groups, the commercials do seem to be pretty effective. by using songs with smaller core audiances, the rejection factor is reduced.
this is a somewhat new terrain and we 40 somethings are the first real media fattened generation and are figgerin' it out as we go. i think however we may have over invested in nostalgic ownership of popular songs. that we had our moment alone together and bonded does not confer entitlement.
Y'know, I'm not wild about most sports, but if I walked into a room and people were grousing about a game I didn't see, how cool would it be for me to say, "You guys have had your bonding experience, and of course people get attached to certain teams, but it's interesting that you get so emotional about it."?
your representing. you described something that happened to you. it fits into a dialog with other people who have made similar public observations. subject open.
thanks sally for your thoughts on pete and the who. i think me being a major bowie fan did prepare me and soften the "shock" effect you mentioned. heres more from not bored / and a response. i'll keep posting links (like this thread chasing the use of obscure songs in commercials) on this subject because i think its important, not just to bust toms hump. i dont know if i exactly got the sports analogy but im working in it. the N*ke ad is running in theaters only. i think its extra long too so the version TM saw may not make it to regular TV. tbc...
"Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place, or event in our lives. It's no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear or automobiles while you're in the trance. Artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs. It reduces them to the level of a jingle, a word that describes the sound of change in your pocket, which is what your songs become. Remember, when you sell your songs for commercials, you are selling your audience as well. When I was a kid, if I saw an artist I admired doing a commercial, I'd think, 'Too bad, he must really need the money.' But now it's so pervasive. It's a virus. Artists are lining up to do ads. The money and exposure are too tantalizing for most artists to decline. Corporations are hoping to hijack a culture's memories for their product."
-Tom Waits
(quote lifted from a message board quotation, not a TW interview)
big hits big mula / a legal perspective
"A barbershop quartet in Minneapolis sung the first broadcast jingle over network radio, for Wheaties, in 1929. By 1939, the jingle had come to saturate the nation with commercial tunes intent on driving consumerism. Credited with the first massively promoted singing commercial, Pepsi-Cola "was played 296,426 times over 469 stations in 1941, and more than a million times by 1944, becoming in effect a new kind of golden disc hit" (Booth 322). The enormous success of the jingle was testimony to the profitability that jingles lent to products and the intimacy that they lent to the public. In his article, Jingle: Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot, Mark Booth discusses the similarities between popular music and jingles claiming that the purpose of each is to cement a tune into the listeners mind. However, the "hook" or refrain of a popular song has traditionally been intended to snag the listener into the song itself, whereas the "hook" of a jingle is also designed to lodge itself in the mind. It is intended to draw the listener outside the lyrics to the product itself. A jingle, unlike a popular song, is not meant to sell itself but rather the product is represents."
WHY POPULAR MUSIC REALLY DOES SUCK
I can't believe I listened to Willie Nelson last night, but CNN (and PBS) decided Carole King not worthy.
good ole willie. johnny b goode can start its mending process. the dems had an otherwise pretty "soul" intensive showing. i wonder how well the r'pubs will serve up the "white-bread".
who is on their roster?
During Mr. Obama's speech I kept thinking, how do they think the terminator will compare.
Obviously the Terminator will crush that girlie man Osama. I mean Obama.
the skinny guy with the funny name vs the fat retard with the funny name. (sorry). i was just thinking about arnold (too) helping define the republican profile. real men vs girley men. dont know about the roster yet. im not looking forward to the RNC thing but i wont be able to divert my eyes.
(i see jim and i are on the same page - simal-posting)
it's like driving by a car accident, you can't help but look even though you know it will upset you.
rubbernecking delays expected in manhattan for august.
to avoid head-on collisions, get out of town.
Fox News played Carole King. How do I know you ask? I was ... um .... surfing the channels .... Bill O'Reilly .... the car crash thing.
By the way, a consistent talking point about the democrats is that they were putting up a front. "The candidates are far more liberal than the party, and the delegates are far more liberal than even the candidates." Barnes, Brooks, Kristol, etc. were all singing from the same page of the hymnal.
What are the odds that they'll be making these same remarks when St. Gulliani, the Gropenator, etc. are shilling for Jr.. At least the non-democratic party will be true to their roots and have Jerry "9/11 happened because God hates fags" Falwell giving the invocation.
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- bill 7-27-2004 7:18 pm
breaking it down by title
adtunes archive
admusic
- bill 7-27-2004 8:47 pm [add a comment]
notbored says of Townshend... "Both common sense and personal experience indicate that only someone who hates himself and consequently has no respect whatsoever for the value or quality of the songs he's written -- only a musician who has nothing but contempt or hostility for his fans and admirers -- could do such things.".... and he hits the nail on the head. Thing is, the guy has always hated himself and its always come through in his music; a conflicted, brutal, emotional mess (ie: great f*cking rock and roll).
Earlier in the essay notbored says, "It was obvious that Bowie was never attached or committed to the various personae, singing styles, lyrical concerns and musical forms that he'd pick up, use for a while and then dispose of. It was all a put-on for him. And so there's no sting, no resentment, no anger, when Bowie sells anything he's got to whomever wants to buy it (as long as the price is right)." ...That's true, though more interesting than phrased here. It's not that Bowie didn't care, its that the sellout was already inherent to the work itself. Same with Townshend's self-loathing. The shoot-yourself-in-the-ethical-foot ethos was always part of his music's intrigue. And, as I said (and mis-spelled) elsewhere, Townshend's embarrassing public statements aren't really a shock either. But what is a shock is our loss.
A song (like an artwork) is a gift, and these elements of emotional detachment (Bowie) and depravity (Townshend) were initially given to us listeners to turn over in our hands and examine, interesting artifacts that resonate with our own weird internal shit. Car commercials, on the other hand, are not gifts. And worse, they take back the gift. Townshend reclaims ownership over his song, extracts it from all the resonant connections it made in our brain, and, by giving it to a car company, effectively also removes it from the public sphere. It's his, he can do what he wants, but its still a loss. And sad that he can't then rise to the new situation and "give" a song to Michael Moore instead, or even I'd settle for "as well", as a car company. Townshend has always been self-centered and myopic. And he always talked too much. Part of his charm, but it looked better on the young, hot rock star than it does on the old, fusty millionaire.
- sally mckay 7-28-2004 7:40 am [add a comment]
so i was pretty busy not feeling toms pain on his HNM post and wondering why. it occurred to me (duh), thats just it, it was his unique transaction (and not mine) with a not so unique piece of vinyl. by is very nature the vinyl impression is a multiple, a reproduction, obscure perhaps, but not unique.
as sally mentioned, so bonded are we with our albums/cds that we feel they were (almost) gifts from the artists. we bought these records and made them our own. we bought other albums to keep them company. a community of experiences with friends and associates on our record shelves.
when reintroduced as a marketing tool, a song (which retains the charged resonance of personal bonding) cannot be effective on core followers. fictional response dramatization : "judas why have you betrayed me! ", "i was there for you when no one else cared for you, now this!" as a core follower of more than a few music makers, i'm certain that we cannot be commercially re-seduced. and sure as hell wont be conned by a corperate ploy using my song to seduce myself into buying nikes. it just doesnt add up for us. witness the strong negative reflex response by core beatles fans to the (mis)use of revolution number whatever. outside of the core groups, the commercials do seem to be pretty effective. by using songs with smaller core audiances, the rejection factor is reduced.
this is a somewhat new terrain and we 40 somethings are the first real media fattened generation and are figgerin' it out as we go. i think however we may have over invested in nostalgic ownership of popular songs. that we had our moment alone together and bonded does not confer entitlement.
- bill 7-28-2004 6:41 pm [add a comment]
Y'know, I'm not wild about most sports, but if I walked into a room and people were grousing about a game I didn't see, how cool would it be for me to say, "You guys have had your bonding experience, and of course people get attached to certain teams, but it's interesting that you get so emotional about it."?
- tom moody 7-28-2004 6:57 pm [add a comment]
your representing. you described something that happened to you. it fits into a dialog with other people who have made similar public observations. subject open.
- bill 7-28-2004 7:18 pm [add a comment]
thanks sally for your thoughts on pete and the who. i think me being a major bowie fan did prepare me and soften the "shock" effect you mentioned. heres more from not bored / and a response. i'll keep posting links (like this thread chasing the use of obscure songs in commercials) on this subject because i think its important, not just to bust toms hump. i dont know if i exactly got the sports analogy but im working in it. the N*ke ad is running in theaters only. i think its extra long too so the version TM saw may not make it to regular TV. tbc...
- bill 7-29-2004 9:02 pm [add a comment]
"Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place, or event in our lives. It's no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear or automobiles while you're in the trance. Artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs. It reduces them to the level of a jingle, a word that describes the sound of change in your pocket, which is what your songs become. Remember, when you sell your songs for commercials, you are selling your audience as well. When I was a kid, if I saw an artist I admired doing a commercial, I'd think, 'Too bad, he must really need the money.' But now it's so pervasive. It's a virus. Artists are lining up to do ads. The money and exposure are too tantalizing for most artists to decline. Corporations are hoping to hijack a culture's memories for their product."
-Tom Waits
(quote lifted from a message board quotation, not a TW interview)
- bill 7-29-2004 9:25 pm [add a comment]
big hits big mula / a legal perspective
- bill 7-29-2004 9:29 pm [add a comment]
"A barbershop quartet in Minneapolis sung the first broadcast jingle over network radio, for Wheaties, in 1929. By 1939, the jingle had come to saturate the nation with commercial tunes intent on driving consumerism. Credited with the first massively promoted singing commercial, Pepsi-Cola "was played 296,426 times over 469 stations in 1941, and more than a million times by 1944, becoming in effect a new kind of golden disc hit" (Booth 322). The enormous success of the jingle was testimony to the profitability that jingles lent to products and the intimacy that they lent to the public. In his article, Jingle: Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot, Mark Booth discusses the similarities between popular music and jingles claiming that the purpose of each is to cement a tune into the listeners mind. However, the "hook" or refrain of a popular song has traditionally been intended to snag the listener into the song itself, whereas the "hook" of a jingle is also designed to lodge itself in the mind. It is intended to draw the listener outside the lyrics to the product itself. A jingle, unlike a popular song, is not meant to sell itself but rather the product is represents."
- bill 7-30-2004 5:37 am [add a comment]
WHY POPULAR MUSIC REALLY DOES SUCK
- bill 7-30-2004 6:04 am [add a comment]
I can't believe I listened to Willie Nelson last night, but CNN (and PBS) decided Carole King not worthy.
- selma 7-30-2004 6:50 pm [add a comment]
good ole willie. johnny b goode can start its mending process. the dems had an otherwise pretty "soul" intensive showing. i wonder how well the r'pubs will serve up the "white-bread".
- bill 7-30-2004 7:06 pm [add a comment]
who is on their roster?
During Mr. Obama's speech I kept thinking, how do they think the terminator will compare.
- selma 7-30-2004 7:11 pm [add a comment]
Obviously the Terminator will crush that girlie man Osama. I mean Obama.
- jim 7-30-2004 7:15 pm [add a comment]
the skinny guy with the funny name vs the fat retard with the funny name. (sorry). i was just thinking about arnold (too) helping define the republican profile. real men vs girley men. dont know about the roster yet. im not looking forward to the RNC thing but i wont be able to divert my eyes.
(i see jim and i are on the same page - simal-posting)
- bill 7-30-2004 7:22 pm [add a comment]
it's like driving by a car accident, you can't help but look even though you know it will upset you.
- selma 7-30-2004 7:25 pm [add a comment]
rubbernecking delays expected in manhattan for august.
- bill 7-30-2004 7:28 pm [add a comment]
to avoid head-on collisions, get out of town.
- selma 7-30-2004 7:36 pm [add a comment]
Fox News played Carole King. How do I know you ask? I was ... um .... surfing the channels .... Bill O'Reilly .... the car crash thing.
By the way, a consistent talking point about the democrats is that they were putting up a front. "The candidates are far more liberal than the party, and the delegates are far more liberal than even the candidates." Barnes, Brooks, Kristol, etc. were all singing from the same page of the hymnal.
What are the odds that they'll be making these same remarks when St. Gulliani, the Gropenator, etc. are shilling for Jr.. At least the non-democratic party will be true to their roots and have Jerry "9/11 happened because God hates fags" Falwell giving the invocation.
- mark 7-31-2004 5:24 am [add a comment]