The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: pmcd9 on January 20, 2004, 03:00:29 am
-
Are we beyond being righteously indignant that Madison Ave. co-op's our music to sell whatever it is they were selling (I honestly couldn't tell) or should we be grateful that sometimes they have great taste.
~Paul
-
I'm confused.
-
No, righteous indignace is key to the discerning music snob. I find few things more upsetting than hearing a track I like being used to sell boring crap.
Although that ad for Disney cruises that uses 'Lust for Life' still cracks me up: the way they turn down the volume right before "With the liquor and drugs" line is utterly classic.
-
Maybe I'm insufficiently indie, but I've never really gotten riled up about this. The only time I can remember doing so was when "Charmed" inexplicably quoted random out-of-context passages of "How Soon Is Now?" as something resembling a theme song (le sigh).
Incidentally, am I to assume the subject line refers to the Flaming Lips being used in this way?
-
It does bug me when they use highly inappropriate songs. Like when Wrangler was using Fortunate Son and showing all kinds flags and crap in the background. How did they get the rights to this?
-
How did they get the rights to this?
Because it's the record company that owns the rights, and deals with these deals, and funiily enough, if you hadn't noticed, record companies tend to be, in the words of Bill Hicks, suckers of satan's pecker.
-
How did they get the rights to this?
Because it's the record company that owns the rights, and deals with these deals, and funiily enough, if you hadn't noticed, record companies tend to be, in the words of Bill Hicks, suckers of satan's pecker.
But don't they get rights from the songwriter separately?
-
These things irk me a little, but I suppose I can get over it.
I find it a little ironic that we're worrying about the artistic integrity of one of the hugest AM rock bands ever -- CCR. I mean, I'm a big big CCR fan and have been since I was a tot. John Cameron Fogerty et al can flat out rock. But the music was first and foremost written to sell. It was made to play on AM radio. It's a short step to commercials.
Of course, you can't help but appreciate the irony when the corporate yaps completely miss the point of the a song when they use it for a soundbite. It's bound to be satisfying for the artist(s) involved when the very people being made fun of pay big bucks to spread the song where you skewer them all over the airwaves.
Still and all though, I can't get used to hearing Rock and Roll in Cadillac commercials.
-
should we be grateful that sometimes they have great taste.
~Paul
5 minutes after I wrote that I saw an ad for "The Swiffer" with Whip It as the theme music. Well sort of, it was actually Swiff it, swiff it good. That was heartbreaking.
~Paul
-
But don't they get rights from the songwriter separately?
Nope. Once the songwriters sign it over, they have no choice. I mean, hell, some companies might ba less fascistic than that, and some artists might hold out on some rights, but quite generally the artist only holds direct rights to the lyrics and music to the song, not the end product if released on a disc by the label.
-
I love how people say that a band "sold out" when their songs are used to shill floor wax, but they don't consider making shitty albums and doing multiple "Farewell" tours "selling out."
Let's face it, folks, your favourite bands all sold out a long long time before you ever heard of them. Let them get their money, I say. If a song is good, no commercial application can sully it. And if a song is ruined for you because of its association with a television advert, then you're much much shallower than I had envisioned.
-
All that moral and philosophical discussion aside, I find that the best possible 21st century use for the song "Rubber Band Man" (Spinner's version from, what, late 1970's?)) is the Office Max commercial being shown now.
-
This used to bug the shit out of me back when I was a teenaged elitist prick who actually believed that the Wrong People liking or even being exposed to my favorite shit somehow diminished it. I can't even begin to understand this rationale, now - it's not as though I personally created the Dead Kennedys out of thin air from some pocket dimension and have been carefully screening each and every person to whom they are exposed. Geez. Now I get more of a kick out of trying to get people who are otherwise completely squaresville into good stuff, like slipping something by The Fall into that weird little fundamentalist homeschooled kid's ears.
Even my right-on socialist pals over in Stereolab have had a couple of their songs in commercials, for crying out loud, and that is totally cool with me - the drawling fuckheads on the television stop screaming about Truck Month or whatever for thirty seconds and I get to hear something I like. If The Man wants to give you money and exposure for doing something you'd be doing anyway, take it.
-
Indeed, the use of "Freedom of Choice" in an ad for an American lite beer is kind of distressing. On the other hand, these things usually pay pretty well. It's easy for those of us who aren't professional musicians to think "Sell-out!", but given the opportunity to make good scratch for a song I wrote years ago (i.e. doing no new work), I'd jump at it too.
What I really hate is when they change the lyrics of the song for the ad. The department store Hecht's has an ad campaign that uses Naked Eyes' "Always Something There to Remind Me," except that for Hechts it's "Always Something There to Excite Me." I sure hope Naked Eyes got paid a fuckin' fortune for that, because it's painful. And I suppose that's why it's much less annoying when Stereolab or Moby has music in a commercial--it's just music, the background, and not so much pimpin' per se.
-
If it weren't for ads I probably would have never heard Nick Drake. It's not like he was ever (even back in the day) played on the radio.
~Paul
-
And I suppose that's why it's much less annoying when Stereolab or Moby has music in a commercial--it's just music, the background, and not so much pimpin' per se.
Well, apart from my more recent hatred of Moby, I do have to admit I liked the fact he didn't get any money whatsoever from any advert using his music (a clause he put in the legal wranglings). On the other hand it meant stuff from Play was on fuck*ng everything, and he sold more copies.
So I hate him for it, at the same time as liking that he wasn't demanding money.
Damn paradoxes.
I do have to say, I am never going to let anyone use any of my stuff for an advert, if I ever get popular enough that anyone would want to.
-
I do have to say, I am never going to let anyone use any of my stuff for an advert, if I ever get popular enough that anyone would want to.
I'll be sure to mention this in a few years when you're pimping for OxyClean.
-
I do have to say, I am never going to let anyone use any of my stuff for an advert, if I ever get popular enough that anyone would want to.
I have a similar conviction that if I ever publish the books I'm writing I won't let anyone make movies out of them. But I suspect it's easy to feel this way now, when I would be so thrilled if anyone offered me five dollars for one of them that that would seem like enough.
But let's hang together slink if we ever become famous enough for people to wave that money at us.
-
Plus as a new author you wouldn't have the pull to get a custom contract like that.
It's like all those bands who insist their stuff be sold as a whole album only and not as singles on iTunes or whatever. It's all people like Madonna and Radiohead who've built up the clout to be choosy about their works.
-
The only ad that ever irked me was the jeans commercial that only used the "some folks are born - made to wave the flag - ooh they're red white and blue" line from "Fortunate Son." Muy republicano.
Beyond that, however, it doesn't matter. The original post also neglects to mention that internet cable ad from a few months ago in which not only did "Do You Realize" appear, but the Flaming Lips themselves. If the band appears in an ad, you can't blame the record company for ho-ing them out. And if they sell an extra 50,000 copies of Yoshimi Vs. The Pink *****s to people who've never heard of the Flaming Lips as a result, more fuck*ng power to them.
Zeppelin in Cadillac ads? I'm personally sick of the ads, but if teenagers who have never heard them before get a Zeppelin album instead of the latest drop D/ goth-metal / hate-my-dad CD, fabulous. Ditto for the "Pink Moon" Volkswagen ad. And if selling "Lust For Life" to companies that leave out the flesh machine line keeps Iggy waist-deep in Chinese whores, terrific. Cuz his album sales sure aren't.
I went to the NAMM convention on Saturday, and, to paraphrase Lie Bot, the saddest thing is seeing an old rock star trying to make a buck. If selling a song to a company provides a living for someone who should just stay home and not drag his wrinkled ass out into the light, spiffy.
When Spieltod hits it big, I'm going to see that our music only appears in military recruitment commercials. And one black-and-white cologne ad.
THIS IS SOME DAMN GOOD COFFEE, DIANE
-
But let's hang together slink if we ever become famous enough for people to wave that money at us.
Excellent. A pact will keep me in shape. So yaboo Jough! Mwaha.
Although I have to say, if I ever finish my book, and the right director comes along...
-
All that moral and philosophical discussion aside, I find that the best possible 21st century use for the song "Rubber Band Man" (Spinner's version from, what, late 1970's?)) is the Office Max commercial being shown now.
That IS some funny shit.
-
The whole sell-out tag springs from the 60's when the music was supposedly "anti-establishment" and "revolutionary", but we know now that was just the conciet of the baby boomers. About the only ones who have never used their songs in advertising is The Beatles, but that's just because they are so filthy rich that ad money is chump change to them. Then again, so are the Stones, but they have no problem with whoring thier music out.
~Paul
-
Actually, Michael Jackson owns the rights to the Beatles songs. It's true (http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.htm), I swear.
-
Actually, Michael Jackson owns the rights to the Beatles songs. It's true (http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.htm), I swear.
Only the publishing rights (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27954-2004Jan18.html)
And I guess the songwriter's rights only really matter when transferring to a new medium, sampling, or covering.
-
And not all of them, in any case (back in the 80s Jackson's then friend Paul McCartney started trying to buy them himself).
-
As a side effect of this thread, I had "All We Have Is Now" running through my head all day today, and I will almost certainly put Yoshimi on the player after I get home tonight. If the commercial could indirectly remind me of what a fine album Yoshimi is, then in my mind all is good.
-
....The Beatles had always tried to prevent their work being used in advertising, but under Jackson's ownership, Beatles songs appeared in TV commercials for the first time - though the surviving Beatles had more success in preventing the use of original recordings.....
Full Story at BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/1323693.stm)
From Guardian Unlimited (http://www.guardian.co.uk/thebeatles/story/0,11212,606544,00.html) November, 1995
The three surviving members of the Beatles attack fellow singer Michael Jackson in a magazine article published today for 'cheapening' their work by allowing it to be used in advertising.
Jackson, who bought the publishing rights to the Beatles ' music for £50m in 1985, allows songs to be used in TV commercials for products including Nike trainers. He is thought to have received about $250,000 (about £166,000) for one advert.
They are, not surprisingly, a little miffed and a row has been brewing for some time. George Harrison warned: 'Unless we do something about it, every Beatles song is going to end up advertising bras and pork pies.'
He was backed by Paul McCartney, who said Jackson - with whom he recorded two singles in the 1980s, Say Say and The Girl Is Mine - had 'cheapened' the songs released.
The bitter comments are made in the latest edition of Elle magazine, just ahead of the release of the Beatles Anthology album this month, which will feature the first new tracks for a quarter of a century.
McCartney was outbid by Jackson for the rights and is said to still be furious at his refusal either to sell them back or, more gallingly, to increase his royalties, despite stories that Yoko Ono has re-negotiated the share due to her late husband, John Lennon.
It is perhaps an even more painful pill to swallow because, as he reveals in a book, McCartney: Yesterday And Today, by Ray Coleman, that it was he who advised Jackson, at a lunch party given by singer and actor Adam Faith, to get into publishing.
The 4,000-song ATV catalogue includes over 159 Lennon-McCartney Northern Songs gems and almost 100 other Beatles compositions. The group own neither their greatest compositions nor their most treasured recordings.
Despite the row, Jackson sees himself as a custodian of the great recordings of the 1960s, and recently blocked a rap album of Beatles' songs.
-
That's right, Michael Jackson can liscense Beatles songs for ads, but not the Beatles performance of those songs. That's what I meant to say.
On a slightly seperate topic. If Paul McCartney wasn't such a cheap ass this would have never happened to him. He had a chance to get the Beatles publishing rights but balked at the price.
~Paul
-
Well, Sir Paul's getting up in years you know. He's got to save for retirement and all that...
-
Well, Sir Paul's getting up in years you know. He's got to save for retirement and all that...
He can't afford to retire now, he's got a new baby and a trophy wife to pay for.
~Paul
-
Listening to the commentary track on the "Royal Tenenbaums" DVD, Wes Anderson said that he had wanted to include the Beatles rendition of "Hey Jude" in the film but Sir Paul refused. So they had Mark Mothersbaugh record a version, which was VERY good and really made the scene.
-
Oh god, Jough, you really shouldn't get into Wes Anderson's soundtracks when I'm around... I have this unfortunate propensity to turn into a slavering geek when he's mentioned, and the soundtracks are among the best parts of his films.
-
I mentioned it just for you.
I consider Anderson to be one of the best filmmakers of his generation, right up there with the other Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Neil LaBute, David O. Russell, Atom Egoyan, Todd Solandz, Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, Tom Tykver, Sophia Coppola, Sam Mendes, Richard Linklater, Alex Proyas, Alexander Payne, Guy Ritchie, Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriquez, Christopher Nolan, Baz Luhrmann, Darren Aronofsky, Bryan Singer, etc.
Did I leave out any talented young auteurs?
Ah yes.
And Michael Bay. The giant.
-
Damn Jough. Erm, perfect list. I agree with al of them.
Oh but you missed off some of the other older crowd, like I'd put Gilliam on there, and Hiyao Miyazaki, and Shinichiro Watanabe.