The world has gone musically mad

when will people get over the "I heard a SONG in an advertisment" shock shock horror horror routine?

As I see it,

a) 99.9% of the world will hear it and NOT KNOW it's a Fall song or who the Fall are, or maybe maaybe think 'hmmm...that's that band whatsisname used to like, the Farm, innit?'. It's a tree falling in the forest for just about everybody.

b) The clued-in kids who hear a Fall song in a car commercial now have to decide for themselves about What The Fall Means and then have to grapple with the fact that they live in a capitalist society where everything - even songs and bitter iconoclastic singers - has his price, and they will be wiser and more wary for it. (& hopefully set about raising their own prices now so they won't have to sell their songs or whatever they don't want to be selling when the dark days come.)

c.) the remainder of the world already know all about the Fall and are probably in self-backslap mode knowing they were right ALL ALONG about hell's proximity to a handbasket.

d.) the guy who bought the rights to the Fall song was probably a fan, thinking, 'poor ol' mark could probly use the cheese. Maybe he'll make a really good record if he's got 3 squares in im'

when will people get over the "I heard a SONG in an advertisment" shock shock horror horror routine?

As I see it,

a) 99.9% of the world will hear it and NOT KNOW it's a Fall song or who the Fall are, or maybe maaybe think 'hmmm...that's that band whatsisname used to like, the Farm, innit?'. It's a tree falling in the forest for just about everybody.

b) The clued-in kids who hear a Fall song in a car commercial now have to decide for themselves about What The Fall Means and then have to grapple with the fact that they live in a capitalist society where everything - even songs and bitter iconoclastic singers - has his price, and they will be wiser and more wary for it. (& hopefully set about raising their own prices now so they won't have to sell their songs or whatever they don't want to be selling when the dark days come.)

c.) the remainder of the world already know all about the Fall and are probably in self-backslap mode knowing they were right ALL ALONG about hell's proximity to a handbasket.

d.) the guy who bought the rights to the Fall song was probably a fan, thinking, 'poor ol' mark could probly use the cheese. Maybe he'll make a really good record if he's got 3 squares in im'

As Fritz asks: "when will people get over the "I heard a SONG in an advertisment" shock shock horror horror routine?" Well, it took me a long time to get over it but when it comes to it, why not make money from your art - to believe that to do so in some way nullifies your credibility or integrity is naive and insensitive sentiment, nine times out ot ten posited by the critic rather than the creator.

i know people who are displeased by a record by a relatively unknown band they like being used on an advert. these people work good jobs (or are on a career ladder) that give them a comfortable living. they seem not to want the band they like perhaps also to have a more comfortable and secure existence. i cannot take these peoples criticisms seriously, because they have no problem with doing it themselves. perhaps if they lived in a tent on communal ground and didn't enjoy the comforts commerce can bring to some people then i might take them more seriously. but i doubt it. i find this sort of hypocrisy a little difficult to swallow

Isn't it "Touch Sensitive"? Sarah and I saw the ad the other night and I thought, oh, there'll be trouble at t'ILM over this.

But from the Fall website:
"Yes, that is Touch Sensitive on the Vauxhall Corsa TV advert."

.. my diatribe still stands though .. the artists care less about the songs than you do.

this entire panic is about the inability to grant to music the power you're claiming it has: basically it argues that the ad is the only art form with any force

This sort of behaviour should be celebrated. In fact, I think I'd happily embrace the theory that advertisers have a wider musical knowledge (and love for the thing)than, say, 89.6% of the radio DJ's, music journalists and record company employees.

That nails it, thank you. Songs on adverts bother me around the edges, but really if the song is good, it's good. "Lust for Life" has been used for so much (it's now in cruise ads or something) but it doesn't bother me because it makes me dance. The ad and the song get put in the gladitorial ring! Iggy wins always! Some songs may be too fragile to survive the combat.

Although I would say that it would bother me if someone like Neil Young let a song be used because he's railed against such things in the past...just because I don't want artists I like to be hypocrites.

And Carribean cruises. Shit, at least some punks can afford a beat-up mid '80s XJS.

Yes Fritz, I think that is what should happen.

Scary to be the only voice of dissent, but I've got problems with the general 'anything goes' attitude here. I'm picking up a sense of 'Music? Feh, just another tin of beans, to be used as anyone sees fit in any context, no-one really owns it other than the people who can sell the rights or afford to buy it, and anyone who gets upset by a sense of personal meaning or personal relevance or even it's representational efficiency being changed by encountering it in a different social context is just naive/sentimental, and it's time to GET WITH THE PROGRAM.'

I thought that part of why we're here is out of a LOVE of music that can be very 'naive' and 'sentimental' and time/place/use specific. There's more to 'ownership' than legal contracts and a big fat cheque book - that's part of what the whole business (ha) is built on the first place.
If you want music for an advert - get some made. The use of 'source' material seems a lot more questionable to me. It reminds me of that tiresome quality of certain film soundtracks to press the nostalgia-trigger of prospective viewers, in a way not unlike 'School Disco'. I also think it's really lazy and somehow maybe even degenerate to use music that was created to resonate with 'naive' youthful expressions of personal dissatisfaction, or vague socio-political resistance, as part of a bloody ad campaign. There are more than enough internal contradictions in the production/selling of widgets purporting to be about anti-widgetdom or non-widgety areas of life - this kind of practice is like plastering YOU SEE IT IS ALL JUST FOR SALE AND ISN'T THAT GREAT all over a more difficult and conflicted set of words.

Tom - maybe what you say is true, but from the outside even that might look different: an 'Oh I can really USE this now' idea, an implicit mature sniggering at their youthful foolishness, of 'HERE's yer revolution right here pal! Glad I wised up!'
I mean, do they really have the same relationship to the widget they're trying to sell as to the music they've chosen?

I don't think it's necessary to get engaged with caring about the financial wellbeing of the creators of a piece of music you like - you made the only deal you needed to with them when you bought it - IF you paid for it of course you bunch of anti-corporate bootleggers hahaha. In fact, depending on the function it has performed in your life and the cultural role it was purporting to play, this could be interpreted the other way round - 'you fucker many of us bought and paid for that song and now you've gone and spoilt it for us'.

mark s - I really hesitate to question, but I don't know about what you said: I don't know what kind of contextless 'power' a piece of music can have?
Can't this be just a matter of personal connectivity and conditioning?
Isn't there any music you love that carries some cultural/personal meaning to YOU that you feel would somehow be sullied by a more generic use - do you really appreciate everything you like in that kind of isolated or socially-abstracted or impervious-to-recontextualisation way - or is it that there's no context for it that could conceivably piss you off?

" a song in an ad"

Jeezus

yeargh

1. Hey, that was my song! They gave it to the TEEVEE! I WANT MY SPECIAL SOCIAL IDENTIFIER BACK!!

2. Hey, he said that song was about revolution, and now I'm supposed to identify it with tampons! THE ARTIST LIED TO ME!

My favorite example of these reactions being shot down quickly was the licensing of the minutemen's "Love Dance" and "Corona" to Volvo and MTV's Jackass respectively.

The fans: HEY! What happened to "Let the products sell themselves, fuck advertizing?"

Mike Watt: D. Boon's dad is dying and has no insurance. It's a way for D. to help his father even though D's dead.

Fans: *silence*

(why are my jokes always 15 years late?)

I think yr argt on an earlier thread, that some other fan's (mis)use can detract from the specific way you want to hear the song, is perfectly fair in the short term: but the problem's no worse than eg being in an eatery on romantic assignation and them playing Carcass all night, or someone giving away the ending of a film you haven't seen yet: it's about control of context and atmosphere, and sometimes that's a pain having to strategise to avoid yr fun being spoiled for an evening, or a month, or whatever. But the ad will run a few weeks then vanish, and then you'll have the song back forever: if it *really* fails to re-establish itself then it has to be a weakness of the song. [haha insert boilerplate ilm-cliche mockery of n.drake, j.morrison, j.strummer etc etc]

Nick Cave always says something about how he gets letters from fans saying how one of his songs was played at a friend's/brother's/whoever's funeral etc, and that he therefore can't taint the thing by selling a song to an ad. Which sums up the dilemna, really. It's not so much that allowing this kind of use spoils the music for the MAKER of it, but rather it's about what it means to the people who loved the song before it was everywhere. And that's another question. Does artistic purity have to include respect for fans, or is that irrelevant? Isn't it useful sometimes to deliberately piss the fans off?

I liked how Chumbawumba (and I don't normally go about liking them) took the cash for an ad recently and immediately gave it to some group who were involved in campaigning AGAINST the corporation in question. I like it because it highlights the way in which some principles may be self-defeating. If you turn down an ad, then some other band with equally funky music won't, and the ad will still get made. If you do take the money, then at least you're in control of where it goes. This 'the ad will still get made' principle also applies to bands with no political point to make. I can well understand, even if it bugs me, when a band not selling an outrageous amount of records accepts an offer to receive £50,000 or whatever for no work.

It is annoying when bands try to be cool by not selling their music to ads in the UK / US , but rake it in in Japan etc where they think it doesn't matter.

I get what this is saying, but not all ads are that way. Mark mentioned the Venus In Furs, but don't tell me the surfing horses damaged Phat Planet for you - I am perfectly happy that the song reminds me of the gorgeous ad, as well as sounding fantastic in its own right. There doesn't have to be an opposition at all. I've not come across the Fall or Clash ads, and they are both bands I love, but I'll be surprised if they trouble me at all. Rubbish adverts won't damage the songs for me, but I've noticed before that I seem to have less in the way of contextual, sentimental attachments to songs than most people.

Do you believe in magic
And burgers that talk
Chicken McNuggets that can go for a walk...

At least to me, there is a whole lot of things that bug me more than a musician hocking a song for an advert, not that the practice isn't completely cheezebot at times.

Er... I think?

I think the D Boon/ Low cases are instructive, toward the point that the setup of recording contracts makes it nigh impossible for some artists to profit, much less prosper, from their music.

i hate to bring "indie" into this but someone has to. Low's relatively meager earnings have more to do with the fact that they release records on an independent label than with the setup of their contract - i think kranky's royalty rates are normal by indie standards.

what makes this subject so touchy for a lot of people (myself included) is that when a Fall song appears in an ad accompanied by the obligatory "TWMAMO" arg it means that something many of us really truly want to believe in ISN'T WORKING - that all efforts to establish a viable parallel as-lizard-free-as-possible commercial universe are futile and/or hopelessly misguided. very very simply stated = "if the Fall can't make it none of us can". this tends to get lost in the usual simplistic/elitist/kneejerk hysteria but there are a few of us poor decrepit souls trying to understand and articulate a very specific frustration/disappointment that has nothing to do with crying "sellout" or lamenting the theft of a misty nicey-nice memory by ford motors.

If such an offer was proffered to the badn, do you really think a major contract -- with its incrementally higher royalty rate but monumentally higher recoupables -- would earn them more money? You can tell from the phrasing of the question that I don't think so.

The only niche-oriented (I love Low, but they definitely fulfill/occupy a niche) "indie" band I can think of who made some decent hay out the major label fandango was probably Royal Trux. They ripped Virgin Rec's off wholesale (and created one of the worst album covers ever int the preocess) as far as I've heard.

Not that indie is panacea, duh, look at many folks' gripes with SST, amongst others.

But anyhow, you gotta feed the baby.

I was gonna say that sometimes songs licensed to TV and movies bother me as much as/more than when used in advertising. You have pinpointed part of the reason.

Well, maybe they are. In the end, I'm anti-utopian; the baby trumps the dream. We all live in the world, and in the market, it's all one. I really don't want to sound like a prick, but what kind of "alternative commerical universe" consists only of pop music? How about some lizard-free gas stations, to start with?

I brought up the Low situation to argue against the "sellout" cry, which I suppose hadn't actually been made. But in a larger sense, I don't think these things belong to us as fans, and it's these moral qualms about what a song should be used for that seem proprietary to my ears. That, and I think that falling in love with/to a song and hearing it used to pump an SUV are part of the same story, the glittery sweating ugly human comedy [/cliche]. As much as I admire the stubborn refusal that is at the heart of the utopian dream, and wish that it was right or even possible, I think it's a retreat.

Really, who got the shit end of the deal? Low made exactly what they wanted to make, that their audience wanted, the Gap paid them, and got what? To sell some pants? (weren't their sales in the fucking toilet at the time, btw?) How utopian is that?

(I think if I worked in advertising [and going by Creative Review, the label of choice is Warp] I wouldn't use music I liked in ads, because, well, I *would* feel a bit precious about sullying songs I loved (films, though, would be a different matter). I think I would follow the Scooter principle of using fucked up versions of terrible songs.)

Anyone else remember when music videos were considered to be bad and horrible and a creation of the 12 foot lizards and all of that because they supposedly kept you from creating your own image of the song? My reaction always was, "I don't get images from the song anyways, so why not have ones that the artist creates?"

Oh, and about the x-ray machines in shoe stores: There was a Colorado store that used one of those things well into the Eighties. The machine was old (Forties vintage, IIRC), broken down, unshielded, and spewing ungodly amounts of radiation into the air. I wonder just how many employees died of cancer because of that thing.

SE: 'But FischerSpooner are about so much more than just music, you really have to SEE them and their show to get the full effect.'
Tom: 'So why have they released an audio CD instead of a Video/DVD?'
SE: 'Because imagined pictures can be so much better than ones you're given!'

Me: Errrr....

well yes but we're talking about musicians and their actual sphere of control not imaginary CEOs. and I don't consider my admittedly quaint and problematic idealism in these matters utopian.

as for the notion of "retreat" (in the sense i think you mean), this begins way before the hypothetical ad-refusal - the moment a group or individual decides to identify as Indie in the first place. since that initial decision is more often than not at least partly ethical, many subsequent commercial decisions also become minor crises tackled in terms of degrees of compromise. but to see a refusal as a "retreat" at this point is a fabricated dilemma - it ignores the fact that the group in question is already engaged in an art/commerce equation at least as complex and sophisticated as the "mainstream" one if not more so. the baby only complicates the dream - if it trumped it, a band like Low would simply cease to exist.

By "dream" I meant our dream of a band's anti-lizard virtue. When you say that "the group in question is already engaged in an art/commerce equation at least as complex and sophisticated as the "mainstream" one if not more so" you're absolutely right. Their baby trumps our dream.

And by "retreat" I meant a mental retreat of a fan holding up some kind of ideological scorecard (which you of course aren't doing) rather than trying to understand those decisions that put the song in the ad. I really didn't mean an artist's "retreat" from the golden teat or market inevitability or some such thing.

But, you're talking about a more generalized disgust, ie song-in-ad = signal that everything has gone wrong; not disapproval of a particular artist's decisions. And to that feeling, I don't have an answer. I guess I've never really believed in the possibility of another parallel world, myself.

Yr stuff about obsessiveness/other ppl is a VERY BIG THING - I'm almost scared to answer in case I get torn apart by the rest of you!

I don't understand this 'baby trumping dream' stuff above, but surely you don't have to believe that a 'lizard-free parallel world' actually exists in order to find music that implies or represents the imagined existence of one, or that implies non-lizard areas of life in this one? (What I meant by 'non-widgety' above) These are important imaginings. Artefacts can be an awkwardly commercial manifestation of art/idea - but to say that the art/idea is therefore always and inevitably reduced or compromised by that seems needlessly economics-obsessed and faux-logic cynical.

And could ppl aaarrghghg PLEASE try to get past only using Nice Memory Syndrome as way of interpreting the complaint - it's part of it but not all of it.
Unfortunately I'm stuck in that fog of whether the other stuff I'm struggling to clarify is really subtle and difficult, or whether it's just too incoherent to exist atall :( - NEED MORE INPUT!

There are some other ILx regulars/Big Guns who I wish would contribute their take on this stuff: the pinefox, Ned & Tim Finney especially.

Could any North-England ILx'ers please resist from using this unfortunate turn of phrase as a setup line.
Thankyou.

Somewhere along the line we've forgotten that the point of 12-ft lizards is that they REALLY DON'T EXIST. And REALLY DON'T RUN THE WORLD.

these "music in ads" threads can get very exhausting for the Anti camp - one always seems to wind up defending an ideology far more rigid or sentimentalist than one's own, or trying to distinguish one's position from that of the strawman "sellout!"-yellers who are NEVER actually present. i've been persuaded enough by past threads to admit that there IS something very reactionary in my own feelings on the subject, something which doesn't hold up under scrutiny. so on this one i've tried to restrict my arguments to what frustrates me from a struggling artist POV - namely the assumption that licensing music to an ad firm or film or whatever is practically inevitable for "minor talents" trying to make ends meet and that that in itself merits no further discussion. maybe it doesn't - this is all stuff i'm still trying to work out and this probably isn't the best place for it. anyway any mention i've made of compromise is made in this sense - not on the part of the artifact but of its creator(s) - apologies for any confusion there.

Sterling - the lizard bit was me too. "The Man" would have worked just as well. it was a shot at lucid naive which i guess failed.

Sterling I thought 'Lizards' = 'Those Capitalist Bastards' generally, a lack of ILx history on my part.

Tom, yr examples are good and useful, but its.....it's not 'disappointment' with anybody involved in the process as such......it's.......it's......something else.....*sinks to knees and puts head in hands*

I maybe have to let this thread sink into obscurity until I can articulate better what the fuck it is I'm trying to say. A few years might do it. (Further neuronal ear-dribble notwithstanding).

I like hearing songs in advertising. I'm bemused at the attempt of advertisers to link their product with whatever sound-world is implied by "Lust for Life" or "What Do I Get" or "Little Drummer Boy." I like hearing songs get ruined. I like having to constatly rethink my recieved notions of art, capital, and rock music, every time it happens. I like the idea of artists getting scads of money for work they might've done years ago, good for them. I like imagining a world where the Fall is the score to every ad. I like the fact that potential Jaguar owners might be Clash fans (joke's on them both).

(I don't know how many of these I really believe, btw, but I'll go with them for now.)

it just occurred to me that a better example of the situation reversed than songs subverting ads (by accident) might be songs appropriating brands on purpose like V Taylor's Brand New Cadillac or better yet Snoop endorsing Tanqueray etc (gangstas perhaps not being the demographic they'd like to be affiliated with thogh i'm just guessing)

it just occurred to me that a better example of the situation reversed than songs subverting ads (by accident) might be songs appropriating brands on purpose like V Taylor's Brand New Cadillac or better yet Snoop endorsing Tanqueray etc (gangstas perhaps not being the demographic they'd like to be affiliated with thogh i'm just guessing)

Pass the Courvoisier!

"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."

it's hard to even picture him behind the wheel
of some rugged sport utility vehi-kill

even sittin on a phonebook wearin platform shoes
it just clashes with his eyeliner and all that rouge

pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
what do you get for your rock 'n roll dreams
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
s-e-l-l-o-u-t

i hate to beat up on such a petite rock star
i mean so what if he sold out to some foriegn car
he's just a homo sapien like me & you
maybe it was the only way to get his due

pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
have you seen this travesty?
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
s-e-l-l-o-u-t

i hate to begrudge or judge you
but who nudged you into signing away your legacy
do i have to spell out sell out
as i shell out money i dont even have on me
for some brand new s.u.v.
and some used buzzcocks cd..........

ever fallen off the sofa like a lost remote
when whats comin cross the cable hits a sour note?
well thats kinda how it happened with my tv set
im there flickin through the channels and what do i get?

pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
gunnin down the road runnin over me
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
pete shelley in an s.u.v.
s-e-l-l-o-u-t
s-e-l-l-o-u-t
s-e-l-l-o-u-8-1-2

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