Do you know how much money arteest are missing out on these days because if illegal downloading? a boatload Do you know how many times bands get shafted out on the bar circuit? a bunch Do you think the checks ever bounce from fortune 500 companies paying commercial royalties? probably never Instead of 'selling out' consider it a new paradigm for survival. Besides, I dig a little Kings of Leon or The Sonics on the tube (But that Dream On makes my skin crawl)
I'm not sure that most artists have an artistic vision. I think most artists make music they like and they want other people to like it too. I don't think they really care how people hear it so long as they hear it. Besides, they didn't make the music for the commercial. They made it for themselves. If it ends up on a commercial, that's just another avenue to sell product. They do call this "pop" music for a reason. It's short for popular. That's sort of the point.
Jeff; You don't find "Blitzkrieg Bop" used for AT&T or The Clash for GM is a bit of a compromise for bands who made their name being anti-establishment or Leftist?
Not really. I mean, if they continue to espouse anti-corporate sentiment and take corporate money, then I would consider them hypocritical. But, we're talking about bands whose members might be 50 by now. Opinions change and I don't have a problem with that. I just find it kind of funny because I am a musician and I know hundreds of them. Most of us started playing for popularity and girls. Most bands CONTINUED to play for the same reasons. If someone wanted to create art, he/she was likely going to switch to a different genre - jazz, classical maybe. I get the anti-establishment thing, but most of the bands you hear on commercials were ALWAYS in it for the money and the women. They don't call it sex, drugs and rock and roll for nothing.
That's how I have always seen it, a band does not make music hoping it hits the charts, they make it because they want to. Some of my friends in high school would tell me oh you listen to "pop punk", and i'm like well its not really their fault they got popular, they didnt know that particular song was going to become that big of a hit.
I always remember Billy Joel talking about how the anti-establishment pose was still a pose. He said, and I agree, you knew the potential consequences of your actions. You knew that if you got into this business, you could end up popular. So, if you didn't want popularity, why did you make a record, why did you make a video, why did you go on tour? Most importantly, why did you take the money? If you want to be an artist, there are plenty of ways to do that. There are plenty of ways to avoid commercialism. Go play avante garde jazz or chamber music. Go play folk music in coffee houses or fusion music. But, if you don't ever want the opportunity to become popular, you should avoid rock music because there is always a chance.
But there's a difference between being popular and shilling for burgers or jeans. You make it sound like its a choice between being obscure or licensing their music for commercials when there's several bands that have stuck to making money without licensing their music to commercials.
zep could sell all their songs out to commercials and i would love them the same. the only thing that bothers me is that whenever i hear rock n roll now i think of the commercial and i'd just rather it not be that way.
Yes, but that is not how it works anymore. It used to be that you could make all the money you needed to support your art by playing gigs. That ended with record labels, which gave you the option of making money off records too. Now, that has dwindled with the massive consolidation of labels and the radio industry. The irony is that if you want music to continue to thrive and be creative, you may HAVE to rely on commercials. The vast majority of commercials that use music from original bands and artists use obscure stuff that can no longer be heard on commercial radio. Ad agencies have even been responsible for BREAKING artists, something once only reserved for radio. It is just the way the industry is today.
I like that Elvis Costello, Radiohead, REM and Neil Young and a few others have resisted the urge to sell out. I don't begrudge people from making a living, or getting their music out for public comsumption so they can maintain a career (the Shins let McDonalds use one of their songs, for example), but when the likes of Dylan, Sting, the Stones, the Who and countless other big name acts sell their songs in a commercial they are doing it for simple greed and they are diminished. David Bowie shilling Pepsi turned one of the coolest guys ever into a total tool. It took him nearly a decade to recover from that. I think selling art for commercials is damaging not so much because it reinforces corporations, or mindless consumerism. I think it is most harmful because it brands the memory and meaning of the art to commerical images. In the case of the Caddilac "Rock and Roll" ad the listener thinks of some crappy car pealing out in the desert instead of their own memory of the song. That sucks. It's no coincidence that music meant more to people when the music, itself, meant more to the artists. If it is only a means to maintain a career, or a revenue stream than what is the point?
This probably articulated it best. I do agree that the big artists who have turned to corporations for ads and money didn't need to and, in some ways, probably damaged their rep a bit for doing it. And, yes, there have been times when songs have been forever linked to commercials in an unfortunate way (Heard it through the Grapevine with California Rasins for example), but history rarely remembers this. Jazz artists used to shill for commerce all the time and no one remembers that. We just hear the great music and enjoy it. I frankly don't even remember the Bowie/Pepsi ad. Memories for that kind of thing are relatively brief, fortunately. The area where I just disagree with most is in the area of emerging artist where, by far, the largest amount of music in commercials come from. As a musician, do I really want my big break to come from an ad agency for a car commercial? Hell no. As a musician who wants to succeed and reach a wider audience, would I consider it. Hell yes. Fifteen years ago, this wasn't an issue. Commercials didn't use popular (or even lesser known) music on a broad scale mainly because it didn't work. It didn't really help them sell things because that generation wasn't motivated by it. But, we are in the era where boomers are retiring and Gen Y is in its consumer phase. Both are HEAVILY influenced by popular music - boomers out of nostalgia, Y's because of their age. So, it makes sense given the shrinking of both the record and radio industry that artists should turn to other mediums for help in promoting and distributing their music.
"This Note's For You" Don't want no cash Don't need no money Ain't got no stash This note's for you. Ain't singin' for Pepsi Ain't singin' for Coke I don't sing for nobody Makes me look like a joke This note's for you. Ain't singin' for Miller Don't sing for Bud I won't sing for politicians Ain't singin' for Spuds This note's for you. Don't need no cash Don't want no money Ain't got no stash This note's for you. I've got the real thing I got the real thing, baby I got the real thing Yeah, alright. Neil Young
here's a tangentially related article: A Graffiti Legend Is Back on the Street By RANDY KENNEDY Published: April 18, 2005 He arrived on foot, and on time, wearing heavily grease-stained beige overalls and boots. He seemed to be in his late 30's or early 40's, with thinning light brown hair. He had the windburned eyes and blackened fingernails of an ironworker, along with the vaguely feral intensity of someone on the lam. But he hardly looked like the kind of shadowy revolutionary figure who had once declared that his goal was to "tear the city to pieces and rebuild it." Now, he says, smiling weakly, "I stop at stop signs; I pay taxes; I get up and go to work and get a paycheck." In the New York graffiti world of the early 1990's, he was everywhere and larger than life, sometimes literally: the name Revs, usually accompanied by that of his partner in crime, Cost, could be found scrawled, wheat-pasted or painted in gargantuan white letters on overpasses, walls and roofs from SoHo to northern New Jersey. The work upended many traditional notions of graffiti and helped inspire a new generation of so-called street artists. Then in late 1994 Cost was arrested for vandalism. Revs went underground and left the city for Alaska. And when he returned, his work went mostly underground, too - into the subway, where he painted long, feverish diary entries worthy of a Dostoyevsky character on dozens of walls hidden deep inside the tunnels. (He called this a personal mission and said he did not care if anybody else saw them.) But over the last few years, he has re-emerged into public view and reincarnated himself in a way few of his fans ever expected, as a legitimate and (mostly) law-abiding sculptor. He has made dozens of works using construction-grade steel and other metal parts and has sought the permission of building owners to weld and bolt them to the outsides of buildings in the meatpacking district, the East Village, the Gowanus Canal area and Dumbo, where the gentrifying but still half-deserted streets have become a veritable Revs gallery......... LINK to rest of article: http://nytimes.com/2005/04/18/arts/design/18revs.html
