The world has gone musically mad

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...

Josh I meant to go back into that bracket and put a "only" in, but I forgot.

I hated those surfing horses, but that was the stupid voiceover, I liked the music lots, the voiceover didn't spoil it because it was too good to be spoiled.

Is there a UK vs US break-down here at all? Everyone knows the best ads in the UK are the ones where afterwards you can;t work out what was being sold, you just had a brilliant time watching. I always liked Clarkes shoes anyway cz in the shop when I was little they had a sliding measuring device made of metal and it felt nice on your foot. In Machynlleth there used at be an x-ray machine in the shoeshop! You could see the bones of yr feet!!

Yeah I loved putting my foot on those too. They have an updated computerised version now. Same idea but 'hi-tech sensors' work out how big the foot is.

That all said, I was careful in my post to suggest that ad people being music fans doesn't excuse what they do to music, any more than rock writers being music fans excuses what THEY do to music. I am often a bit freaked out when an ad uses a song I like but it's more to do with the possibility of overplay and the context-changing, and as Mark S says it comes right in a couple of months (or a couple of years) or it's a weak song. It's worse I think for people who hear the song *first* in an ad context - I've never, after 10 years, been able to hear "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" outside the jeans ad I first heard it in, but then I hated it when I first heard it in the ad - maybe if I'd liked it I'd have built up my own context...

Thanks, Tom. That's what I was trying to say....

No - I agree there are some good & thought-provoking points being articulated above. Too busy at work just now to respond though - and it takes me ages to figure out the words anyway. I might try later.

But I think I was (still am to a degree) very much an 'obsessive' in the way that Ben Williams has described, at least about a certain type/period of music. I thought/hoped there might be more of us around.

(Tom - point taken. Maybe I've been adversely affected by once knowing some TV types, directors/producers/researchers, who seemed to have this horrible 'Oh I can USE that' mentality running all the time in their head. Cultural Hyenas.)

I always try to break any associations I have with music, to see it afresh and try out a new association for a while. That's how you keep your focus on THE MUSIC, and not nostalgia. This is why even old folk who used to be alternative so often don't see value in new stuff: they forgot to keep it real.

Depends on the song. Depends on the ad. Depends on the group. Depends on the general familiarity of the song.

Take The Clash fer instance: they based their entire image around being hardcore revolutionaires who despise consumer society (that they're a part of it doesn't matter here, since it's the image we're talking about, not reality) - of course their fans are gonna get angry when their music is used in a car ad!

(To say nothing about how spectacularly inept the ad itself was- "THIS CAR WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BRITISH!!" Does *anyone* in the USA really crave that?)

Compare that with the Nick Drake commercial for Golf- Nick's image was/is all about a semi-mystical connection to nature and the will to be diferent than others. The ppl who made the Golf commercial seemed to be aware of that and made their product accordingly. In this case I'd say there's no reason for anyone to feel shocked/disgusted/betrayed by the commercial, since it respected the artist's image (regardless of how silly/stupid/hateful you personaly think that artist's image is.)

I didn't mind it when they used "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" for jeans either, because there's nothing in that song that implies some sort of rebellion or at least discontent against consumer society; but when Strummer calls for "the underworld" to purchase cars, I feel I have the right to be pissed off.

There's also the overplay factor- Vodafone uses "Bohemian Like You" by The Dandy Warhols to advertise for cell phones in Europe, and though the ads provide at least a decent facismile of what ppl would generally consider the group to be "about", it still pisses me off 'cos I had ALREADY played the hell out of that tune, and now I've heard it so many times that I am truly sick of it forever. But I suspect that's another thread...

Congratulations on your nuggetism, but I'd quite like to know what you actually DO when you keep your focus on 'THE MUSIC' - do you blot out all interpretive processes of representation in some way, such that you just hear some kind of abstract sound-blob that literally means 'nothing in particular' to you?

I'd also like to know what 'keep it real' means - it sounds as though your definition would include cheerful and almost enthusiastic acceptance of one of your favourite songs being used to promote anything at all.

Someone said this earlier - but I don't think that has to follow. This isn't about disliking advertising, it's about acknowledging that something more important than petulance or 'sentimentality' can be involved if people do react adversely to certain songs being used in its service. I suppose ultimately it's about what music does/can/is supposed to MEAN to us, about how we use or are used by it, about whether all modes of perception/consumption are equally valuable, about what the nature of our appreciation actually IS.

SOMEBODY - HELP - IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE ?

I at least reclaim a bit of my psychic space and don't associate Nick Drake or whoever with whatever shit someone was trying to sell me.
Well tigger, according to many on this thread, this implies you don't really like ND atall....strange isn't it?

Sure by 'THE MUSIC' I mean the notes. I really try to keep things limited to the notes. I enjoy the other stuff (lyrics, album art, associated experiences, whatever -- though really notes are where it's at) but I keep an eye out for the other stuff becoming more important to me than the notes. And do please offer some other reasons for disliking new contexts enough to call the world musically mad.

But, good Christ, what about the bands? It's a difficult and risky life being a musician, even with some moderate success penury is only a blink away, and every other link in the chain of production is designed to take the fruits of your work from you. God forbid you get sick (esp in the US). Who among you would turn down a raise where you work?

People in my circle of friends sneered, rightly enough, at the suburban-looking teenagers who called out "Gap ad!" at a Low show last winter, but all I could think was the Gap paid for Al and Mimi's kid's immunizations or something.

Of course, the stones taking 12 mil from Microsoft for "Start Me Up" is...no that doesn't really bother me either.

Something that stops me getting too unhappy is that the song already is a commodity i.e. I have bought it myself and have already had to go through the (so habitual now as to be subconscious) adjustment between commercial-transaction and role-in-my-life. All that happens when the song appears in a new commercial context is that I have to do that again.

You're also, Ray, characterising the life-context argument as 'sentimentality' etc etc - no not at all, we're saying it's hugely important and strong and worthwhile for music to play that kind of role, just that music isn't damaged much by what other people do - is that so hard to believe?

Since Ray's argument seems to be (OK this is the cartoon version, a bit) that all adverts DO have power to affect how you hear but all songs don't (or at least, their power is catastrophically weaker), I can't work out what it is he's mourning.

phil masstransfer jumped on me last time for generalising this next point too far, but i think we sometimes hate the easy-target "marketing people" because they are actually responding in a *very similar way to us*, and we don't like that: viz they like this song they have heard, and assume other people like them will like it too, and they in fact act in a proprietorial way towards it, as if they own it and can do what they like with it

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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haha