The world has gone musically mad

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

Serious question: To whom does it all belong?

underneath our contempt for capital's use of culture, isn't there some uneasiness about pop music as a whole? Pieces of music, that, even if an ad strips them of any irony or depth, were successes because of their immediate pleasurability, their reach, their cogent mood? Is it any surprise that they are used this way?

I don't think it's at all childish to feel betrayed by seeing these things happen...but I don't see it going away, either.

'THE MUSIC' = 'the notes'. But that really doesn't get us much further, does it? Maybe the idea might be that within frameworks of cultural codes and physiological functions and natural soundscapes certain 'notes' might be generated with certain timbres then combined and chained into structures which have some kind of semi-representational meaning? I repeat - how do you listen? Is there no metaphor or representation for you in music, is it all just socio-economic context or perceptual-gridding of sounds into patterns? These are perfectly valid dimensions of listening, but they're not the only way to listen, and there's nothing more 'real' about them. (The 'other stuff' you describe as possibly enjoyable but ultimately irrelevant also includes lyrics - that may seem a strange dismissal to many: sometimes they are sort of what the song is about)

And do please offer some other reasons for disliking new contexts enough to call the world musically mad. Instead of arguing on the basis that there might be.

I didn't say the world was musically mad – I think the title is about the unexpectedness of the Fall song/ad combo, which has led to a more general discussion of 'appropriateness' of band material in adverts – this ‘appropriateness’ includes more than just aesthetic notions of ‘it sounds like the product looks’- some advertising works on subtler and broader levels than that anyway (‘lifestyle’ and ‘aspiration’ and all other kinds of stuff that Tom will know loads more about) and is I suspect probably using these same subtleties in the functions of pop/rock music when it purloins them - and for many of us music appreciation is embedded within a wider context of cultural and intellectual connections: the key point coming out on this thread is that most (all?) of these should somehow be jettisoned as ‘sentimental’ irrelevancies – I don’t necessarily agree with that. I’m struggling towards positing the notion that there also is a powerfully efficient and context-personalized strange form of understanding that music, like other artforms, can bring about in its listeners – a soundtrack not just for one’s lifestyle, or even one's life, but for a way of perceiving the world.
So the ‘reasons’ might be in that area.
(And I think we are allowed to imply ‘might be’s round here, and to ask for other input – it’s a discussion forum, not a debating society.)

Regarding all this ‘what about their livelihoods’ stuff: I really don't 'care for' the financial welfare of any band, or their family members, or their kids school fees etc. – that is, quite literally, their business. My end of the deal is to care about the music they make and sell, the musical/cultural intentions and ideas it is encapsulating, how well/badly it does that, and the functions/meanings it has for me as a punter buying it. These seem relevant to a discussion about the use of music in adverts.

I'm sure that setting music to a commercial after you write it doesn't confuse the artist about what the song is about: so it shouldn't confuse your abliminal either. Would an artist be changing the meaning of an album if he played it a pool-party? Would that change the music? Not for me.

ads can be subverted by songs, i think: and sometimes i think ads can rescue songs, by helping you hear them "clean" (the context they're in the ad - will wash away, but momentarily the long-ago social whatever you've let stick to them, like trying to fit in with the wrong crowd at college, i dunno, has its power broken)

haha there shd be a schmaltzy TV show called "Our Ad" in which couples reminisnce abt how they always replay the Stella Artois ad on video when it's their anniversary

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. Commercial $$ can make a huge difference.

The trade-off is obvious, because having your song turned into a jingle naturally cheapens it for many listeners. (Even for those who hear it in the commercial for the first time... I know folks who knew of the Shins but never heard them before, for whom "New Slang" will forever be "that McDonald's song.")

But if I had a child (or a habit) to feed, I know I'd take the money in a second.

And another point to consider in along the lines of "the commercial will be made anyway" -- even if they don't license your song, they can create a studio approximation that cops its vibe and clearly references it for those in the know. I'm thinking of an older Target ad that had a rip of the groove from Sebadoh's "Flame" and a Haggar slacks ad that ripped the love vibe from Soul Coughing's "Soft Serve." If either band turned down an offer to license the song first (and I have no knowledge whether this happened), they kind of got the short end of the stick.

Also, there are some delicious context-fucks (subversion by song, as mark s put it) that come out of this. Kind of like the old Onion article along the lines of "Bank Uses Song About Heroin to Advertise Low Interest Rates." (Sorry, can't find the link.)

For instance, there were KMart ads featuring kids running around having fun, families hugging, etc., to the unmistakable strains of the instrumental parts from Nico's version of "These Days." It also seemed kind of appropriate though, coming right after the company's bankruptcy.

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.