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Start the Commotion

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Start the Commotion

Author’s Warning: The following is another contribution to the accumulating coverage of the nexus between automotive marketing and music. While this may seem dubious to some people, it is predicated on the fact that (1) automotive manufacturers are among the world’s leading marketers, which means that they are spending staggering amounts of money trying to convince consumers not only of their products’ relevance and importance and desirability, but (2) that they are evidently convinced that it is imperative to persuade a group of people who range in age from 16 to 49, people with disposable income, that they, the vehicle manufacturers, are clued in, and the means through which they are doing this is borrowing the music of the relative generations (from Dirty Vegas to Led Zeppelin). Their co-option—although often voluntary and driven purely by economic motives—of the musicians’s work dwarfs that of any other class of corporation when it comes to using music for what is essentially propaganda. Perhaps it is irrelevant to dwell on this. Perhaps we should just be blithe to the whole sociopolitical ramifications (it isn’t just Clear Channel that determines who you see and what you hear—not by a long shot) of this. If that is your position, then stop reading this now, if you didn’t already.

Mitsubishi Motors had a problem. It was simply that compared to other Japanese brands, they weren’t moving much sheet metal in the world’s most important market for cars and trucks, the American market. Some of this had to do with distribution. They didn’t have as many outlets as the other guys. Part of this had to do with product. Some of it (e.g., the Mirage) just didn’t make the grade as compared to the likes of the Civic and the Corolla. And another aspect of this had a lot to do with image. Whereas Honda has become closely identified as being the brand that tuners gravitate toward, and Toyota has the reputation for providing bulletproof (but comparatively bland) transportation, Mitsubishi was, essentially, as the name of their WWII airplanes had it, zero.

One of the consequences in being in this position was that they faced economic constraints with regard to what they could do. So they opted for cleverness to be a lever. In 1998, the company awarded its advertising account to Deutsch Inc.’s LA office. Which came up with a theme, “Wake Up and Drive.” The target was to be young, edgy, spirited group—not my characterization, but what I was told by the vehicle manufacturer’s vice president of Corporate Communications & Public Affairs. The brand positioning included the notion that the cars “make you look and feel alive.” So to wake up people, they turned to music, music that is ostensibly coming out of the speakers of the various vehicles as people are on their way to hip venues. The people in VW ads are comparative slugs to these. And the people driving in the rocks in the Nissan spots are just so, well, déclassé. Waking up includes seat dancing. Popping.

Whereas the DaimlerChrysler bank account is deep enough to sign Aerosmith, Mitsubishi didn’t have the requisite amounts to sign big names to their advertising campaign. So some audiophile at Deutsch went listening for options. One such option was a 1998 number from The Wise Guys, “Start the Commotion,” which was released in the U.K. and quickly departed the charts. It sounded right for the black and white, quick-cutting, trendy spots of attractive people driving the Eclipse. But what’s interesting to note is that the commercial in question (entitled “Fun”) was released in 2001, long after “Start the Commotion” had proved to be a non-starter. The aforementioned veep told me that thanks to the car commercial, “Start the Commotion” was driven to the Top 10 in the U.S. (And, yes, Mitsubishi sales have increased.)

There have been several spots in the series. “One Week” from the Barenaked Ladies for the Lancer. “20th Century Boy” from the sometimes-lamented voice of Marc Bolan and T. Rex for Montero Sport. “Lust for Life” by Iggy for the Galant. Not the A-team, but getting it done.

What is the most interesting—and possibly troubling—is the most recent spot, which features “Days Go By” by the British trio Dirty Vegas. The song has been nominated for a VH1 “Visionary Video Award” and “Best Dance Video” in the MTV Video Music Awards. Not bad. But read this, from the Dirty Vegas website:

“Earlier this year [2002] the song [“Days Go By”] was picked by car maker Mitsubishi to use as the soundbed in a US TV Ad campaign. The song received more attention than the car and soon “Days Go By” became the most added track at radio, the stunning video became a fixture on MTV, and Dirty Vegas became probably the hippest band in America.”

What the band’s self-adulatory praise leaves out is that it seems that the release of “Days Go By” was coordinated with the Mitsubishi ad. Evidently, the band knew what Mitsubishi had done for The Wise Guys, so they, too, decided it is better to be smart than good.

It was once necessary for bands to convince record companies, promoters, and radio stations that their music was worthwhile. Now, apparently, there is another category that may be more important: Car manufacturers. As is the name of “The Mitsubishi Mix, Vol. 1″ (Warner Special Products, Warner Music Group, an AOL Time Warner Company) puts it: Are You In?

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Ozzy: That’s the Way It Wasn’t

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You remember Winston Smith, don’t you? Sure, he’s the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984, but do you remember what he did for a living? He worked in the so-called “Ministry of Truth,” changing history by rewriting newspapers and books and any other media that needed updating to reflect the prevailing mindset of Oceana’s totalitarian regime.

Not unlike Ozzy and Elvis.

By now you’ve probably heard about the “reissue” of some of Ozzy Osbourne’s back catalog earlier this year. Problem is, they are not reissues at all. These new versions of the old albums have had the original Bob Daisley bass and Lee Kerslake drum tracks removed; the remastered songs now feature members of Ozzy’s current touring band. Apparently this was done because of ongoing legal disputes over royalties among these former bandmates.

Regardless of motive, this transgression of history is wrong, for reasons that shouldn’t need explaining.

As is what was done to the documentary, Elvis: That’s the Way It Is when it was re-edited and released on DVD about a year ago. While the Ozzy debacle is annoying and typical of the corporate entertainment industry, the new Elvis movie is even more disappointing because its ruination was carried out in the name of the fan. Yeah, you and me and every other music geek were catered to when they unearthed the extra thirty minutes of footage and remastered the sound to create this concert film. Only problem is, the original movie was a heck of a lot more than a concert.

That’s the Way It Is was a strange document of a strange time, something of a foil to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was a true documentary—of the entire process of putting post-Comeback Special Elvis Presley into the Las Vegas show scene, a fascinating idea for 1970, especially considering E’s only other appearance there, in the late-1950s, had bombed. (Remember too, this was long before a stint in the desert on the road to eternal life in Branson, Mo., was the natural washed-up pop star progression we think of now.) Sure, on outward appearances That’s the Way It Is was a concert flick, but there was a lot more to the goofy film and its oddball interviews with unnamed and frequently creepy fans and hangers-on. Most of this fell to the cutting room recycle bin for the digital release in favor of more concert footage, little of which adds much of anything to the film as a film. No, the new footage amounts to more rocks for the fan cum crackhead, while eliminating much of what worked in the original film—the reflections of Elvis in the eyes of all who beheld him. The effect leaves Elvis looking as two-dimensional as his postage stamp.

The most important legacy of my much-played VHS dub of That’s the Way It Is is that even the non-Elvis fanatics I’ve shown it to have come away with a better understanding of why this era of Elvis’ long and tumultuous career was perhaps his best. As the availability of the original version of the film wanes, as old videotapes get eaten by dirty players or thrown away after garage sales, this very real historical document will disappear. Sure, we’ll have many more copies of a fancy new DVD to replace it, but without the historical context of the original edit there will be little to learn from it.

Reissues, remastering, lost footage, unreleased tracks—they’re all worthy endeavors, but full-scale revision leads us down a dangerous path indeed. Remember Winston Smith?

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Lyrics Born: Writing to Reach You

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As Stephen Macaulay’s article below (“Beginnings and Leavings,” 7/21) makes clear, we all have a personal relationship with rock and roll lyrics. It doesn’t matter if you’re an elitist music snob, Nicolas Cage, or the mayor of Santiago, Chile – words and music have the power to make you think and feel.

It’s no different around the Glorious Noise office compound, as Stephen’s article attests to. We’ve compiled just a few of the rock and roll phrases that make our world go around in a new feature article. Glorious Noise encourages you to read it, and then submit your own contribution to the words that made rock great.

Continue reading Lyrics Born: Writing to Reach You →

Articles

BEARD-SCRATCHERS, KEEP OUT!

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BEARD-SCRATCHERS, KEEP OUT!

Hot times with Mum in the city

Empty Bottle, Chicago, 7/18

Johnny Loftus

By the time Mum took the stage at Chicago’s Empty Bottle this past Thursday, the backs of the necks of 300 hipsters were dirty and gritty. And at the Bottle, the only air conditioning you can find is the ice-cold PBR in your hand.

Mum is electronicists Gunnar Orn Tynes and Orvar Poreyjarson Smarason with twin sisters Kristin Anna and Gyda Valtysdottir, whose frail vocal melodies lend the music a diaphanous quality. But no one in Mum is just the singer, or only the keyboardist. Melodica, cello, bass, electric guitar, and a stack of assorted Casios are passed around on stage so much that the mechanics of watching a band live break down, and the viewer is left with only the sound. It’s not possible to simply watch one person perform; chances are, by the next or even the middle of the song, he or she will be on the opposite end of the stage tapping notes into a completely different instrument. The Icelandic quartet has been making gentle waves of the sort previously washed ashore by Sigur Ros. While the two groups share a homeland, Mum’s dynamic isn’t as deliberate as SR; Mum songs behave like pieces of a lyric poem, revealed piece by piece as the night goes on. And you know you like the story, even if you don’t understand some of the words.

Maybe it was the heat. But by the middle of Mum’s set, a videotape loop had formed in my head of something I’ve never seen. As a melodica traced out a simple melody over a slightly unsettling bottom end of bass and electronic rumbles, the reception flickered and popped, eventually forming an image beneath the curtain of static and color bars. Through the electronic haze (and the humidity and stink of sweaty hipster in the club), the images described in “Green Grass of Tunnel” (from the new Finally We Are No One) began to transmit. A swampy tunnel, dripping water, swimming through darkness with your eyes closed. “The song takes place in this valley with a swimming pool and they are sending music to everyone in the world through the tunnel,” Kristin Valtysdottir has said of the song’s theme. And that’s not too far off from the images that formed in the steamy air around my head Thursday night. It’s evocations like this that define Mum’s music, beyond clichés like their being from Iceland, their similarities to other “European”-style electronica, or Kristin and Gyda’s appearance as cover stars for Belle & Sebastian’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant.

But the beard-scratchers were definitely in attendance for Mum, evocative atmospherics or not. You know the beard-scratchers. It’s a sub-category of music fan that bleeds into all genres, but seems to gather at electronic music shows featuring skinny, articulated men on stage, keeled over sampling units and PowerBooks. And as the man on stage continues to build his bed of white noise, stopping occasionally to scream nonsense into a microphone, or bring someone from Norway or Germany onstage to blow incomprehensible noise into a series of horns, the beard-scratchers will nod their heads and chat to their friends about their latest “project.” While the beard-scratchers have certainly extended the careers of many the experimental music artist out there, their counterfeit appreciation of music – which is essentially grandstanding to determine who’s the hippest, most “down” cat in the room – can tarnish the work of an electronic-based band that’s actually worth the money. Luckily, it was too hot for beards Thursday night.

Mum’s subdued beats and lilting vocals are an acquired taste. But their mixture of traditional instrumentation with ultra-modern automation and sampling is certainly worth hearing, if only for the transitory moment when it suggests something otherworldly in your head.

JTL

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Beginnings & Leavings

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One of the things that we’ve talked about here at GloNo is coming up with a list of lines from songs that each of us likes for whatever reason. Which got me to think about songs that I’ve long appreciated, songs that are not necessarily widely known, or if known, not listened to in the same context as my listening involves.

While there are some songs that resonate as a whole with us, there are others that have a telling phrase that lingers even after we’re not sure of the other lyrics. It echoes in our memories, long after the cause of that memory is passed.

I guess that the lines that follow were selected based on my experience growing up, when I was pretty much trying to figure out relationships. I suspect that there is a certain male orientation to this, which I point out because I’m not sure whether there is a cross-gender feeling of not exactly inadequacy, but more of mystery: A feeling that perhaps young women were more likely to have it figured out. Or maybe not. Maybe we were all in the same fog-shrouded maze, trying to find the beginning and completely mystified as to the ending.

I should also note that the selections here are evidently not socio-political in bent, that they are based on relationships, potential, unrealized and fulfilled. This is not about sloganeering, of manning the barricades, of sticking it to the Man. There is propaganda. And there is poetry. I’ll leave the White Panther approach for another time.

One of the musicians whose work I most admire is Ricki Lee Jones. Her repertoire contains a wide selection of lines to choose from. It is fairly clear by examining her lyrics that she is self-consciously writing in the sense that if you look back into your English lit. books of the 19th and centuries earlier, you’ll find that poets wrote pieces that included the word “Song” in their title (e.g., just think of William Blake). Her “It Must Be Love” from The Magazine is a song that has probably had far more airplay than any of the other pieces she’s done with the exception of one (and you all know it). The plaintive line that strikes me:

I have seen you walking in the rain

I wanted to know why you were crying

I want to fix what’s wrong

There are many songs about walking in the rain. There’s even the famous “Singin’ in the Rain.” These songs tend to be upbeat (e.g., “Walkin’ in the rain with the one I love/feel so fine”). But here there’s a more appropriate reason. When you walk in the rain and cry, your tears are obscured by the raindrops. Yet the narrator of the song knows that it isn’t just water streaming down someone’s face: There’s pain.

In the same sort of context, there are lyrics from one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, William “Smokey” Robinson. He could turn a better phrase than Michael Schumacher can turn a corner. In a matter of just a few minutes, Smokey and the Miracles were able to tell a story, a story that was often of heartbreak, which is something that everyone growing up could certainly relate to. It is exceedingly difficult to just select one of two lines. There are far too many. One of the things that Smokey examined was the whole relationship between image and reality, between the strong front and what is behind it. If Shakespeare had written pop songs, he’d probably have written the likes of “The Tracks of My Tears”:

So take a good look at my face

You see my smile looks out of place

Look closer, it’s easy to trace

The tracks of my tears

. . .

My smile is my makeup

I wear since my breakup with you.

There’s the issue of betrayal of “The Love I Saw In You Was Just a Mirage”:

There you were, beautiful

The promise of love was written on your face

You led me on, with untrue kisses

But you held me captive, in your false embrace.

And of the one who will undoubtedly find his love unrequited, despite its depth and truth, in “(Come ‘Round Here) I’m the One You Need”:

I may not be the one you want

But I know I’m the one you need

. . .

Girl, can’t you see while you’re longing for his touch

That I’m the one who loves you so much

As he put it in “More Love”:

This is no fiction, this is no act,

It’s real, it’s a fact.

While Elvis Costello is known for a variety of things, songs of heartache/break are a fundamental of his lyrics. While “Allison” is certainly full of this, a more interesting treatment is found in “The Only Flame In Town” (which, as we make the transition from Smokey, it is worth noting, features “blue-eyed soul” singer Daryl Hall on harmony):

She’s not the only flame in town

She’s got to stop thinking that I’m carrying this

Torch around.

Note that he’s actually carrying the torch, despite the fact that he’s trying to convince her that he’s not—which is really the last thing he wants to have happen. Once again, it is all about a brave face.

Finally, a verse from a musician who is the victim of the MTV-driven success of his “She Blinded Me With Science,” Thomas Dolby. To be sure, on its own, that is nothing more than a novelty record. But it is something that fits within the context of The Golden Age of Wireless, an album that is something of an audio Thomas Pynchon novel. But with “Science” being where most people started and stopped, Dolby has been pretty much dismissed to the level of the likes of The Thompson Twins. Which is unfortunate. Listen to his cover of Dan Hicks’s “I Scare Myself” from The Flat Earth and realize that Dolby puts his audio science to good work.

The lyric in question comes from Astronauts & Heretics, from the N’awlins spiced “I Love You Goodbye”:

Some words are sad to sing

Some leave me tongue-tied

(But the hardest thing to tell you)

But the hardest words I know

Are I love you goodbye

I love you goodbye

Note, this isn’t an ending, but a departing, a leaving. Once the tears are past, once the love has been gained, leaving isn’t such sweet sorrow. As Smokey asked back in 1961 in “What’s So Good About Goodbye”:

How can goodbye be good

To a lover who really cares?

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Stand and Be Honest

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I picked up an interesting though ultimately disappointing bargain book the other day: Stand and Be Counted, by—get this—David Crosby. Yes, hard to believe the man whose first solo album was called If I Could Only Remember My Name actually managed to find the brain cells to write a nonfiction book, but Stand and Be Counted was published in 2000. (How I missed it then can probably be explained by a simple look at the price tag on my copy, down to $5.99 from original MSRP of $25—curiosity got the better of me at the price of a super-size Big Mac meal.) The book was written with Crosby’s friend David Bender, author of The Confession of O.J. Simpson, A Work of Fiction, and subtitled, “Making Music, Making History. The dramatic story of the artists and events that changed America.” The idea was to write a history of musician activism. As are most recent Crosby endeavors—from his artificial insemination escapades to the most recent CSNY album—it’s an idea that might sound good when you’ve had a little doobage, but its execution leaves something to be desired.

David Crosby: Stand and Be CountedThe main problem with Stand and Be Counted is, surprisingly, not Crosby’s writing. His voice comes across loud and clear, like a literary “Almost Cut My Hair”; while there are some really awful passages (“Taking a stand shows a depth of character and a generosity of spirit. It shows the quality in human beings that makes me proud to be one.”), hearing Crosby tell the story is one of the book’s pleasures. If he could tell a more complete story, one that included a deeper exploration of the politics of activism or looked at musician activism before the rise of rock music, it might be a great book. A glance at the contents betrays instead, we’re just getting Crosby’s personal story, his autobiography of do-good-ism, from protesting during the Civil Rights movement through his participation in benefit concerts in the 80s and 90s. Fun reading, a lot of it is—the tales of rich and famous classic rockers as concerned citizens are just the ticket to fuel the fame machine—but at the end, I’m left with an overriding, “So fucking what?”

Like most of the baby boom generation, Crosby once had ideals and goals that would have changed the power structure in America. As we know, they largely failed or at best fell short. But unlike most boomers, Crosby hasn’t gone on to admit defeat, get a suit-and-tie job, buy an SUV and a house in the suburbs, and join the Republican Party. He still hangs on to the myth, figuring if he keeps telling the story about how the hippies changed the world, eventually someone will believe him. This book is the most egregious example of this revisionist history that tends to accompany any discussion of “The Sixties” by those boomers like Crosby who won’t recognize the great sell-out of America that’s led us to the current State of the Union.

As wealth and power in the United States continue to concentrate in fewer hands, while our elected representatives lie and cheat, when corporations can run roughshod over everyone and everything, and we all sit and sweat in this even-hotter-than-last-year summer (yeah, it’s just those tree huggers who believe in global warming), I have a hard time giving Crosby the peace sign for all the “activism” he’s been involved with. Activism has a component lost on Crosby and most of his musician friends in Stand and Be Counted and that’s actually achieving political or social ends.

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THE SAME OLD CRACKS

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THE SAME OLD CRACKS

Rock’s latest youth movement finds a friend in Emo

Johnny Loftus

Where do all the Britney fans go when the lip gloss wears off? What happens to young consumers – already used to buying CDs and downloading MP3s from the days of their pre-teen popstar love affairs – when they get old enough to realize Pop isn’t cool, but aren’t knowledgeable enough to do anything about it other than changing the channel to M2?

Superchunk is old enough to appreciate the irony of their support slot on the current Get Up Kids club tour. It has to be a little weird, considering Superchunk released its first 7″ when most of GUK were still in short pants. But how do they take it when most of the audience still is? Last Friday evening, Superchunk bassist Laura Ballance looked out across a house packed with peach fuzz and training bras. “No fancy entrances,” she said with a weary, sarcastic sigh. “We’re going to pick up our instruments and play a few songs for you now.” As Superchunk commenced with the rock, there was a palpable sense of confusion from the throng of teenagers, each one dressed in meticulously arranged Abercrombie wear with various nouveau punk rock accoutrements. “Who is this group of old people on stage?” they seemed to be asking. “Why does the rhythm guitar player look like my old T-ball coach?” Despite the solid rock foundation of Superchunk’s anthemic riffs, they received only a smattering of applause after each song. Polite patronizing, as anticipation continued building for headliners The Get Up Kids – Midwestern phenomenon, certified dreamboats, and Vagrant Records’ #1 act with a bullet. “Yes, I’m making fun of you and your cell phone,” guitarist Jim Wilbur said to a pretty young thing in the front row. “How can you even hear over the racket we’re making?” Ballance chimed in that she was probably calling her mother, “just to check in.”

Parents pounding MGDs in the back bar as their teenagers hop around to the music is nothing new for an all ages show. But over the last year, the music industry has realized that its Pop audience is growing up, and searching around for something other than “Active Rock” histrionics to identify with. Enter Emo. The success of Blink-182 proved that “Alternative Rock” isn’t made exclusively by ugly people. Mark, Tom, and Travis’ heartthrob status paved the way for a new crop of sensitive boy bands that rock – Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, and now The Get Up Kids. It’s Meat Loaf in G, Freddie Prinze, Jr with a Les Paul, and Morrissey without the celibacy. It’s a corporatized amalgam of indie rock’s more sensitive side, and it’s the perfect product for the post-Britney demographic.

At the show this past Friday, I asked the girl next to me (who was 6 when Superchunk’s seminal “Slack Motherfucker” was released in 1990) what she likes about The Get Up Kids. “I think Matt [Pryor, lead vocalist] is cute,” Susan said. Musically, she’d heard some GUK tracks on a friend’s Vagrant Records sampler. Then I asked her what she thought of Superchunk’s set, which had just ended with a searing version of Sebadoh’s “Brand New Love.” Susan thought for a second, then explained how she’d missed most of their set waiting in line to buy bottled water. For Susan and so many other kids at the show, history doesn’t matter. Superchunk’s permanent seat in the indie rock Hall of Heroes – not to mention their significant influence on the music of groups like The Get Up Kids – isn’t important, because indie rock doesn’t matter much anymore. Or at least it matters in a different way. During its early 90s heyday, the music was unified by its labels, and a few geographic enclaves like Olympia, WA. This international pop underground survived the corporate workover in the wake of Nirvana, but eventually diversified on its own terms. New labels, new bands, and new scenes sprang up. Something called Math Rock was discovered under a rock. And the seeds for another Alternative Nation were sown.

Nowadays, the industry calls Weezer, The Strokes, and The White Stripes “Retro Alternative,” and it’s the hot format of the moment. The prettyboy rock bands like Get Up Kids or Sensefield get thrown into the mix as Adult Album Alternative or wherever their label positions them, via video, tour, and appearance on M2. It’s a more calculated approach to Alternative than the feeding frenzy that followed Nirvana. But it’s also much more important financially, as the industry is trying desperately to keep the spending power of 12-25 year-olds firmly in its corner. With this new gaggle of good-looking, guitar-toting rockers, they seem to have hit on a formula that will last at least until the majority of Friday night’s teenage riot hits freshman year of college, discovers Mary Jane, and invests in a Jon Belushi ‘College’ poster, a giant blow-up of Jim Morrison, and the entire Phish back-catalog.

JTL

Rock and roll can change your life.