Friday, April 25, 2008

"In every city there are dozens of these clubs where men can go..."

The Faint was on The Office!! Well, their music was anyway.

I totally squealed when I heard Worked Up (So Sexual) in the background of a scene where Michael (Steve Carrell) is hitting on a woman. And I loved coked out Ryan (BJ Novak).

Refocusing to what I wanted to say, it's constantly fascinating to me when things permeate the mainstream without having reached a saturation point. There's been a higher occurrence lately of more... independent, I'd say, bands in the forefront of the media but it appears to have risen out of nowhere. Months ago I'd mentioned Shiny Toy Guns in a commercial, Mates of State, etc. Lately, I've been noticing Ben Lee, Silversun Pickups, and so on and so forth, have been populating commercials and television show episodes more than say, your Kelly Clarksons or Rihannas. I don't know what to make of it yet, because I'm not a marketing person and don't know the trends as far as exposing people to what they haven't heard and how these things correlate to big business. Nevertheless, it's just fun to recognize snippets of things you enjoy.

Here's a tiny clip of the Faint's Worked Up (So Sexual)

1 comment:

Bryn Thousand said...

Here are my opinions as to why indie acts are getting commercial slots:

1. They are cheaper to obtain. Indie record labels are being swallowed up by large labels such as Sony, Interscope blah blah. So an NBC or ABC or McDonalds or Toyota doesn't have to work so hard to get the contacts, and can save a few bucks. On the otherhand it makes it profitable for the big labels to have bought up the smaller ones by doing these Old Navy commercials and the what not.

2. Younger influences at big networks and ad agencies. Just look at the celebrity playlists on itunes to get an idea of how diverse these "power players" tastes are.

3. Top 40 is becoming a facade more and more. In the late 1990s a record release from a huge pop act could get 1 million done in a week. Now they are lucky if they sell 200k. So it's really not that big of a sell unless it's like Justin Timberlake cause he's skeezy omletteville sexy.