To: The Hot Topic TeamFrom: El BichoRE: Selling Out“Sell-out,” a sleight uttered by those who think their definition of “cool” should be of any consequence to a musician. Aside from the normal delusions of self-importance created by the ego, I am not sure what makes a person think he has been crowned arbiter of a musician’s status. Probably some romantic ideal of the bohemian artist, read about in worn paperbacks and glossy magazines, which ceases to exist after said musician hits the big time, presuming that condition ever occurred in the first place. Music creates such a deep bond that a presumptive sense of entitlement infects people. It’s rather selfish and obnoxious for fans to place musicians into this bizarre form of bondage. You would think the pleasure of a song would be enough. Usually when a stranger gives you a gift, it is met with gratitude not a demand for more, especially when nothing is given in return. Oh, sure, there’s fanatical devotion, but if that could be spent, Gene Simmons wouldn’t have sold KISS Kaskets. The term “sell-out” is bandied about when a musician alters his work, usually considered to be an appeal to a larger audience, or when Madison Ave. is using a generation’s teenage soundtrack to pitch products. Both of which are done to make money obviously.No one wants their favorite band to be appreciated by the huddled masses. Friends are perfectly fine as is a small group who know their stuff, but when people you don’t like enjoy your music, it turns you uncool by association, and that ain’t cool. It’s bad enough once the mainstream music magazines take notice, but when Us Weekly writes a feature, the publicity appears to reach whorish levels. The worst is when your mother likes your music. You have to immediately drop that band from your collection. Sure, at first, it will seem like a great set-up. Your friends will come around, hang out and drink, mom will joke around, cook, and everyone thinks she’s the coolest. That’s great until a few weeks go by and you come home to find Paul and mom in bed together smoking a joint. You spend the remainder of the year startled by ringing phones in fear that the voice on the other end will say, “Hello, I’m Janelle from The Jerry Springer Show.” There’s no song yet, blues or country, to help you get over that calamity.Others want to place a musician in stasis for perpetuity, capturing them at the precise moment in time of the recording, but the truly talented musicians want to expand and explore. I feel embarrassed for all the people who booed Bob Dylan and called him “Judas” because he wanted to play electric. After all that great folk music he created, probably more than anyone in that same time period, it wasn’t enough. I feel indebted to him just for “Masters of War,” but these geniuses didn’t care. Like a high school sweetheart who doesn’t want his girl going off to college and leaving him behind, they said don’t be who you want to be. Be what we want you to be. We know better even though we couldn’t create the music you did. All he wanted was to try something new, something that excited him, to explore other modes of music. Apparently folk music fans had no use for “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” or “Tangled Up in Blue.” Their loss is our gain.I do understand the shock and pain of hearing your favorite band spilling out of the TV in an effort to pimp merchandise. The first time I heard Jane’s Addiction, my band, from right here in Los Angeles, selling Coors Light with “The Mountain Song” I must admit I did feel a wave of nausea. These guys had trouble getting the video aired back in 1988-89, although they eventually did with black bars covering miscellaneous naughty bits, but were now considered safe enough for Middle America. I did some research and found out that after Strays and its supporting tour, which had a number of cancelled dates, the band found itself in a great deal of debt, so they sold the song to cover their losses. Completely understandable from a business perspective, so any complaints from detractors ring hollow. Why they couldn’t have picked a better beer than that watery swill known as Coors Light is best left for another time.Back to the original question, “Did Pete Townsend sell out when he used his music to sell automobiles?”My answer would hinge on whether or not he retains the rights to The Who’s music. The Beatles sold Nike sneakers, but that wasn’t their fault because Michael Jackson owned the rights at the time. If he does, the answer is obviously yes, but since I don’t pay his bills I really don’t care. I’ll just say, “Thanks,” for “My Generation,” and consider everything else a bonus.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Mat Brewster
It's hard to argue with a guy like Tom Waits. The guy walks his talk. I got nothing but respect for that. Still, I can't really knock other folks for making the decision to make a few extra bucks on the side.
With people like the Who I have a hard time caring that much since songs like "Baba OReilley" have been played by radio stations for so long and at such repetition that the song has lost most of its shine long before it hit a commercial.
2 - DJRadiohead
I've been all over the map in terms of how I feel about this sell-out question. Like El B, I admit I have occasionally groaned when I heard a song I like in a commercial. On the other hand, I don't have to marry that song to those commercial images. I have a choice in the matter.
I also think ElB said what I had intended to say when I was trying to explain the triangle of artist-song-fan.
3 - Mat Brewster
Yeah, I definitely have felt that sting, and have made more than my share of derrogatory comments towards a given artist for selling out, but hey, nobody has ever offered me a dime for anything artistic I've created, so I don't have much right to knock others for doing it.
4 - Temple Stark
Selling out is subjective.
If a ban dlike OK GO, starts out marketing their music and puttin git to commercials as often as possible, they aren't selling out. That is, unless there can be considered some kind of referse sell-out where they go Gothemo (one word, roll with it). And I don't think that can be considered.
You definitely have sold out when, well, take Nirvana for example. Kurt Cobain and the grooup was famous for their "Corporations Still suck" t-shirts and similar sentiments. Hell, Kurt didn't like Pearl Jam's music (still can't quite figure that one out) They walked a line of having cred while still sounding fairly commercial (insert your own interpretation here).
Cobain, essentially killed himself because he saw the future, with a significant factor being intense stomach pain. He didn't think he had the power to keep the essence of why the music was important to him. Dave Grohl obviously had more of a commercial "sell-out" bent (and I'm not trying to knock the Foo's) in that he wanted to be in a different space musically.
Almost lost my train of thought there. When I heard Jewel's "Intuition" for the women's razor and Liz Phair's "Extraordinary" for the WNBA, I paused, but didn't curl up and die too badly. (I did send a CD single to a friend who wrote a book called "Intuition." Both women had already taken steps with their music to become more mainstream. Extraordinary is over-the-top mush and has no internal integretity anyway - except as a feel good tour de force.
I want "Fuck and Run" over a Nike commercial, but, yeh, that's just me.
But if I heard Ani DiFranco anything on any commercial that wasn't a PSA for something, I would be stopped in my tracks and consider it a dark, sad day.
Fugazi? The Same. There are others.
Mat's comment makes no sense, respectfully. You're a music fan with feelings for music. If something strikes you as wrong, well it's your musical milieux. That doesn't mean all opnions are created equal, but ...
Simply put, the idea of whether something is a sell-out is where the music began.
5 - Mat Brewster
Can you point out which comment makes no sense, and I'll try to make it clearer. My opinion on the whole concept are mixed and ever changing, so I'm sure I may not always be particularly precise.
6 - Mark Saleski
Cobain, essentially killed himself because he saw the future, with a significant factor being intense stomach pain.
...and then there was that pesky heroin addiction.
7 - Pico
I can't go on, this is too depressing. Singh will be over in the morning with the books, you can see for yourself. Maybe we should call back the Budweiser guys and see if they still want "Reelin" for the malt liquor commercial. You didn't tell them what I told you to tell them, right? Tell me you didn't.
--Walter Becker, in a memo to his agent
8 - Temple Stark
Mat - #3. Now riff please ...
Heroin doesn't really cause suicide or even suicidal tendencies - it is suicide, but millions of people have that shared monkey rider. Also, you take drugs, more often than not because of something I your life that's eating at you.
9 - Mat Brewster
Re: Comment Three
The gist of my part of the post was that it's ok for a musician to sell his work for a commercial. In the comment I was trying to express that I have, in fact, been angered by a musician doing just that. I understand folks who get pissed off when they hear their favorite band on a Coke commercial.
However, having never been offered millions of dollars by Coca-Cola to sell my music, I can't really say what I would do.
Point being it is easy to sit on the sidelines and judge, but a different story when you are staring at the wads of cash being offered to these guys.
Make more sense?
---
While heroin certainly wasn't the cause of the suicide, I suspect it didn't really help matters much.
10 - Vern Halen
I've always thought the songs you write are like your children - some of them make you proud, some are brilliant, some are full of mischief, some are quiet but deep, some are successful (as in rich & famous). On the other hand, some end up working for a company you don't like, but if you've brought them up right, they'll do you proud anyway on some level.
I'm biased here - I don't watch a lot of TV anyway, so it mostly doesn't bother me.
11 - Temple Stark
Are comments held in pending now too, because I tried to post my #8 a few time and it never showd. Now I see it's there. And, yes, Mat, that makes more sense. Thank you.
12 - Ashley
How do I e-mail an author of one of the blogs?
13 - El Bicho
Ashley, assuming you are talking about the authors of this piece. Go ahead and post a comment with your email and who you'd like to speak to. The comment will be erased because they don't like personal info on the site, but the comment will still have made it to Mat you can forward it.
14 - Christopher Rose
Sorry, but that's bad advice - and clunky too. All anyone has to do is click one of the links above to the author's own blog. Ashley's comment has indeed been deleted...
15 - Christopher Rose
Oh, and Temple's comments are currently being tagged as spam by the new anti-spam software on the site, which means I have to release them manually. It will learn that he's not a spammer in a day or two, possibly faster if he makes a lot more comments. It's happened to quite a few people, including me.
16 - Mary K. Williams
Well, gee, I wanted to see who Ashley wanted to talk to. Probably wasn't me : (
(not really upset : )
17 - Janelle aka Ashley
Mary, I googled my name last night and came across this online journal community... and I also ran into El Bicho using my full name in his entry on this page. I wanted him to remove my last name... which he did... but I found it a little unnerving having a stranger use my full name in his journal. I have been communicating with El Bicho and everything is A-O-K now. Just a little weird running across your name on the internet. I have, however, worked for the Jerry Springer Show and was just curious how El Bicho got my name.
18 - Mary K. Williams
Janelle, glad everything is OK now, and this little online community is doing some very big things, come back and visit again!
19 - Christopher Rose
Artists DON'T sell their music to adverts, music publishing companies do. Major artists MIGHT get consulted as a courtesy, to keep them sweet, but technically it's entirely out of their hands...
20 - Guiness Crowley
Just wanted to chime in on one point. I only get on my soap box when I hear a song I grew up with being used to sell products.
I love my music. I hate advertising. I feel raped by it every day. Advertising is a chattering whisper of insanity that seems intent on never letting me forget that I am nothing more than cattle. The fact that advertising is a lie and that it is an infuriating waste of money is only overshadowed by the rage I feel when it tries to obtain my favor by wrapping itself in the trappings of my most cherished memories. I don't care if a band sets out to write a new song for a commercial, but don't whore out a song that has served a different cause for years just to give a corporation a back door into my affections. Don't give them the songs that we celebrated our youth with to market garbage to me in my middle age.
These songs have a special backdrop in my mind. They were always the soundtrack for the best times of my life. The times when I felt free and strong and had the deepest faith in my souls potential to escape this psychological labor camp we call life.
There are many good things here in this life, but there are also a great many things that give me reason to suspect that this might actually be hell. When I hear a Janes Addiction song behind a beer commercial or a Violent Femmes song behind a burger king commercial I am not transported back to the nights with my friends that I never wanted to end... rather I am hurled into every moment where I was watching the clock, waiting for the horrible experience to be over.
I find myself back in college, at an interview in a nearby Uni-Mart, trying to keep a straight face as the store manager asks me where I see myself within the Uni_Mart family in 5 years. I was in college. I needed some pocket money. That was the extent of it. Before the commercial that whored out my music my answer to that store manger would have been "If I'm still here in 5 years I'm burning this store down with me in it". After the commercial that whored out my music the answer would be "Well sir, I hope to one day follow in your fine footsteps and hopefully earn the responsibility of running my own Uni-Mart".
Do you see? Can you feel it? It is the death of something once sacred. It is the corrosion of the unshakable belief that we are more and we will never give in.
Those songs and those sentiments are forever tainted after they promote a product. Especially when that product is rarely as good as it claims to be and usually turns out to not only harm us the consumer but probablly harmed many other people on it's way to the market.
When I'm 3 drinks in and feeling a bit beaten down by the day and "Mountain Song" plays on the juke box I don't feel that purging chill down my spine as the music softens my bodies hold on my soul and lifts it out to take a quick nourishing dip in the ether. I don't feel that because it doesn't happen, not anymore. What does happen is I get to the point right when the chill down my back would release me but then I lose focus on the promis of heaven and start thinking about Coors Light, because that's what this song is about now.
So instead of swimming in the rejouvenating spirit of my childhood I find myself fuming about yet another gateway back to my youth that has been blocked by a corporate sponsored toll gate. That's why I think it's a sell out. The only way it would be forgiven would be if all the money made on the transaction was donated to something of value like cancer or aids research. If I knew that the band did it for that reason then I could look the other way and pay the toll.