According to this precious Civic commercial, it’s a small-scale Ra Ra Riot gig.
I’m all for including fledgling bands in commercials that get major airtime in NFL game breaks (as this one did). But it’s a bit tone deaf to plug this middling indie band as some sort of major deal everyone should already know about. It’s embarrassing, even for the band. There are three possible reactions to seeing a Ra Ra Riot show hailed as a once-in-a-decade event:
- You’re a fan of the band and you’re happy to see them get some exposure. But you can probably think of 30 other average indie bands better than Ra Ra Riot.
- You’ve heard of Ra Ra Riot. Maybe you like one of their songs. But, at best, you think the band is a cultural blip. At worst they’re a symptom of the bland, know-nothing aesthetic currently plaguing “indie rock” music. If the Civic is the car version of this crap, I don’t want it.
- You’ve never heard of Ra Ra Riot. Best case scenario, you conclude this is a fictional band, and given the other cues in the commercial, you think you might consider buying this car for your college-aged kid. Worst case scenario? You’re annoyed the “show of the decade” is some band nobody’s ever heard of. You decide if the car is for some subset of music cognoscenti, it’s certainly not for you or your kid.
This commercial tells people who have heard of Ra Ra Riot that Honda doesn’t know anything about music, and by extension their customers. For people who haven’t heard of Ra Ra Riot, they hyperbole is also a potential turn-off. And this is all before you consider the actual music. Which, in my opinion, is less than compelling. I don’t like the band, and even I know they’ve got songs better than this one.
The synergistic commercial for both product and band can be done and done well. Apple is an obvious example, and the rule they follow is a good one: let the music speak for both the product and the band. If the song is good, you won’t have to tell the audience what to think about it.
Car companies have done this well, too. I can even think of a precious indie example done right. Here’s this gem from Ford and Band of Horses.
I noticed that the reverbnation events widget “no upcoming events” solution isn’t all that nice to display on a band website, especially since we do have an upcoming event.
In order to stop reverbnation from lying about 3Tons schedule I had to login to reverbnation; at which point I was met with a strange menu that advanced from Bank to Bill History to…at this point I can’t recall because I thought it disturbing to have had to attempt to process why the first two menu choices were bank and billing history.
But I did find a menu choice called “shows” and it was pretty simple to add a new one.
We’re playing a benefit for a community center. They run a recording studio where inner city kids can learn the trade. The kids will get an opportunity to mix a recording of the gig. I’m figuring out stuff to do in the possibility that it’s actually a decent recording in which case it would be cool to do a kickstarter thing to release it and give all the proceeds to Benton House.
I like being old some times.
Wow, so first REM breaks up and now this news item, “Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore Announce Split.”
Now, obviously the reasons for their split-up is their business and their business alone. To the rest of us, it’s about them as an abstraction – what they represent to us through their music and their public personae – and that is all I can speak to in writing this.
The first thing is that the future of Sonic Youth doesn’t sound too bright. If they call it quits after their scheduled tour dates in Brazil or perhaps after one last farewell tour, I wouldn’t be surprised. Much like REM in a previous post, I also kind of stopped paying attention to SY. The last album that really blew me away was Daydream Nation. At the time that was a perfect indie rock companion to Metallica’s …And Justice for All - a long spiraling album that was equal parts unfocused and brilliant. But starting with Goo, I began to lose interest. Goo sounded like a band that was trying to be commercial but trying to be arty at the same time resulting in an album that was kind of goofy and at times fun but ultimately forgettable. From then on the albums just seemed to be a band retreading similar ideas. Not that there weren’t good albums but they just never had the kind of impact that the triumvirate of Bad Moon Rising, Evol, and Sister had on me. Still it was good to see them still out there keeping their music going and never quite becoming irrelevant even in their old age.
The thing is that for those of us who followed them back in the 80′s and 90′s, especially with REM’s recent demise, it’s just a nother reminder of the dying of an era of music. It’s like watching old blues dudes die off and oh yeah, dudes, we’re getting old!
But on another level, the thing about Kim and Thurston breaking up also has another side in that they were kind of the Mom and Dad of the US Indie rock scene. Perhaps because they heralded in Nirvana and indie rock as a commercial product with the tour documentary 1991 – The Year That Punk Broke, they kind of took that elder statesman position in my mind. So them breaking up has this kind of weird “Wow, together for all those years and they break up?” kind of feel that, not knowing them, is admittedly kind of odd. But you look at two well respected, good looking, commercially and artistically successful people and they can’t make it as a couple? That’s kind of disheartening. Not that I’m epically crushed by this but just a small part of me kind of sighed a little “awww” when I heard it for that reason.
So, good luck Thurston and Kim,
All I can say is don’t be dicks to each other in divorce court and thanks for some great music.
The Houston Press Music Awards are happening again this year. Unfortunately, I stopped caring once the free food and drinks ended at the Rice Hotel. Still, I vote every year and here is who I nominated this year.
4. Best LP/CD/EP – Rusted Shut
5. Best Mixtape – Rusted Shut
6. Best Song – Rusted Shut
7. Local Musician of the Year – Rusted Shut
8. Best New Act – Rusted Shut
9. Best Male Vocals – Rusted Shut
10. Best Female Vocals – Rusted Shut
11. Best Songwriter – Rusted Shut
12. Best Rock – Rusted Shut
13. Best Indie/Alternative – Rusted Shut
14. Best Punk/Garage – Rusted Shut
15. Best Metal – Rusted Shut
16. Best Experimental/Noise – Rusted Shut
17. Best Electronic Act – Rusted Shut
18. Best Solo Rapper – Rusted Shut
19. Best Rap Group – Rusted Shut
20. Best Rap DJ – Rusted Shut
21. Best Club DJ/DJ Night – Rusted Shut
22. Best Pop Artist – Rusted Shut
23. Best Latin – Rusted Shut
24. Best Reggae/Ska/Dub – Rusted Shut
25. Best Jazz – Rusted Shut
26. Best Blues – Rusted Shut
27. Best Soul/Funk/R&B – Rusted Shut
28. Best Zydeco – Rusted Shut
29. Best Country – Rusted Shut
30. Best Folk – Rusted Shut
31. Best Americana – Rusted Shut
32. Best Cover/Tribute Act – Rusted Shut
33. Best Guitarist – Rusted Shut
34. Best Bassist – Rusted Shut
35. Best Drummer – Rusted Shut
36. Best Keyboards – Rusted Shut
37. Best Miscellaneous Instrument – Rusted Shut
38. Best Producer – Rusted Shut
39. Best Radio Personality – Rusted Shut
40. Best Radio Station – Rusted Shut
41. Best Radio Program – Rusted Shut
42. Best Record Store – Rusted Shut
43. Best Local Label – Rusted Shut
44. Best Live Music Venue – Rusted Shut
45. Best Instrument/Equipment Store – Rusted Shut
46. Best Scenester – Rusted Shut
Who am I rooting for on Sunday? No, not a football team, but Fauja Singh, a 100 old dude who is running the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon on Sunday. Here is the story on the CBC (link).
 - Cool Olds of the week – Fauja Singh (image from the CBC)
I mention him becasue his story is in sharp contrast so much out there in the news. See, I went in for my annual checkup at the doctor’s yesterday. To my annoyance, they had stupid-ass CNN blaring in the waiting room just making all this noise and reminding me why I never watch television news. What were the stories being shouted about by the announcers and their guests? An awesome dude who lost his wife and child 20 years ago and took up running? No, long horrible stories about John Wayne Gacey, who appears to be back in the news, and some horrible case about a home invasion where the killer tries to blame the people he murdered. GAH!
Seriously, I don’t get that shit. Not to minimize the tragedy of the victims in those cases but the fact that people follow these cases in the news as a kind of entertainment – that I don’t get. Balls to that! I don’t want to invade on someone’s tragedy nor do I want to hear graphic details of brutal people’s actions. Which is why when I read Fauja Singh’s story, it felt like a relief – there is good stuff and good people out there.
Go, 100 year old dude! The world needs olds like you.
The first Apple product I ever owned was an iPod Touch 4th Generation. It’s also the only Apple product I’ve ever owned. And it is a pretty good one. I don’t use it very much though. The screen is too dinky for browsing the web. Music technology has changed for the better to where it’s not necessary to tote your personal music library if you don’t want to. And when I walk away from a digital device (the ones upon which I can actually be productive), I’m usually also taking a step away from the constant feed of emails, twits and status updates.
I used to keep an iPad2 around the house. My company bought it so I could develop iPad apps. I stopped keeping it at home though because I noticed that, while I would indeed use it for its convenience, I was actually less productive when it was around. I wouldn’t bother attempting to do coding on it; the Google docs stuff didn’t work very well at all; and many of the online programs I like don’t work on the iPad2. The only thing I genuinely miss about keeping it around is the battery life.
So I’m not sentimental at all about Apple. And in fact I’ve always been a critic because of the locked down nature of these products – getting more so everyday. With Apple you pay for form over function – the Prada of technology.
I am however truly saddened by the death of Steve Jobs. And not because he changed the world with the iPhone. Because he didn’t do that. There is no one individual to be given such praise, it’s some engineer group over at Research In Motion (since it truly was the Crackberry that heralded in a new age and not the iPhone). What truly makes me sad is the statistic: Steve Jobs, a great and powerful man on the forefront of human inventiveness, was powerless in the face of pancreatic cancer.
The other day a junior developer I work with sent me an op-ed piece; one of those “technology is taking our jobs” numbers that make the alarm bells ring in my head. This article pointed to the toll booth operators losing their jobs to technology as one example. That sort of “point” is what rings the alarm bells because it seems clearly written to prompt a debate over the worth of the job. Of course “toll booth operator” is not a job worth fighting technology to keep. Especially given the bigger point: Steve Jobs died at the very young age of 56 due to a disease we have no power over. There is still plenty, plenty of work to do. And then, we will look back at these Apple toys and laugh at their uselessness.
Curious that today, as Houston joins in with its own Occupy Wall Street protest, one of the big captains of industry, Steve Jobs typed “/sbin/shutdown” yesterday.
I think we all have a relationship with Apple products. I personally remember my old Apple IIc. That was the first computer I owned and to this day I wish I hadn’t given it away to Brian Carusella. It was a great little machine and I made a few mods here and there (made it smoke once even when I connected a few wires wrong). Bongtooth, used it as a drum machine. We didn’t have a drummer so I sat down and did some primitive sampling using a SAM card and my turntable. As I recall, Live Skull’s Don’t Get Any On You and 10,000 Maniacs’ Blind Man’s Zoo had some pretty good drums that were clean of other instruments and was where the vast majority of my samples came from. The primitive nature of the sampling and poorly cobbled loop software made for some curiously weird rhythms that wouldn’t quite stay in sync and that kind of lent a flavor to what Jim Otterson, John Cramer, and I wrote. It’s funny because from working with the Apple to Kurt Mackey’s histrionic drumming style was quite a leap but to this day I still recall with fondness trying to make this 64K machine work beyond its means.
Our studio by the way is built around Macs. We learned after blowing our first record company advance at a studio that it was better to invest in our own gear and so the band put money together for a PowerMac and some software that Steve eventually expanded on to create his own Studio.
Even though my ex-wife has my old G4, I still kind of miss that computer. I’d souped it up as fast as a 1999 G4 could go but damn if it still didn’t work nicely. I moved up to a G5 after the divorce and while I’m a generation behind on the processor (mine was the last of the PowerPCs) it still does what it does efficiently and nicely and that is that I am running on the bare minimum of RAM because I’m too lazy to buy new sticks. And I think that’s the thing about Macs you do get attached to them. I’ve had PC’s that you can diddle around with and have no fear of setting it afire which is fun in the same way my old AppleIIc was but for some reason there is something disposable and impersonal about the PC. PCs are the beater computer that when they break or become obsolete, you can run down and plunk another $400 at Best Buy to replace but a Mac is something you buy and expect to last for at least a decade. Maybe that’s because when you plunk down that much money for a computer, you are a little more committed.
Anyhow, the point is many of us here are Apple folks. We suffered through the beach ball of doom and the clunkiness of OS9, learned Apple Basic and Fortran on an AppleII, and recorded music on their machines as well. To be fair, many of us also winced as Apple grew from being the underdog to becoming a variant on the overlord it mocked when it ran its 1984 super bowl commercial. Good or bad, Steve Jobs gots the lion’s share of credit for what the company and its products became. Of course, Jobs never acted alone, he was smart enough to surround himself with a solid team of developers but you can’t argue with the fact that without him, there would be no Apple Computer in 2012. If you don’t believe me then you likely don’t recall John Sculley’s reign at Apple. So because his company has had such an effect on the technology that affects our lives, his passing is kind of a big deal and tributes are flowing from everywhere.
Hell, even KPFT was getting in on it. This afternoon, I was listening to a speech on that station while driving. I was completely oblivious as to who was speaking until the end of the speech but the speaker was Jobs and he closed with a very lovely and fitting line, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” I can’t think of a better epitaph.
So, anyhow thanks Steve
Well, it seems the Wall Street Protests are finally getting some traction and there is going to be a march and “occupation” here in Houston (http://occupyhouston.org/). It’s an interesting amorphous grass roots movement that’s inspired by the Arab Spring demonstrations with a worthwhile target.
For some reason the movement does get portrayed as liberal - that may have to do with the youth culture of the right vs the left and how they see themselves and how they are seen in the media – but I think corporate corruption isn’t a liberal agenda. Remember McCain-Feingold? John McCain back in 2000 (before he became a weirdo robot) was very aggressive with campaign finance reform. Look no further than the bail outs and the stimulus. The partisan left bitched about Bush’s bail-outs and the partisan Right bitched about Obama’s stimulus, and the rest of us just wanted some accountability. And the whole thing just comes across as crony capitalism when you read sentences like, “One of Obama’s top economic advisers confided in a 2009 e-mail that the government did a “crappy” job as a venture capitalist, picking which companies should receive financial support.”(1) But regardless of the broad message and the local organizers writing that their “political and social beliefs will remain neutral for this cause” and that “the only thing [they] will promote openly is peaceful demonstrations,” I suspect it will be mostly folks on the left or left leaning who will show up to the Houston protest.
But outside what’s behind the protest and who will be attending, I think one of the more interesting aspects is how broad and leaderless it is. That can be a double edged sword. One the one hand the lack of a cohesive message and specific proposed solutions can just come off as an aimless bitch session. On the other hand, as a message to lawmakers to address the issue, it’s quite open and democratic in its approach.
Another double edged sword is the lack of an proper and cohesive organization that can make for a clouded and muddled message. A reporter can go to one person and get a statement then go to another and get something else. But that also has an advantage in that it addresses the largest problem I saw in the local peace movement – egotistical self-righteous assholes.
I will tell you right now, I’m no fan of some of the local big wigs in the political left who seem to be more about self-aggrandizement than what is best for their cause so it’s nice to see them passed over simply becasue of the manner in which this was organized. No doubt those guys will try to get their paws into this so they can speak loudly and pound their chest but, for the moment, the movement it’s pretty safe from their bullshit. As far as I can tell, it’s basically a big ass picnic down a city hall and that’s cool because nobody wants to hear the Communist Party guys yammer on for an hour at a rally or cringe while someone starts-in with “those Jews.” I’ve seen both and trust me, that kind of shit will suck the life out of any rally which is why I loved it when, at a march I once attended, the Anarchist kids responded with their own chant “Workers of the world…RELAX!” Brilliant!
How will it go? Who knows. It looks to be a peaceful sit-in and march with good intentions. Sure it has its flaws but those flaws also help in avoiding some of the pitfalls that other local movements have been burdened by. So, while I can’t make the rally, I’m gonna give it a proper shake and give it up to the kids organizing this. Good luck.
(1) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/03/BU9V1LCRSL.DTL#ixzz1ZoxRirvj
Satan clearly has been working overtime at Gibson. If you need further proof, look at this abomination – The Gibson Firebird X. Patches, third party apps, robo tuners, on-board effects, a fucking battery pack???!!!! What the fuck!!!! What assbag at Gibson greenlighted the development on this piece of shit?!!!!
I mean, it takes nearly fucking 40 minutes for this guy to ramble through all these crappy things that nobody asked for and a lot of it sounds like ass. I’d almost rather have someone read me the tax code for 40 minutes than suffer though this demo.
The biggest issue I have with this is that the whole idea of making an IGuitar really misses the entire point of the instrument. I have a Jaguar and it has its quirks and its sound that’s totally different than my Samick or my Strat (RIP) or my Roy Smeck or my La Boz. Why would I want something that tries to emulate a million OTHER things but doesn’t have its OWN sound and pay over five grand for it. No, I want each guitar I have to have its own little niche in what I do and most people I think approach it the same way. Each guitar is singular and has its own qualities – just like your friends. You plug them in and they just act like themselves. No muss no fuss. You like them for who they are or they wouldn’t be your friends.
So, all I can say is if you have over five grand to blow on this, get yourself a real guitar. Hell, you could buy a couple at that price and the bonus is you wouldn’t look like a rich douchebag pussy poseur half-wit playing it. But if you don’t heed my advice please….please let me know next time you play so I can “accidentally” spill a beer on your guitar while you play on stage.
Fuck you, Gibson.
Peace!
un d Dancin u nd Ies Kreeem
2 ways to enjoy your Sunday that are more enjoyable than researching detached garage construction.
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