One of the things I did find before I signed off last week was this story about indie bands who refuse to take money from General Motors Hummer Vehicle Division to feature their songs in Hummer commercials.
Their sole reason for doing this is, if I may paraphrase, “because we don’t want our music to be represented along with those earth killing Hummer SUV’s”.
If Toyota called up and wanted the song for their Scion brand or the Hybrid Highlander SUV, they probably jump on it in a second, but when GM calls, they get a big nope. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that it is their music and wholly their decision as to what they want to do with it, but I always thought people made music to make money.
The electronica band Dirty Vegas made millions after their song ‘Days Go By’ was featured in those Mitsubishi commercials a few years back. They can make lukewarm records for the rest of their lives after all the money that single tune and all of the related remixes brought in. Sting releases his songs to car companies before putting them out on disc so that people will know them when they hear them on the radio.
But I suppose that if you want to keep your ‘indie cred’ (a codeword for: poor struggling artist who makes minimum wage and has few to zero actual job skills) you have to never sell your music except out of the trunk of your car while you and your band “wait to be understood/discovered for your genius”.
The truly hypocritical part of this whole thing is that if you look how indie bands get around to shows with all their gear, they do it in older, pollution spewing, trucks and vans. I really like watching when the bands start rolling into town for “Hempfest” in their VW Microbuses, spewing black smoke, and then go onstage to do an hour long set where they talk about protecting ‘Mother Gaia’.
It’s worth the price of admission. Oh wait, Hempfest is free, so I guess its worth twice the price of admission.
But hey, if these bandmembers want to remain poor, that is their right, in America.
If they were really smart, they would go into negotiations for larger quantities of cash and then donate a goodly sized chuck of the money to their favorite treehugging organization who is working on legislation to outlaw SUV’s.
But then again, they’re musicians. If they were smart enough to do that, they’d be record producers.
My son used to be a rock musician. He asked me one time if I knew what you called a musician who broke up with his girlfreind.
You call him “Homeless.”
Gerry N.