Name That Tune: The Importance of Putting Song Lyrics on the Internet
More and more these days, the music of independent unsigned music artists is integrated into our daily lives. Creative music licensing. It’s pretty much everywhere – on TV, obviously on the radio (online and traditional formats), at the gas pump, in department stores, grocery stores, the list goes on and on.
Thanks to insomnia, just in one day while flipping through channels I heard a few of our friend’s bands on TV (which will remain the most popular vehicle for song placements for quite some time to come) as I attempted to clear out my DVR’s recordings.
This was a few months ago, and I’d initially planned to publish this post at that time (if you can believe it, that was back in January) after having had a similar encounter with an all too familiar soundtrack comprised of more friend’s bands which included: Spider Problem’s “Cha, Cha” on some “Gossip Girl” teaser, Bang Sugar Bang’s “Where’s the Fun in That?” on a re-run of “The Hills” (I think it was a re-run I hadn’t seen that show in eons?), and of course with Samsung having gone the way of Sprint with featuring a local LA band late last year, (The Happy Hollows) on their Google Phone Commercial (Sprint featured iO Echo on their Palm Pre commercial). Just because the programming isn’t quality (but then again, I’m also not necessarily the target market of the shows mentioned), that doesn’t mean the music getting played isn’t and people won’t take notice of it.
I’m sure there was a lot more that I didn’t catch. In fact a couple of years ago I couldn’t watch many of the shows on TV without hearing a band I knew on shows. This will only become more and more true for years to come. Some of those that I recall included, but aren’t limited to: The New Fidelity, Silver Needle, Bang Sugar Bang, The Mulhollands, The Waking Hours, and The Automatic Music Explosion all on the WB and MTV, Get Set Go on Grey’s Anatomy (they even made the soundtrack)– those are just some I can think of off the top of my head, the list goes on and on. I won’t even get started on films.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but songs have a tendency to stick in my head. Name of song and artist not always so much. At least not at first listen, unless I happen to know them personally or it’s all over the place (an example from earlier in the year, Phoenix’s “Listomania”). At times all I can remember is a few of the lyrics, and those lyrics won’t get out of my head. I want to hear them again.
So what do I do?
Hope that episode plays again and they announce the artist name and song title? (more…)
The Dollyrots and The Action Design
Introduction. Let’s start this off by talking about books. I am currently reading a book titled “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street” by William D. Cohan. This book describes the events surrounding the collapse of Bear Stearns – a Wall Street firm. It is 450 pages long and I am currently on page 131. I’m slowly reading through the book and hopefully as soon as the Lakers-Magic Championship Series ends, I’ll speed through the rest of the book rather quickly because it has grabbed my attention. I recently read a book titled “Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism” by Kevin Phillips. This book also looks at our financial system. Kevin Phillips looks at the beginnings of our current economic crisis from a high level perspective while William D. Cohan focuses squarely on a specific Wall Street bank. Now why would I find reading books about our economic collapse so interesting? If you read my bio, you’ll notice I have a degree in economics so I rather enjoy reading about financial collapses and such. I can’t possibly spend all my reading time; however, reading about how depressing our current economic state is so I recently squeezed in Michael Crichton’s “Airframe,” a quick to read techno-thriller that he was so well known for – he also wrote books such as “Jurassic Park,” “Timeline.” (I use “was,” as Michael Crichton recently passed away.)
The Knitting Factory. The Knitting Factory holds a special place in my heart. I first got introduced to a number of cool local Los Angeles bands at this location: Bang Sugar Bang, Underwater City People, The Randies, Midway and Silver Needle to name just a few. (more…)
All IV-I, I-IV All
It’s time for a lesson in music theory. Don’t worry, we’ll start slow. Today we’ll be discussing the plagal cadence in rock and roll.
A plagal cadence is just a cadence from the IV (subdominant) chord to the I (tonic) chord. It’s my favorite kind of cadence, and it’s probably best known as the “amen” at the end of every Anglican hymn. If you have a guitar or a piano lying around, you can make your own plagal cadence at home. First, play a D major chord. That’s your tonic. Then play a G major chord—the subdominant chord in D major. Now play a D major chord again. Doesn’t that feel good? Ohhhh yeeeaaah, that’s the raw groin-tingling power of the I and IV chords.
Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite songs that rely heavily on the I and IV chords. There’s no hierarchy to this list, and my point is mainly to illustrate how many diverse things different bands can do with the same two chords. If you don’t have all these albums, most of these songs are youtube- or myspace-able. Or I guess you could just go out and buy some goddamn CDs.