And The World Is Full Of Energy... New Hope For Good Music

As we are heading towards the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, it may be time to start looking at the decade as a whole stacks up to previous periods. One of the biggest evolutions came out of necessity. Traditional avenues of cultural dissemination, radio and television have for a long time been co opted more and more by established artists Radio has been dominated by insipid pop music-making factories created mass-consumable drivel for a unsuspecting public graving for something new that didn’t offend their moralistic sense. Also, the target audience for the big consumer dollar lowered from 18 to 24 to 10 to 14. Thus, the Teenbeat market moved into the mainstream with the late 80s and 90s. with the manufactured band, Menudo which begat Ricky Martin which led to NKOTB, Britney, *NSYNC, Pink, etc.

The new frontier of music video and MTV became the playground of the rich and either famous or soon-to-be-famous, whose videos became more and more elaborate, backed by record companies with mega-big budgets.

With these traditional avenues of exposure became less and less viable for many musical acts those with no money or financial backing or conceived less than commercial appeal. Many bands plugged it out touring the college circuit, receiving airplay on a variety of college radio station, listened to by only the most dedicated of music lovers. By the late ‘90s new avenues of access for good music to seep into the general populous started to appear with the Internet. To combat this growing cultural power, older media jumped on board and began to shift their focus. Some films, especially teen comedies (in the tradition of the films of John Hughes and Jonathan Demme) and TV shows (The O.C. and C.S.I.) have sprinkled snippets of cool music into the backgrounds of soundtracks, some times these spots" have broken bands in recent years.

Another method of reaching a wider group of music listeners is through band's songs being used in commercials. What a 180-degree turn this step has made. Once having a rock song in a commercial was believed to be a complete sell-out, the point when a band was on the decline searching for ways to maintain their precarious grip on public attention. (Of course today, these bands mount comebacks or play the casino circuit.)

Over the past ten years especially since the use of Nick Drake in that VW ad and with the increase Television advertisement targeting by Apple and the myriad of cell companies, there's been a desire by many of these companies to sell their brand rather than their products. (I'll leave this discussion to Terry O'Reilly and his brilliant Age Of Persuasion program airing on CBC One). One of the ways ad agencies have been able to brand a product as cool is through the use of catchy accessible and relatively unknown musical soundtracks by relatively unknown bands. Not only have obscure oldies like Nick Drake, Shuggie Otis, Betty Davis and Os Mutantes have been rediscovered through commercials, new bands just getting started or even bands with a relatively long list of releases are finding wider audiences.

A recent example of a small band's is The Apples In Stereo's "Energy" currently is being used in a 2008 Pepsi ad showing off the cola company's new logo. The same some appeared in a New Balance ad where a fellow uses his new running shoe as a defibrillator on a porcupine he rand over. A contestant on the latest on American Idol also covered “Energy” and an Acoustic re-recording of the song was part of the Saturn Outlook campaign. The Apples In Stereo's "Staring At The Sun" was used in 2007 for the Dodge Journey ad, the one featuring a bunch of people building a water slide down a hilly street in a large downtown city, possibly San Francisco. Both songs can be found on the band's brilliant 2007 release New Magnetic Wonder.