In general, I agree with your comments. The problem is. probably most obvious and glaring with artists who are already very successful whether it's Bob Dylan or Mick Jagger.
When I live in. NYC in the 60's and into the 70's, I was a studio musician. New York was and to some extent remains, the jingle capital of the US., largely because so many ad. agencies are headquartered there. As a "hired gun," I played on dozens and dozens of commercials, with a lesser number of gigs in film and records. Of course, studio musicians remain anonymous, so you are not lending yoirf name to a product only your talents. A couple of stories:
I played on an American Airlines commercial. It had been written by Jerry Jeff Walker, and he was so conflicted about doing it that he did dozens and dozens of takes. To aggravate things, his guitarist was one of those musicians who never played the same thing twice. That can work well on records, but is kind of antithetical to the concept of jingles, which generally involve little improvisation. Eventually the agency people gave up, and a week later I played on a different American jingle, which was the one that got used. Another time I played banjo and guitar on a Brothers Four recording session. To be honest, the music was boring, and required little effort. I lived ten blocks away from the studio. Walking home I heard music coming out of a bar. It was a plectrum banjo player named Lee Blair and a pianist named Cliff Jackson. I went in and had a drink and listened to them for about an hour. There were maybe a half dozen people in the place. The music was somewhere between dixieland and swing, and these musicians were both fine players. I figured they were lucky if they were making $25. each for the gig. I had made maybe six times that on my session. It was clear to me who was being exploited and who was rewarded for being in the right place with the right contacts at the right time. Another time In played on a jingle for Crest Toothpaste. It was a beautifully written instrumental piece, composed by Mitch Leigh (Man of lLa Mancha.). We did two or three takes of it. Mitch had set up a sort of contrapuntal rhythm between a small rhythm section and an oboe and soprano sax played-Phil Bodner and Jimmy D'Abato. The agency didn't like the music. A break was called, and we were sent home early. A week later we came back and did four really dull jingles that Mitch had written for them. Really insipid stuff, like one was sort of a re-write of Oh Susannah. The agency loveds it, and used it. As Mort Sahl used to say, "who is to say what is good and what is bad?"
It’s these kinds of first-hand stories that help me grapple with all the main themes Gioia focuses on here: what music is and does, how and why we share about it, and what happens when power brokers manipulate it to their advantage… True stories and experiences put creative (and professional) endeavors back into context, returning some of the meaning and purpose that is removed from it when we solve for X.
I remember when famous actors and musicians would do commercials in Japan but not in the US. I'm with you--every time I hear a song or a musician (or actor) in an ad for the first time... welp, there goes another one. A long time ago our label put a song by our band on an American Eagle in-store promo CD. One of our friends in New York saw it and really gave us some shit, and I never forgot how dumb I felt with something so inconsequential.
And worse than doctors selling out, plenty of our scientists have. (I won't bother with a comment on politicians.)
Bill Watterson’s refusal to monetize Calvin and Hobbes by selling movies, dolls, and other ancillary products remains for me one of the great acts of artistic integrity.
I talk to musicians who lose money from performing and spend their own hard-earned cash on studio recording with no hope of recouping their outlay. They’d probably be delighted if Pepsi paid to use their song in an ad. That’s different from rich legacy artists peddling music in a way that betrays its cultural importance for their audience (I’m assuming poor legacy artists don’t have much of a legacy to abuse).
I am of a very specific age, when the first time I became aware of Lou Reed, he was trying to sell scooters. A couple years later, every "cool" person in my life was trying to tell me how amazing he was, and I was like, the scooter guy? Are we sure?
Yeah... people get so heated if yr not on board with him. I just imprinted on him as a scooter salesman with a perm, and even if he had been my ideal artist later, the first impression was already set.
He absolutely became pretentious and totally aggravating over time. But the Velvets brought a novelistic approach to rock lyrics. The drugs and crud didn't have to be there, but that was his environment. He opened the door for scores of great songwriters in his path. I loathed him, though, for his output during his final 25 years. He WAS VERY pleased with himself, that's for sre.
Great article, but one objection: "selling out" is used too broadly. Whatever the rights and wrongs of selling a song to be used in a commercial, this is in no way comparable to a critic taking any form of bribe to write a favorable review. The former might spoil the memory of a song, but the latter is really just fraud and a form of theft from the readers of the review.
Some years ago I read one of those wry fables. There was a nightingale brought before some wealthy sort who asked him to sing. The nightingale refused, saying that he should know that nightingales do not sing in captivity. The wealthy sort asked, "Who is talking about captivity? I'm offering you a job." It sounds like Thurber, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.
Selling out is different from just accepting money. If you want to earn a living composing classical music, odds are you are going to be writing for the movie industry. An awful lot of artists accepted money from wealthy patrons or governments of various character. Was James Harvey a sellout because he designed boxes for Brillo, while Andy Warhol was a true artist since his Brillo boxes did not contain a useful household cleaning product?
An artist creates something but cannot control how it was used. Nietzsche, for example, loathed German nationalism, but his work was co-opted by supporters of a regime he would have had no part of. Selling out has to do with what the artist does, not the art itself. A lot of older artists are often happy to cash in their later years. I remember reviewer after reviewer asking what Laurence Olivier was doing in "Sleuth". Odds are he was getting a good paycheck.
"Was James Harvey a sellout because he designed boxes for Brillo, while Andy Warhol was a true artist since his Brillo boxes did not contain a useful household cleaning product?"
IIRC, Andy Warhol took out an ad to the effect that he would endorse anything you could think of for money.
I just wrote a comment very similar to the last paragraph of your post. I noted the income, but also the fact that the older artists may get some satisfaction by becoming relevant again after their fame has faded.
Agreed. The term sellout needs some definition and context. Many of these acts are massive commercial endeavours. Commerce is at the core of what they do. The Rolling Stones touring massive stadiums and taking private jets are not the club rockers of their youth. Is that selling out?
And you are right that taking free stuff in advance vs monetizing after something is created are two entirely different things.
Personally I’m a little sad whenever I hear a hit from my youth being used to sell something like laundry detergent. It always makes me wonder what the younger versions of those artists thought about their song as they wrote it and how they’d feel about where it ended up.
"Personally I'm a little sad whenever I hear a hit from my youth being used to sell something like laundry detergent..."
With all due respect (and I'm as prone to the malady described in the bumper sticker "Nostalgia Kills" as any other media saturated humanoid), that HIT from your youth that was used to sell something like laundry detergent BECAME a hit via the same Advertising Industry machinery that has driven our nation's surrendering of our Radio Air Waves to commercial purposes.
Rather than setting aside broadcast spectrum for cultural, civic, political and\or educational uses as other nations were doing as technology came online, we the US refused to establish a national PUBLIC INTEREST BROADCASTING part of the spectrum. Apart from a commercial advertiser-driven form of mass media sponsorship.
Other civilized nation-states decided to apportion their broadcast spectrum to be governed under law with most designed to be separate from commercial use or corporate capture. That necessarily imposed a quasi propagandistic model of state broadcasting system.
Those state-run national PUBLIC INTEREST BROADCAST NETWORKS now have the most interesting cultural productions being archived on You Tube dba U. of Tube. Moreover, even from behind the Iron Curtain there was less of a dumbing down effect. Although, with propaganda model in mind, there was a decided lack of political, if not mental and sensory sophistication.
When you try searching online for TV or LIVE RADIO clips of world-renowned and often U.S. Jazz greats or theater pioneers or experimental filmmakers or even STEM scholars who have few if any clips available from U.S. TV (except from the museum pieces that PBS with corporate underwriting may have aired though not produced), there is a rich and varied selection. The Museum of Broadcasting in New York used to and perhaps still does archive such in the world's many languages. Here in the U.S. our broadcast history is almost exclusively confined to Anglo language and regional U.S. culture that is chopped up into time frames determined while content is driven by the commercial corporate sponsorship of the broadcast system that we as a society accepted from our designated broadcast elites.
Yet, U. of Tube will list hundreds of TV clips from nations that had established and do continue to develop and broadcast in parallel to subscription cable fare a distinctly and authoritative PUBLIC INTEREST TV presented in a cornucopia of international languages and with complete educational courses offered. Some for academic credits in the history of U.S. Jazz, theater, politics, geography, history or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
That is just one example of what has become of stunted U.S. cultural and educational INNOVATION. On the other hand the 20th Century STEM breakthroughs even into the technologies of broadcasting and mass communications along with tele-communications reveals no lack of creative spirit nor expressive confinement.
20th Century national mass communications technical breakthroughs may have had no set-asides for PUBLIC INTEREST, although politically all such expenditures down to a municipal government level needed to justify public expenditures by demonstrating PUBLIC INTEREST (and proceed via open bidding among PRIVATE CONTRACTORS). By the mid-century, however, we see sharp restrictions on freedom of expression in the name of fighting COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM as our BROADCAST AIRWAVES were auctioned off to Madison Avenue, our centralized national advertising Mecca and hub for producing WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION. Private Profit was deemed, with little protest, to be the best driver of this new mass communications system we as a nation were building as surely as we did build PRIVATE PROPERTY empires within our sea-to-shining sea coastal and riverrine along with mountainous national borders.
To get a delightfully off-beat yet well-researched classic book on the early 20th Century birth of our nation's national radio broadcast networks pick up a copy of Arnold Passman's breakthrough book that decades after its publication is still used as a reference guide to the juicy history saucily titled: The DeeJays: How the Tribal Chieftains of Radio Got to Where They're At (1971 MacMillan).
The book was so titled because Passman had a special appreciation and interest in the role of THE CHARISMATIC MORNING MAN PITCHMAN (or on Sundays, CHURCH PREACHER) whose career fortunes were based on how well he sold the radio station's snake oil sponsors on the air as the systemic actual focal point of all U.S. broadcasting. If this sounds like it might have some common traits with how cults are formed, you would be correct. Although Passman, based in Berkeley for much of his life and career, was less interested in those University of California professors who made an academic discipline out of the Social Psychology and Sociology of Cult Dynamics and Formation, such as Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer.
Also, her student soon to become a U.C.-Berkeley full professor and deemed by U.S. Courts of Law an Expert Witness in Cult cases of either civil suits or criminal prosecutions, namely current Prof. Richard Ofshe. Both have their own Wiki pages and fascinating online archived papers, talks, interviews and studies:
Arnie Passman the author of The DeeJays, does get into the history of the originally color-coded national U.S. Radio Broadcast networks that were set-aside for EDUCATION, NEWS\WEATHER, RELIGION, LABOR, MUSIC, DRAMA, JOURNALISM, CIVICS and COMMUNITY SERVICE before the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the Educational TV network was created in the 1960's for Public TV and long after the broadcast airwave licenses were auctioned off under the Broadcast Czar of the FCC or Federal Communications (or Federal Cookie Cutter) Commission.
Interesting. I’m Canadian and remember the difference the CanCon rules made here. Mostly I think of my own youth and the art (theatre) I created with my colleagues and how idealistic we were about what we were doing. I think the young artists today are much more aware of the machinery of it all.
Love Robertson Davies and funnily enough this is the third time someone’s brought up his name this month - maybe a nudge for me to reread his books? I always think of Maury Chaykin as a Canadian artist (and perhaps that’s part of who he became). After our initial exchange it got me thinking about how well funded the theatres were when I was young and how lucky I was to work at a theatre devoted to the creation and production of Canadian plays. Cheers
The Cornish Trilogy (especially Rebel Angels) and the Deptford Trilogy kept me such hilarious and absurdist company during my Northern Californian and more economically depressed and stressful Oregon years that I recall referencing characters with hang-out friends and re-setting Robertson Davies intricate set-ups even as my diner and coffee companions or dates eyes would glaze over. Very few were motivated from my presentations and referencing to take these vividly and intrinsically cinematic novels and trilogies up.
I'm going to have to try again searching to see if any of those 6 books were adapted into films. Easier to share a DVD or video (link) with someone than having a friend invest their time and patience reading a book recommended by a sketchy character like me. I've always been a steady visitor to repertory movie theaters and film archives and don't recall even reading of such a canon of Robertson Davies film adaptations or lone projects produced in North America or abroad. One would think the Canada Film Arts endowment would have something to show, given their generous funding of original filmmakers.
This would be the Canadian filmmaker (long since gobbled up by Hollywood) for the job:
Quickly searching online I've come across this essay on how some of Davies books were much more popular in U.S. than Canada, despite Davies settings being north of the High Line.
In addition to his stage plays written and adapted for stage productions, his writing was most frequently adapted to international and CBC television productions.
Imdb notes three series of teleplays for television and only The Rebel Angels as a theatrical film release adapted from his novels:
The interior lives of his novel's characters bringing so much of the pleasures of his humorous, mystical and often 'magical' and 'theatrical' action-filled narratives, it seems like some flattening out of any of his novels, much less trilogies into film or extended TV treatment would be quite a challenge. And yet his narratives and writing style remains so vividly and compellingly cinematic.
The closest I could come to finding a theatrical film adaptation is a spirited and playful DIY literary YouTuber posting an imaginary trailer he produced for a fictional Big Screen adaptation of Davies' novel "Fifth Business"
"Based in the early 20th century, Dunstan Ramsay (Cullen) grows up in rural Ontario, in a small town called Deptford. He grows up with his lifelong friend and enemy, Boy Staunton (Laaper). His home life spins out of control and Ramsay decides to serve in the army as World War I breaks out. After returning home, Dunstan becomes a changed man who is on a sacred quest to discover lost saints to satisfy his newly developed passion for hagiology. This is a story full of joy, tragedy and comedy as Dunstan fulfills his destined archetype of being Fifth Business.
"This trailer is designed in order to interest folk in reading the amazing piece of literature known as Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. Please do, it is quite the read!"
"Produced for an AP English Class. Many inside jokes were made in this film. Each annotation that says "Inside Joke #x" shall be explained below: "
"Inside joke #1: In the novel, Liesl attacks Dunstan in the night and they eventually have a one-night stand. Not being a crude fellow, I referred to this event as a "rough time" in my English class. It cracked up our instructor every time. "
"Inside joke #2: When Dunstan says she wasn't sure if she was a girl or not, that wasn't said in the book. When we were doing a section on poetry, there was a poem about this young girl named Janet. Someone in the class inquired, "How old is Janet?" I immediately said without thinking, "I think she's a girl." What I mean was, "I think she's a young girl." However, it was quite funny and we always make references to my stupid remark."
"Inside joke #3: After Boy was killed, there was much speculation by the class on who performed the deed. Logically all would point to Eisengrim, for Boy destroyed his childhood. However, some said that Denyse, Boy's second wife, had a hand in the plot. Furthermore, others said that Joel Surgeoner was hypnotized by Eisengrim and through the power of suggestion, made to perform the deed. Denyse and Joel obviously had no part in the death, but they were funny theories. By having all three of these characters high-five after his car goes into the river, we pay tribute to this joke."
"Extra credits:
Music: Hans Zimmer, from the film Inception - "Time"
Car footage: From the film Unknown.
Star background: From youtuber Mockmoon2000, video: "Winter Stars" "
Of the actual television miniseries adaptation of FIFTH BUSINESS the Toronto Globe & Mail has either a preview or review behind their pay wall:
Likely in your youth there'd have been the same mix as today of young artists that were aware of the production machinery including marketing challenges awaiting them and others obliviously unaware. I've always sought out indie storefront or body shop converted neighborhood stage companies and those indie filmmakers (especially from Canada) of singular vision that worked your well endowed country's National Arts Council grants to fund some truly original, innovative and pioneering indie stage and film works.
I loved visiting my relatives up in Canada who often tipped me off to the stuff I wasn't likely to get a taste of down here in the States. Especially my older cousin Rob, first in Montreal and then as he settled into his own family life in Ottawa. Cousin Rob's taste in Canadian novelists turned me on to some lifelong fascinations with authors that I've pursued. Although the one at the top of my bookshelf was one I got from lit profs with wide-ranging tastes who turned me on to that wizard of storytelling on so many levels and so broadly funny, Robertson Davies.
Now there's a Canadian cultural treasure that reveals how ignorant and shallow our culture here in the States has become, where we live by Market Rules alone. Stop hundreds of passersby in a variety of U.S. locales, urban, exo-urban and rural and I doubt you'll find more than a coupla three who even know the name Robertson Davies. I got lucky doing my schooling at U.C.-Berkeley!
Even on my own solo trips made just to explore the range and depth of indie music, stage and films as well some terrific CBC (which is now more accessible thanks to U. of Tube).
An early one that completely fascinated me when I saw it at either a U.S. rep or art house theater or one of the film societies\archives like Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive (now named BAMPFA as part of the University of California complex). It was just before the director of this film and screenwriter got scooped up by Hollywood. Do you recall early Atom Egoyan movies like "The Adjuster"? New York indie theater actor Maury Chaykin had to find his film break in Canada thanks to Atom Egoyan's casting!
Seeing "Jesus of Montreal" changed me and definitely broadened my worldview and tastes in movies (as well as indie stage). His later movies also became repeated viewings classics for me, especially "The Decline of the American Empire (Le Déclin de l'empire américain)" - 1986; "The Barbarian Invasions (Les invasions barbares) - 2003"; and "The Fall of the American Empire (La chute de l'empire américain) - 2018".
What a great album. It managed to stay on Billboard's top LPs chart for just short on nineteen years. There's no way I can figure out how many times I've listened to the whole thing since I first bought the LP when I was in junior high school in 1976. It's been easier to listen to the whole album since I bought the CD; no need to flip it over.
Are musicians a reflection of culture, the drivers of culture, or something else. If, like me, you think they reflect culture, selling out is no great surprise…
Excellent. This is why I like Ted Gioia even though I've never heard Ted mention any music in my collection. Music is sacred. Music can raise the dead. Music should be free from neoliberal vampirism.
I was a SITS in the 80's. Whether or not a musical act was a sellout was very important to us young people back then. Glad to hear it still is, or at least I hope it is.
Trust is the one thing the vampires can't provide, they can only muddy the waters. Support your favourite artists through bandcamp or cdbaby or similar. No streamer will ever give them what they're worth. Don't feed the vampires.
Ted, your timing is a bit off. “The Who Sell Out”, featuring songs about products the band hoped to get “thank yous” from (e.g. Jaguar cars) was released in 1967. I don’t recall Pete Townshend — who was a counterculture hero at the time — being pilloried by fans or the music press.
A question to ask is why product placement works at all. I’ve never understood why someone would want the same brand of shoes their favourite singer wears. That said, there are folks who joined the Krishna movement because of George Harrison and others who followed Linda and Paul McCartney into vegetarianism. [sigh] Maybe we should stop having idols.
"Satirizing commercialism is distinct from embracing it. Counterculture Era artists, influenced by Pop Art, often blurred the line between art and commerce ironically. This irony is key. It sets them apart from modern hip-hop artists who genuinely celebrate materialism and commercialism without critique. Neil Young wasn't selling beer when he wrote, "This Note's for You." He was critiquing it. It was a rejection of materialism. RUN DMC's "My Adidas" was about brand loyalty and status. An embrace of materialism. Your other point about George Harrison and Paul McCartney doesn't apply here. Artists sharing their opinions and philosophies is what art is about. You can't lump a spiritual vision or a lifestyle choice in with a product endorsement. One is a venal cash grab; the other aims to communicate ideas, perspectives, or experiences. I doubt Michael Jackson saw Pepsi as a path to spiritual fulfillment.
Problem is… apparently Townshend really was hoping to get a Jaguar out of Jaguar. He has built himself a rather nice collection of automobiles since 1967, too.
"A question to ask is why product placement works at all." From metaphorical marketing Mecca of Wall Street's POV and in-step with the fall of clerical or spiritual confidence in irrational impulses not measurable or quantifiable, along with business corporate hierarchies and bid-net model planning extended to churches and organized religion and parochial schooling much BLIND FAITH was placed in the "scientific study of the subconscious."
Especially much faith was placed in subliminal product placement in all audio\visual media response data meant to measure "human desire."
Empirical Measurement's appropriate uses isn't fussed over all that much, especially the teachable moments within masses or tables of orderly numbers neatly graphed and sealed into modeling matrices and interpretational synopses. Especially when it comes to the business of imperial overreach in projecting the profiting off of what are deemed sacrosanct personal and private spaces.
Find the right statistician to interpret any studies quantified results properly rendered and plastic-sealed with antiseptic coating and said reverentially referenced matrices, graphs and marketing synopses and you've got boardroom-worthy persuasion for the proper corporate reading of such consumer studies and marketing data.
I disagree Ted. Music is something we use to decorate time as it goes by(Zappa said this I think). Some music is amazing art and some not so much but who cares who the artist sells it to? You can clutch your pearls in shock but you will not stem the tide of sales and use of all kinds of music.
In general, I agree with your comments. The problem is. probably most obvious and glaring with artists who are already very successful whether it's Bob Dylan or Mick Jagger.
When I live in. NYC in the 60's and into the 70's, I was a studio musician. New York was and to some extent remains, the jingle capital of the US., largely because so many ad. agencies are headquartered there. As a "hired gun," I played on dozens and dozens of commercials, with a lesser number of gigs in film and records. Of course, studio musicians remain anonymous, so you are not lending yoirf name to a product only your talents. A couple of stories:
I played on an American Airlines commercial. It had been written by Jerry Jeff Walker, and he was so conflicted about doing it that he did dozens and dozens of takes. To aggravate things, his guitarist was one of those musicians who never played the same thing twice. That can work well on records, but is kind of antithetical to the concept of jingles, which generally involve little improvisation. Eventually the agency people gave up, and a week later I played on a different American jingle, which was the one that got used. Another time I played banjo and guitar on a Brothers Four recording session. To be honest, the music was boring, and required little effort. I lived ten blocks away from the studio. Walking home I heard music coming out of a bar. It was a plectrum banjo player named Lee Blair and a pianist named Cliff Jackson. I went in and had a drink and listened to them for about an hour. There were maybe a half dozen people in the place. The music was somewhere between dixieland and swing, and these musicians were both fine players. I figured they were lucky if they were making $25. each for the gig. I had made maybe six times that on my session. It was clear to me who was being exploited and who was rewarded for being in the right place with the right contacts at the right time. Another time In played on a jingle for Crest Toothpaste. It was a beautifully written instrumental piece, composed by Mitch Leigh (Man of lLa Mancha.). We did two or three takes of it. Mitch had set up a sort of contrapuntal rhythm between a small rhythm section and an oboe and soprano sax played-Phil Bodner and Jimmy D'Abato. The agency didn't like the music. A break was called, and we were sent home early. A week later we came back and did four really dull jingles that Mitch had written for them. Really insipid stuff, like one was sort of a re-write of Oh Susannah. The agency loveds it, and used it. As Mort Sahl used to say, "who is to say what is good and what is bad?"
It’s these kinds of first-hand stories that help me grapple with all the main themes Gioia focuses on here: what music is and does, how and why we share about it, and what happens when power brokers manipulate it to their advantage… True stories and experiences put creative (and professional) endeavors back into context, returning some of the meaning and purpose that is removed from it when we solve for X.
great stories- thxs
I remember when famous actors and musicians would do commercials in Japan but not in the US. I'm with you--every time I hear a song or a musician (or actor) in an ad for the first time... welp, there goes another one. A long time ago our label put a song by our band on an American Eagle in-store promo CD. One of our friends in New York saw it and really gave us some shit, and I never forgot how dumb I felt with something so inconsequential.
And worse than doctors selling out, plenty of our scientists have. (I won't bother with a comment on politicians.)
Bill Watterson’s refusal to monetize Calvin and Hobbes by selling movies, dolls, and other ancillary products remains for me one of the great acts of artistic integrity.
I talk to musicians who lose money from performing and spend their own hard-earned cash on studio recording with no hope of recouping their outlay. They’d probably be delighted if Pepsi paid to use their song in an ad. That’s different from rich legacy artists peddling music in a way that betrays its cultural importance for their audience (I’m assuming poor legacy artists don’t have much of a legacy to abuse).
I am of a very specific age, when the first time I became aware of Lou Reed, he was trying to sell scooters. A couple years later, every "cool" person in my life was trying to tell me how amazing he was, and I was like, the scooter guy? Are we sure?
I always through Lou Reed was pretentious and overrated, and I could not care less about the scooters.
Yeah... people get so heated if yr not on board with him. I just imprinted on him as a scooter salesman with a perm, and even if he had been my ideal artist later, the first impression was already set.
"a scooter salesman with a perm" - I will never unsee this image...
The Velvets stuff is great, and groundbreaking. About 35% of his solo work isn't crap.
I can listen to some Velvets stuff, but it wasn't exactly life-changing or anything for me.
Then again, humans wax rhapsodic over a lot of music that at best leaves me cold.
He absolutely became pretentious and totally aggravating over time. But the Velvets brought a novelistic approach to rock lyrics. The drugs and crud didn't have to be there, but that was his environment. He opened the door for scores of great songwriters in his path. I loathed him, though, for his output during his final 25 years. He WAS VERY pleased with himself, that's for sre.
Great article, but one objection: "selling out" is used too broadly. Whatever the rights and wrongs of selling a song to be used in a commercial, this is in no way comparable to a critic taking any form of bribe to write a favorable review. The former might spoil the memory of a song, but the latter is really just fraud and a form of theft from the readers of the review.
Some years ago I read one of those wry fables. There was a nightingale brought before some wealthy sort who asked him to sing. The nightingale refused, saying that he should know that nightingales do not sing in captivity. The wealthy sort asked, "Who is talking about captivity? I'm offering you a job." It sounds like Thurber, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.
Selling out is different from just accepting money. If you want to earn a living composing classical music, odds are you are going to be writing for the movie industry. An awful lot of artists accepted money from wealthy patrons or governments of various character. Was James Harvey a sellout because he designed boxes for Brillo, while Andy Warhol was a true artist since his Brillo boxes did not contain a useful household cleaning product?
An artist creates something but cannot control how it was used. Nietzsche, for example, loathed German nationalism, but his work was co-opted by supporters of a regime he would have had no part of. Selling out has to do with what the artist does, not the art itself. A lot of older artists are often happy to cash in their later years. I remember reviewer after reviewer asking what Laurence Olivier was doing in "Sleuth". Odds are he was getting a good paycheck.
"Was James Harvey a sellout because he designed boxes for Brillo, while Andy Warhol was a true artist since his Brillo boxes did not contain a useful household cleaning product?"
IIRC, Andy Warhol took out an ad to the effect that he would endorse anything you could think of for money.
I've always thought that Warhol was more of an art critic than an artist. And far better as an art critic than as an artist.
Let's call him an "art slut" and leave it there :))
I just wrote a comment very similar to the last paragraph of your post. I noted the income, but also the fact that the older artists may get some satisfaction by becoming relevant again after their fame has faded.
Agreed. The term sellout needs some definition and context. Many of these acts are massive commercial endeavours. Commerce is at the core of what they do. The Rolling Stones touring massive stadiums and taking private jets are not the club rockers of their youth. Is that selling out?
And you are right that taking free stuff in advance vs monetizing after something is created are two entirely different things.
I agree, both motives and timing matter here.
Personally I’m a little sad whenever I hear a hit from my youth being used to sell something like laundry detergent. It always makes me wonder what the younger versions of those artists thought about their song as they wrote it and how they’d feel about where it ended up.
"Personally I'm a little sad whenever I hear a hit from my youth being used to sell something like laundry detergent..."
With all due respect (and I'm as prone to the malady described in the bumper sticker "Nostalgia Kills" as any other media saturated humanoid), that HIT from your youth that was used to sell something like laundry detergent BECAME a hit via the same Advertising Industry machinery that has driven our nation's surrendering of our Radio Air Waves to commercial purposes.
Rather than setting aside broadcast spectrum for cultural, civic, political and\or educational uses as other nations were doing as technology came online, we the US refused to establish a national PUBLIC INTEREST BROADCASTING part of the spectrum. Apart from a commercial advertiser-driven form of mass media sponsorship.
Other civilized nation-states decided to apportion their broadcast spectrum to be governed under law with most designed to be separate from commercial use or corporate capture. That necessarily imposed a quasi propagandistic model of state broadcasting system.
Those state-run national PUBLIC INTEREST BROADCAST NETWORKS now have the most interesting cultural productions being archived on You Tube dba U. of Tube. Moreover, even from behind the Iron Curtain there was less of a dumbing down effect. Although, with propaganda model in mind, there was a decided lack of political, if not mental and sensory sophistication.
When you try searching online for TV or LIVE RADIO clips of world-renowned and often U.S. Jazz greats or theater pioneers or experimental filmmakers or even STEM scholars who have few if any clips available from U.S. TV (except from the museum pieces that PBS with corporate underwriting may have aired though not produced), there is a rich and varied selection. The Museum of Broadcasting in New York used to and perhaps still does archive such in the world's many languages. Here in the U.S. our broadcast history is almost exclusively confined to Anglo language and regional U.S. culture that is chopped up into time frames determined while content is driven by the commercial corporate sponsorship of the broadcast system that we as a society accepted from our designated broadcast elites.
Yet, U. of Tube will list hundreds of TV clips from nations that had established and do continue to develop and broadcast in parallel to subscription cable fare a distinctly and authoritative PUBLIC INTEREST TV presented in a cornucopia of international languages and with complete educational courses offered. Some for academic credits in the history of U.S. Jazz, theater, politics, geography, history or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
That is just one example of what has become of stunted U.S. cultural and educational INNOVATION. On the other hand the 20th Century STEM breakthroughs even into the technologies of broadcasting and mass communications along with tele-communications reveals no lack of creative spirit nor expressive confinement.
20th Century national mass communications technical breakthroughs may have had no set-asides for PUBLIC INTEREST, although politically all such expenditures down to a municipal government level needed to justify public expenditures by demonstrating PUBLIC INTEREST (and proceed via open bidding among PRIVATE CONTRACTORS). By the mid-century, however, we see sharp restrictions on freedom of expression in the name of fighting COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM as our BROADCAST AIRWAVES were auctioned off to Madison Avenue, our centralized national advertising Mecca and hub for producing WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION. Private Profit was deemed, with little protest, to be the best driver of this new mass communications system we as a nation were building as surely as we did build PRIVATE PROPERTY empires within our sea-to-shining sea coastal and riverrine along with mountainous national borders.
To get a delightfully off-beat yet well-researched classic book on the early 20th Century birth of our nation's national radio broadcast networks pick up a copy of Arnold Passman's breakthrough book that decades after its publication is still used as a reference guide to the juicy history saucily titled: The DeeJays: How the Tribal Chieftains of Radio Got to Where They're At (1971 MacMillan).
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/Radio-Programming/The-DeeJays-Passman-1971.pdf
The book was so titled because Passman had a special appreciation and interest in the role of THE CHARISMATIC MORNING MAN PITCHMAN (or on Sundays, CHURCH PREACHER) whose career fortunes were based on how well he sold the radio station's snake oil sponsors on the air as the systemic actual focal point of all U.S. broadcasting. If this sounds like it might have some common traits with how cults are formed, you would be correct. Although Passman, based in Berkeley for much of his life and career, was less interested in those University of California professors who made an academic discipline out of the Social Psychology and Sociology of Cult Dynamics and Formation, such as Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer.
Also, her student soon to become a U.C.-Berkeley full professor and deemed by U.S. Courts of Law an Expert Witness in Cult cases of either civil suits or criminal prosecutions, namely current Prof. Richard Ofshe. Both have their own Wiki pages and fascinating online archived papers, talks, interviews and studies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ofshe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Singer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cultic_Studies_Association
Arnie Passman the author of The DeeJays, does get into the history of the originally color-coded national U.S. Radio Broadcast networks that were set-aside for EDUCATION, NEWS\WEATHER, RELIGION, LABOR, MUSIC, DRAMA, JOURNALISM, CIVICS and COMMUNITY SERVICE before the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the Educational TV network was created in the 1960's for Public TV and long after the broadcast airwave licenses were auctioned off under the Broadcast Czar of the FCC or Federal Communications (or Federal Cookie Cutter) Commission.
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Interesting. I’m Canadian and remember the difference the CanCon rules made here. Mostly I think of my own youth and the art (theatre) I created with my colleagues and how idealistic we were about what we were doing. I think the young artists today are much more aware of the machinery of it all.
Love Robertson Davies and funnily enough this is the third time someone’s brought up his name this month - maybe a nudge for me to reread his books? I always think of Maury Chaykin as a Canadian artist (and perhaps that’s part of who he became). After our initial exchange it got me thinking about how well funded the theatres were when I was young and how lucky I was to work at a theatre devoted to the creation and production of Canadian plays. Cheers
The Cornish Trilogy (especially Rebel Angels) and the Deptford Trilogy kept me such hilarious and absurdist company during my Northern Californian and more economically depressed and stressful Oregon years that I recall referencing characters with hang-out friends and re-setting Robertson Davies intricate set-ups even as my diner and coffee companions or dates eyes would glaze over. Very few were motivated from my presentations and referencing to take these vividly and intrinsically cinematic novels and trilogies up.
I'm going to have to try again searching to see if any of those 6 books were adapted into films. Easier to share a DVD or video (link) with someone than having a friend invest their time and patience reading a book recommended by a sketchy character like me. I've always been a steady visitor to repertory movie theaters and film archives and don't recall even reading of such a canon of Robertson Davies film adaptations or lone projects produced in North America or abroad. One would think the Canada Film Arts endowment would have something to show, given their generous funding of original filmmakers.
This would be the Canadian filmmaker (long since gobbled up by Hollywood) for the job:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_Egoyan
This is why I'm put in mind of an original Robertson Davies-esque screenplay that is the first of Egoyan's films to get under my skin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjuster
Quickly searching online I've come across this essay on how some of Davies books were much more popular in U.S. than Canada, despite Davies settings being north of the High Line.
https://thisistrue.com/robertson-davies/
On a search for RD movie adaptations:
"Film adaptations of Robertson Davies novels"
yields this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Film+adaptations+of+Robertson+Davies+novels+
In addition to his stage plays written and adapted for stage productions, his writing was most frequently adapted to international and CBC television productions.
Imdb notes three series of teleplays for television and only The Rebel Angels as a theatrical film release adapted from his novels:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0203942/
The interior lives of his novel's characters bringing so much of the pleasures of his humorous, mystical and often 'magical' and 'theatrical' action-filled narratives, it seems like some flattening out of any of his novels, much less trilogies into film or extended TV treatment would be quite a challenge. And yet his narratives and writing style remains so vividly and compellingly cinematic.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/14/books/the-world-of-wonders-of-robertson-davies.html
The closest I could come to finding a theatrical film adaptation is a spirited and playful DIY literary YouTuber posting an imaginary trailer he produced for a fictional Big Screen adaptation of Davies' novel "Fifth Business"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPHn3VgG_M
Robertson Davies' Fifth Business Film Trailer
Anthony Duchesne
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16,358 views Jun 7, 2012 #x
"Based in the early 20th century, Dunstan Ramsay (Cullen) grows up in rural Ontario, in a small town called Deptford. He grows up with his lifelong friend and enemy, Boy Staunton (Laaper). His home life spins out of control and Ramsay decides to serve in the army as World War I breaks out. After returning home, Dunstan becomes a changed man who is on a sacred quest to discover lost saints to satisfy his newly developed passion for hagiology. This is a story full of joy, tragedy and comedy as Dunstan fulfills his destined archetype of being Fifth Business.
"This trailer is designed in order to interest folk in reading the amazing piece of literature known as Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. Please do, it is quite the read!"
"Produced for an AP English Class. Many inside jokes were made in this film. Each annotation that says "Inside Joke #x" shall be explained below: "
"Inside joke #1: In the novel, Liesl attacks Dunstan in the night and they eventually have a one-night stand. Not being a crude fellow, I referred to this event as a "rough time" in my English class. It cracked up our instructor every time. "
"Inside joke #2: When Dunstan says she wasn't sure if she was a girl or not, that wasn't said in the book. When we were doing a section on poetry, there was a poem about this young girl named Janet. Someone in the class inquired, "How old is Janet?" I immediately said without thinking, "I think she's a girl." What I mean was, "I think she's a young girl." However, it was quite funny and we always make references to my stupid remark."
"Inside joke #3: After Boy was killed, there was much speculation by the class on who performed the deed. Logically all would point to Eisengrim, for Boy destroyed his childhood. However, some said that Denyse, Boy's second wife, had a hand in the plot. Furthermore, others said that Joel Surgeoner was hypnotized by Eisengrim and through the power of suggestion, made to perform the deed. Denyse and Joel obviously had no part in the death, but they were funny theories. By having all three of these characters high-five after his car goes into the river, we pay tribute to this joke."
"Extra credits:
Music: Hans Zimmer, from the film Inception - "Time"
Car footage: From the film Unknown.
Star background: From youtuber Mockmoon2000, video: "Winter Stars" "
Of the actual television miniseries adaptation of FIFTH BUSINESS the Toronto Globe & Mail has either a preview or review behind their pay wall:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/fifth-business-becomes-a-miniseries/article4194145/
Health and balance
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Likely in your youth there'd have been the same mix as today of young artists that were aware of the production machinery including marketing challenges awaiting them and others obliviously unaware. I've always sought out indie storefront or body shop converted neighborhood stage companies and those indie filmmakers (especially from Canada) of singular vision that worked your well endowed country's National Arts Council grants to fund some truly original, innovative and pioneering indie stage and film works.
I loved visiting my relatives up in Canada who often tipped me off to the stuff I wasn't likely to get a taste of down here in the States. Especially my older cousin Rob, first in Montreal and then as he settled into his own family life in Ottawa. Cousin Rob's taste in Canadian novelists turned me on to some lifelong fascinations with authors that I've pursued. Although the one at the top of my bookshelf was one I got from lit profs with wide-ranging tastes who turned me on to that wizard of storytelling on so many levels and so broadly funny, Robertson Davies.
Now there's a Canadian cultural treasure that reveals how ignorant and shallow our culture here in the States has become, where we live by Market Rules alone. Stop hundreds of passersby in a variety of U.S. locales, urban, exo-urban and rural and I doubt you'll find more than a coupla three who even know the name Robertson Davies. I got lucky doing my schooling at U.C.-Berkeley!
Even on my own solo trips made just to explore the range and depth of indie music, stage and films as well some terrific CBC (which is now more accessible thanks to U. of Tube).
An early one that completely fascinated me when I saw it at either a U.S. rep or art house theater or one of the film societies\archives like Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive (now named BAMPFA as part of the University of California complex). It was just before the director of this film and screenwriter got scooped up by Hollywood. Do you recall early Atom Egoyan movies like "The Adjuster"? New York indie theater actor Maury Chaykin had to find his film break in Canada thanks to Atom Egoyan's casting!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjuster
Except for "Ararat" there haven't been any of Egoyan's Hollywood projects that conveyed that personal creative spark of his earlier films.
Likewise for Quebec French language playwright, screenwriter and director Denys Arcand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Arcand
Seeing "Jesus of Montreal" changed me and definitely broadened my worldview and tastes in movies (as well as indie stage). His later movies also became repeated viewings classics for me, especially "The Decline of the American Empire (Le Déclin de l'empire américain)" - 1986; "The Barbarian Invasions (Les invasions barbares) - 2003"; and "The Fall of the American Empire (La chute de l'empire américain) - 2018".
Health and balance
Keep on writing!
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Sorry Ted but I could not resist. "Money it's a hit. Ah, don't give me that do-goody-good-bullshit..."
The perfect parody song reference to add here (next to, perhaps, “which one’s Pink?”…
I never took notice of that song's lyrics.
What a great album. It managed to stay on Billboard's top LPs chart for just short on nineteen years. There's no way I can figure out how many times I've listened to the whole thing since I first bought the LP when I was in junior high school in 1976. It's been easier to listen to the whole album since I bought the CD; no need to flip it over.
One of the reasons I love Tom Waits (cuz he never 'sold out' -- even wrote a great article about this way back).
Are musicians a reflection of culture, the drivers of culture, or something else. If, like me, you think they reflect culture, selling out is no great surprise…
There are innovators. But you are right, they are few and far between. Oh, and
I-L-L-
I-N-I
Excellent. This is why I like Ted Gioia even though I've never heard Ted mention any music in my collection. Music is sacred. Music can raise the dead. Music should be free from neoliberal vampirism.
I was a SITS in the 80's. Whether or not a musical act was a sellout was very important to us young people back then. Glad to hear it still is, or at least I hope it is.
Trust is the one thing the vampires can't provide, they can only muddy the waters. Support your favourite artists through bandcamp or cdbaby or similar. No streamer will ever give them what they're worth. Don't feed the vampires.
Ted, your timing is a bit off. “The Who Sell Out”, featuring songs about products the band hoped to get “thank yous” from (e.g. Jaguar cars) was released in 1967. I don’t recall Pete Townshend — who was a counterculture hero at the time — being pilloried by fans or the music press.
A question to ask is why product placement works at all. I’ve never understood why someone would want the same brand of shoes their favourite singer wears. That said, there are folks who joined the Krishna movement because of George Harrison and others who followed Linda and Paul McCartney into vegetarianism. [sigh] Maybe we should stop having idols.
"Satirizing commercialism is distinct from embracing it. Counterculture Era artists, influenced by Pop Art, often blurred the line between art and commerce ironically. This irony is key. It sets them apart from modern hip-hop artists who genuinely celebrate materialism and commercialism without critique. Neil Young wasn't selling beer when he wrote, "This Note's for You." He was critiquing it. It was a rejection of materialism. RUN DMC's "My Adidas" was about brand loyalty and status. An embrace of materialism. Your other point about George Harrison and Paul McCartney doesn't apply here. Artists sharing their opinions and philosophies is what art is about. You can't lump a spiritual vision or a lifestyle choice in with a product endorsement. One is a venal cash grab; the other aims to communicate ideas, perspectives, or experiences. I doubt Michael Jackson saw Pepsi as a path to spiritual fulfillment.
Problem is… apparently Townshend really was hoping to get a Jaguar out of Jaguar. He has built himself a rather nice collection of automobiles since 1967, too.
"A question to ask is why product placement works at all." From metaphorical marketing Mecca of Wall Street's POV and in-step with the fall of clerical or spiritual confidence in irrational impulses not measurable or quantifiable, along with business corporate hierarchies and bid-net model planning extended to churches and organized religion and parochial schooling much BLIND FAITH was placed in the "scientific study of the subconscious."
Especially much faith was placed in subliminal product placement in all audio\visual media response data meant to measure "human desire."
Empirical Measurement's appropriate uses isn't fussed over all that much, especially the teachable moments within masses or tables of orderly numbers neatly graphed and sealed into modeling matrices and interpretational synopses. Especially when it comes to the business of imperial overreach in projecting the profiting off of what are deemed sacrosanct personal and private spaces.
Find the right statistician to interpret any studies quantified results properly rendered and plastic-sealed with antiseptic coating and said reverentially referenced matrices, graphs and marketing synopses and you've got boardroom-worthy persuasion for the proper corporate reading of such consumer studies and marketing data.
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
“Everybody knows the boat is leaking, everybody knows the captain lied. That’s how it goes… everybody knows.”
Hicks answered this beautifully back in the day.
a bit of swearing for anyone a little sensitive...
left out is the bit where he gives a pass to a really struggling artist, and also Willie Nelson....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp4l7eASeOk
Indeed!
If you want to hear him going full bore, check out his Jay Leno bit….
As Swamp Dogg (a.k.a. Jerry Williams) said a long time ago "I'm Not Selling Out, I'm Buying In."
I disagree Ted. Music is something we use to decorate time as it goes by(Zappa said this I think). Some music is amazing art and some not so much but who cares who the artist sells it to? You can clutch your pearls in shock but you will not stem the tide of sales and use of all kinds of music.