Please excuse one more Modest Mouse thread.

[dola]

I really don't want to be called a "faggot" on their really considered and insightful official web forum. Plus i'm too lazy to sign up. There seems to be a few fans over here, and you faggots are pretty smart like. Man that's contagious. I'm sorry.

In case you haven't seen the commercial or heard about it, the first thirty seconds of "Gravity Rides Everything" appears in a Nissan ad for their "more stylish, more aggressive" Quest minivan. I think the copy is something like, "Moms have changed and so has the minivan."

Doing a quick search for some reaction, I came across a site/blog/forum/whatever (http://www.alttext.com/archives/03/08/030814immodest_mouse.html) that opened up the discussion like so:

My shock wasn’t that great artists want to get paid but rather that this was Modest Mouse - the epitome of the indie band - the last band I would expect to "sell out". And this wasn't the first time.

Here's a question: Why is it ok for artists like Moby and Fatboy Slim to have "commercial" success but not bands like Modest Mouse and Smog? Is it because so much of the identity of these groups is wrapped up in being independent? Most likely something like that.


Not to make this any longer than necessary, but one of the first awesome responses goes:


I wouldn't consider that "selling out". Now if Modest Mouse have for years spoken out against Japanese car manufacturers and then turned around and did the commercial that would be different. Or if they had crafted a song specifically for the commercial with lyrics like "My Nissan is so sweet to drive down the street." it may be a close case. Run-DMC once sang about merits of "my adidas". So when adidas signed them to a contract they weren't selling out. They were simply getting paid for what they were already doing/saying. The same?


There are about thirty replies on that page, and they are mostly variants on 'well they worked hard/gotta get paid/hope they don't change their sound/please everyone's a sellout/it's so weird to hear them in a car commerical!' Now I know that the same MM song was used in a Miller beer ad earlier in the year. I know that it's also quite possible that Sony would have the band's balls in some kind of sick litigious vice if a fight was ever mounted by Isaac or whomever. I'm going to plead ignorance on that right now though, because i don't want to replace indignance toward one of my favorite bands ever with total bewilderment at why they'd sign a contract like that. (Maybe that's why I still don't know how i'm paying rent this month. Hurry up student loan!) Every response that I've seen so far on this has missed the point entirely, which is amazing because I'm fucking retarded, and this shouldn't be that hard. Isaac, I know that you love beans on toast and read this board. YOU CANNOT WRITE SONGS LAMENTING URBAN SPRAWL, BEACH EROSION AND ALL TYPES OF OTHER MODERN BULLSHIT AND THEN SHILL FOR NISSAN YOU DISAPPOINTING MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!


JSBX is a fun rock n roll band. They have been featured in a car commerical. They also basically sing about werewolves in bellbottoms fucking people, or something. That's the difference. Obviously MM is not a political band. They are critical though, with a poetry that I think is really powerful at points.

The band doesn't have to answer to me or anyone else, blah blah. Yeah i'm taking it badly.


"Wow!" said the broken Californian down
On the beach that used to be by the beach
Town hasn't moved but's getting closer, losing ground
Making better views and close relaxing sounds
Ground sure don't like the way it's treated so now
It's moving back to the sea

--------------

Goes through the parking lot fields
Doesn't see no signs that they will yield
And then thought, this'll never end
This'll never end, this'll never stop
Message read on the bathroom wall
Says, "I don't feel at all like I fall."
And we're losing all touch, losing all touch
Building a desert

--------------

Soon the chain reaction started in the parking lot
Waiting to bleed on the big streets
That bleed out on the highways and
Off to others cities built to store and
sell these (plastic) rocks
Well aren't you feeling real dirty
Sitting in the parking lot (X2)

-------------

Moms have changed and so has the minivan.

[johansen smith]

I'd like to officially declare that I don't care. so they are making some money. oh no, so what. I'm more concerned about how their last album just wasn't all that good more than that they're in commercials now.

[dola]

I'm not begrudging a band making money, or wanting to widen their audience, or whatever the reason it was that they ok'd the usage (please someone tell me that they do have that much control, right?). My problem was that for specifically Modest Mouse to help sell more fucking cars, it makes a portion of their art disingenuous. I'm probably reading too much into a handful of songs by a rock band. Time for MVP Baseball 2003.

[johansen smith]

no one is buying any car based on that or any song.

[vesper]

Anyone concerned that Modest Mouse is just now "selling out" must have missed out on their signing to Sony. If that is the epitome of an indie band, then nevermind a label like Dischord that really deserves heaps of credit. It's rather insulting to smaller, struggling bands.

Now, now not that I have a problem with bands on a major, but I think that people are getting upset about nothing. It's just like johansen said - Modest Mouse's hawking of Nissans won't have any impact on the sale of that car. You can wax philosophic/nostalgic all day but the results just aren't there.

[Futureman]

From an interview with Isaac Brock:

What's your response to people who accuse Modest Mouse of having sold out by signing with Epic?

"You know, I don't really give a fuck. I mean, if they'd rather I was washing dishes than playing, then fuck 'em. What is it, an integrity issue? Seriously, where is the integrity in washing dishes?"

Good answer, says I.

[mancalledb]

minivans have never looked so good. i think i need three. if modest mouse endorses it why don't i see sixty million of those pieces of shit and metal out on the street every day.

[vesper]

Futureman, I agree. I'm not angry at Modest Mouse for signing to a major - I'm just pointing out that "epitome of an indie band" seems like a lofty statement considering the band in question.

[dola]

I'm glad you've all agreed that they are not the "epitome of an indie band", as the strawman I quoted put it, but that wasn't the point. My problem is that over the years more than a couple of their songs have questioned (some more obliquely than others) the consequences our particularly American automobile culture. This doesn't smack anyone as being totally hypocritical? What planet am I on?

Johansen and Vesper: I've taken a break from waxing philosophic and nostalgic and stumbled across an article in last year's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1908-2002Jun5&notFound=true) to see if the results are there. Turns out, they are! Just using common sense, why do companies spend more money liscensing obscure songs than they would making cheap jingles? Do you think Volkswagon has the "youngest demographic of all foreign automakers in the United States" because the prospect of owning a descendant of Hitler's 'people car' is so appealing?

Somehow I doubt that it's between washing dishes and signing to Sony for Mr. Brock.

[johansen smith]

people in my class (it's true folks, I'm one of them) buy VWs because of the image they present in their commercials of young, well-off financially hipsters enjoying the vehicle in well-shot/designed commercials that appeal to our asthetic principles, be it thru music or the art direction and camera editing. people DON'T buy VWs because they like that ELO song.

[vesper]

Johansen has beaten me to it again.

It's the over-all image of owning said car, not a particular song that is used in the advertisement. Pinning a market's success on only one factor is faulty at best. It's the entire package.

And I never took MM's lyrics to be about the american-automobile culture, but rather to be about gentrification, urban sprawl and industrialization among countless other observations and emotions. Sure, cars all tie into that, but they still aren't necessarily the same thing.

[tinobeat]

also, keep in mind that it isn't the band that sells the song to an advertiser. What the band does is license the song to company that stockpiles songs and artists, and keeps an archive so that ad agencies can pick. So if a band is selling their songs for advertising, it means they're agreeing to have their songs in ads in general, and doesn't necessarily mean that Isaac Brock himself had to clear a song to be used in a particular commercial. I don't know how it works exactly, but I'm sure a contract with Epic involves giving the rights to songs over to potential commercial uses.

so ironic or hypocritical or whatever, it doesn't necessarily mean that Isaac himself cleared it. when a band's on a major label there's far greater forces at work than just a single artist's decision...

[dola]

Thanks Tinobeat, that's what I figured but hoped wasn't the case. Must be a shitty game when you need to give other entities carte blache to use your art however they see fit. But hey, no one wants to have to wash dishes now! That's been going on forever though. Picasso didn't want to have to wait tables his whole life - so Franco gets to appropriate a "Guernica" or two. So what?

Johansen and Vesper miss the forest for the trees once again.

well-shot/designed commercials that appeal to our asthetic principles, be it thru music or the art direction and camera editing. people DON'T buy VWs because they like that ELO song.

You're contradicting yourself. Is that ELO song a factor or isn't it? They don't buy a car soley based on a song, I never said it was as simple as that. It is the entire package, and the chosen music plays a major role in crafting the right personality; that the car and the car makers are insiders of some kind, safe enough to supplement with your own image.

Vesper, I don't have all their albums, what song(s) is about gentrification? I'd love to hear it. As it is, i'm stuck with their bullshit about sea levels rising and convenient parking being way back, way back.

[vesper]

As far as gentrification goes, I look more towards Ugly Cassanova - Isaac Brock's side project. The lyrics are a bit more abstract, but the overall tone is one of loss, disenfranchisement, encroachment, etc.

It's good to see that we agree, however a statement like thisYOU CANNOT WRITE SONGS LAMENTING URBAN SPRAWL, BEACH EROSION AND ALL TYPES OF OTHER MODERN BULLSHIT AND THEN SHILL FOR NISSAN YOU DISAPPOINTING MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!! seems to suggest that you are only focusing on one factor: the music hawking the commercial. That is where the discrepancy came. Now that we all know it isn't the case, I suppose the thread can end peacefully.

[p.a. beaumonty]

I'll agree with Tinobeat. I doubt Brock had much say regarding the transaction (or much right to the dividends).

I'm more curious about the McDonald's (?!) commercial feauring the Shins a while back. Being on SubPop, I assume they had more control over the dealings.



McDonald's!!!