Diplomatic Corps Rock Fest

As it happens, not too long ago (on March 1, 2006) I wrote:

"It bears mentioning that reasons for corporate patronage also include a desire or necessity to curry political favor in another country, as Lorenzo de' Medici is known to have done. By investing or contributing in another nation's arts and artists, one possibly wins favor with its members of government. For American and European interests (seeking foreign industrial contracts), it may seem like good strategy to spend dollars developing tomorrow's Chinese rock stars and East Indian 'gangsta' rappers. Likewise, we may one day witness Asian governments sponsoring indigenous African and mid eastern cultural activities in a bid to compete for those country's petrol resources".

So, it was with no shortage of interest that only two weeks later –in the November 12th issue of the New York Times– I discovered an article titled: The New Ambassadors.

In 'The New Ambassadors', writer Jeff Leeds reports that several foreign governments have begun sponsoring their own local popular artists in an attempt to spread goodwill as they tour abroad –in this case, 'abroad' meaning the United States.

Leeds writes:

"In a global economy that is blurring geographic borders, more and more nations view intellectual property — films, software and the like — as valuable commodities, easily transferred exports that can sell in previously inaccessible markets. That includes intellectual property like pop-punk or death metal... One way or another, between the musicians who are representing their countries abroad and the government officials who are seeking out and signing new talent, the international trend has forced all parties to invent new rules, and new roles, in situations that none of them could have anticipated."

Obviously, I agree –excepting the idea that such a 'situation' could not have been anticipated, for it most certainly was, six hundred years ago by Lorenzo de' Medici.

Series: Audio As Added Value

Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

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Like this topic? Explore the May 2006 ADDED VALUE AUDIO article from the Critical Noise Archive:

ADDED VALUE AUDIO

Synergy = Energy

Over the years I’ve noted CDs packaged with boxes of cereal and cleaning fluids, among other household items. We have also seen custom CDs distributed by the Gap, Pottery Barn, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret and Williams-Sonoma. Interestingly, a company named LidRock even found a way to turn fountain drink lids into a functional Mini-CD or DVD disc capable of delivering music, video, and games.

In 2003 LidRock launched with a four million unit promotion for Big3 indie label singer Rachel Farris. Rachel Farris is by no means a household name today, but one can hardly call one marketing event a campaign. Also, keep in mind that LidRock wasn't using the technology to promote the artist, but rather using Farris' material to demonstrate proof of concept to potential corporate clients.

I propose such promotions work better when the artist doesn't simply represent available content, but when the advertiser and the entertainer form a synergistic relationship, and each represents one half of a real strategic alliance for the other.

Some people don’t like the idea that artists might attempt to win fans from the back of box of soap or oatmeal, but this concept goes well beyond detergent and oats. I think it could even portend a future music industry where artists are at least in part supported by patronage rather than the deals record companies currently offer them.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Self-Referential Jingles Are Not Content

In the mid-nineties we saw the idea of music promotions updated and repackaged, in the form of promotional CD–ROMS and DVDs, usually offering electronic games, software and video content. Most of these give-aways went from box to garbage, but some were received with popular interest, as when in 1996 when General Mills inserted a free CD-ROM into each box of Chex cereal, which contained Chex Quest, an electronic game created using ID software’s DOOM engine.

More recently, in 2002, General Mills plastered the cover of eight million boxes of cereal (including: Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams, Honey Nut Chex and Cinnamon Toast Crunch) with promotional DVDs touting Columbia titles "Bear in the Big Blue House" and "The Muppets."

However, the Kellogg/Disney/Pixar Industrial Complex fell short with 'Buzz Lightyear’s Exclusive Music CD', which was packaged in every box of their Buzz Blast cereal concoction. One online writer unfortunately described the promo as “3 awful songs extolling the virtues of Buzz Lightyear.”

The lesson here is that collateral produces sales when advertisers go beyond gimmicks to create truly engaging content.

Self-referential long-play jingles are ads, not content. No one finds them entertaining but the people who make them and kitsch collectors twenty years after the fact.

So why not offer real songs, current hits; or original non-promotional content featuring select artist/s (suitable to collaborative promotional experience with a given product); or even Branded Mixes? At least, then an advertiser can promote the content in the usual media outlets, downplaying its role as added value, up playing its role as a collectible.

One then arrives at the desired result: Built-in authenticity –not to mention guaranteed Word-Of-Mouth buzz you just can't get from any other so-called box prize. Johnny Quest PF Secret Decoder Rings exempted, but of course!

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time

From the beginning of my career as a music producer of television and radio commercials, I sometimes received calls from consumers who wanted to purchase an album that contained the music they heard on a given spot. However, album production is not a general compliment to spot production. So, there never was a product to recommend people buy –unless they were referring to a pop track that an ad agency had licensed in lieu of commissioning an original underscore. In fact, most of the time the music one hears on a TV or Radio commercial rarely extends beyond the thirty or sixty seconds specifically created for the ad.

As a result:

1) A given intellectual property is limited from possible secondary use by simple virtue of its length.
2) Resulting inability to leverage music into extended customer experience (away from the TV).
3) Diminished ROI by neglecting opportunity (based on demand) to create a for-sale entertainment unit (or a Point-of-Purchase gift that may generate future sales).

Considering this, I began as early as 1994 pitching the concept of creating entertainment collateral. At the time I initially conceived of this collateral as 'gifts' redeemable upon purchase. For instance, buy a car, and here's a CD you can play on the drive home, et al. The idea would be to produce the music in tandem with the production of our primary commissions (being TV/Radio commercial, web site, theme park or electronic game scores). However –regrettably– at the time I couldn't convince one account to allocate the resources required to test this concept, although all seemed to think it was great idea (for someone else to do).

Regardless, the concept stuck with me. In March of 2001 the online marketer's magazine Clickz published an article I wrote on the subject of Sonic Branding. In it I argued the merit of this concept and other such alliances; and I suggested the following:

If music in a marketing context does its job, it will inform as well as entertain. And if consumers –that is, your audience– call the company switchboard and ask who wrote the music and where they can buy a CD of it, then maybe you and your client should actually produce a promotional CD that consumers can take home and listen to whenever they want...If you've produced a CD, for instance, folks will listen to it while they eat, work out, make love, and your company will be the underscore to their lives. Oats may be oats, but if I'm making babies to your music, then chances are my babies will be eating your oats.

Now, I was by no means the originator of this idea:

In the nineteen-seventies Post –and other cereal companies– packaged singles with their Super Sugar Crisp product. Many such promotions were dreadful (at least to adult ears). However, the Sugar Bears “You Are The One" continues to enjoy happy memories from enduring fans of the song to this day. Why? –Because the song framed an episode in many people’s youth. Their collective recollection has essentially been wrapped in its own soundtrack, brought to you by Post. And that's why kids of all ages still think the Post Super Sugar Crisp Bear IS THE MAN!.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Latest Headlines: Entertainment Today

In related news, the Compact Disc was laid to rest this morning at a funeral in Bremerton, Washington, the birthplace of its inventor, James T. Russell.

Meanwhile, on the Velvet Rope, an online music forum known for its contributors from various segments of the entertainment industry, pundits were debating not just how to resurrect the disc itself, but they were also trying to figure out a way to hold the discussion in a medium that did not require the use of any computer technology.

One respondent is said to have suggested meeting at a bar, where they could discuss exactly how much cardboard a new Led Zeppelin Box set would require before consumers considered the package a collectors item. Unfortunately, most were unavailable to attend as they had prior obligations requiring the services of a television set, an iPod, a DVD player, a mobile phone, a PDA or an electronic game. Those who did attend finally found a suitable venue where the music would not overwhelm the urgent conversation.

The Compact Disc Is Dead

Digital Music News recently (October/2006) reported that EMI Music chairman and chief executive Alain Levy called the CD "dead.” He said: "The CD as it is now is dead, but a new version with added value will live on… There will always be a need for the physical product. You're not going to give your mother-in-law an iTunes download for Christmas…”

To my mind, it depends how you define 'physical product', 'added value'; and how you contextualize the download. If by 'added value' he means more digital media on the disc itself, then in my opinion neither Mr. Levy nor his team has quite thought the problem completely through. There is no 'added value' in content that one will eventually be able to download from the web (for free). Therefore, moving forward, 'added value' must indicate something other than elements found on the CD. We may as well dispense with the CD altogether, and invest our time defining an entirely different physical medium. Instead, let's think of the audio itself (and any other added content traditionally distributed on the disc) as the added value element, which we only make available with the purchase of Artist Branded Merchandise (created in or from a non-digital medium).

For instance: You might give your mother-in-law a pair of mittens, and they might come with a coupon redeemable for an Elvis Presley Christmas Album download. Even value-added CDs are just so much packaging, and you can't beat the value of a nice warm pair of mittens, especially if Elvis's handsome mug is embroidered on them.

What is unfortunate for the music Industry, is that digital audio technology is a catalog killer. Barring a hardware malfunction, consumers now only have to buy music once in a lifetime, and often they don’t pay for it all. Whereas, twenty years ago I may have duplicated several purchases in different formats in order to have my favorite music available on vinyl, 8-track and cassette –and I actually bought one artist's Double LP vinyl set twice because I wore out the records.

There is still a magnitude of worldwide customers converting to digital audio, notably in the Southern Hemisphere where analog formats are still prevalent. However, in North America and Europe, the days of repeat purchases (in order to accommodate different play back devices or even simple wear-and-tear) are very much over. Not to mention the fact that neither my kids nor yours will ever have to buy much in the way of old catalog recordings because they stand to inherit their parent’s hard drives.

I can already imagine entertainment companies sending lobbyists to Washington to mandate the destruction of media storage devices upon an individual's death under the auspices of simultaneously fighting piracy and protecting privacy.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Gotham Artists

When the World Trade Event occurred, 911, or whatever you want to call it, we stood on the roof of 21st and Broadway where we owned a music production company. My business partner, Michael, and I had gotten to work early because we had two tasks to get done before the start of the business day. I think we were working on one music project for McCann-Erickson, an ad agency, and another for Sesame Street. Then another early bird neighbor on our floor ran in and told us that one of the towers had been hit. We were far enough away to consider ourselves safe, but after the second tower was hit, it felt like planes might be falling out of the sky at random, and you didn't know if the next one would drop right where you were standing. I recall seeing specks tumble out of the tower, every few seconds it seemed like. I turned to Michael and confirmed what I assumed we were both thinking, "Y'know, those are people.”

I called my parents and a couple of friends for information, because our TV reception was intermittent. It was a couple of hours before we understood that what we had witnessed was a terrorist attack. The first reports we got were that an accident had occurred between a jet and a smaller private plane. And as dramatic as the scene was to behold, no one stayed on the roof very long before going back downstairs to continue working. I think that's what most New Yorkers did, so used to being part of the machine. I even called a messenger service and asked them if they were still delivering packages to midtown (had to get that package to McCann) –and of course they were! It seemed like nothing, short of the world's end, was going to stop our great metropolis from working.

Among others, we shared the floor with an architect who drew a diagram on a piece of paper explaining why the towers, although injured, would not fall, he said. Afterwards I went back up to the roof in a curious attempt to fit what I had just been told with the ominous black cavity that now bore through the top of the north tower.

And as I stood there, the south tower fell. But I didn't see it, because I experienced its disappearance almost like watching a magic trick: First there was a tall building. Then a puff of smoke. And as the smoke dissipated I realized I could not possibly be seeing what I was seeing, so I strained my eyes, looking for the building that was supposed to be, but of course, it was no longer there. Instead in its place, the unimaginable, nothing, and I too, also felt hollow inside.

I ran downstairs and told my everybody within hearing to stop working, that one of the towers had fallen. Amazing, maybe some people were in shock, but it seemed to me that even then, a few were reluctant to push aside the work at hand.

Later, when the second tower fell, the following words peel off my brain and burn themselves into my consciousness:

Two arms
Stretched towards God
They pulled them down
And our spirits with them

My girlfriend and I lived down by Washington Square Park, within the border cordoned off by the military, and well within the sad and acrid smell of the two broken buildings. Our next door neighbor worked for Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. and he lost hundreds of friends and colleagues. Another neighbor who lived across the hall, David Crafa, was not only the owner of The Cutting Room Recording Studio, but also a welder, it turns out. As such, he had been called down to work in Ground Zero in order to assist in the search for survivors. And I, too, like so many others I knew –artists, musicians, singers– wanted to do something to help, but what could we possibly offer?

A song to help heal our souls, and our wounded city, too, perhaps?

So on October 3, 2001, myself, and a few of my friends, all of us session musicians and music production types, assembled at The Cutting Room Recording Studios in order to record a memorial song. It sounds insignificant in retrospect, but when I think back to those times, I realized the writing process was part of working through my own grief. And I think those who participated in the recording also saw in it a way to move through their own pain.

I wrote the following passage in the liner notes of the memorial CD:

Via television broadcasts spanning the globe, the entire world was a witness to the incomprehensible events of September 11th, 2001. A shared feeling of utter senselessness permeated the planet the moment towers fell. Our initial shock was immediately followed by frantic questions: Where are my loved ones? Where are my friends? Did I know anyone who worked at The World Trade Center? Did I know anyone traveling from Boston or Newark that day? Whom do I know in Washington? At the end of it all, another question surfaced: What could we do to help? We are simply musicians, singers, and artists who happened to have made our lives in New York City and the surrounding areas. Understandably, the city needed more rescue workers at Ground Zero than musicians, and more welders than singers. Not being pop stars or famous movie actors, there seemed like little that we could do, except pray. Then, through the sheer effort and good will of so many kind people, a momentum started and we all found ourselves in a recording studio for one long day with an idea that we could help, and that we could do so by using our own modest talents... It’s the least we could do.

And at the time, it's all that I thought we could do.

'911' was originally posted in the old MP3.com site where it found a receptive audience, before CNET bought the domain name and dispensed with the assets circa December 2003.

In the beginning I also wanted to present 911 as a benefit song, and raise money for the American Red Cross. But in those days MP3.com priced all CDs, whether fully loaded or merely singles, at around $8.00 a unit. I tried to promote the music as best I could, but of course it was overpriced, and I was not experienced in other avenues of distribution. I personally bought one for everyone who participated, and I think our engineer's sister actually bought our only real sale. Naturally, for a couple of years after, I felt like our efforts, or rather mine specifically, amounted to little more than a well intentioned failure.

But then an amazing thing happened, around 2005, I started to get email from all over the world from people who wanted to catch up with me and tell me how much our song still continues to resonate for them.

And so today, I do feel believe that the 'Gotham Artists' tribute song actually did succeed in its mission of providing comfort and consolation, and that we did help a number of people get through that time, myself included, as it happens. For many, it turns out, this music served to make some sense of what once was and still is an incomprehensible thing. But then, that is what art does. Art provides context; it comforts the senses, and it puts one's brain and heart back into working order.

After that, a lot of what I was doing –producing music for TV commercials– seemed meaningless. And it took a while to bounce back. But I did, of course. The world didn't stop that day, and the city marches forward.

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The Original September 11, 2001 Memorial Song '911' can currently be heard by clicking on the following link:

Gotham Artists – 911

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These are the people who graciously gave their time, talent and resources in order to participate and performed under the auspices of 'Gotham Artists':

Drums: Joe Bonadio
Percussion: Erik Charlston
Electric Bass: Will Lee
Keyboards: Charles Giordano
Electric Guitar: Larry Saltzman
Strings: Sandra Park, Jungsun Yoo, Sarah Seiver, Eileen Moon, Krysztof Kuznik, Ann Kim
Singers: Craig Chang, Tod Cooper, Jo Davidson, Jenny Douglas-McRae, Tabitha Fair, Morley Kamen, Gary Morris, Jenni Muldaur, Jason Paige, Sophia Ramos, Eugene Ruffolo, Stephen Scarpulla
Singers contracted by Valerie W. Morris, Val's Artist Management
Strings and Orchestral Percussion contracted by Sandra Park.
Arranged by Tony Finno.
Engineered & Mixed by Michael Sweet/Blister Media
Asst. Engineer: Steve Schopp
Special Thanks to David Crafa who generously helped us with studio time and resources.

‘911’ was recorded and mixed 10/03/01 at The Cutting Room Recording Studios/NYC
Mastered by Larry Lachmann/Absolute Audio
CD Art & Promo Design by Quiet Man: Amy Taylor: Exec. Prod./Jason Sienkwicz: Designer†

†Special kudos to Design Creative Director, Amy Taylor, and Designer, Jason Sienkwicz, who's powerful design of the song title, '911', uses a sans serif font to create two translucent rectangles that reference the Towers as they once stood, and as I hope that they will continue to stand in our collective memory. The combination of the date, whose numerical result parallels the US emergency telephone number, and the twin tower iconography, all together, creates  a semiotic masterpiece which we are happy to employ as the logo for this music. Thanks Jason and Amy!

Update: The folks at Landor seem to think so, too:

 "Finding a balance between a compelling visual style and the proper tone and mood for the memorial was important. Combining the date with the building silhouettes creates an essential connection in people’s minds."

AI 03: Aural Stimuli & Influences

Do people 'mellow' as they mature, or are they actually returning to their 'roots' –turning their ears towards music whose melodic content is reminiscent of what they became acquainted with in early childhood –and regardless of whether or not they enjoyed it in their youth? Contrast the way you felt about your parent's music collection when you were young, for one instance, and the way you feel about it now:

Do you think you enjoy Sinatra or Chopin because you've acquired a level of sophistication that only comes with age? Or does this music appeal to you now because you were exposed to it long ago it at an impressionable age, while your parents played it for themselves?

Just what is the underlying impulse that makes you musically you? What’s at the sonic core of your soul? Maybe it’s Sesame Street? Maybe not –or maybe so! Personally, I think it’s whatever you were listening to before you reached your twelfth year.

Actually, I don't want to limit early 'sensory gathering' to mere listening alone. When I was a child I noticed sunlight flicker through trees, and I thought how one day I wanted to write music that sounded the way the light in that moment danced across the branches. So, I experienced a persuasive aural response to visual stimuli which I found not only entertaining, but it thereafter left a residual effect on the way I listen for music when I create it and generate it myself. What the eyes witnessed, the ears wanted to replicate. It was more than an influence, it produced a creative framework.

I once read a magazine article with some young rocker impressing upon the interviewer that his 'major' influences (dude) included Metallica and Nirvana. But I couldn’t help but think to myself: ‘Well, maybe you were influenced by Nirvana –but you got your mojo from Sesame Street.

And 'Metallica is to your soul what edging is to a Mother Goose granite counter top.'

One only has to consider how Carl Stalling's repertoire of Warner Brothers Cartoon Scores has shaped the inner ear of the latest generation of classical composers to realize that this must be at least somewhat true.


To read the complete Aural Intelligence Article, follow the links:

AI 01: Aural Intelligence
AI 02: AI Quotient
AI 03: Aural Stimuli & Influences

aural, music, sound

AI Quotient

When someone asks you to list your musical influences, they usually expect you to identify 'primary sources', that is artists and compositions that you consciously enjoy. After all who is really interested in what nursery rhymes you heard as a child? But, in fact, there's every reason to believe that one's underlying influences are those very same nursery rhymes, and not one's current list of favorite recording artists, for instance.

Of course, Americans who were born in the United States since at least 1980 have grown up listening to pop music from the day they were born. My friend, Andrew Hager, a composer who graduated from NYU’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, noted that for Baby Boomers, the bands of the sixties represented rebellious music, whereas today’s kids are lulled to sleep in their cribs while their mothers play Beatles tunes.

You might even argue that kids growing up today will understand rock’n’roll in an innate way their parents never did, because they grew up with the genre –within the genre– rather than discovered it as the innovators of the medium rolled it out to teenagers.

My own exposure to pop music came a little later than most Americans because not only did we live overseas until I was thirteen, but also at the time the places we lived were considered remote. We were lucky to have any kind of television programming, which when we did was never in English, and this was certainly before the birth of the Internet.

What accounts then for the diminishing interest in the music of early childhood, and the increasing enjoyment for other forms of music, sound, conversation, etc? Human beings by their very nature require variety. And Maturity begets a taste for more sophisticated forms of music than the simple melodies of nursery rhymes. Thus as we evolve, we become more sophisticated creatures, whether we intended to or not –and some would say jaded, as well.

Once exposed to variety, it follows that we will require more and more complex forms of communication/ stimulation to keep our minds engaged.

But I think the substratum upon which all this mental processing is built, the architecture of sound, your personal Aural Intelligence Quotient, if you will – is formed as a child and forever remains the filter through which all subsequent sonic experiences are interpreted.

How could it not be the case?