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For Rock Bands, Selling Out Isn't What It Used to Be
(Page 3 of 5)
Ad agencies, particularly the creative departments, tend to be
filled with people in their 30's with adventurous, nonmainstream tastes -- exactly the kind of people who
might listen to Moby or the Apples in Stereo. Barnes, 33, is a perfect example: a musician and
former college radio disc jockey who came of age during the 1990's success of alternative rock and
remains convinced that underground tastes can translate to the masses. The music in any ad has to
establish an emotion, but it does not have to sell itself, to triumph as foreground. This opens the door
to music that could never thrive in the marketplace, and so to the idiosyncrasy of personal taste --
increasingly, to the tastes of people like Barnes. When the creative directors on the Sony ad planned to
commission music from a commercial jingle house, Barnes suggested the Apples, a cheap alternative.
Robert and Hilarie found their conversations with Barnes a surprising education in the ad world, how
different it was from the bureaucracy of the music business. A creative director who liked Moby or the
Apples in Stereo could just put them in the mix. The contrast hit Robert hard: "Radio is controlled by this
huge industry. Ads are controlled by a few creative people. They probably did art in college. Maybe they
were college radio programmers."
And there was another, broader view: no matter how punk you thought you were, so much of what you
did was about selling, whether yourselves or your T-shirts. Even the band's Web site, its 24-7
connection with the community of its fans, ran ads. Why was this any worse? "It's more of a sellout to go
to a commercial radio station and kiss someone's [expletive]," Robert says. "It's more of a
sellout to do cheesy meet-and-greets for some major label. And having to work another job that takes
all your energy from your music is even more selling out."
 o understand how entangled the connections between underground
music and advertising have become, consider the Volkswagen commercial that used the ethereal ballad
"Pink Moon," by Nick Drake, an obscure English folk rocker who died in 1974 after an overdose of
antidepressants and who in the 1990's developed a cult following among indie-music fans. The
Volkswagen campaign, created by a Boston agency called Arnold Worldwide, has been among the most
adventurous in its use of obscure or forgotten music, pulling songs from performers as disparate as
the jazz iconoclast Charles Mingus and the German new wave band Trio. To shoot the Drake spot, the
agency hired Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who are known for their trippy, award-winning music
videos for the alternative bands Korn, Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Such crossovers
between making videos and making ads are common, further blurring the distinction between the two.
The original plan was to use the song "Under the Milky Way," by the Australian post-punk band the
Church. But Lance Jensen and Shane Hutton, the writers, couldn't get "Pink Moon" out of their heads.
During the edit, they tried it with the film. It clicked. The agency put the ad on the VW.com Web site, with a
link for people to buy Nick Drake's CD online. Sales of the album jumped from 6,000 copies a year to
74,000. "He sold out without knowing it," Faris says.
 ny discussion of the nuances of selling out should rev.finally get down
to money. The finances of a working rock band like the Apples in Stereo are far from glamorous. The Apples
do not have a manager, and after a brief flirtation with a major label, they record solely for SpinART, a
tiny label in Manhattan. For their most recent album, they received an advance of $30,000 to cover the costs
of recording and pay the band. Though rock fantasies are made of truckloads of royalties, in reality musicians
more often live off their advances, beholden to their labels by paper debt. Royalties kick in only after the label
recoups the advance, plus assorted other expenses.
Continued
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