From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V11 #107 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, April 20 2005 Volume 11 : Number 107 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Best albums in the world....ever. [Bernie Mojzes ] Grossly Mis-Used Songs [RavFlight@aol.com] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [Sue Trowbridge ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs ["Robert Field" ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white)] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [David Liebson ] RE: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [Christy Horne ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [robert bristow-johnson ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [Josh Burnett ] The name Find Me Sampler... ["Xenu's Sister" ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [Graeme Mair ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [RavFlight@aol.com] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs ["Xenu's Sister" ] Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs [Ken Blake ] For the frothing Tori geeks... [Lame Chicago Ecto ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:16:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: Best albums in the world....ever. the "top 100" are at http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/G/greatest/albums/results.html of course, whenever a popular poll is taken, the results are always heavily skewed toward the present, but the SDR (signal to dreck ratio) is actually surprisingly high for this sort of compilation. notably missing is miles davis' "kind of blue." the presense of kate bush and nick drake in the top 100 clearly makes this a non-US list (the vast majority of whom have never heard of either of them). for those who enjoy lists, wxpn here in philly did a "885 greatest songs" list. http://www.xpn.org/885_GSAT.php brni On Tue, 19 Apr 2005, Adam K wrote: > Over here, TV channel 4 recently ran the results of its viewers poll for > its top 100 albums....ever. An impossible task, one would think, but > never underestimate the short-term memory of your Brit music listener. > I don't know, exactly, what the brief was, and only tuned in for an hour > of the four-hour countdown, enough to see Joni Mitchell's Blue, Patti > Smith's Horses and Dylan's Blood on the Tracks nestling in the 50s, just > below the music journalists' fave The Libertines. I also saw that they > roped in such luminaries as Katie Melua to discourse on the artists > involved. This was an harbinger, I guess, of things to come. > > I can't find the total list, but the top 20 are at > http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/11919.html. > > For those that can't be bothered (a bit like me, really) number one was > Radiohead's OK Computer. When I heard this, I thought it could have > been a lot worse. And then heard that, in the entire 100, there was > only one Bowie album (go on, guess) and, at no. 17, Led Zeppelin's only > entry, album 4, gets beaten out by .....Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little > Pill. Not to mention Oasis and Guns N Roses. > > Disturbing, but not surprising, I guess. These things never reflect the > true greatness of the item being listed, just it's place in the > nostalgic heart of the people voting. There's never a long-term, > big-picture view. > > But it could have been worse. > > adam k. > - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. www.livejournal.com/~brni ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:44:31 EDT From: RavFlight@aol.com Subject: Grossly Mis-Used Songs I'm currently writing an article about my hatred for the mis-use or just plain ignoring of both a song's meaning and intent..and I'm wondering if anyone here has any good examples. I know that for me, the next time I hear the 'stalker ode' of "Every Breath You Take" by the Police played as a couples slow dance at a wedding, I am going to go kidnap the DJ and force him to tell me what he was thinking. "American Woman" by the Guess Who, which is clearly a song standing up AGAINST the song's title character has been used by at LEAST 3 companies (Gatorade, Nike, and Tommy) as an ode to American Women. For heaven's sake, the opening lines are "American Woman, get away from me." (On a side note, the 'American woman' in the title is actually the statue of liberty, after the Guess Who were turned away at the border due to a drug charge.) Princess Cruise Lines has adopted the Iggy Pop song "Lust For Life" to promote their family fun cruise packages...despite the fact that the song is actually about heroin use. My favorite or recent days is that Circuit City has started to use the Cars song "Just What I Needed" because the chorus line matches their new slogan...but actually CUT the song off at the line "I needed someone to bleed.", which is a nice little ironic comment on consumer/corporate culture. So I'd love to hear some more examples of grossly mis-used songs that either focus on the beat, or a repeated line in the chorus, but totally ignore the songs real meaning...either in ads or movies or just in walkaround life. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:18:31 -0700 From: Sue Trowbridge Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs On 4/19/05, RavFlight@aol.com wrote: > I'm currently writing an article about my hatred for the mis-use or just > plain ignoring of both a song's meaning and intent..and I'm wondering if anyone > here has any good examples. I think the all-time classic example is Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," which was chosen by the Reagan campaign as a theme song despite lyrics like, "Got in a little hometown jam/ So they put a rifle in my hand/ Sent me off to a foreign land/ To go and kill the yellow man." Not surprisingly, Springsteen put a stop to that pretty quickly, but I saw him in concert a couple times during that era, and there were lots of people waving little American flags and hootin' and hollerin' whenever he played the song. And Wrangler jeans used John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" in an ad -- well, they used the lines "Some folks are born made to wave the flag/ Ooh, they're red, white and blue." Of course, the song is a bitter commentary on the class system during the Vietnam war era, in which the "senator's son" and the "millionaire's son" were able to get out of serving in the military while the lower classes were used as cannon fodder. I'm not sure if the people who came up with that campaign were extremely cynical or just missed the point. - --Sue T. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:16:24 -0400 From: "Robert Field" Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs I'm probably begging for vilification, but I always found it ironic that the hymn sung during the second collection at my church is "take our bread." - ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:44 PM Subject: Grossly Mis-Used Songs > I'm currently writing an article about my hatred for the mis-use or just > plain ignoring of both a song's meaning and intent..and I'm wondering if > anyone > here has any good examples. > > I know that for me, the next time I hear the 'stalker ode' of "Every > Breath > You Take" by the Police played as a couples slow dance at a wedding, I am > going > to go kidnap the DJ and force him to tell me what he was thinking. > > "American Woman" by the Guess Who, which is clearly a song standing up > AGAINST the song's title character has been used by at LEAST 3 companies > (Gatorade, > Nike, and Tommy) as an ode to American Women. For heaven's sake, the > opening > lines are "American Woman, get away from me." (On a side note, the > 'American > woman' in the title is actually the statue of liberty, after the Guess Who > were > turned away at the border due to a drug charge.) > > Princess Cruise Lines has adopted the Iggy Pop song "Lust For Life" to > promote their family fun cruise packages...despite the fact that the song > is > actually about heroin use. > > My favorite or recent days is that Circuit City has started to use the > Cars > song "Just What I Needed" because the chorus line matches their new > slogan...but actually CUT the song off at the line "I needed someone to > bleed.", which is > a nice little ironic comment on consumer/corporate culture. > > So I'd love to hear some more examples of grossly mis-used songs that > either > focus on the beat, or a repeated line in the chorus, but totally ignore > the > songs real meaning...either in ads or movies or just in walkaround life. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:22:50 -0500 From: kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white) Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs Hi, CSI's theme song is The Who's "Who Are You? The show is about the mystery of who did what. The song is about asking a person who does he think he is and includes the line, " Who the [bleep] are you?" Some bank or other big institution used the hippie anthem The Chambers Brothers', "Time has Come Today". bye, KrW I'm Peter Pan! I'm perpetually young!! OW!! What's wrong with my back? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:16:51 -0700 (PDT) From: David Liebson Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs The number one example, for me, has to be Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA", misused all over the place. Check out the demo version on his "18 tracks" to hear the song without the sarcasm. I think Melissa Etheridge's "All American Girl" is another good one. This one seems to be chronically misused during major network Olympic athlete profiles. Go Figure. On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 RavFlight@aol.com wrote: > So I'd love to hear some more examples of grossly mis-used songs that either > focus on the beat, or a repeated line in the chorus, but totally ignore the > songs real meaning...either in ads or movies or just in walkaround life. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 13:09:53 -0700 From: Christy Horne Subject: RE: Grossly Mis-Used Songs I still get a giggle when I see middle America doing the YMCA. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs From: kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white) Date: Tue, April 19, 2005 3:22 pm To: ecto@smoe.org (That warm and fuzzy [place]) Hi, CSI's theme song is The Who's "Who Are You? The show is about the mystery of who did what. The song is about asking a person who does he think he is and includes the line, " Who the [bleep] are you?" Some bank or other big institution used the hippie anthem The Chambers Brothers', "Time has Come Today". bye, KrW I'm Peter Pan! I'm perpetually young!! OW!! What's wrong with my back? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:59:48 -0400 From: robert bristow-johnson Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs on 04/19/2005 14:44, RavFlight@aol.com at RavFlight@aol.com wrote: > "American Woman" by the Guess Who, which is clearly a song standing up > AGAINST the song's title character has been used by at LEAST 3 companies > (Gatorade, Nike, and Tommy) as an ode to American Women. For heaven's sake, > the opening lines are "American Woman, get away from me." American Woman was a metaphor for the U.S. itself (sitting next to the Canadian "Man") that made reference to some of the "sparkle" that the U.S. holds in Canadian's eyes, but the entirety of the U.S. personality was (and is) disgusting to many Canadians. it was essentially an anti-war (Vietnam) song from a Canadian rock band. i was in high school and got to see the Guess Who perform in Fargo ND back when Cummings had really long hair and Kurt Winter was passed a joint from someone in the crowd and toked on it in front of everyone, cops included. (those were the days. long before "Star Baby" and other later abortions.) - -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 13:01:37 -0700 From: Ethan Straffin Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs Add "The One I Love" by R.E.M., which some people still insist on viewing as a romantic tribute when even the most cursory glance at the lyrics reveals it to be anything but. Ethan RavFlight@aol.com wrote: >I'm currently writing an article about my hatred for the mis-use or just >plain ignoring of both a song's meaning and intent..and I'm wondering if anyone >here has any good examples. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 13:16:03 PDT From: Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs Volkswagon, while simultaneously introducing the world to Nick Drake, invites us to take a death-ride in their Cabrio; as the song they used was Nick Drakes' Pink Moon: the song a reasonably transparent metaphor for death. "And none of you stand so tall Pink moon gonna get you all" .... - - Russ _______________________________________________________________ NW Nexus WebMail - powered by NOCC, http://nocc.sourceforge.net ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:14:38 -0500 From: Josh Burnett Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs On Apr 19, 2005, at 1:44 PM, RavFlight@aol.com wrote: > So I'd love to hear some more examples of grossly mis-used songs that > either > focus on the beat, or a repeated line in the chorus, but totally > ignore the > songs real meaning...either in ads or movies or just in walkaround > life. Perhaps the most obvious example is using the Beatles' "Revolution" to sell sneakers. Also, a few years ago, a car company (I don't recall which) used an instrumental portion of the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" in a car commercial. Oh, and I remember reading about a radio DJ playing The Cure's "Killing An Arab" during the (first) Gulf War as an anti-Arab anthem. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:28:07 -0700 (PDT) From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: The name Find Me Sampler... I got this inquiry in email, and thought maybe someone else might wonder too. > Incidentally, why does everyone call it the "Find Me > Sampler"? I've not seen anything official naming it so. > When i first heard about the disc it didn't have a name... Hi, you're right, it doesn't have an official name. Since the album is called Find Me, and this is an 8-song sampler of the songs on Find Me, I take it upon myself to call it the Find Me Sampler (could as well, and maybe more properly be Find Me sampler) rather than "The CD containing 8 songs from the upcoming album Find Me". :) It's just easier. Could be called, let's see... Find Me non-album Pre-album Release Not Really Find Me Not Yet Find Me Not Find Me But Contains The Song Find Me Happy's Teaser More Really Wonderful Songs From Happy Cool Cover Thing Not Enough Really Wonderful Songs From Happy It's About Time More Great Songs That Only A Few Hundred People Will Ever Hear (any more names for the sampler?) V __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:21:31 +0100 From: Graeme Mair Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs On 19 Apr 2005, at 7:44 pm, RavFlight@aol.com wrote: > 'm currently writing an article about my hatred for the mis-use or just > plain ignoring of both a song's meaning and intent..and I'm wondering > if anyone > here has any good examples. Jamie Cullun has done a cover version of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" which I feel fits your criteria exactly. Jamie completely ignores the meaning and intent behind the lyrics and renders it as some wishy washy cocktail bar schmaltz pap. Jimi's original and Jamie's travesty Nuff said Graeme ps this is my first post here so hello everyone! o__ o__ o__ o__ _.>/ _ _.>/ _ _.>/ _ _.>/ _ (_) \(_) (_) \(_) (_) \(_) (_) \(_) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 19:25:42 EDT From: RavFlight@aol.com Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs In a message dated 4/19/2005 4:11:43 PM Pacific Standard Time, fuzzytnth3@mac.com writes: Jamie Cullun has done a cover version of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" which I feel fits your criteria exactly. Jamie completely ignores the meaning and intent behind the lyrics and renders it as some wishy washy cocktail bar schmaltz pap. Jimi's original and Jamie's travesty Nuff said Graeme ps this is my first post here so hello everyone! o__ o__ o__ o__ _.>/ _ _.>/ _ _.>/ _ _.>/ _ (_) \(_) (_) \(_) (_) \(_) (_) \(_) Well, covers is a very very distint WING of this subject that I'm going nowhere near at the moment, but for the tidal wave of things I would say in it's regard. Covers walk a razors edge. Obviously, covering a song so closely to the original version makes one wonder what the POINT is of simply hollowing out someone else's art. However, it also requires a kind of reverence for the original...an understanding of the passion behind it, while still adding your own level to it. Jimi Hendrix's verison of Dylan's All Along The Watchtower, Jeff Buckley's verions of Cohen's Hallelujah, Every cover Johnny Cash ever did. But again, I'm trying not to get into this, because I'm still very interested in the responses to the original topic :) hehe ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:53:38 -0700 (PDT) From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs - --- Graeme Mair wrote: > Jamie Cullun has done a cover version of Jimi Hendrix's "The > Wind > Cries Mary" which I feel fits your criteria exactly. > > Jamie completely ignores the meaning and intent behind the > lyrics and > renders it as some wishy washy cocktail bar schmaltz pap. That reminds me of Bobby Darin's swingy, zazzy version of "Mack the Knife." I grew up with that song playing on the radio, and it's one of those oldies that I can automatically "sing" along with (mostly phonetically, not really paying attention to the actual words), and yet, it wasn't until I as a grownup that I realized the song was very creepy, and about a serial killer! If I had been old enough to be familiar with the song in Kurt Weill's context and then heard Darin's version, I'd think his was wishy washy cocktail bar schmaltz pap too. I'd be appalled. I'm appalled now, but that's because I've heard so many other versions besides Darin's now. It's amazing that it was a hit, come to think of it. That's blatant subversiveness or complete dumb luck. Of course, it depended on the masses (like me) not paying attention to the lyrics. I'm not defending Cullum, who I haven't heard because I have no interest in hearing anyone do that to Hendrix, it just crossed my mind. > this is my first post here so hello everyone! Welcome to ecto Graeme! Vickie __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:05:20 -0500 From: Ken Blake Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs Then there was the Windows 98 launch using the Rolling Stones "Start me up". Here are a few lines: If you start me up I'll never stop You make a grown man cry You, you make a dead man cum I'm wondering if it wouldn't be harder to find songs that were actually used appropriately in a major commercial / product launch. Ken ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 18:25:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Lame Chicago Ecto Subject: For the frothing Tori geeks... Review of last Friday's (4/15) Chicago show and interview: http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/search/mmx-g1m1rv3va.11apr17,1,1555471.story http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/music/mmx-050413-musictoriamos,0,1609756.story?coll=mmx-music_heds __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:24:24 -0400 From: "Michael Quinn" Subject: RE: Grossly Mis-Used Songs Nitpicking maybe but the show is really more about identifying unknown criminals through scientific means. I think the song is really more a reference to them having the evidence and trying to figure out who the criminal is through that. Not saying it is totally appropriate but the part of the lyrics they sample do fit the show IMO [including the "Who the *bleep* are you?!" when they get frustrated. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Grossly Mis-Used Songs From: kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white) Date: Tue, April 19, 2005 3:22 pm To: ecto@smoe.org (That warm and fuzzy [place]) Hi, CSI's theme song is The Who's "Who Are You? The show is about the mystery of who did what. The song is about asking a person who does he think he is and includes the line, " Who the [bleep] are you?" Some bank or other big institution used the hippie anthem The Chambers Brothers', "Time has Come Today". bye, KrW I'm Peter Pan! I'm perpetually young!! OW!! What's wrong with my back? ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V11 #107 ***************************