Devo has sold out!

[Archae]

When I heard a couple years ago that Devo was going to do a song for "The Powerpuff Girls Movie" I had some angst, but the song is good.

But now Devo has sold out totally.
A TV ad for Swiffer, using "Whip It's" music.

:argh:

[Chicago Democrat]

1. Money and exposure is good ..... period

Be happy for them

[Coventina]

2. I feel your pain

I'll never forget my shock at hearing a Jesus and Mary Chain song used in a Chevrolet commercial.

[tuvor]

8. London Calling for Jaguar

:mad:

[miss_kitty]

3. swiffer has been using that for ages

maybe it was just regional. and hey! who knows what they do with the money...when Chumbawumba allows their stuff to be used, they give that income to a good charity. and they are not the richest band on earth...

[utopian]

4. They've gotta eat

But I know what you mean. They just played Portland as part of a "One Hit Wonders" tour with bunch of shitty 80's bands. I wanted to see DEVO, bit I didn't want to suffer through the rest of it.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. Not everyone owns the rights to their songs.

So they may have nothing to do with it.

[scottcsmith]

6. No, they approved it

Ad Report Card from Slate.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

14. Fuck, really?

That's a shame. I hope the reverse is true for the Mary Chain.

[tuvor]

7. Devo was royally screwed by their record companies

I was aghast at first, but I can't really blame them.

Trivia: The whole song was rerecorded specifically for the commercial. Probably because Warner holds the rights to the recording, but not if it's a new performance.

More at: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.lasso?id=722

Trivia again: I heard part of "Gut Feeling" in that new Bill Murray movie, The Life Aquatic. Apparently Mark Mothersbaugh is scoring that flick.

Wear gaudy colours or avoid display!

[Khephra]

9. Exactly

I'm not a big fan of bands using songs for ads, but DEVO is one of the bands that was screwed over the most by their record company in the history of music.

BTW, they've sold songs as ads before.

Mark Mothersbaugh once said that they earned more for one Honda ad than all their albums/cds combined. It's not like they ever reached the point of say a band like the Rolling Stones who can't possibly need anymore money. They were effectively always a cult act.

Anyway, Mark is now doing tv and movie soundtracks and that's where he gets to do his real ART.

[tuvor]

10. I still listen to the old albums regularly.

Duty Now for the Future still holds up to this old fart's ears, although the electronics probably sound quite dated.

Way ahead of their time at first, but started getting boring around New Traditionalists. Still, they put out more great stuff than a lot of bands.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

15. I'm a big fan of his work on The Royal Tenenbaums.

[frylock]

13. mothersbaugh does all the soundtracks for wes anderson..

he's great!

[CanuckAmok]

17. Mothersbaugh has been writing commercials for years...

...as well as scoring movies, TV shows (Pee Wee's Playhouse, for one), and computer games.

Face it, Gen Xers, we're the new disposeable income demographic.

On the upside, nobody else is going to bother using "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" in an ad ever again.

"Lay eggs or give birth to live young, it's all the same"

[Bertha Venation]

11. Here's worse: Ketchup commercial using Carly Simon's "Anticipation."

There are a million of 'em out there. It really burns my cookies.

Tommy Hilfiger has sold out too (not that I much care...). In the grocery store today, I saw a guy wearing a Tommy t-shirt, with the usual recognizable blue/red design. But when I got closer to him, I saw the Pillsbury dough boy standing on the blue/red field, and the words read "Tummy Pokefinger."

[tuvor]

12. That one was the granddaddy of selling out for commercials

I'm sure I remember seeing that in the 70s.

[Swamp Rat]

16. Devo will always be cool.

I don't care how they earn their money. I'm a totally broke musician that would love ONE fucking commercial job. Do I like commercial art/music - fuck no! Do I like hearing Led Zeppelin in a Cadillac commercial? #T(@^(&*$!!!! NO! I can't make a dime playing classical guitar unless I play in Jackson Square or Café du Monde for change. I'd happily do a car commercial so that I could have enough to buy new clothes.

Mark Mothersbaugh, like thousands of others, is an artist worthy of Dick Cheney's salary. I saw Devo in the Saenger Theater on Canal St. in New Orleans when they first came out. The whole crowd was tripping their asses off when Mark Mothersbaugh and gang came out on conveyor belts emanating from classical Greek columns. Mark was one of the first to use a composit, body-less guitar (Steinberger) and he jumped into the audience jamming like Eddy Van Halen. It was a total freak-out because he was doing so many new things. A man in a chicken costume came out and did front flips over and over while a big screen played weird videos that occasionally melted into blurry colors. They gave such a good performance that I remember it 24 years later.

These guys deserve to be rich if anybody else does.

[CanuckAmok]

18. Trivia:

The man in the chicken suit was named "Spazz Attack", and he's in some of their videos, sans chicken suit.

[Swamp Rat]

21. OH YEAH! Spazz Attack!!!

Thanks!

[bbernardini]

19. BREAKING NEWS: Devo has been doing commercials for years!

Believe it or not, the majority of Devo members have been making music for commercials and films for years. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Swiffer folks hired their company (www.mutato.com) to make the commercial for them, and they hit upon the idea themselves.

Look at it this way: why not advance the message and mission of Devo in the most obvious way possible? The work Mark Mothersbaugh has done for "Rugrats" has introduced Devo to a very young audience. That can only be a force for good, in my book.

Remember, it's not the medium, it's the message.

[tuvor]

20. Don't forget the incidental music on Pee-Wee's Playhouse!

That show kicked ass in every way possible.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

22. Hello! Devo was a sellout from it's inception. Duh.

Mark Mothersbaugh writes the music for Rugrats, for Christ's sake.

[Deja Q]

23. The Powerpuff Girls song was cool. But I agree re: Swiffer...

They have sold out.

Of course, I never got the impression that they were not the type not to sell out. :shrug: