I saw the Felice Brothers live at Austin City Limits in 2009, and the thing that struck me most about them was how pumped they were to be there. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a band so ecstatic on stage. So for a little Music Monday lovin’ I thought I would post this video.
I stumbled on this cool summer mixtape at The Fox is Black. Far cooler than something I could have come up with, I can now pump the tunes at my hipster beach barbeque with confidence. If you want to be cool at your summer social check out more mixtapes here.
Volkswagen joins Subaru in the “great car commercial music” category with VW Canada’s latest commercial called “Drive Until: Courage,” where a young man drives around the block working up the cajones to propose to his girlfriend. It’s a great sentimental ad that underscores the significance of the automobile in our life. But what’s that song??
Immediately after seeing this ad for the first time I was on my iPhone Googling “Volkswagen Courage Commercial Song” to figure it out. Turns out it’s the familiar “Just Like Honey,” by Jesus & Mary Chain. You may remember it also as the poignant closing song in the Sofia Coppola movie Lost in Translation.
You can read more on the technical production side of this commercial at The Rooster’s Blog.
Every now and again a commercial jingle grabs me in a good way. This one by Sean Hayes is one of them.
Powerful Stuff stands as a testament to the power of good music to underscore emotion in advertising. I had no recollection of what the commercial was about just that it was for Subaru and the song had the lyrics “powerful stuff.”
From there I googled Subaru commercial powerful stuff, and ended up watching the ad again, which featured a Subaru Forrester. They even provided a link to download the song via Facebook. How’s that for a little consumer insight? Powerful stuff indeed.
To be honest I’m not really sure what this video means. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Fast Food Kid from the burbs walks across a giant empty lot, then hangs out with his friends all day on bicycles while the suburbs is under siege by some paramilitary group with big guns.
Suburb kids get upset, cry, comfort each other, then go back out in the dark on bicycles, get arrested, somehow get let off. They get older, go to party, get McJobs, have bicyle destroyed, which perhaps signals a loss of innocence or something like that.
Fast Food Kid somehow is working at the deli, perhaps sometime in the future. His friends run to warn him about an impending beating from Angry Disposition Kid (who has a different hair cut than earlier), but are too late. Angry Disposition Kid beats the crap out of Fast Food Kid to the horror of his friends. I don’t really know why.
The only foreshadowing of this beating is a strange exchange of glances while they’re getting arrested by the paramilitary guys. My only thoughts are that being that this is the suburbs, Fast Food Kid said something stupid to Angry Disposition Kid, or made out with his girlfriend, or found out that he is gay.
Either way, for whatever reason he still beats the crap out of the kid.
Presumably the beginning scene where Fast Food Kid is walking across the empty dirt lot is actually the end of the video, but is actually shown at the beginning to further F* with our heads.
It sounds like a typical day in the burbs to me.
What do you think?
Chris Stenberg presents:
Interesting People Doing Interesting Things
Recently I had the pleasure of spending some time interviewing a friend of mine, artist and musician Ari Neufeld, for a project I’m working on. His friend and cello player Richard St. Onge happened to be staying at Ari’s while playing a few gigs after a recent cross-Canadian music trip. I convinced them to play a quick tune in Ari’s converted turkey/chicken coop studio while I was there with my camera. The result was something kind of quirky and magical. A perfectly imperfect synergy between two fantastic musicians. Great tunes in a tiny little wooden box in the country. This is the real deal.
Check out AriNeufeld.com and MySpace.com/richardstonge for more tunes.