What Am I Watching?

Because I never listen to the radio anymore I have a hard time discovering new music. (Not that the radio would be a big help if I were listening. Mainstream radio does a horrible job of playing new music. It's the same 14 popular artists on rotation and then it's just whichever of their songs is the most popular for that week. Even the 'underground' station which is supposed to help get people discovered plays the same few musicians every couple of hours. There is almost no variety anymore.) Ironically I have found the best place to hear new music from obscure musical acts is television. It used to be that having a pop star was the best thing for a television show, but as people came to recognize how many of them are terrible actors that trend has cooled and been replaced by shows (especially on non-networks such as FX) closing their show with some song you are most likely unfamiliar with but instantly want to hear a second time as the chorus manages to worm its way into your brain. What's convenient is that in this day and age all you need to remember is one lyric for a Google search and that is usually enough to track down the band's name and a song title. Most of the time their music video will even come up on YouTube, even though it would probably be better for them if it didn't.

Bands used to make music videos as a way to promote themselves to record labels. It was a way for the executives to see what the band looked like (can't say music changes too much because that will always be as important as what they sound like) and gave them a chance to show off some personality. Then someone got the brilliant idea to put all these videos no one was ever going to watch again on one channel, which gave us MTV. At first it worked out well for everyone as the channel became immensely popular and the bands got exposure they never dreamed of before. Once the concept took off it evolved into a competition for musicians to produce the most exotic video they could dream up, with a couple of the video shoots taking on budgets large enough to produce an independent film. The problem is that the high cost of these mini-epics ultimately began pushing smaller bands out of the video business and the MTV had fewer videos in their library, which forced them to come up with non-video-centric shows. Unfortunately they got a little too good a making these non-video shows which is why today the only place you are less likely to find new music than the radio is MTV.

Things have boomeranged slightly because video equipment is cheaper than it has ever been. Also the software to edit videos is readily-available and very user-friendly. You could shoot a video in your backyard if you wanted to. But, as with all things in life, just because you can do something that doesn't mean you should. I can not tell you the number of times I have heard a piece of a song, been very interested in hearing the rest of it (maybe even buying a copy, what a novel concept) and then too distracted by how awful the video is to pay attention to the music. What these bands have to remember is that just because their diehard fans are going to love them no matter what and are going to be thrilled at whatever quality video they churn out, there is an above-average chance this video will be the first time a majority of these people ever see or hear them. The last thing they want to do is scare away a potential fan with a poorly-shot video shot by their cousin who went to one semester of film school and is filled with cliches from the late-90s which has nothing to do with anything. Remember, all those bands which had smoke machines and a random old guy sitting in the corner just being creepy were making a video for a song which was already a hit. Eccentricity is one of the spoils of fame, but you have to earn it.

So, if you are a band out there who thinks you have a great song but need a music video to push you over the top and get signed I have a piece of advice for you - keep it simple. You want people to focus on the song and that is hard to accomplish if we're sitting there trying to figure out why there is a piano on fire in the middle of an intersection when we thought the song was supposed to be about an ex-girlfriend. I happen to think what bands should do is look to the early days of music videos and an old standby - the concert video. For those of you who don't remember these, concert videos consist of the audio of a song over a collage of clips from live shows. These were done when the band either didn't have time for a video shoot or couldn't think of a concept for one and were all very similar (hot girl in crowd, band goofing off backstage, crowd cheering wildly, band giving it their all on stage, repeat as necessary). None of these concert videos were particularly memorable, but when the alternative is being remembered for being awful, I think you happily take solid and unremarkable every time. Plus they are cheap and hard to screw up, two things which are key when making a first impression. You can save all the crazy ideas for the first single off the next album, but first you have to get to the point where you are spending someone else's money to film it. Trust me, nothing is more rock 'n roll than that.