27/08/2002 - Entry #27
Holy fuck-sticks! I've found the best website in the entire world ever! The other day I was sitting around thinking about the music from TV ads, and how everyone always wonders who it was that provided it, but quickly forgets, or gets bogged down in yahoo searches for "+T-mobile +advert +music" and gives up. Believe me, I've been there. I then thought about the director's and cinematographers of these adverts. How many people know that Jonathan Glazer was responsible for the Levi's "Running Through Walls" advert, as well as the Samuel L. Jackson Barclay's adverts, and the famous Guinness "Surfer" advert, despite me telling them so many fucking times? How many people care? Probably not many, but possibly a few. So my pondering eventually worked around to creating a website that listed all these adverts, in a big database of directors, actors, writers, songs, etc etc etc. A kind of IMDB of adverts. To the best of my knowledge, that hadn't been done, at least not very well. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to contact the companies directly and ask them for the details, and slowly build up a comprehensive list. It'd take some time, and some money, and a fair bit of effort, but such is my misplaced ambition when I'm avoiding work.
But then just an hour or two ago, I came across this work of mind-bending genius:
Not only is it a pretty funky name, but it's also an admirable list of all those songs you heard on 'that' advert, and wondered who the hell did them. I've already found two songs I really wanted to know about. It would have been a hell of a lot more if I hadn't recently found out who did the Lexus advert, the VW beetle advert and the Clark's advert. Those two songs, in case anyone is wondering, were "So Easy" by Royksopp (from the T-Mobile advert with the posters of the baby's face around town), and "100 Million Ways" by Nash (from the Scrubs advert on Channel 4). I was, incidentally, amazed that Royksopp could have recorded a good song, given their staggering shitness, but they seem to have managed it. Despite the chorus being a painful, yet determined effort to ruin the entire song, they seem to have lost sight of their trademark 'talentless drivel' sound for a massive four minutes and eleven seconds. For Royksopp to go so long without sodomising the music with whiny sampled vocals straight from their pasty white Swedish arses is frankly unheard of. Fair play to them, I say. Nobody could have possibly foreseen that. Oh, and I have no idea who Nash is, so if I've made a huge pretentious faux pas, ostracising myself from the intellectual elite by supporting some 'cuntsicle of a derivative RnB rapper', then accept my most humble apologies, but I really do like this song. The staccato verses get me every time, and I heartily recommend it to you all, regardless of who the hell Nash is. He could be French for all I know, and I'd still recommend it! (No, no I wouldn't).
But the site really is a touch of genius. I was most impressed by the info on some of the artists, too. The mini-description of Eirik Satie's career shows a genuine understanding of music and landmark compositions, while the information regarding Herbaliser is similarly in-touch with modern trends. This is a very well crafted site, that can only get better as time goes on. I'm so impressed with the whole thing, I really am. I've added it to my favourites, and it's going straight into the links section up there (a selective bunch indeed. Although I've just realised that 1000% Funk seems to have disappeared. Those fucking French bastards. You see? You see what we're dealing with here? That's four times they've changed the whole thing around in the last six months! Now they want money for it? Dirty bunch of soap-dodging layabout fuckwits. Right, I'll replace them with my new favourite site, then! See how they like that!).
I've forgotten what I was saying now. Well, anyway, check out the site. See if you can find some songs you'd been wondering about. I'm marking this one down as the find of the century, I tell you.
Mini update--- They even have "Java" by Andre Popp listed for that Honda advert I mentioned a few weeks ago! Obscure 1952 experiments in tape, and they STILL have them listed! I thought I might be able to contribute to the site by naming that song, but nooooo. Very impressed with that place. Can you tell?
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