Regardless of what Justin Vernon thinks of the Grammys as an institution, he got some serious face time with 39 million viewers, most of whom it seems had no idea who he was. You can moan about the hokeyness of the awards show all you want, but it’s reach is undeniable. I didn’t even watch the Grammys myself and I still know the highlights of who won, who was controversial, and whose performances went well/not-so-well.
That’s 312 in the cart.
Be Kind to Your Fans
This past summer Bradford Cox and I celebrated our 4 year “friendiversary” with hugs and reminiscing at the Pitchfork Music Festival. While I’m sure our friendship has value to him on an interpersonal level, it was a brilliant marketing move even if he didn’t intend it to be. When I was 17, Deerhunter made their debut appearance at the festival. They had the 1pm time slot on Sunday. I hardly knew who Deerhunter was but I knew I liked the few tracks I’d researched in preparation for the weekend and I also knew that Cox had Marfan syndrome, a disease of the connective issues that causes a slew of related issues, often centering in on the heart. I immediately felt a connection with the musician thanks to my own heart issues. I made a sign to hold during their set. “I have a heart condition too. Can we be friends Bradford?” A few songs in I worked up the nerve to actually hold up the sign. He struggled to read it and then stopped the song. “Yeah! We can be friends,” he said before relaunching the band into the song.
Since then, Bradford and I have developed a lovely relationship. There is always a spot on the guest list for me. He wrote me a song my senior year of high school. I knit him a scarf. It’s an incredible feeling to be friends with your favorite musician.
Where the marketing comes in is that I sing the praises of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound (his solo venture) every single day. I blog about hanging out with Brad and the rest of the Deerhunter guys. I include their songs on mix CDs for new friends. I once played an entire Deerhunter album on my college radio show. I have t shirts, tote bags and buttons that are staples in my wardrobe. Before Deerhunter was known as a band of indie rock gods, they needed my help. The perks are a thank you for being the cheapest full time marketing staff on the planet.
Marry me John. xoxo, Gossip Girl: St. Vincent on Gossip Girl
St. Vincent/ Annie Clark is going to appear on Gossip Girl. Will I watch? No. Will I look up videos of it after the fact? Possibly. Will I watch it years later when it comes out on DVD and I have nothing to do but stream episodes of a show I never watched? Probably.
It’s pretty much always a good idea to make a television appearance on a popular show. It’s a great way to reach a fan base that isn’t seeking out new music but is still potentially interested. The great thing about making television appearances in recent times is that once the initial broadcast is over there are still so many ways for viewers to see the episode. I have a friend with at least 4 seasons of Gossip Girl on DVD. It pains me how often she and my other friends watch them. She must have seen every episode several times and lent out the DVDs to other friends several times. When the next season comes out St. Vincent will get her fair share of that circulation. Additionally, with Hulu and Netflix etc. it doesn’t take any real commitment or investment to begin watching whatever show is available.
Bottom line: if a teen will have you on their show, you ought to thank them. And hope that whatever show it is has the same reach as Gossip Girl or the OC.
St. Vincent to Appear on “Gossip Girl”
By
Jenn Pelly
Photo by Tina Tyrell
St. Vincent will appear on the CW teen drama “Gossip Girl”, on the show’s Valentine’s Day special. Annie Clark and co. will perform “Cruel” and “Cheerleader” from 2011’s Strange Mercy. Will she play Nate’s party? Will Blair and Serena sing along? The episode airs Monday, February 13.
Meanwhile, further downtown, St. Vincent recently joined Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen onstage during the “Portlandia” tour stop at the Bowery Ballroom. She covered Pearl Jam’s “Black”, which you can watch below, via BrooklynVegan. Clark’s previously reported “Portlandia” appearance will take place on the February 3 episode.
Googlability and the rise to fame in Germany
My friend Marc Hogan recently wrote a piece for Spin about up-and-comer (much to my dismay…) Lana Del Ray and the impact she’s had on a band sharing a similar name. Chicago band Del Ray is starting to show up on the German charts. The spike in sales is being attributed to Amazon searches for Lana Del Ray that probably lead to “Did you mean Del Ray?” Or as google translate tells me, “Meinten sie Del Ray?”
In scheming for band names or other things that need to be named (companies, albums etc.) I’ve always made googlability a top priority for myself. Googlability is the focus of results when you google something. It’s the reason why I didn’d name a band Tyra and the Banks. It’s why when I came up with the name Vague Babies for my band in high school I was elated to find out that searching for “Vague Babies” returned one result and that result was from some obscure book that no one cares about. As of right now, “Vague Babies” gives 4,360 results. And we haven’t even been a band since 2009.
Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas sound fame once said in an interview that while they were getting big he imagined that people would come to their shows expecting to see the band Deerhoof. He imagined he’d walk on stage and they audience wondered “well there’s the skinny drummer, but where’s the japanese lady?”
I would argue that in most cases googlability is still a good thing to consider when naming anything you want to become notable, but I doubt Del Ray is complaining that they had to do a second pressing of their album.
Lana Del Rey Helped Make a Band Big in Germany
Lana Del Rey’s conversation-dominating rise has been a boon for at least one long-slogging band. As the Chicago Reader reports, Chicago instrumental rockers Del Rey are finally charting in Germany, and they owe it all — or surely some of it, anyway (we’re talking about the nation that gave us Falco here) — to the Born to Die singer.
The metal-leaning quintet’s most recent album, 2010’s Immemorial, has evidently popped up in Amazon Deutschland’s Top 20 more than once, with a high so far this winter of No. 7. Del Rey’s Jason Ward, who runs Chicago Mastering Studio with Bob Weston, tells the Reader the band’s German label, Golden Antenna, ordered another pressing of the CD after its sales spiked to 500 copies or so in November. Not coincidentally, that’s roughly when other Del Rey’s “Blue Jeans” entered the European charts.
Couldn’t the Chicago post-whatever band’s own daunting musical prowess account for the group’s sudden Teutonic renown? Ward doesn’t say it’s impossible. But he won’t deny credit to the singer, songwriter, and search-engine-optimization technique formerly known as Lizzy Grant, either. As he told the Reader: “It seems hard to think of another reason a criminally underappreciated band of oldsters such as ourselves would have a sales spike like that, though [Germans] do get all wet over both David Hasselhoff and Die Toten Hosen, so who knows?” You know what else Germans love? Beer!
Business cards arrived in mail today!
Think I have enough business cards?
Pitchfork gives Atlas Sound’s ‘Te Amo’ Best New Track
Atlas Sound
“Te Amo”
4AD
By Larry Fitzmaurice; September 16, 2011 Best New TrackArtists:
In my review of Deerhunter’s iTunes Live from Soho concert released earlier this year, I noted that one of the changes the Atlanta rockers have undergone over the past few years is frontman Bradford Cox’s voice. Where he was once content to softly swagger behind thickets of reverb and metal-plated guitar noise, he’s become a bolder performer in live settings, breaking into his higher register to unleash something more naked and more dangerous. Clearly, Cox has also noticed this previously unchecked strength: on “Te Amo”, the second taste we’ve received from Parallax, the latest solo LP under his Atlas Sound guise, he turns in his boldest performance yet, his voice unadorned by the blips and effects that characterized 2008’s Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (as well as, to a lesser extent, the following year’s Logos). The song itself is relatively simple— a looped piano figure or two, some spare guitars and percussion, watery ambience lying low in the mix— providing Cox with plenty of space to let his hair down and lean hard on his amorous ode to no one in particular: “We will go to sleep/ And we’ll have such strange dreams.”
[from Parallax; out 11/08/11 via 4AD]
As always, thrilled for my boy Bradford. Trying to place the live show where I heard this track before. I’m gonna go ahead and guess it was from Atlas Sound’s only set at SXSW 2011 at the Flamingo Cantina. It’s sort of coming back to be now. Cox ended up using someone else’s drum kit to tap out the rhythm of the track. The owner of the drum kit didnt leave any sticks. Playing MacGyver, SM58 microphones became Cox’s drum sticks (not plugged in, of course).
spotify
Finally took advantage of my Spotify invite yesterday and I’ve gotta say I’m loving it. I’m using it primarily at work which is really nice because I don’t have my entire itunes library at my disposal and I’m not in the practice of bringing my ipod around with me regularly.
My one qualm is the advertising. Blah blah blah “GO PREMIUM IF YOU HATE IT SO MUCH!” No. I don’t hate the concept of advertising. I know its a necessary evil when offering a free service such as this one. But I wish they would go the Google route and track my listening habits using that data to advertise things I might actually be interested in. There is nothing in my listening habits that suggest I’d like to hear the latest Lady Antebellum album.
Currently jamming CANT, the solo project of Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor. I gave a very brief review of the first single out on Pitchfork HERE
