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December 3, 2003
Music on TV
We've noticed that a lot of interesting, not-quite-mainstream music has shown up on television lately, perhaps because people who listened to decent music in college a few years ago are finally reaching a level of seniority at their ad firms and have some discretion in selecting the soundtrack for their marketing efforts. Here's what we're talking about:
- Crystal Method's "Keep Hope Alive" [mp3] is the theme song to ABC's rather crappy cop-and-firefighter show, Third Watch. The song fuels the energy of the opening credits -- energy that is dissipated as soon as the show actually starts.
- Fatboy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now" [mp3] from You've Come a Long Way, Baby is featured in the promos for "Line of Fire," the new FBI-and-mob show starring an uncharacteristically scary David Paymer and the dead mom from 24. The pilot episode was stylishly shot, and the music is a good fit for what seems to be a somewhat innovative show. (Rod Lurie, director of the political thrillers The Contender and Deterrence, created it and directed the pilot.) Of course, since Boomtown was recently cancelled, it's hard to be hopeful about the prospects for Line of Fire.
- The same song is also associated with an entirely different kind of progam. Amy says the promos for Bill Moyer's PBS show "Now" feature "Right Here, Right Now," too, but the show itself only offers a lame new-agey track over the opening titles.
- TNT's promos for NBA basketball are set to "Proper Propaganda," an amazing track from Dilated Peoples [mp3], and a suitably titled piece for a commercial. I'm not sure whether TNT used Dilated's actual song, or just the dominant sample from the track. Wherever the sample came from, it's also (coincidentally) used in a song on an NCAA football game I played on PS2 at my brother's house over Thanksgiving weekend. He says the track on the game is from some guy called "Mr. Jinx," but I'm not what the song is called, or the original source of the sample, and I don't have my liner notes from the Dilated album lying around to find out. If you know where it comes from, please email us. Anyway, "Proper Propaganda" is a great song. In it, Evidence and Iriscience imagine they have their own anti-establishment news organization, which is driven by the ideals of hip-hop. The best line in the song is when they say they even have "the illest weatherman in the biz." [lyrics]
- Then there's that quasi-racist(?) Mitsubishi commercial where the soccer mom and her husband drive up to the Saturday night urban hangout in their bright yellow Mitsubishi and ask for directions. The song playing in the background is an instrumental version of "Positive Contact," from Deltron 3030 [mp3], a brilliant Del the Funkee Homosapien/Dan the Automator collaboration from a couple years ago.
- Amy reminds us that "California," [mp3] the big single from Jason Schwartzman's band Phantom Planet, is the theme to The O.C. She'll have more on that below a little later.
The O.C. is a complicated show. During the summer season, we thought it was terrible, apart from Peter Gallagher and maybe Adam Brody. Then the fall season started, and suddenly it wasn't just the summer premiere that people watched by default, but was one of the better new shows of the regular season too. Lately I've been following the music used for the show (see "Weekly Soundtrack" under the Features section,) and it's some impressive stuff--between Doug Liman and McG and the 26 year-old kid from New York who created the show, they've managed some real credibility. Over the past few episodes, the show has featured songs by Black Eyed Peas, Mazzy Star, Jet, Belle and Sebastian, Air, and Death Cab for Cutie, who are almost too cool for Fox. I don't know what's going on with this show, but between the soundtrack, the unstoppable charm of Seth Cohen, and Summer's favorite book being Madame Bovary, this show has turned into something surprisingly good. The O.C., like C.K. Dexter Haven, has unsuspected depth. -amy
