Most bizarre music/commerical pairings?

If the resurrection of Nick Drake wasn't enough to leave me puzzled, now I'm hearing Nick Drake sound-alikes.

-Z

On 2005-02-25 01:13, stuff-o-rama wrote:

I just saw a surreal commerical with "Hootie" dressed as a country singer singing a country song for some Bacon Ranch Burger at Burger King.

I just saw this by accident this morning and am once again appalled (it happens a lot!). It's a fine butchering of a song I first heard on the O' Brother soundtrack, "The Big Rock Candy Mountains". And yes, I'd like to hang the jerk who invented work. Or at least the jerk who put thet uber-no-talent, Shania Twain, in a commercial (isn't that her at the end?)

...worse, it's former Playboy Playmate Brooke Burke.

Or at least the jerk who put thet uber-no-talent, Shania Twain, in a commercial (isn't that her at the end?)

Nah, that's uber-hot uber-model Brooke Burke at the end.

But I think that's Christina Aguilara towards the beginning...

Didn't even recognize her with all those clothes on :wink:. Brooke may have fallen outta the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down, but fortunately her greatest assets were spared. :P

[i]On 2005-02-25 01:13, stuff-o-rama wrote:
Does anyone remember about 5 years ago Lux Interior was the spokesman for some software or computer company? I stopped dead in my tracks at a Best Buy when I saw a large, life-sized display cutout of Lux on the endcap display.
I would sell my own grandmother for one of those.

(What exactly does our beloved Mr. Interior have to do with software anyway?! I mean, do people really go, "Oh, WOW! Lux Interior uses this brand; I wanna be cool like him, so I'll use it too!"???)

We used to have a Mr. Roboto cut-out in my attic in Austin in my punk years; he was always the life of the party.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

yse, i know this is veering off course from the thread....unless Styx did a corporate gig....which would not surprise me in the least.

I'm almost certain "Come Sail Away" must have been used by a cruise line at some time or other.

Come to think of it, Mr Roboto was used for a VW ad recently. It's such a stupid song it's impossible to get upset about it, though.

I talked to a friend who is a major garage music fiend. He is pretty sure The Sonics won't see a dime of the publishing royalties. The label they were on at the time was run by a guy who negotiated some pretty heartless deals. Ian Whitcomb wrote a book about it. Said the guy was great as far as providing what you needed at the time, but when it came to royalties, you were screwed.

He also advenced his opinion that the reason we're hearing these songs in commercials is that advertising companies often call their parent companies and see if they own a music catalog. That way they get the music cheaper, and often don't have to pay publishing royalties.

He also said they save money because they no longer needed to hire jingle writers, and pay musicians to record the jingles.

I remember the song that really caught my attention and its use my scorn for iys obvious manipulation to sell product. When Phillips used "Getting Better All The Time".
And of course they had to cut the line that follwed that exhuberant statement "IT CAN'T GET NO WORSE" because that would imply that their product was crap.

See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!-- Bill Hicks, on being censored from "The Late Show with David Letterman"

Just an FYI, to pay someone to write and record a jingle or track for a commercial is about $20,000. To buy a piece of music starts at 50,000 and can go upwards to several million. So theres no money saved there!

I work in the business. I buy music to put on my commercials. I'm not out to ruin your memories, taint your teenage heroes, or brainwash you. I'm just trying to make a cool ad that will resonate with the people who are the target audience for that product. People seem to think there's all sorts of conspiracies afoot within the ad industry - we're out to subliminally make you 'obey' and we spend our days airbrushing the word 'sex' into the ice cubes of the product shot. Sadly, it's not half that exciting!

That's not to say that the people who bought 'Lust for Life' for that cruise line aren't total idiots. They are.

But if the ad agency is owned by a company that also owns a music catalog the "money" stays in house, relatively speaking, correct?

Correct me if I'm wrong... But promise me you'll wear go-go boots when you do it!

Then there's backwoods yokels like me. I was not allowed to listen to any radio (didn't get it way at the back of the canyon) as my folks were, I don't know, hippys, Minnonites...so when we finally got cable back there, I was stunned. I think the first "song" I ever learned was a story about a man named Brady! Of course, back then, the commercials did not use a whole lot of popular songs. It was more "My Dogs Better Than Your Dog" fare. I finally ripped free of the Canyon walls and discovered a world of music. i went to evry concert I could get tickets to. Loved it. So, when I hear "I want To Break Free" for soda, it makes me feel kinda old! In fact, my 14 year old is saying "OOH! I love that song! Who sings that? She buys all of Queens stuff at Virgin next day. That I don't mind. Just makes me feel old. Or how 'bout when she hears a song I'm playing on the old Victrola and says "Cool! That song's from Moulin Rouge!" Cringe! No no, I tell her, bad girl! The song came first, then the "movie". Old again.

On 2005-02-26 14:20, tikifish wrote:
People seem to think there's all sorts of conspiracies afoot within the ad industry - we're out to subliminally make you 'obey' and we spend our days airbrushing the word 'sex' into the ice cubes of the product shot. Sadly, it's not half that exciting!

I was just funnin with that stuff. I don't think the proverbial "they" or "them" have to even bother with subliminal shit. Just put an add on the air and blatantly tell someone their life will suck if they don't buy it, and the sound of the lemming heard is deafening.

And yes, I've been a lemming. But at least I'm a self aware lemming, and I fight the cliff rushing urge as much as possible.

Heck maybe you could do an add that says "with out tiki, your life will suck". Put up a picture of said tiki offered at three easy payments of 19.95, and sit back and watch the cash fill the bank account.
(I have to use the edit feature and point out that the above is in no way an attack on tikifish. It's just merely my taking a point to an extreme example for illustrations sake. Using "tiki" as a product we all understand. Thats alll, nothing else.)

I sure do hope target comes out with more tiki stuff this year.

And I wish Chrysler would come out with a hybrid PT Cruiser.

[ Edited by: tikigardener on 2005-02-27 12:30 ]

On 2005-02-23 10:36, Trader Woody wrote:
"Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink."
Bill Hicks

Thank you!!

As we all know, this type of thing has been going on for years and years. Back in the late 70s/early 80s Kodak had an instant camera called 'The Handle', which did the same thing a Poloroid camera did except you cranked the photo out with the handle that was attached to the camera. They used the Beach Boys song 'Fun, Fun, Fun' ("you'll have fun, fun, fun with the handle made by Kodak"). At least back then they would re-record the song with their slogan, not that that was such a great thing mind you. Now it's just a wholesale rip-off of the song. And like alot of people on this thread I totally fucking hate that. It's doubly annoying to me because I used to work for a post-production company who's clientele was 90% ad agencies. I used to deal with these assholes on a daily basis for many painful years until, thank god, I found another way to make a living. These people not only thought that what they were doing was important, they thought it was 'art', and they actually had the balls to walk around with egos while they did this stuff! Un-be-leivable.

One song I've heard lately is Aerosmith's 'Dream On' in a Buick commercial. What a stupid fucking idea. For starters, even before the commercial came out I always felt that if I never heard that song again for the rest of my life I'd be happy. I can just imagine one of those ad agency stooges...some disconnected rich white guy, hearing this song one day on the CD player of his Lexus as he drives around the Hamptons with his wife (that he's fucking around on) and thinks this would be a good idea for a commercial. Back at the agency he sells this to the company as all his 'yes' men cheer him on.

Steven Tyler and the rest of the band should just hit the retirement home already. I was a huge fan of theirs in the late 70s, but I now officially hate them. 'Love in an Elevator' was reason enough, but this takes the cake.

Here's a tip, people: make the 'mute' button on the TV remote your new best friend. I have been doing this for years now and it makes a huge difference. Mute that garbage right out of your life. It's very effective. Many times I have been in conversations with people and they'll mention something about a commercial and I'll have no idea what they are talking about.

"Let the products sell themselves. Fuck advertising, commercial psychology. Psychological methods to sell should be destroyed" The Minutemen from their song 'Shit from an Old Notebook'

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2005-02-27 08:53 ]

On 2005-02-27 08:34, donhonyc wrote:

[i]I used to work for a post-production company who's clientele was 90% ad agencies. I used to deal with these assholes on a daily basis for many painful years until, thank god, I found another way to make a living. These people not only thought that what they were doing was important, they thought it was 'art', and they actually had the balls to walk around with egos while they did this stuff! Un-be-leivable.

Ouch! I dont think what I do is art, nor do I have balls, and I'm pretty sure I'm not an asshole. Not everone who works in the ad business can be painted with one brush!

Sounds like you worked with some real winners.

Yeah...that was a pretty sweeping generalization. No offense,Tikifish. There actually were...literally, less than a handful of people that I was friendly with during my 'jail time' in the ad world. But honestly, alot of them did have a holier-than-thou attitude and they would be working on, no joke, Douche accounts. Or cereal or something. I don't hold anything against anybody for being serious about what they do for a living, and working very hard at it. But fachrissakes, have some humanity about it. There was one guy I remember who was just like the Alan Alda character from 'Crimes & Misdemeanor's' ("if it's funny it bends, if it doesn't it breaks). Real egomaniac, and his account was like 'Just for Men' or something like that. Which is fine, but he was such a dick about it.

I don't sound too bitter about it....do I? :drink:

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2005-02-27 16:53 ]

Railing against advertising is like shaking your fist at the sun for shining. I'm not saying it's always (or ever) necessarily a good thing, but fer crissakes, aren't there about 10 trillion things in the world that need more attention than ripping on stupid ads (and our ad culture in general) and the people who make them? Yes, advertising can be despicable, ubiquitious and downright annoying, but who made you king of declaring all things good or bad, and can you give me a job? :wink:

There's plenty of things in the world to be morally indignant about (and Bill Hicks carries the banner proudly in the battle for biggest hipocrate), but there are a$$holes of varying degrees in every profession. Why not channel all that bile and energy into something that actually matters instead of trying to rally everyone around the barrel full of fish you just shot?

There are varying degrees of a-holes in every profession, and there are varying degrees of experinces in people lives. Good and bad. I'm not rallying for anything. I mean, is Tiki Central a place to 'rally' against bigger causes? I channel my energy just fine thanks, and if I want to put in my (negative) 2 cents in a discussion that has thoughts similar to mine, what's wrong with that?

Who made me king of declaring all things good or bad? Ah..hem. I don't know, why don't you tell me about when you started wearing the crown.
:drink:

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2005-02-27 22:51 ]

Sully Bill Hicks all ya want. I know his close personal friends. I know his words.

If some guy makes some money for calling it like it is, oh well. If you don't like it, don't buy his cd's.

But maybe you could give something to the Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife...
http://billhicks.com/wildlife/donate/

You won't find any shot fish there.

The Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife is a non-profit organization of volunteers dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing orphaned, ill, and injured wildlife in and around the Texas Hill Country.
http://www.billhicks.com/users/wildlife/

Now does anyone find the hypocracy of Clapton allowing Layla to be used for ringtones, after his stated reason for leaving the Yardbirds was because they were getting "to commerical" just amazingly hypocritical?

And they say irony is dead...

Oh, yesterday was the anniverary of Bill Hicks' death.

Furthermore...Apparently some people in high places had a high opinion of Bill Hicks.

"That this house notes with sadness the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks,
on February 26th 1994, at the age of 33; recalls his assertion that his words would be a
bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American Dream; and mourns the
passing of one of the few people who may be mentioned as being worthy of inclusion with
Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinching and painfully honest political philosophers."
- Stephen Pound MP; Parliamentary House of Commons

House of Commons, not bad...

Comte de Guise: You have read Don Quixote?
Cyrano: I have. And found myself the hero.
de Guise: The chapter of The Windmills?
Cyrano: Chapter 13
de Guise: Windmills, if you tilt your lance with them, will cast you down into the mire!
Cyrano: or up... up into the stars...

[ Edited by: tikigardener on 2005-02-27 21:49 ]

American Express dug deep to come up with "Mas y Mas" a cut from Los Lobos' '96 Colossal Head CD as the soundtrack for their TV commercials that are currently running here on my local stations.

Gag

I just saw a Diet Pepsi ad with the Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop" as the party music for the dancing cans in the fridge.

Now I hate Pepsi even more.

(I love the Ramones.)

(I'm going to TRY and tell myself that "people will hear this and want to buy Ramones CD's," but after hearing the fact the Sonics are likely getting zilch for their song, my naive optimism's kinda fading......)

After all this, I heard the worst of all time the other day. Black Flag have done an ad for Yahoo-esque website called Wanadoo........

I've only seen it the once but it just made me weep. Sure, it was early Keith Morris era Black Flag, but then again Rollins is happy to present British Robot wars type shows over here, so he's also off the artistic rollcall.

Sheesh......Black Flag......shakes head..........

Trader Woody

On 2005-03-11 13:18, Trader Woody wrote:
Sheesh......Black Flag......shakes head..........

I can't get behind THAT!

Yeah you really got my act down good, guys. That'll be great. You know, when I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian govenment that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink orange drink."
[after being asked to do an advertisement for orange drink].

I think companies buying these adds ............do a disservice to their product ........and .........add companies creating them .........are more interested in highlighting there own commercial projects ...........by using well known songs .......(rock n roll or any other genre) ..........rather than using the tried and true "original" jingle to make a product meorable to the targeted audience.

If it isn't a familar tune .....or one directly touting the product .........I tend to remember the music rather than the product

For instance ..............the iPod commercial ...........where...........the urban kid walks past the wall of posters listening to his iPod. When he walks by the posters each one of them changes colors and starts to jam and dance ..........till he turns his iPod off .....turns and looks back and they stop dancing. You would hardly know what the product that they are trying to sell .............and ...........I didn't until I started seeing iPoda all over the place. I couldn't get the music out of my head though.

Then there was another television commercial out in the last year .....that advertised a cruise line in a dual spot on the cable stations (this was the only television advertisement I have ever seen this where after the first part of the add .........just before the show came back on ........there would be a short of the same music as in the first spot ........but ....with view of a cruise ship parked out in the ocean ...from the perspective of a beach comber on shore). The lyrics of the background music was to ...."shed their skin .......let the light shine in".

I only remembered the music from both the cruise line commercial and the iPod commercial .........and .........the unique advertising concept of the dual spot ........but I never could remember the products .......L.

Just my opinion.

You know how it's not like me to state strong opinions here :wink:, but this on or off the "artistic roll call" is complete nonsense. There seems to be a belief, among non-artists and artists alike, that all art should aspire to be free of any and all commercialism.

All kinds of artists - painters, musicians, graffiti painters, sand-castle builders - all of their art exists within a world of commerce to some degree or other, whether they admit it or not. I am a commercial artist myself, and coworkers often dream of being "pure" artists, while at the same time understanding that no such thing exists. We all dream of getting rich and staying at home all day creating our self-indulgent artistic masterpieces, but the world already has a Jeff Koons.

A former co-worker left the video game biz to do landscape painting full time. It sounded like a dream to a lot of us, but we all knew the reality, and so did he. He gave up answering to project leaders and production managers for answering to his personal manager, gallery owners, and the fickle art-buying public. His daily work may be more artistically and emotionally satisfying, but all the same business issues still exist. He needs to do paintings (and a LOT of them) that people want to buy or he doesn't eat. Bam! He's a commercial artist again!

Who are we to be the gate-keepers of what level of commercial involvement is acceptable? Sure, you get to make up your own minds about who's crossed the line into "sell-out" territory, but it seems unfair to equal want of commercial success with a lack of honest artistic intent or ability (though I agree it doesn't appear that way in the mainstream entertainment media).

PS: Fijifingers - there....certianly.....are...a...lot...of...gaps...in...your...message...

If you're an artist and you sell your work ( painting, sculpture, string art, whatever ) thats fine.

If you are a musician or comedian and you pack halls, and sell cds, or whatever other medium conveys you're thoughts or ideas, thats fine.

If you allow an advertising company to use you art to sell a product. Well the word that best describes what you do starts with a W.

Or if you like semantics, you're a jingle writer, or an illustrator.

I work with "art" everyday. I must see two or three hundred paintings, sculptures, and string art in the course of one workday. Most of the guys around me are artists. If they made it big by selling their hearfelt artwork I'd have no problem with them sitting up in Brentwood. And the same goes for the musicians at my job. But to a one, none of them could see allowing their art being used for selling a Hummer, or a can of soda.

There is a difference between selling your art, and allowing it to be whored out.

I also deal with a large number of galleries. I take the Stuckists line;"Art that has to be in a gallery to be art, isn't art."

That said, I'm surprised no one has asked the question;" Is Shag an Artist or an Illustrator?"

"Gardener Industries, helping you find new and creative ways to flog your dead horse...". Maybe WILD HORSES by The Rolling Stones could play in the background.

[ Edited by: tikigardener on 2005-03-27 14:07 ]

Shag is an interesting and relevant example. His art is not only sold as "art" per se, but is used to sell all kinds of consumer items. Most certainly he started doing his artwork out of simple desire to do create something he thought was cool. But then he licensed the hell out of it. Is that called "selling out" or "whoring"? It's no different than a musician allowing a car company to license their music. It's a business and he has a product to sell and wants to make a living doing what he enjoys. More power to him.

There was some show on this topic, maybe on NPR, quite a while ago. The most hilarious thing they played was Iron Butterfly doing an ad for Ban roll-on antiperspirant, many years ago. Please imagine this with their weird art-rock / heavy metal sound, and the lead singer's husky voice singing (shouting): "Ban doesn't wear off ... As the day wears on!..." It was such a bizarre thing to hear, I have never forgotten it.

Reading this thread today for the first time, my initial thought is you guys sure watch A LOT OF TV! Seriously, I don't know 25% of the commercials you all are referring to and I'm not even one of those anti-TV people like Bong.

When I do hear a commercial with good music, I just figure that the ad company has someone cool on the payroll that just wants to inject a little taste and goodness into their work. Expose an unknown artist to the masses, that sort of thing.

As far as who's a whore and who's not, 99% of you all have sold out to "The Man," why hold the heros of your youth to higher standards than you hold yourself? You know that your priorities today are not the same as they were 5, 10, 20 years ago. Neither are Eric Clapton's or Iggy Pop's. To want your heros to be perpetual rebellious teenagers while you grow up, get a job and buy a house is a bit selfish.

But that's OK, I know how you feel. I too get a jolt when I hear a favorite non-mainstream song used for a TV ad. Not so oddly enough, whether or not I have indignation about the song/product pairing is highly correlated to how I feel about the product. The "Lust for Life" cruise commercial is a good example. I don't go on cruises, so I was like WTF is this? But I just figured that someone cool worked on the ad. The opposite would be when Mountain Dew came out with a television commercial a couple of years ago that used the Supersuckers' "Four Stroke." I loved that ad but then again I was drinking a lot of Mountain Dew at the time. Had Prudential Insurance used the same music I'd have probably hated it but who knows? I've got enough real life things to worry about to care about TV ads.

I hear that Smith and Wesson have licensed Fugazi's "Repeater" to use with a series of TV ads in South America and former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe.

:wink:

I hear that Smith and Wesson have licensed Fugazi's "Repeater" to use with a series of TV ads in South America and former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe.

:wink:

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Brilliant Irony... Now that I can appreciate.

There was some show on this topic, maybe on NPR, quite a while ago. The most hilarious thing they played was Iron Butterfly doing an ad for Ban roll-on antiperspirant, many years ago. Please imagine this with their weird art-rock / heavy metal sound, and the lead singer's husky voice singing (shouting): "Ban doesn't wear off ... As the day wears on!..." It was such a bizarre thing to hear, I have never forgotten it.

Don't forget Jefferson Airplanes Levis Stretch Jeans ad. And the Electric Prunes Lays Potato Chips ad. But at least both bands wrote the jingles. "Crunchy Munchy Potato Chip" is about the lamest thing you've ever heard.

Who made me king of declaring all things good or bad? Ah..hem. I don't know, why don't you tell me about when you started wearing the crown.
:drink:

Still my favorite quote on tiki central, bar none.

Just saw an ad for Payless shoes with Luscious Jackson's "Naked Eye" playing in the background. Kooky!

[ Edited by: filslash 2008-09-13 12:18 ]

I cringe every time that coke ad comes on and I hear them sing:

"Put the Lime in the Coke You Nut"

Arrrgh!

Mute mute mute...

Last night I heard Jane's Addiction on a Coors commercial. bah!

On 2005-03-27 13:45, TikiGardener wrote:

If you allow an advertising company to use you art to sell a product. Well the word that best describes what you do starts with a W.

I think the reality is that musicians don't own the rights to their music. The publisher owns the rights. I have lotsa friends in the music biz, some more succesful than others. They give up the rights when they start out, to pay for the record to get made & distributed and to pay for the tour to support the record. I think that's why you hear of so many musicians being totally broke, even though they've sold millions of records. Music is a business, you gotta have money to make money. When I hear the Ramones in a Pepsi commercial or the Clash in a Jaguar commercial, it's sad, but I know Joey or Joe didn't sell the rights the that song, BMI or whoever owns it did.
When Michael Jackson gives up the Beatles Catalog to Bank of America to pay off his legal fees and the mortgage on Neverland, the shit's really gonna hit the fan. But this is America, we reap what we sow.

Most musicians don't own their own music. Prime example is The Sonics "Have Love Will Travel". They got screwed contracually by the owner of the label. So he gets rich, Range Rover sells product, and The Sonics get the short end of the stick.

I don't believe in selling out, but it bugs me even more when someone appropriates my youth to sell product, and screwing musicians and artists while doing so.

Again, as someone who does this evil job for a living (buying music from artists to use in commercials) , I am not out to ruin your memories, fuck with your sacred bands, or piss you off. I am just out to make the best commercial I can with what I a have. And its a proven fact people like commercials with 'known' music better than unknown. Now, having said that, I live in Canada, and mu budgets usually cannot affford big name bands for our spots. I give most of my business to a music house in Toronto called Eggplant who write original music fo my commercials, but sometimes a known track is needed, And if those people want to sell it to me, well then we both are happy.

Bit then again, I only write GOOD commercials. I still do cringe every time the Swiffer spot comes on with the Devo song.. glood lord!

There used to be a group called Fox Tracks ( I think that was the name ) from somewhere in the northern midwest. They did commercial jingles. At some point they did an album of commercial parodies. I vaguely remember hearing some of them on Dr Dimento back in the late 70's.

Graffiti Legend Is Back on the Street
By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: April 18, 2005

He arrived on foot, and on time, wearing heavily grease-stained beige overalls and boots. He seemed to be in his late 30's or early 40's, with thinning light brown hair. He had the windburned eyes and blackened fingernails of an ironworker, along with the vaguely feral intensity of someone on the lam.

But he hardly looked like the kind of shadowy revolutionary figure who had once declared that his goal was to "tear the city to pieces and rebuild it." Now, he says, smiling weakly, "I stop at stop signs; I pay taxes; I get up and go to work and get a paycheck."

In the New York graffiti world of the early 1990's, he was everywhere and larger than life, sometimes literally: the name Revs, usually accompanied by that of his partner in crime, Cost, could be found scrawled, wheat-pasted or painted in gargantuan white letters on overpasses, walls and roofs from SoHo to northern New Jersey. The work upended many traditional notions of graffiti and helped inspire a new generation of so-called street artists.

Then in late 1994 Cost was arrested for vandalism. Revs went underground and left the city for Alaska. And when he returned, his work went mostly underground, too - into the subway, where he painted long, feverish diary entries worthy of a Dostoyevsky character on dozens of walls hidden deep inside the tunnels. (He called this a personal mission and said he did not care if anybody else saw them.)

But over the last few years, he has re-emerged into public view and reincarnated himself in a way few of his fans ever expected, as a legitimate and (mostly) law-abiding sculptor. He has made dozens of works using construction-grade steel and other metal parts and has sought the permission of building owners to weld and bolt them to the outsides of buildings in the meatpacking district, the East Village, the Gowanus Canal area and Dumbo, where the gentrifying but still half-deserted streets have become a veritable Revs gallery.

Yet unlike many former graffiti artists who have turned their street credibility into successful careers as graphic designers or youth-market branding gurus, Revs has continued to shun, angrily, the worlds of conventional art and commerce. He makes his living about as far from the art world as possible, as a union ironworker, surrounded by co-workers who mostly have no idea of his reputation as a near-mythical deity of the graffiti world. His only gallery show, in Philadelphia in 2000, was to raise money so he could pay a lawyer after he was arrested for the subway graffiti. Otherwise, he has refused to sell his work or take commissions for it.

"To me," he said recently, in a rare interview, "once money changes hands for art, it becomes a fraudulent activity."

He also continues to avoid publicity. In order to find him, a reporter contacted several graffiti aficionados, most of whom warned that Revs, whoever he was, would probably not cooperate. Calls eventually led to Julia Solis, an author and photographer who specializes in charting forgotten and subterranean New York. She agreed to pass a message along to Revs. A day later, a call came to the reporter's home from a man with a thick New York accent who agreed to an early-morning meeting in Brooklyn, at an intersection almost beneath the Manhattan Bridge, on the condition that his photograph not be taken and his name and age not be revealed.

He apologized for the cloak-and-dagger routine but said that his anonymity was still his most prized possession. "I don't want to become nobody; I just want to do what I do," he said, stressing, as a kind of implied message to the police, "I'm not trying to stage a major comeback or anything." (The New York Police Department confirms that he has not been on the radar screen of the Citywide Vandals Task Force since his arrest in 2000.)

But Revs fans can be forgiven for thinking a comeback is in the works. Over the last several months, pictures of the sculptures have shown up on several street-art Web sites. This has prompted graffiti cognoscenti to scour the streets to find - and in a few places, to wrench loose and steal - the works, most of which are clustered in or close to Manhattan, although some have been discovered as far afield as Queensboro Plaza.

"He's huge, you can't deny it," said Will Sherman, a photographer who operates a Web site called untitledname.com and has scouted out several Revs works recently. "I have a lot of respect for him not just as a graffiti artist or street artist but as an artist in general."

Peter Sutherland, another photographer, spent a year tracking Revs down. Last year, in a book of portraits of graffiti artists titled "Autograf," he featured a picture of the artist himself, though his face is completely covered by a cap. "I'm a photographer and I don't usually get intimidated or impressed by celebrities," Mr. Sutherland said. "But when I met Revs, I kind of geeked out."

During the recent two-hour interview in Brooklyn, Revs conducted a proud tour of half a dozen of his metal sculptures, only one of which he said he installed without permission: a tall, heavy piece that spells out "Revs," welded several years ago to the top of an abandoned loading dock. Asked how he was able to weld something so large and distinctive to a building without attracting a crowd and eventually a phalanx of police, he shook his head.

"I can't talk about my techniques," he said sternly. "It's a trade secret, you know? It's my cloaking device."

Over the last few years, he said, he has made more than 100 metal pieces, some weighing hundreds of pounds, and he estimated that he has installed about two-thirds of them with permission, including nearly all his most recent sculptures. He says that while he may not be a guerrilla street painter anymore - some of the 1990's wall paintings were more than 10 feet tall in the middle of sheer walls, most likely requiring a harness and ropes to accomplish - he is still a fully committed outsider, and his work will be seen only outside, on New York City streets, as long as he keeps making it.

He kicked one the pieces, made from two-inch-thick steel, part of a column left over from a construction project where he once worked near the Port Authority bus terminal.

"A car can back up into it," he said. "Somebody can get their head cracked open on it. A dog can go on it. Somebody can paint it if they want. It rusts. It's more interesting that way, you know?"

But is it any less interesting because it's legal?

He smiled. "I might still have a few little knickknacks scattered around in places where they're not supposed to be, who knows?" he said. "I'm not commenting on that."

On 2005-03-27 17:32, Kono wrote:
As far as who's a whore and who's not, 99% of you all have sold out to "The Man," why hold the heros of your youth to higher standards than you hold yourself?

Right on Kono. It's not easy to be a member of that 1% that hasn't sold out to "The Man" but I'd like to think it's worth it. I still cling to my copies of Do It!, Soul On Ice and Howl. The Fugs, MC5, Fraternity of Man & David Peel & the Lower East Side still spin on the the turntable and reality is still for people who can't handle drugs. (BTW, most of my heros are DEAD).

"Whew...it was all a dream." - Phil Austin

Brothers and sisters,
I wanna see a sea of hands out there.
Let me see a sea of hands!
I want everybody to kick up some noise.
I wanna hear some revolution out there,
brothers.
I wanna hear a little revolution.
Brothers and sisters,
the time has come
for each and every one of you
to decide whether you are gonna be
the problem
or whether you are gonna be
the solution.
You must choose, brothers,
you must choose.
It takes five seconds,
five seconds of decision.
Five seconds to realize
your purpose here on the planet.
It takes five seconds
to realize that its time to move.
It's time to get down with it. Brothers,
it s time to testify and I want to know,
are you ready to testify?
Are you ready?
I give you a testimonial...
The MC5!

"my love is like a ramblin' rose, the more you feed it the more it grows"

http://www.furious.com/perfect/MC5/johnsinclair.html

Ya know!
I hear a lotta talk
by a lotta honkies talking
about High Society!

But if you ask me
This is the High Society!

Let it all burn!!!
Let it all burn!!!

Edited because my dyslexia always heard it as "They'll all burn!!!" Which I kinda like better!

[ Edited by: tikigardener on 2005-04-20 00:13 ]

Black Panther snipers wouldn't let 'em put it out
Wouldn't let 'em put it out
Wouldn't let 'em put it out

-Motor City's Burning