Devendra shakes the money tree

[imomus]

Devendra Banhart (or his publisher) has licensed several of his songs to some commercials for Fat Tire Beer. You can watch the commercials here. The spots feature a bearded man cycling around a rural landscape. "Follow your folly," run the slogans, "ours is beer".



Now, "moronic cynicism" would dictate that we condemn Banhart at this point for "selling out" (and according to this messageboard thread he's also licensed a track to M&Ms, so the money tree is well and truly being shaken). Purists might point out that figures like Beck and Tom Waits have objected vociferously to their music being used or pastiched in commercials, and the recent controversy over Nike's appropriation of Minor Threat artwork (the standoff ended when Nike apologised and withdrew the plagiarised cover from their campaign) shows that people still consider artistic credibility severely dented by commercial use. The same logic informs the New York Times' approving comment at the end of my art show review last week: "Nothing is planned, nothing is for sale nor is anything being documented in this work of endurance and sound art. Everything will be happening just once, and much of it could be worth experiencing."

Of course, it is very cool when things aren't for sale. You can claim to be doing things for their own sake, and suddenly everything's like a spontaneous 1960s-style "happening", an "intervention", an "action". But here's where things get more complex. First of all, the kudos you generate by appearing to avoid the commercial can itself be a form of capital. It helps you accumulate "cultural capital" which, if all goes well, can be translated back to actual capital at some point. Secondly, it may be that you aren't selling anything because you haven't figured out how. I can tell you that we looked into a number of ways of getting paid before we mounted our art show: selling videos, seeking funding from private art sponsorship bodies, looking into fashion tie-ins, and so on. In the end Zach Feuer was cool enough to let us do the show without putting anything on sale, and I think it works well this way, but it wasn't for lack of trying to find a way to make it pay. We're not rich. This show is costing us money to mount. We're having to subsidize it ourselves.



In the end we opted for originality and spontaneity over commerce, but there's no reason why the two couldn't have been integrated. Mai and I don't really take any philosophical stand against getting paid in general. Or, let's say, we're ambivalent. I like to imagine a "post-money society" from time to time, and I think our show is a gesture towards that. Both Mai and I have taken anti-copyright stands in public before. Mai's involved reproducing Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" in Amsterdam. Her naked body was scrawled with anti-copyright slogans. Mine was more staid: I was a panellist at Jenny Toomey's Future of Music conference in DC a few years back. One thing I remember saying there was that I'd be fine with musicians making music for no money, but that we shouldn't be the only ones doing that. We need the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker to all give their services free or put their wares up on P2P networks before we can truly enter the post-money world. Nevertheless, I agree with artist Miltos Manetas when he says:

"The copyright/intellectual property issue is the most important political issue of our days. We have finally accepted a world build on ideas, and if ideas become property, then there is no place for a free spirit." I also agree with Maurizio Lazzarato when he says "The resistance to the capitalist appropriation of common goods (an appropriation which today constitutes the essence of the neo-liberal strategy) will have effectiveness only if it assumes the primacy of the cooperation-between-minds over the capital-labour relationship." So perhaps we need to start with making ideas free and work our way along to bread being free.

"Moronic cynicism" would probably also dictate that when we read about the philanthropy of a company like the New Belgium Brewery, parent of Fat Tire beer, we search for inconsistencies and hypocrisies, as one student newspaper did when confronted with American Apparel's apparently generous wage structure and anti-sweatshop policies. (I found it useful to balance the NYU News article with this piece on Jewlicious.) In the end, though, I think it's sensible to welcome products and policies which seem to make employees' lives better, or advertising that seems to have a constructive message. Seeing a man abandon his car, refurbish a bicycle, and ride around listening to some nice Devendra Banhart songs seems fairly wholesome to me.

Pop shouldn't get on too high a moral horse. Kudos can be capital, and pop music is an entirely commercial form anyway. It's born with its roots deep in money, it's never far from money's fertilizing, growing force. That can be a force for good or evil, as Larry McCaffery says: "One of the good things about capitalism is that it's blind to what it sells. The system isn't really the enemy. It's blind, all it wants is to replicate and do more things."

What's more, a lot of pop songs are advertising even before they're advertising. They advertise the artist as a force in the consumer's life, or the narrator as a lover, or both. Devendra sings, in the "Tinkerer" beer spot:

Cook me in your breakfast
And put me in your plate
Because you know I taste great
...Put me in your way if you haven't yet

Imperatives, hyperbole and self-recommendation are the language of commercials as well as the language of this song. There's no reason to believe that in a post-money society they would suddenly stop. After all, what's a flower, a piece of fruit or a folk song if not advertising for the DNA of the lifeform pushing it forth into the world?

Comments

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

> Of course, it is very cool when things aren't for sale.

It's the best when things aren't for sale.


Sometimes I fantasize about what the human race would be like if we weren't so stuck on quantifying everything. Of course, we quantify because we must share limited resources, and to do so as fairly as possible, we quantify. I wonder, though, if resources weren't limited, would we even have mathematics? What would our brains be like in an environment where we didn't have to fuss over our resource allocation every day?

All The Little Fishes Have Golden Wishes

[invent-this.livejournal.com]

It's too soon for Devendra to think along these lines, career-wise.
His texture will thin, as an artist.

Oh brother.
Where art thou.

[nhennies.livejournal.com]

Devendra is turning out to be quite a big fat phoney, actually. He has also had his music used in an advertising campaign for a brand of cheese in the U.S. and his new record is to be released on XL Recordings, home to such artists as Prodigy, Basement Jaxx, and the White Stripes.

This is hearsay, but a friend from SF tells me DB used to be employed as a "culture spy" in the late 90s (someone who reports to a business about what "the kids" want to buy) when he still went by the name Devon.

Sounds like true hippie spirit to me...

[theophile.livejournal.com]

this is only a small part of what you're saying, but I find myself reacting very strongly to this sort of argument:

First of all, the kudos you generate by appearing to avoid the commercial can itself be a form of capital. It helps you accumulate "cultural capital" which, if all goes well, can be translated back to actual capital at some point.

the first sentence... well, it translates into "if you create a thing of value, then perhaps you will have something valuable." I suppose it's conceivable that a clever entrepreneur might be able, on speculation, to create art and preserve its perceived integrity long enough to make a final profit greater than would have been possible with a short-term maximization policy, but the reality is that you have a better chance of making more money off of your creation if you sacrifice integrity in the short term. Moby realized a long time ago that he'd get richer by selling out to car companies the moment an offer hit his desk than he would by banking on some sort of counterculture equity to turn his back catalog into gold in the long term, and that's why he could buy and sell Ian MacKaye so many times over.

oh, also, I guess I react strongly to:

Secondly, it may be that you aren't selling anything because you haven't figured out how.

but that's mostly because it sounds so similar to the '80s American screed of "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

[ratz.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the argument over whether or not graffiti was art. The argument was settled when corporations started using graffiti artists for advertisement. Cries resounded "sellout sellout" which in a way validated the art form. It seems that there can be no pure art without the selling out of it.

[depechenick.livejournal.com]

devendra? who's that?

advertising is as natural as flowers! i like that. we all advertise ourselves every day, like any other plant or animal. the search for "authenticity" is boring and fake.

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

I persist in advocating the use of Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) as a first step towards the abolition of copy restrictions. I have expanded my views on copyright on this entry from May 2002 (http://fufurasu.org/archives/000096.html), using a medieval minstrel example which I think might appeal to you.

Having said that, I would happily pay the admission fee for "Cut Piece" with Mai Ueda in what appears to be Issey Miyake.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think there's a big difference between saying "That's true of Devendra, therefore that's all Devendra is" and people who say "That, amongst many other things, is true of Devendra". For instance, I think it's possible to say that Devendra is both a "big fat phony" and "one of the most genuinely pure people you might ever meet", just as I think the argument currently raging over the moral character of American Apparel's Dov Charney (as it once did over Vice's Gavin McInnes) should allow that these people are multi-faceted: Charney is both a benign philanthropic entrepreneur and a union buster (not to mention a masturbator). The nice thing about complexity is that it tends to make the witch-hunting a last resort, and that way we don't burn any good stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

when capital enters the picture it is easy to assume that it will spoil the integrity of the artist or the art. its the responsibility of the viewer to decide whether intention and purpose have remained pure. it is unfortunate that the possibility for this objective observation is hindered by the moronic cynicism bias. i recall people even giving chumbawamba a hard time for selling a song to GM, even though all the profits were donated to anti-car/anti-pollution campaigns.

its also easier to be forgiving to flowers and fruit trees for having marketing being the essense of their artistic dimension. they can't help themselves.

Like all ideals...

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

...the meritocracy is a flawed theory, but it works in some ways, such as on Wikipedia.

[badspelling.livejournal.com]

devendra has already licensed a song for a cheese commercial here in britain. it's been on for about a month now. I can't remember the name of the song but it's the one that goes "have me on breakfast..." or something.

Playing songs in bars versus playing songs about beer

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Since live pop music is retail beer sales, I'm not sure what's so wrong about doing it wholesale with an ad.

Besides, Fat Tire is really good beer!

[depechenick.livejournal.com]

man, hipsters are insane. sometimes i think you're more puritanical than the puritans; trying to figure out whether devendra is a sell-out or if american apparel is sexist. complex? don't make me laugh.

lemme break it down:

devendra banhart = who's that? nevermind, i don't care.

american apparel = a store that sells overpriced t-shirts.

vice magazine = a magazine by some canadian wiggers living in new york.

$$ nick

[imomus.livejournal.com]

when capital enters the picture it is easy to assume that it will spoil the integrity of the artist or the art.

While there are musics produced without capital, pop music isn't one of them. I think it's easy to listen to Devendra's bucolic strumming and imagine him under an apple tree singing to a girl, but the reality is that we only know his name because of factories stamping out bits of plastic, factories that pay the rent, that churn smoke into the sky, that send trucks out all over the world carrying Devendra and his bucolic sounds across the capitalist infrastructure. So it's somewhat arbitrary to say that capital only enters when Devendra licenses a song to a commercial.

its also easier to be forgiving to flowers and fruit trees for having marketing being the essense of their artistic dimension. they can't help themselves.

Are you suggesting that if fruit trees were rational and responsible they wouldn't produce fruit? That's a rather sad thought — I hope you're wrong.

[j7bnvaaaetrd.livejournal.com]

It's like socialism of the senses. For many of us who were born in the 1960s, anti-capitalist technologies seemed noble. Now it's like only wealthy people can think like that. Any object of value, once it hits the marketplace, is flattened out, and who cares what the source is? Many of these people of the younger generation, like Devendra Banhart, never experienced the guilt of money, so "selling-out" doesn't seem like an issue to them.

[concrete-tiger.livejournal.com]

Purists might point out that figures like Beck and Tom Waits have objected vociferously to their music being used or pastiched in commercials [...]

This is not to pick on Tom Waits, but to illustrate a point. Tom Waits did an episode of Storytellers (http://www.vh1.com/shows/dyn/storytellers/49431/episode.jhtml) on VH1. Last I checked, that network broadcasts commercials. Tom Waits did his thing, and VH1 sold ad time to companies that want to sell products to people who watch Tom Waits. So it amounts to the same thing.

But one difference is critical: Tom Waits did his thing from start to finish. His music had not been edited and rearranged to fit into 30-second spots.

I may be wrong, but I don't recall that any of Devendra Banhart's short songs are quite that short. So they would have needed to be bastardized in some way to fit the spot.

Writing music for ads is good and noble work for those with the disposition for it. The trick is the music is done for the ads. It's hard to say a composer compromised his vision when his vision was a 30-second music bed for a TV ad.

[lil-octopie.livejournal.com]

plus there's now a hot hollywood film showing people how coooool tagging is: harhar

http://www.bombthesystem.com/

[lil-octopie.livejournal.com]

the way i figure it, it's all about the redistribution of funds. albeit there are *some* evil companies i personally would not work for. one just has to judge on a case per case basis.

I figure they'll give their money to me or they'll give their money to some other person. The other person may spend their money on expensive gas guzzling cars, eat pricey dinners at chain restaurants, etc. But if I have the money I can spend it on buying nice art for myself from other indie artists, eatting at local cafes, donating to animal shelters, whatever. I just figure I can distribute the money better...so yes big corporations, give me your money, I will help you spend it wisely.

as for devendra. who cares. if one likes his music, then like it. if he has some cash then he can feed himself and make more music. all is good. beer, m&ms and cheese are not evil as far as I can tell. besides, judging at how 'affected' his singing style is, this can't be a surprise?

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

my main problem with using pre-existing music for a commercial spot, is not so much the money taken by the artist, but the fact that the song is put into a very strong, new context, so every time i'll hear the song again on its own, i will be reminded of the commercial. this is true not only for pop songs, but also famous aires from operas / symphonies are disgustingly "branded" to me now.
as for the amassing of cultural capital: that's the only thing i have left at the end of each month, when the rentis payed, the food eaten, the books bought - i am in a position to handle my cultural capital quite independently, as are you, but there are many cases where that capital is taken out of the hands of those who provided it, and be exploited by force of the "real" capital - there are so many stories of authors / artists being cheated by big corporations who create whole industries by transforming an original thought into a product line, often without paying the originator - not everyone can afford a lawsuit against, say, warner brothers ...
as for "One of the good things about capitalism is that it's blind to what it sells. The system isn't really the enemy. It's blind, all it wants is to replicate and do more things.":
that's not all there is to it. in many cases, it ain't blind at all, but very consciously the lobbies will provide only things they WANT to sell, not only what they CAN sell. for example, nuclear energy plants went on the market and sold to countries like india, instead of building many small biological energy plants, one for every village, thus providing work and keeping the costs low - because nuclear energy plants are central and demand a technically complex and extremely expensive periphery - huge transformer stations, etc., which means having power in the country for the energy industry. in germany in the 70ies, the energy industry and the government talked the population into an imagined "energy crisis", thus making way to build nuclear energy plants which provided energy that in fact nobody needed - and that's capitalism, too, because with money, you can not only buy things, but also buy power, to dictate on others what they can buy.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if this is the commercial mentioned or not, but I saw an M&M's commercial and I thought the delicate strumming was Iron and Wine. If not then I think we can say folk music is in.

[(Anonymous)]

your correct that capital is intrinsic to the recording artist process and i didn't mean to imply otherwise. as long as the person stamping labels on cd's is getting a paycheck there is no reason that the artist should be denied one too. listeners have to discern what remains artistically authentic, like devendra, and what ceases to be due to capital exchange.


Are you suggesting that if fruit trees were rational and responsible they wouldn't produce fruit? That's a rather sad thought — I hope you're wrong.

if trees were rational, maybe they would produce fruit for the enjoyment of squirrels and birds instead of their own proliferation. i know i would enjoy eating apples much more if that were the case. :)

moronic cynicism versus artistic prostitution

[facehead2k.livejournal.com]

I don't think one's artistic credibility is sullied by commercial use, just one's reputation as a voice that can be trusted. Despite the commercial machine that makes Waits' and Beck's music so widely available, they don't feel the need to compose adverts for doritos, beer, or laundry detergent. By licensing work for advertisements, the songs enter a venue where they become part of the product they're selling instead of the product the artist fashioned them to be. The role of the prostitute is more acceptable for artists than it is for their work. While one could accuse Mackaye and Co. of being stingy with their cultural capital, I sympathize with them. Whether or not one appreciates their work, Minor Threat valued their reputation as a voice to be trusted more than the money that voice could earn them selling shoes. To fault them for that seems as foolish as faulting Banhart. The problem isn't the public's distrust of salesmen, but rather our inability to apply more scrutiny to the voices of salesmen that sell us wars, paranoia, and prejudice.

[(Anonymous)]

They're more nerdy than wiggerish.

Your Icon

[commodorevic.livejournal.com]

from Bards Tale? for the Commodore 64?

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Doing music for adverts is often the best way to open your music to a larger audience. I'm not a fan of adverts and typically not a fan of most big companies, but when thousands and, potentially, millions of people are listening to Devendra Banhart (!), I can't see that as a bad thing.