Bob—

First—thank you for your newsletter. I’m a new subscriber after reading your contributions to the Celebrity Access Newsletters and can wholeheartedly say that I look forward to your musings in my inbox every day now.

I’m sure you’re inundated with mail, so I’ll be brief—

What are your thoughts on what seems to be the recent influx of bands, old and new, selling their music to every type of corporation under the sun?

It seems like only the past three or four years that this has become an almost ‘cool’ thing for them to do.

I’m in my early 30’s and grew up on grunge—and can say that had Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam ever sold one of their songs to a commercial entity, it would have been their kiss of death and they would have been exiled from the garden of cool mighty quick.

But these days, it seems like fans and bands alike are all too eager to have one of their songs featured on a fucking sitcom on the WB or in a Nissan commercial.

I can maybe understand a band like The Who wanting to get some sort of payback for the losses and mismanagement of their early career by allowing their songs to be used in the CSI series; but what about the new guys?

Doesn’t anyone have a soul anymore? Wasn’t rock and roll supposed to be AGAINST the corporate machine?

I made a mix tape (CD actually) for a girl I’m seeing not too long ago and one of the songs I included was Iron and Wine’s cover of Such Great Heights. A couple days later I’m watching a little tube and BLAMMO! There’s that super cool song I used on a CD to express my crush for this girl being used to hock M&M’s!!!

Again, I’m a new subscriber and reader of your site and haven’t gotten through all of your archives yet—if you’ve already covered this topic, please just direct me to the link on the site.

If not, please let me know that someone else out there shares my frustration with this disturbing trend.

I think that a rule should be made that once a band sells a song to a company for use in their commercial that they should be cast aside like a used whore…which is, in my humble opinion, exactly what they are.

No more airplay on the FM or XM dials; no more touring; no more coke and limos; Just go work a kiosk in the mall selling your cars/beer/pharmaceutical and that’s it.

Thanks again Bob, and keep up the great work.

Regards,

Mike Van Jura
Talent Buyer
Harrisburg PA USA
www.roundtablepresents.com