Sunday afternoon (or evening, depending on your time zone), America will experience its one remaining tribal rite, the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
The Oscars are toast, the Grammys a laugh, and "American Idol" so 2007.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be you went to the movies so you’d have something to talk about at parties.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, collectively, everybody agreed the movies sucked and stopped going.\u00c2\u00a0 Leaving people to discuss their kids, or school, or just hook up without saying anything at all.\u00c2\u00a0 We did have the benefit of the two year Presidential race.\u00c2\u00a0 They said it was too long?\u00c2\u00a0 At least it gave everybody something to talk about.\u00c2\u00a0 With the last hurrah of the inauguration.\u00c2\u00a0 Soon, Obama will make a mistake and we’ll all start squabbling again, retreating to our own respective corners, whether they be MSNBC, Fox or talkingpointsmemo.com.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, it is humorous that politics have trumped music.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve come a long way when our President is a bigger rock star, with tons more cred, than anyone on the hit parade.<\/p>\n
Is a Tower Of Babel society inevitable?\u00c2\u00a0 Are we destined to speak a thousand languages, be into our own bands and hobbies, unable to relate to our brethren?\u00c2\u00a0 Mmm…\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting question.\u00c2\u00a0 I think people want to feel they belong, that they’re part of society.\u00c2\u00a0 And this has been demonstrated to me by two recent Web phenomena.<\/p>\n
First we had the Vail skier.\u00c2\u00a0 I was actually at that lift an hour later, but didn’t know about the dude hanging upside down until the next day, when there was a small black and white photo that failed to highlight the slider’s nudity in the "Vail Daily".\u00c2\u00a0 What I found most interesting about the story wasn’t him hanging upside down, but that they could run the lift in reverse.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d never seen that!<\/p>\n
Fully five days later, my inbox started filling up with links.\u00c2\u00a0 From both skiers and non-skiers alike.\u00c2\u00a0 The story made the Huffington Post, never mind PerezHilton and Drudge.\u00c2\u00a0 And eventually the "Today Show". In other words, this hapless dude got more exposure than U2, whose single is fading down the chart as I write this.\u00c2\u00a0 Even more than the performers exercising their pipes on the Lincoln Memorial’s steps.\u00c2\u00a0 That was a cable production.\u00c2\u00a0 The naked skier was mainstream.<\/p>\n
Now comes Microsoft Songsmith.<\/p>\n
The word always starts slowly, it’s never an instant supernova.\u00c2\u00a0 Some early adopter, someone tuned in, e-mails me the day of, before I’ve even heard of it.\u00c2\u00a0 In this case, I viewed the video and laughed. Irrelevant.<\/p>\n
But then my inbox starts filling up, and the "New York Times" picks up on it and the denizens who don’t need to be first, who don’t need to be hip, start e-mailing me in droves.<\/p>\n
This is a gargantuan story.\u00c2\u00a0 It proves that missteps will live on in infamy.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that no one at Microsoft could see the downside of this video illustrates the employees there are just as stupid as those at the record labels who couldn’t fathom that Napster was the future and needed to be embraced, not eradicated.\u00c2\u00a0 How do you make a video of a Windows product on a Mac (that’s delineated in every story)?\u00c2\u00a0 Where do you find these zombies, straight out of fifties TV?<\/p>\n
Then there are the parody videos.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the software doesn’t truly work.\u00c2\u00a0 It delivers generic music to all lyrics and singing.\u00c2\u00a0 YouTube is filling up with laughable clips.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the biggest phenomenon online today.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re all insiders, laughing at the corporate behemoth.\u00c2\u00a0 Wondering how anybody can be that out of it, that stupid.<\/p>\n
Utilizing the record industry’s wares to illustrate the point, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 Like somehow Doug Morris can truly stop every freaking individual with a computer from synching Universal Music to the images of their choice.<\/p>\n
So, think twice, everybody’s watching.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, very little.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re drawn to the train-wrecks, they illustrate the human condition.\u00c2\u00a0 But this wildfire word of mouth demonstrates the power of the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 If only you can make something that everybody wants to spread because it’s so damn cool.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how Peter Gabriel broke, via the "Sledgehammer" video.\u00c2\u00a0 Marry images with music and you’ve got a phenomenon. If both are beyond good, if both are crazy good.\u00c2\u00a0 The public wants to rally around, and experience things together.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that the music industry titans haven’t figured this out, haven’t exploited this, shows that not only are they dumb, they’ve failed to come up with music that can reach the masses. Jonas Brothers?\u00c2\u00a0 For kids.\u00c2\u00a0 Rihanna?\u00c2\u00a0 For mindless twits who want to dance.\u00c2\u00a0 The next Beatles? Nowhere on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Throw out the beatboxes.\u00c2\u00a0 Find people who can sing.\u00c2\u00a0 And write good melodies.\u00c2\u00a0 How come Lou Pearlman could figure this out, but all the baby boomer honchos in power at the labels cannot (and the indies are no better, they want us all to pay attention to a clothed skier riding the lift wearing a beanie with an indecipherable logo).\u00c2\u00a0 Mainstream doesn’t always mean compromised.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone respects limit-testing creativity, if they believe it’s real, that it’s not just a stunt.<\/p>\n
Microsoft Songsmith Commercial<\/span>