music from my rabbit ears

This morning I happened to wake up to the Today Show on NBC and Matt was giving a 'bow down and cry holy' intro for K.T. Tunstall, someone I've not heard of before this morning. I don't remember his exact words, but he seemed to think that she had an original or different style (I was half awake, not wearing my contacts, trying to figure out who the heck she was and where I was). I heard something like a click-track start up and then some palm-muted scratches. The loops began shortly after and that was the foundation for her entire song. Hmm, wasn't that original when Howie Day was doing this back before Australia, although it was new to me at that time (of course since then, he has sold out to the Adult Alternative market with the song "Collide" and the other versions of the same song on the same release, except the track "Perfect Time of Day".) Tunstall's voice was nice and she definitely had to be talented to pull off the 'one woman band' on the Today Show. On the other hand, the song was rather boring and didn't really go anywhere, a pet peeve of mine. I wonder if she will draft a full band for a tour, or if she will keep this solo gig going.

Brendan Benson is a name probably known to most from his appearance on one of the Smallville soundtracks. I didn't know him from that because I don't watch the show. To the surprise of many, I don't have cable or satellite (great DMB song) at home. We watch major network tv and have too much to watch even then, so we have kept away from another pointless bill. I found Benson's music in the Paste Magazine Download Vault. I had heard of Benson before, but didn't know it. The jingle from one of the Ford Fusion commercials features "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" and I recognized the music, but didn't know who it was. I broke out one of the mix cds I had made and listened through it until I figured out it was him. "Gold into Straw" was the other track available from Alternative to Love. I liked both tracks, so I bit the bullet and bought the cd. I have listened through it a few times, but I have had so much music around lately that I haven't had time to really listen and let it grow on me. I downloaded a live John Vanderslice concert from www.johnvanderslice.com (Live and Direct) around the same time and I've been listening to it instead.

There are some tv commercial songs which I never get a chance to figure out at all and many on tv shows which the shows' websites say nothing about. Random songs on shows get me excited. The best example I can think of was one night on Scrubs. The show ended with Coldplay's "Everything's Not Lost" from Parachutes. I didn't even recognize the song, but after the show I ran, knowing it was Coldplay, to my cds and pulled out The Blue Room Ep. It was the wrong one, so I next pulled Parachutes and was glad to find that I wasn't crazy. It's interesting that a lot of shows including Grey's Anatomy, The O.C., One Tree Hill, Smallville, and Scrubs are trying to tie in to those favoring music mostly found off of the radar. This is good for indie music because of the exposure, but bad at the same time because the tracks don't really give the viewing audience the best representation of a band's sound. Take for example Jet's "Look What You've Done" featured on one of The O.C.'s many mix albums. It is a simple Lennon/McCartney ripoff which gathered a lot of radio attention for that reason alone, pathetic. That song would give some the idea of a pop album with maybe a little rock, but that's totally wrong since the rest of the album is a southern rock romp straight from The Black Crows' songbook, which was originally stolen from too many names to mention. Either way, that means more albums sold for Jet, which is probably what they wanted anyway.