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The first-week sales figures are in for the big-box-friendly indie comp This Is Next. I’m gonna level with you… they’re not great.

Units Shipped: 100,000
Units Sold: 1,014

If you would indulge me in some gratuitous back-slapping, please refer back to this post where I get my Nostradamus on with some serious prognosticatin’ business.

Thank you, that is all. [ms]

Ahhh, the sweet smell of burning flesh and boiling potions must mean Halloween is imminent. As music producers accustomed to working on advertising and television production schedules, we hope you’ll forgive the pumpkins and spiders following so quickly on the heels of Labor Day.

The Boogeyman Cometh is the first release in our Burst Labs holiday series.

Very probably NSFW (not safe for work) :

Fair warning - in an attempt to be as genuine and legit as possible, there are some moments in these songs that may or may not be appropriate for your work environment. If your company is okay with an f-bomb storm and sadistic murder references, then turn up the volume and enjoy!

* denotes NSFW : explicit content (and we’re so NOT kidding)

Our first politically-incorrect track from this Halloween compilation brings you moaning evil-doers on a rampage in the form of a school shooting. Featuring the lyric “zombies picking prom queens outta their teeth”, here’s :

Zombies & Prom Queens *

When you need generous helpings of heavy breathing, demonic fear and some Saw-inspired flagellation, Private Mutilation will do the trick (or treat, as the case may be).

Private Mutilation

If you need some instrumental hiphop in cartoon-horror style, we think Smokin’ Mirrors is appropriately Scooby-licious.

Smokin’ Mirrors

For hiphop that has nothing to do with cartoons at all (unless you consider Dahmer or Bundy on par with the Addams Family, or have I-Heart-Marshall-Mathers tattooed on your face), be sure to say your prayers and take some sadistic pleasure in the two most evil and inappropriate pieces of music we have ever been involved with… therapists are standing by.

Homicidal *

The Nightmares *

And for tense and tight grooves hell-bent on death and destruction (which also work well as sports instrumentals when used without their spooky effects), check out :

Wrath Of The Sirens

Skeletal Remains

We promise to balance the universe with our next specimen upload, our ChristmaHanuKwanza holiday compilation… with enough soft guitars, swaddled babies and silent nights to bring our souls back from the brink of eternal damnation. [dh]

“When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.” - Mae West

This feels a bit like Spinal Tap + American Idol + The Office.

I hope the full movie is as good as the trailer - check out Great World Of Sound :

Absolutely perfect bit of music used in marketing (and we’re not even swayed by the fact that the production company, Glass And A Half Full, clearly loves the music of the eighties as much as we do) :

Check out the ridiculously great Cadbury Gorilla here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, AdFreak! [dh]

We’ve all done jobs we haven’t enjoyed. There was a time in my career where I edited a lot of fart jokes and T&A one-liners for small market radio stations (I think I may have actually preferred losing the feeling in the tips of my fingers as I pulled frozen chicken wings out of a 50-gallon drum during my week-long stint at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor).

My former boss, a voice-over who thought he was the top of the heap when it came to being considered The Voice Of God, couldn’t even be the driver in this fantastic bit of video :

But, to his credit, it was at that gig that I first learned about music libraries and produced my first volume of production tracks.

Burst actually looked into hiring Don Lafontaine on a script for the demo of our very first production music library, Gravity, back in 1997. When we realized we’d have to sell a few vital organs to pay his fee, we went searching and found Vic Caroli… and ended up with something much more appropriate anyway.

Maybe I’ll go dig up that old demo this afternoon.

These guys intrigue me to no end. Anyone out here dig Ken Nordine? Man, what a legendary set of pipes.

Thanks to sync.sound.cinema for the flashback. [dh]

UPDATE : I found it… the original Gravity Music Library Demo with Vic Caroli’s voice-over. One caveat, however - this was produced in 1997, people.

Two items of note re: our recent love of All Things Eighties :

The Gameover Project is doing some funs things inspired by videogames of the 80’s with their stop-motion videos based on arcade classics. Here’s Space Invaders (featuring a killer soundtrack impersonation via a human mouth) :

And the Blogosphere is going nutty over the rebirth of the DeLorean - the car made famous by the 1980’s MegaHit, Back To The Future.

Just because. Enjoy. More new music soon. [dh]

Much has been made within the hipster blog set regarding the co-opting of the younger generation’s music to shill corporate products. From Jeff Tweedy’s decision to license 6 songs from Wilco’s new album “Sky Blue Sky” for Volkswagen advertisements to Outback Steakhouse’s retooling of the song “Wraith Pinned To The Mist (And Other Games)” by Of Montreal, agencies seem to have simultaneously grasped that 20-somethings listen to music AND buy stuff.

While the players are new, the game remains the same.

In the mid-60’s, Coca-Cola was having trouble reaching out to the kids. They had a brand-spanking new jingle, courtesy of McCann-Erickson and The Limeliters, and they had a new commercial featuring clean-cut youths eating sandwiches and hanging clocks while enjoying ice-cold Coca-Cola.

For some reason, however, the message just wasn’t sticking. Then, an epiphany. Enlist the hitmakers of the day to re-imagine their hit songs as Coca-Cola commercials and cash in on the result. Latter-day luminaries such as Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, and The Bee-Gees jumped at the chance to be united in song with the nation’s leading soft-drink manufacturer. And the rest is history.

The Bee-Gees Coca-Cola Jingle
The Box Tops Coca-Cola Jingle
Nancy Sinatra’s Coca-Cola Jingle
Neil Diamond’s Coca-Cola Jingle
Petula Clark’s Coca-Cola Jingle
Roy Orbison’s Coca-Cola Jingle
Tom Jones’ Coca-Cola Jingle

In retrospect, I think these jingles present a pretty accurate tableau of mid-60’s pop music. The remakes don’t really alter my opinion of the originals. I don’t love The Box Tops’ “The Letter” any less, and frankly, Tom Jones’ jingle kinda makes me love “It’s Not Unusual” even more.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. [ms]

UPDATE : nice ‘documentary’ on a current Coke advertising approach at Leo Burnett Toronto’s blog. [dh]

RE: our affinity for the Power Ballad of the 80s :

RocketSurgeon gets it.

You’ll find our musical tribute to the era in three parts - here, here, and here.

St. Louis agency Moosylvania (home to a longtime friend-of-Burst, Judson F. Snell) has been described as “the Manson family of integrated marketing.”

What we know is this… they’re a renegade agency with a team of church-dwelling phantoms and their new Agency Simulator game Moosylvasion : Attack Of The Suits is online now. Go play!

Check out the bitchin’ retro music of the in-game soundtrack :

Going binary!

Hey faithful readers - welcome back to Channel Surfing, your monthly installment from the blog world of me, Dreighton Pickner – ad guy extraordinaire. It’s been a fun diversion for me to write these little quips and insights about “the game” while I’m setting up my consulting gig from home. Didn’t you hear? It’s the digital age. Armed with my venerable iMac and fax machine, I can stretch out in the spare bedroom and it’s just like the offices back at YourLogoHere!, minus the bureaucracy and chatty receptionist.

And that brings me to this month’s topic: The World Wide Web v2.0. Just five years ago most companies were still trying to get their act together, but nowadays you can’t find a carpet outlet or above ground swimming pool emporium that doesn’t have exclusive online sales and offers! I spent many a meeting at YLH trying to tell clients like Bill Black Dodge and AmeriTrust Loan (sorry about the namedropping) to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee – only to be met with blank indifference. (I sure hope it wasn’t the concept!)

But now, if I were to get a call from either one of those guys I’d have to ask them, “What do you think about the digital age now?” I may wear tacky ties and listen to my Counting Crows a little loud, but I know what I’m talking about. You have to wise up and see what’s going on out there – these trends are not made in cubicles, they’re made out there in the real world.

My son was here for the weekend and I couldn’t help but notice his mother had bought him a brand new laptop “for back to school.” He was showing me how to make an mp3 - ipod mini, anyone?! - when I saw this curious website in the background. (No, it’s not what you’re thinking. He’s got Pickner Pride and that means good judgment, unlike some former Pickners who let their boyfriends buy their way into kid’s lives with expensive trips to Best Buy.) But anyway – he looked at me and practically laughed because I didn’t know what this Myspace thing was.

So later that night after MoneyBags picked him up, I fired up the old cable modem and started doing a little hacking around myself. All I could think after about 20 minutes was “HEL-LO OPPORTUNITY!” Why pay for a website when you can get one on Myspace for FREE? The networking possibilities are endless and there’s thousands of kids on there just waiting to soak up some creative thinking. That Zeke The Cow character from Dunkables Choco-Yogurt Bites could have been on there in a matter of minutes and I’m betting he’d have hundreds of people sending him cybermails within a week!

I’m going to play that one close, it’s too good an opportunity for other ad guys out there to pick up on. But trust old Dreighton when he tells you that the ad game hasn’t seen the last of him yet and he’s still got a few tricks up his sleeve.

Come say “hi!” at my new Myspace page!! [dp]