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Last year, we posted about Mark Burnett’s new idea, a sort of “American Idol” for jingle writers. Well, it turns out that CBS has decided to pick up the series, and casting is happening as we speak, with episodes to begin airing this summer.

May I just say, from an advertising perspective, what a stroke of genius this is?

The fact that the show will be a nationally televised commercial for anyone willing to pony up the dough, with people literally competing over how best to tell the world about how inexplicably wonderful that company is, well, that’s why Mark Burnett is a millionaire and you’re not.

And if anyone can figure out where they’re casting, give us a head’s up. [ms]

(via Reuters)

“Best Original Song” was the only award that I had invested any emotional energy into at the Oscars last night. If you have not seen Once and you have any love at all for the creative process of making music, you are doing yourself a disservice. The performance of “Falling Slowly” given by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova last night, while not quite on the emotional scale of the version featured in the movie, made it pretty obvious who the rightful winners should be. And then, lo and behold, the rightful winners won! Cheers, guys!

P.S.- Good on ya, John Stewart, for letting Marketa come back out to finish her acceptance speech. [ms]

What I Liked About The Grammys
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love When People Bomb

I have come to realize that I tend to err on the side of crotchetiness on this blog. While that attitude is sometimes completely valid, it makes me seem like an angry young man, which I don’t believe I am. In that light, I am going to run down for you the things I liked about, well, an otherwise lackluster Grammy celebration.

Now, I know, the Grammys mean about as much to a musician as, well, the American Music Awards mean to a musician, but with a lot of money and a halfway decent reputation, you’d think anyone could put on a semi-entertaining show.

Anyways, here are my highlights.

Last Friday we got a call from MTV, wanting to license our song Feels Like This for their hit show, The Hills.

Great, no problem… a flurry of last minute paperwork ensued, and that was that. Apparently the show aired last night because we’re getting tons of hits from search engine users looking for “feels like this burst collective” and so forth…

Mediaweek reports that CBS is in talks with the creator of Survivor and The Apprentice about a show featuring a jingle production contest.

From reality guru Mark Burnett, and aptly titled Jingles, the eight-episode order will pit teams of contestants against each other in weekly battles to determine who can come up with the most effective commercial ditty.

Man, oh man, I’m getting all geeked out on this.

We may knock ‘em from time to time, but jingles are still in use in advertising everyday. Most of our custom music production work is of the underscore (or instrumental) variety, and the vast majority of our vocal productions are actual songs. But it would certainly be a blast, and I know we have a team of people who could actually provide some comedic elements to the show.

(eh, that’s you Matt and Judson)

We were stoked by the idea of teams competing on the show, since that’s what Burst is all about, and were a bit let down when the early talk of individual winners was the focus, but Burnett’s comments at Variety.com give us some hope that as a team we would still be considered :

“This show is sort of like America’s Got Talent but with a purpose,” said Burnett, adding that the competing teams will potentially benefit from royalties even if they are voted off early in the show.

Of course, if they’re looking for that Classic Sing Song Jingle thing, may we humbly nominate Terry Sweet as our Milwaukee representative. The dude has been at it longer than anyone we know in town, and he kills it everytime.

So, I say we enter. Let’s do it. I’m just left wondering who could be our Richard Hatch or Omarosa. Ideas, anyone? [dh]

UPDATE : um, okay, this does not bode well for us joining in (more from the Variety.com article) :

“A team could be anything from a sole singer-songwriter to a brother/sister team to a hip-hop group or a barbershop quartet,” Bank said. “Their performance onstage will really determine the vote.”

Performance onstage? Uh, yeah.

We’ve been fans of KCRW since The Burst Collective was based in Los Angeles nearly 10 years ago.

And music fans the world over are fortunate that we can stream their programming from their website or iTunes, staying up to speed with the pulse of what’s next in music.

And you must have heard this story before, but it’s a pretty great example of the cultural impact of a station : while producing The Sopranos launch, creator David Chase was impressed by a song he heard on KCRW while driving around LA. The rest, as they say, is mob history. Diana Nyad retells the story in a post and podcast at the station’s website.

It’s amazing what rare musical gems have been stored away in the basement of the Santa Monica Community College.

There are countless other stories and recordings and legendary artists who have been recorded in the production archives at the station, but help is needed to properly present the inspired music, timeless interviews and live recording sessions. They’ve launched a campaign to generate awareness and funding for the cause… The Music Match: A Campaign to Save KCRW’s Library.

Closer to home, Milwaukee’s very own 88Nine is doing some great new things for the local music community, as well. It’s quite encouraging to see diverse and alternative programming growing instead of shrinking - for years our only option was the college station WMSE, who have done an admirable job of even staying afloat while the city was slow to catch up - and 102.1’s Kramp & Adler have been super supportive of the growing indie scene (including on-air features with Burst friends Maritime, Fever Marlene and Northern Room).

Join us, drop a dime, help out the world of music if you love it..

donate here : KCRW | 88Nine

… because we all know there ain’t many of us left who are actually paying for the music itself. [dh]

More music from ‘the decade of greed’ is on the way this week… here’s a clip that has brought us much inspiration and joy as we’ve been prepping the latest specimens for upload to our Lab. [dh]

Moby is offering his catalog of production tracks as a free music library for student film projects and non-profits.

We’d put this in our “Wish We’d Thought Of That” category, but, ahhh, yeah…. we already did. Check the last question at our FAQ.

All of our production music is available, for no fee, if you are a student or a qualifying non-profit… and a few of you have taken us up on our offer. We’re simply hoping to make friends and fans, and, as always, we’re on the lookout for quality productions in which to place our music.

To offer any commentary beyond this announcement could be a tad precarious, as we’re on record for being less-than-interested in producing a Moby-esque track ever again (or Coldplay, for that matter) at the behest of yet another ad agency looking to help their client align themselves directly with 1999.

And the charity angle he’s tying in is certainly noble and worth some sort of karmic credit.

But we’ve been fans of Moby… for his (former?) punk aesthetic, for his commercial success (in both meanings of the word ‘commercial’), and certainly for his outspoken and candid views on politics, the environment, animal rights, and religion (frequently still offered at his blog).

Our frustration with his music stems more from the lack of imagination that some of his fans in the ad world appear to have when looking for music for their latest spot. We realize some of the blame lay with their end client, whose capriciousness and indecisiveness have doomed campaign after campaign, skyrocketing their commercial right to the juicy, safe, mediocre, mid-america middle.

And now we say this… (to further ensure that Mr. Richard Melville Hall will never take our calls - unfortunately - because as we said previously, we’re fans) :

The music he’s offering for free just ain’t all that good. The majority of the songs sound like lifeless demos that couldn’t even find a home on a collection of B-sides.

Oh well… that’s been our opinion of the vast wasteland populated by music library after music library after music library for the past decade, as well.

Welcome to the party, Moby. You’ve successfully distributed a few dozen “songs” in an effort to join the world of free production music. Now the real work begins… getting inspired to write something emotionally engaging… keeping your catalog up to date… dealing with the endless requests for tracks that sound like Moby… er, wait… you’ve got that one covered. [dh]

UPDATE 3/12/08 - Moby speaks on his Gratis project at SXSW. More at LA Times Extended Play.

It’s not every week that we get to affiliate ourselves with MC Hammer, Antonio Banderas, AND the hottest reality dancing competition on television.

So, here’s some cool news… music produced by The Burst Collective was used in the Emmy-nominated show Dancing With The Stars.

Of course, there were some great songs featured in the final showdown (dance-off??) between Mario Lopez and Emmitt Smith, including :

“Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder

“Que Bueno Baila Usted” by Oscar d’Leon

“Cancion Del Mariachi” by Los Lobos & Antonio Banderas

“You Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer

“It Takes Two” by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock

In addition to custom scoring and record production, we do production music (or licensed music / library music) as many of you know. Which means we’re the team that sits behind the scenes making the instrumental breaks and musical intro bits to help keep things exciting, or dramatic, or tense, or heartwarming, or whatever the music supervisor thinks is needed for the show.

And we’re content with that. Really.

But we did get a little jacked this past week when our royalty reports showed up and revealed that Dancing With The Stars clearly digs the music we’ve produced for the Velocity Music Library (distributed by FirstCom Music). In addition to a bevy of uses throughout last season, they used two of our pieces quite prominently in the Emmy-nominated Episode 310 :

“Heroes” by Holter/Mosher


“Gonna Getcha” by Ecoff/Holter

And now we find out that that very episode is the one nominated for an Emmy!

Well, we’d like to think we played some small role, but clearly the show’s musical director, Harold Wheeler, knows what he’s doing and deserves all the credit.

Congratulations Harold, and everyone at DWTS!! We’ll be cheering for you from afar on September 16. [dh]

Click here for the complete list of Emmy nominees.

“Heroes” and “Gonna Getcha” are © FirstCom Music / ZFC Music and are provided here for demo purposes only.

Steven Van Zandt, known for both his role as Silvio Dante on The Sopranos and as guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, offers his support for licensing young, up and coming, indie bands for commercials on tv.

Two interesting tidbits for me…

One :

… a big star is going to overwhelm your brand. I remember Beyonce doing a commercial, but who cares what the product was? Two, it’s cheaper. For the tens of millions spent on Beyonce, you get 30-60 new bands. Band, master, song, all in.

Do we really need to point out the obvious here?

SILVIO WANTS YOU TO LICENSE OUR ARTISTS MUSIC. BANDANNAS AND/OR HAIRPIECES SHALL FLAIL IF YOU IGNORE HIS ADVICE.

Okay, maybe not in quite such specific terms, but seriously… there are major advantages to working with artists who aren’t already big time stars.

Help the little guys out, will ya? We tell you about ‘em because we’re fans, not because we get a piece of their careers for landing them a spot. We’ll help seal the deal, connect the pertinent parties, negotiate some terms, but licensing an indie artist song from Burst Labs really does go a long way toward jumpstarting interest in the band or artist.

And point B :

I don’t know who started it — Allen Moyle’s “Pump Up the Volume” with Christian Slater comes to mind — but it’s good for the movies and good for the music world, which, now more than ever, must rely on the synergy of strangers.

Agreed, and it makes me want to add Wave Of Mutilation by The Pixies (one of the tunes in Pump Up The Volume) to our ongoing list of songs too precious to us to ever accept them as corporate advertising fodder. Add yours to the list and drop us a comment over there.

Tip of the ol’ hat to AdFreak. [dh]