all time sellouts

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Beebs
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Beebs »

beantownbubba wrote:"Selling out" (whatever that is) AND not making money? I think the word for that is failure.


This seems to be assigning some cash value to selling out while I believe it's a condition of one's integrity and soul.

I know a guy who briefly in his youth was an earnest song writer. He now tries to write formulaic "christian country pop" songs cause that's what he hears on the radio and thinks he's going to cash in. He's never made a single penny off of a song and I maintain that he's as big a sell out as they come.

Tequila Cowboy wrote:There are sorts of ways to sell out and not all of them are bad. Getting song placements in movies or TV has always seemed to be an acceptable route while commercials are seen as unacceptable. To me they're really the same and both can be done badly and both can be done well. If your song about real emotion and the loves of your life has the lyrics changed to promote a dish rag with greater absorbency you most likely have done it wrong. If your song plays in a beer commercial while beautiful horses march across the countryside if your song was already good, it probably still is.


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Penny Lane
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Penny Lane »

Beebs wrote:
In my interpretation you can sell out and never make more than a quick buck, here and there…

And/Or

You could make gobs of cash and still maintain your dignity, artistic and otherwise.


Interesting. I can't think of an example, though?
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Beebs »

Penny Lane wrote:
Beebs wrote:
In my interpretation you can sell out and never make more than a quick buck, here and there…

And/Or

You could make gobs of cash and still maintain your dignity, artistic and otherwise.


Interesting. I can't think of an example, though?


Yeah, kind of a flaw in the argument. How to come up with an example of a sell out that didn't "make it" by selling out, but yet we're aware of?


I'll come up with something.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by beantownbubba »

Beebs wrote:I know a guy who briefly in his youth was an earnest song writer. He now tries to write formulaic "christian country pop" songs cause that's what he hears on the radio and thinks he's going to cash in. He's never made a single penny off of a song and I maintain that he's as big a sell out as they come.


Agreed. I'd also describe him as a failure (as a songwriter).

As I understand it, the term "selling out" refers to a conscious attempt to make something popular w/out regard to one's own aesthetic/artistic integrity. IOW, whether one succeeds or not is not relevant to determining whether one has sold out. I'm just suggesting that one who has sold out yet not made money has achieved a double whammy of an "achievement."
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Tequila Cowboy »

beantownbubba wrote:As I understand it, the term "selling out" refers to a conscious attempt to make something popular w/out regard to one's own aesthetic/artistic integrity. IOW, whether one succeeds or not is not relevant to determining whether one has sold out.


I'm not sure that one has to sacrifice their "own aesthetic/artistic integrity" when making a conscious effort to be popular. First though, let's be clear, we are talking about two separate but sometimes interrelated things here. The first is trying to consciously make art that it is more commercial. I think there are more artists/bands that are accused of this than truthfully do this, sometimes by assholes like me or sometime actually me, but there is no question it happens. Bonnie Raitt did this with Nick of Time and succeeded. She had released a string of really good records that consistently topped out on the charts middle of the pack anywhere from 25-80 and then released an album in 1986 that came nowhere near those respectable, if unspectacular numbers. She talked with her many friends in the business and came up with a strategy to sell more records. In 1989 she succeeded with Nick of Time that topped off at #1 and went multi-platinum. Artistically the album is pretty damned good too, she used more outside songwriters, slicker production and less of her trademark slide guitar work but you can't say it was crap either. Was it a sellout? Yes, because she consciously set out to make a more salable product. Did she sacrifice her artistic integrity? I don't think so unless of course you believe that slide guitar defined who she was prior to that record. I'm sure some do, objectively it's probably not so.

The second kind of sellout being discussed is lending, or more accurately selling, your song(s) to a commercial venture larger than or even unrelated to your own efforts. This would be either writing specifically for movies, TV, advertising, etc. or selling previously written songs to those ventures. Again this can be done with the utmost integrity (Patterson Hood's Depression Era comes to mind) or it could be written with a distinct commercial appeal (think James Bond themes, not all of them bad but all of them sold for their commercial potential). I think it's much easier to tell whether an artist has crossed a line in this type of "sellout" than it is in the one discussed above. Again if your song about your beloved mother is changed to sell soap, well you probably messed up the integrity score but if, in contrast, your beautiful song is purchased and used intact to promote a quality product well maybe not so much. if you consistently sell to the latter and never to the former than I think you can probably sleep easy at night knowing that you have both satisfied your financial needs and desires without singing intimate thoughts about washing your clothes. Win-win.
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Re: all time sellouts

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Re: all time sellouts

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i honestly see Glenn's side of that. He's just as big (if not bigger) a part of the Misfits and their iconography as Jerry. why shouldn't he get $ from merch sales?

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Zip City »

tinnitus photography wrote:i honestly see Glenn's side of that. He's just as big (if not bigger) a part of the Misfits and their iconography as Jerry. why shouldn't he get $ from merch sales?


The point wasn't who deserves what money. The point was that Black Flag has a merch deal with Hot fucking Topic
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Re: all time sellouts

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I've been thinking about this a lot recently & have decided that I am the all-time sellout. I was gonna be somebody. I was gonna make a difference. Instead I have become something far less than that. I sold out to the safer road, the less risky path. I was gonna be part of the solution & instead I let myself become overwhelmed by my own problems. I sold out to 500 gallons of Jack Daniels & about 2 tons of marijuana. I talk the talk but I don't walk the walk. I am a proletariat peon who was gonna break the very corporate stranglehold that I have succumbed to. I was gonna fix their fuzzy math. I was gonna blaze the golden path. I sold out to complacency. I make Rod Stewart look like a bastion of integrity.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by tinnitus photography »

Zip City wrote:
tinnitus photography wrote:i honestly see Glenn's side of that. He's just as big (if not bigger) a part of the Misfits and their iconography as Jerry. why shouldn't he get $ from merch sales?


The point wasn't who deserves what money. The point was that Black Flag has a merch deal with Hot fucking Topic


are you confusing Misfits with Black Flag?

or with Hot fucking Topic?

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Zip City »

tinnitus photography wrote:
Zip City wrote:
tinnitus photography wrote:i honestly see Glenn's side of that. He's just as big (if not bigger) a part of the Misfits and their iconography as Jerry. why shouldn't he get $ from merch sales?


The point wasn't who deserves what money. The point was that Black Flag has a merch deal with Hot fucking Topic


are you confusing Misfits with Black Flag?

or with Hot fucking Topic?


No idea why I wrote Black Flag when I just read the article. My bad
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by tinnitus photography »

even if it was Black Flag, there are tons of counterfeit uses of that symbol. Ginn's a dick (and should spread his $ around to other members), but if he wants to license the 4 bars to Hot Topic, go ahead.

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by linkous »

I've only read the first few posts, but if the criteria is indeed "betraying your music for the sake of bank" as one poster said, then for me that sounds like a certain band from Athens, GA. Circa 1986 by my reckoning, no pun intended.
Last edited by linkous on Thu May 08, 2014 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: all time sellouts

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Slipkid42 wrote: I make Rod Stewart look like a bastion of integrity.


you shut your whore mouth
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by cortez the killer »

tinnitus photography wrote:
Zip City wrote:
tinnitus photography wrote:i honestly see Glenn's side of that. He's just as big (if not bigger) a part of the Misfits and their iconography as Jerry. why shouldn't he get $ from merch sales?


The point wasn't who deserves what money. The point was that Black Flag has a merch deal with Hot fucking Topic


are you confusing Misfits with Black Flag?

or with Hot fucking Topic?

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by dime in the gutter »


love the bull fighter arm swing at the end.

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Dean »

Black Keys

I get working to get your music heard, but damn, to license it out to EVERY Tom, Dick, and Harry to come calling?

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Beebs »

dime in the gutter wrote:
love the bull fighter arm swing at the end.


WTF did I just watch? What in the eff does Paul Stanley have to do with coffee? Or the circus?

Would most Folgers drinkers even know who Paul Stanly is? Out of makeup?

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Re: all time sellouts

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Re: all time sellouts

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Hiya Ryan. Hiya pal.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Rocky »

I don't want to overshare here but....that Paul Stanley Folgers commercial made my dick hurt.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

Rocky wrote:I don't want to overshare here but....that Paul Stanley Folgers commercial made my dick hurt.
I watched it after reading that and I'm disappointed. I thought she was going to swing low enough to take him out with two feet to the groin.
The sooner we put those assholes in the grave&piss on the dirt above it, the better off we'll be

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Smitty »

Indicative of how people misunderstand/misinterpret the term "sell out", I've seen it tossed at Sturgill Simpson's new record a lot today. Call it what you want, but he ain't "selling out" at all.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Zip City »

Smitty wrote:Indicative of how people misunderstand/misinterpret the term "sell out", I've seen it tossed at Sturgill Simpson's new record a lot today. Call it what you want, but he ain't "selling out" at all.
There will always be a subset of music fans that simply want every artist they like to copy and paste their first album over and over for their entire careers.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by linkous »

Zip City wrote:
Smitty wrote:Indicative of how people misunderstand/misinterpret the term "sell out", I've seen it tossed at Sturgill Simpson's new record a lot today. Call it what you want, but he ain't "selling out" at all.
There will always be a subset of music fans that simply want every artist they like to copy and paste their first album over and over for their entire careers.
Agree with that, there's nothing worse. Which is why The Fall are the best band of all time natch!

Sturgill Simpson's album is a real divider I reckon. It's not very original, fairly grandiose, overloaded with horns and I can't bring myself to listen to it. However, I can understand why people will really love it.

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by bovine knievel »

Sturgill gives zero fucks.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Zip City »

Sturgill: "linkous? never heard of him"
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Re: all time sellouts

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Zip City wrote:Sturgill: "linkous? never heard of him"
every cloud...... :D

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Re: all time sellouts

Post by Smitty »

linkous wrote:
Zip City wrote:
Smitty wrote:Indicative of how people misunderstand/misinterpret the term "sell out", I've seen it tossed at Sturgill Simpson's new record a lot today. Call it what you want, but he ain't "selling out" at all.
There will always be a subset of music fans that simply want every artist they like to copy and paste their first album over and over for their entire careers.
Agree with that, there's nothing worse. Which is why The Fall are the best band of all time natch!

Sturgill Simpson's album is a real divider I reckon. It's not very original, fairly grandiose, overloaded with horns and I can't bring myself to listen to it. However, I can understand why people will really love it.


Why is that?
FWIW, I think it does sound fairly original; it is grandiose and horn-heavy, but I dig it.
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Re: all time sellouts

Post by linkous »

Smitty wrote:
linkous wrote:
Zip City wrote:
There will always be a subset of music fans that simply want every artist they like to copy and paste their first album over and over for their entire careers.
Agree with that, there's nothing worse. Which is why The Fall are the best band of all time natch!

Sturgill Simpson's album is a real divider I reckon. It's not very original, fairly grandiose, overloaded with horns and I can't bring myself to listen to it. However, I can understand why people will really love it.


Why is that?
FWIW, I think it does sound fairly original; it is grandiose and horn-heavy, but I dig it.
Just my opinion. I'm not the biggest fan of his voice , and it's a bit in your face on this record. I kind of overlooked it on the first two albums.

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