Product Placement
Local bands break in by sneaking through your TV set
In 2005, “Breathe Me” by Sia played during the series finale of HBONs Six Feet Under. Despite being nearly two years old at the time, the song was exposed to a whole new audience, prompting widespread commercial radio airplay and a U.S. rerelease of SiaNs album. The O.C. became so well-known for breaking indie bands it spawned five Music From the O.C. albums.
So itNs not surprising that a lot of local bands try to get their music on TV, but what is surprising—or, at least, impressive—is the number of unsigned Orange County acts that have successfully gotten “placement” (to use the somewhat-icky industry term for it) in the past couple of months. Newport BeachNs the Jakes saw their songs played on the background of The Real World and A&ENs The Beast earlier this spring. Just this past week, Huntington BeachNs Honeypie, relative newcomers on the local scene, got a good minute of “Never Get Enough” on the CWNs bizarre soap opera One Tree Hill. (On a recent episode, a doctor carrying a donor heart tripped and dropped the heart, and then a dog ate it.)
The Brit-pop-inspired Venus Infers (also from H.B.) have had plenty of their songs end up on the tube and are proof that even if MTV doesnNt play many videos anymore (you may have heard), they still support music, albeit in a subtler way—the bandNs music has been on the networkNs Making the Band, The Real World, Road Rules, The Hills and The City over the years, as well as those especially inane Real World/Road Rules challenges. Earlier this year, their music appeared on critically lauded FX drama Damages.
“Sometimes itNs hard to keep track,” says Venus Infers singer/guitarist Davis Fetter, “because I donNt have cable, and a lot of times when people use the placements, they donNt tell me until itNs done.”
Fetter explains that bands not part of the major-label machine get these placements a couple of different ways: through third-party groups whose job it is to get music on TV, film and commercials, or simply through making connections. For Orange County bands, being so close to LA doesnNt hurt.
“On MTV, for The Hills, The City and Making the Band, we had done a couple of shows [in LA], and I had met one of the girls who does music supervision out there,” Fetter says. “I just kind of facilitated that: ‘Hey, weNd love to be on the shows sometime.N”
Even though many of these shows donNt credit the music that gets used in the background, causing interested parties to hunt online for pertinent information, Fetter has seen clear results that the spots have increased the bandNs exposure. They played a show in February at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano with Tamarama, a band fronted by Jay Lyon, the boyfriend of Whitney Port, main “character” on The Hills-spinoff The City. (The Hills itself, of course, is a spinoff of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, so the OC connection runs deep.)
“We played with him, and a lot of girls came to see him,” Fetter says. When they realized that Venus Infers also had a connection to the show, “they kind of freaked out. ‘Oh, thatNs so cool. We heard you; we didnNt know who you were.N”
Sure, there are some who will argue that putting your music in teen dramas, cheeseball reality shows or basic-cable Patrick Swayze vehicles is crass commercialism, and thatNs not lost on Fetter.
“You swallow your pride a little bit,” he says. “ItNs kind of funny. My parents TiVoNd one of them. It was The Real World, with two guys arguing, ‘You left the fuckinN toilet seat up, man,N and then in came my song, ‘You CanNt Scare Me at All.N”
Despite whatever cognitive dissonance this may cause, Fetter still thinks itNs worth it, even if his idols might disagree.
“In the N90s, bands like Oasis or Radiohead were very picky about what TV shows used their art,” he says. “Now, in the digital age, and with radio where it is, itNs just another outlet for bands to get exposure, even if itNs a show you might not watch or endorse.”
It makes financial sense, too. When you toil to make any type of money with your art, who can realistically say no to someone wanting to pay you for something that youNve already done?
“At the very least,” Fetter says, “itNs not a bad way for an unsigned band to get a couple of extra bucks.”
