Jingle Junkies
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Sun-Herald (Australia)
by Rachel Browne
August 4, 2003
For a band that has spent much of its career dwelling happily on the
fringe, the Dandy Warhols get a lot of airplay. But it is not radio
that has embraced the pin-ups of America's alternative rock scene.
Rather, it is ad land that has adopted the Portland, Oregon-based
quartet, using their songs to sell everything from mobile phones to
cars. The fact that their music helps to market Holden Astras and
Vodafone handsets is not lost on the band, which trades in irony in a
very un-American way. Their wry perspective, heard in songs such as
1997's Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth (a swipe at heroin
chic) and 2000's Bohemian Like You (as heard on the Holden Astra
commercial), has made them a favourite among Australian audiences if
not in their homeland.
The Dandy Warhols' latest album, Welcome To The Monkey House, went
top 10 here and last week the foursome - singer Courtney Taylor-
Taylor, drummer Brent DeBoer, keyboardist Zia McCabe and guitarist
Peter Holmstrom - played a sold-out show at the Metro Theatre.
That Australia has heartily embraced them pleases them no end. Barely
in the country 24 hours, Taylor-Taylor and DeBoer were showing signs
of going native when Sunday Metro caught up with them at their hotel.
DeBoer was nursing a hangover from the previous night's excesses,
spent with the Dandy Warhols' support band, Even, at the Hopetoun
Hotel in Surry Hills, while Taylor-Taylor was enjoying a Capel Vale
red at lunch - a daring indulgence that would raise eyebrows on the
other side of the Pacific.
Mulling over the question of why the Dandy Warhols have enjoyed gold
record status (with their third album Thirteen Tales From Urban
Bohemia) here and not in the US, Taylor-Taylor comes up with a
theory. "People here are just a little smarter," he said. "They also
have a sense of humour and an appreciation of warm and melodic music.
In America it's hard for us to get airplay in between Kid Rock or
Creed and now it's Linkin Park and Nickelback. It's difficult for us.
In America we're just going to be the mayors of the underground.
"Being rejected by American radio stations led the Dandy Warhols to
look at alternative avenues for their music - and that's where the
suits from ad land came in. Rather than seeing the move as an
immersion into the mainstream, Taylor-Taylor justifies permitting
advertisers to use his music as a way of spreading it to the wider
population in a way that radio never will. "American radio is
unbelievably lame and we found it was an us-against-them scenario
where we were losing," he said. "Advertising is a medium and it gets
your stuff heard. Then it's up to the world to decide how good you
are. If our stuff is played on a commercial - and every commercial
has a song and most of them aren't very good - then great. It saves
everyone from having to hear a bad jingle. "So when the big
corporations came calling, the Dandy Warhols were listening but, of
course, they have remained true to their principles. "There are
certain products which we don't want our music associated with,"
Taylor-Taylor continued. "Things like fashion. I mean, look at us, we
shop at thrift stores. "I don't care if our songs are used to sell
diapers or tyres. It has to be a valid product that people need.
People don't need Tommy Hilfiger. "And, DeBoer chipped in, citing the
inspiration for the band's name: "Andy Warhol said you're nothing
until you're on TV so being a part of popular culture is a great
thing.
"The Dandy Warhols clearly have an appreciation for pop culture in
general and 1980s pop culture to be specific. They sought out Duran
Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes to co-produce Welcome To The Monkey
House, their fourth album. Duran Duran's singer, Simon LeBon, whose
face adorned the bedroom walls of teenage girls everywhere circa
1982, does duty as a backing vocalist on the album. "We read a story
where Nick had said our band was in his top 10 favourites. We
thought, 'Wow how cool'," DeBoer recalled. "We thought, 'Oh man,
let's get this guy to Portland and work with him. That'd be really
cool if he's into it'. But that couldn't really happen because
there's nowhere for Nick to sit down in our studio." Taylor-Taylor
explained: "Our studio is really filthy." "And he wears expensive
clothes," DeBoer added. "But we got hold of him and we went to London
and Simon's band was working in the same studio but across the hall.
So he jumped back and forth. We were hanging out with all those guys,
eating dinner and drinking wine and checking out each other's music.
It was awesome."
It sounds more like pleasure than business but then the Dandy Warhols
have always been known for their love of a good time. Stories of
drinking, drug taking and the much discussed on-stage nudity abound,
but these days they have, for the most part, outgrown all that. "It's
boring now," Taylor-Taylor said. "Plus, we have enough records out
that people want to talk about our music rather than the whole crazy
randy Dandys sex-crazed thing."
Perhaps they are getting closer to the mainstream than they think.
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