Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Thursday 12 April 2012

Posthumous MVs/Aud in MVs: Pantera

New videos are major news items: look at the no. of Likes within 1hr!
This post is about the real-world demand for fresh music videos for 'old', or more accurately, 'archive'/'back catalogue' material. Most of you pick back catalogue tracks to centre your promotional package on, with albums (digipaks) which are either greatest hits or an album reissue with repackaging - and this is not an artificial notion that only takes place in an academic context.
There are endless examples of this from every genre, and I have blogged on several examples.
Read this previous post too!
Here's a fresh one: Pantera's "Vulgar Display of Power"is seen as a landmark metal album (it can be tagged as thrash, power metal etc) now 20 yrs old; the driving musical force behind this, guitarist Dimebag Darell, died some time ago so there won't be any fresh recordings from that band line-up.
A track which wasn't included on the album has now been released as a single, and will be included in a repackaged reissue of the album shortly.
The video for this centres on fans of the band, and is a good example of a growing trend to expressly represent and include fans/the audience in the text itself. You can read more (and see the video) here.
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The Narrows' BandCamp page: note the presence of Twitter/FB clickable icons
Here's another example: http://louderthanwar.com/the-narrows-video-shoot/ (article contains strong language) - perhaps you witnessed this in Manchester on 1st April?!
...at 1pm on 1st April the band and about twenty of their fans met at the Victoria statue in Piccadilly Gardens, worked out a route and marched through town, in single file with masks on, whilst trying not to fall over a bollard or indeed, each other. The march was led from the front by lead vocalist Phil Drinkwater and guitarist Adam Hynes, marching, with masks whilst holding the banner with what has become the bands symbol.
Note too that in both articles/instances, the shooting/release of a music video becomes a major news story for popular online ezines/blogs, which will be picked up on and read by their many 1000s strong readerships.
If you look at The Narrow's use of new/social media, its not quite exemplary (they're as bad at updating their own official site as Swillob/ST/Two Twigs are at updating their Twitter feeds [4 months + counting...]!), but is a useful real-world example. Their use of Twitter and FB is central to what they do, but also what some see as 'the new MySpace', BandCamp - plus SoundCloud: see http://thenarrows.bandcamp.com/ and http://soundcloud.com/thenarrows


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