Esopus CD #3: Product Displacement

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For our third CD, “Product Displacement,” we asked musicians to select an advertising slogan or jingle and “embed” it in a song, transforming and camouflaging it in a way that made it difficult for listeners to identify it or the product it was pushing.

The 10 musicians rose to the challenge and treated their choices—from totemic slogans of the past to obscure TV jingles—as building blocks for tunes having nothing to do with shampoo, credit cards, hamburgers, or dish towels. Some contributors directly addressed the issue of commercialism in their lyrics, while others buried these public artifacts in deeply personal songs.

By forcing the profit motive to sacrifice itself to art, the participants have reversed the all-too-familar scenario in which an advertiser uses a popular song to help sell something. The quality of the music demonstrates the propriety of the reordering.

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Scott McCloud
Map
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Singer/guitarist Scott McCloud lives and works in New York City. For 12 years, he was the front man for the band Girls vs. Boys, whose albums include Tropic of Scorpio (1992), House of GVSB (1996), and the 1997 Geffen release Freak*on*ica. McCloud’s side projects include the band New Wet Koja. “Map,” McCloud’s track for the CD, was written with and engineered by Teho Teardo, an award-winning electronic music composer based in Pordenone, Italy.

Written by Scott McCloud & Teho Teardo; cello: Bettina; engineered and mixed by Teho Teardo. Copyright control

PLAYLIST
01
Scott McCloud
Map
02
El May
Order in the Nothingness
03
Sonic Boom & Delia Derbyshire
Only the Loveliest
04
Connie MacNamee
B-Flat Blues
05
Jad Fair
Love and Laughter
06
David Naugle & Joy Howard
The Right Thing
07
The Baptist Generals
Raw from Self-Destruction…
08
The New Black
Don’t Leave Home
09
Western Keys
When You Return
10
Alan Licht
The Whole Thing
11
The Wrens
This Boy Is Exhausted
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