The Washington Canard

VICTIM COMPLEX

If you've been watching Comcast cable over the past few months, you've surely noticed the telecommunications giant's recent "Comcastic" ad campaign. If there's supposed to be more to it than an advertisement for its digital television and broadband Internet services, then I'm not sure what that would be. The annoyingly "fun" corporate site (which is slow to load and must launch into another browser window) is no help at all. But the commercials themselves, they are catchy.

Perhaps the best — or at least most memorable — is the one featuring a wife-beater clad longhair (to be PC about it), who looks a bit like my first college roommate, playing the air drums to some godawful, familiar but can't-put-your-finger-on-it hard rock ballad. Like any number of accidental Internet celebrities, he's rocking out, only to nearly fall off the bed in mid-Bonham. Then says the voiceover: "Ruin your reputation four times faster."

But it's the song itself that's getting all the attention. I know because I was curious about what it was, and by Googling the one lyric I was sure about, found plenty of like-minded souls. At this board and this board and this one sponsored by AdTunes.com, Comcast viewers were eager to get their hands on a copy. Like me, most had arrived via Google search and wanted to know what it was. Unlike me, some of these people were really, really, really gung-ho about this snippet of music. And I mean gung ho like Michael Keaton.

The lyrics to the unknown song probably go:

Among the bands put forward as possibilities:

Less credibly, others put forth:

And if it was an unknown band, as someone said, "These guys are going to make a lot of money." Oh, really? The 80's have come back in the form of New Wave and Post-punk, sure. Hair metal? I'll believe it when I see Poison reviewed at Pitchfork.

Allow me to share some of my favorite comments from the AdTunes thread:

"We should start emailing members of those bands ie Foreigner, Firehouse...hey its worth a shot."

"It's SO exciting to see everybody so fired up about this! If anything I said in my first post was misconstrued as being negative let me set the record straight: I'm as obsessed as everybody else here about finding the song. ... I think our best energy is spent directly on Comcast. I'm going to start by e-mailing every person in their advertising department whose e-mail address I can find."

"You know what i think? Comcast is probably scrambling its legal department and the band is contacting their lawyers via the yellow pages."

Within a few weeks of the AdTunes thread's first appearance, along came someone who seemed to be in the know. I'm inclined to believe the following:

"Sorry to burst your bubble but the song you are searching for here does not exist. It was a special loop that was made just for the commercial and what you hear in the commercial is all there is to it. This was the info that I got straight from the marketing team at Comcast."

The commenter claimed to be an employee at the Philly headquarters, whose info came "directly from the marketing team." Of the marketing team, he added: "By the way, they are flattered that the ruin your reputation song has generated this much activity."

But some couldn't let go of the dream:

"No, please, no. THIS MUST BE A REAL SONG. It has to be. Why would they go to the effort of making a fake song? It's not logical when they could very easily just use some cheesy 80s song."

Well, of course it's perfectly logical. Nonexistent bands don't ask top dollar for use of their music. Here's a better question: will a quite-existent telecommunications giant have any trouble if I post the video in question? I'm sure the answer is almost certainly no, and the truth is I just needed a transition to close this out, but what the hell, lets find out:

If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, even after seeing these still images, the picture above links to the key segment in MPG format. I can't quite get it to play in QuickTime in the browser, so it's best to right-click/ctrl-click the link, download the file and use VLC Player. Try not to crash my server, but do make an attempt to rock out.

Hat tip to AdTuneser JulesBookLady for the video file.

UPDATE I — Intercontinental Madison Avenue focus grouper Pretty Little Head has a friend who worked on one of the Comcastic ads, and she asked about it for me. Apparently he wasn't involved with that spot, but as she said over IM: "Yeesh. Apparently it's going around." He'd had requests for it, but didn't know whence the music came.

UPDATE II — Of all the incredibly dated bands listed above, Europe is one to have a recent revival, albeit not for many Nielsens families: Their 1986 international hit "The Final Countdown" is/was the theme song for "Arrested Development" Segway-riding eldest brother George Oscar Bluth II's magic act, as well as his cell phone ringtone. Deservedly.

posted by WWB at 7:32 PM |