The Devo Bootleg Archive
By James Decker
If a still-life of mass marketed popular culture were to appear before
our
eyes, it would be dominated by the color and composition of cross
promotion.
Also known as "priming" to advertising psychologists, it
saturates our
entertainment. Proven to be effective, priming has nonetheless become
an end
in itself and flattened our experience of shared culture so that even
Mozart
is a CD and Bugs Bunny is a celebrity. Now that people express themselves
and
describe their interests and experiences using the language of promotional
culture, it may seem an incontrovertible logic to assume that the
Web's killer
app will likewise be a promotional one. But isn't television already
advertising's killer app? Where retailing, wholesaling, and vertical
integration so dominate this still-life of our popular culture, shouldn't
we wonder if something can't break the surface? Couldn't a very different
idea, say, depth of content, reach in to yank the tablecloth away
and perhaps not leave everything standing in just the place where
television painted it?
The runaway popularity of www.adcritic.com
may be one clue as to how streaming media is repainting the relationship
of advertising and programming. Adcritic achieves depth of content
even where advertising IS it's content. The Web wants to organize
experiences by experience, not by strategic alliance. This
week, Adcritic is courting buyers. I wish I could be a fly on the
wall as the
suits try to figure out how to capitalize on the public's interest
in advertising. It strikes me as ironic anyway. I'm sure some tame,
gradual, and non-threatening business model can be figured out, but
will they discuss the fact that commercials do not have to be unwelcome
and repetitive tools of psychological priming? Will they consider
that priming may be less effective when the marketplace is not a retail
store aisle? Commitment to protecting market share via strategic alliances
will bog down big companies. In the mean time, resourceful folks will
continue to do things for themselves: create, locate, and support
their own interests on their own nickel. And as the big players scheme
to dominate, the Web will quietly construct depth-of-content experiences
that set public expectations high. Once Napster was let out of the
bag, Gnutella would never be recaptured.
All this is by way of introducing you to one of those depth-of-content
experiences that has the power to astound. Because it continues to
deliver its
content in analogue formats, this site does not fall in with the Napster
revolution, but predates it. Transmission is slow, scalability is
poor, but
the idea of The Devo Bootleg Archive is the same revolutionary idea
of
peer-to-peer sharing. The archive is a truly public library where
the
owner/creators of the content, Devo, conspire with the public for
the love of
something other than ownership. The Archive is run at cost with interested
parties paying less than $3 for the blank audio and video tapes supplied
by
the archivists themselves. Shipping costs are added to that, and an
as-you-are-able donation is requested. There are seventy seven tapes
worth of
live and "lost" music performances. Twenty five videotapes
of edited and
compiled concerts, television appearances, and hilarious press-conferences
held in university classrooms where Mark Mothersbaugh explains the
distinction
between a french-fry and a spud, and Gerald Casale invokes the history
of the
Kent State massacre to land the Ouch! that goes with every Ha! Hard
to find?
No, search for "Devo Bootleg" on Google and http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/8539/devoBA.html
is your first hit. Now, encountering depth of content this way may
take you away from thatstill-life of mainstream entertainment for
awhile. But don'tworry, sixty million others are keeping an eye on
it for you. That's how youcan be sure, it's not going anywhere. What's
more, since DEVO (doing business at www.mutato.com)
now writes music for everything from Dawson's Creek, to The
Chris Isaak Show, to Bullwinkle the Movie, Rugrats,
and many other mainstream TV, film, and advertising hits there's no
need to feel isolated when you take interest in the Devo Bootleg Archive.
Take pride in knowing the secret history of that theme song, oh and
pay attention for those subliminal messages Devo claims to drop in.
Of course, no one takes them seriously.