Time Life Music

Flipping through cable channels, often late at night, early in the morning or in the middle of the day, has yielded some highly entertaining paid programming over the years. From Vince and the ShamWow towel to Billy Mays and his miracle cleaning products; from Ron Popeil’s kitchen contraptions to George Foreman’s arsenal of grilling gadgets (sadly, I could go on), the litany of extended ads with their horrible hawking salesmen are ripe for ridicule. Still, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed the Time Life music commercials. Thoroughly.

For at least two minutes and sometimes as many as thirty, some wrinkled and washed-up forgotten star tells viewers about time and life and the songs that accompanied those memorable times and lives. Whether it was the folk music that tempered the turbulent ‘60s or the jukebox jams at the ‘50s soda shop; whether it’s Country Superstars or AM Gold, the good folks at Time Life music are banking on you finding a connection to one of their many wonderful compilations and picking up the phone to make that first of four easy payments.

The commercials always appealed to me because I was a music lover with a short attention span. In the interest of brevity, the ads played snippets of as many songs as they could, trimming the fat and playing the catchiest part of the tune before moving on to another. Where else in TV-land could I go to hear the best ten seconds of a great old song followed by the best ten seconds of another great old song?

Though I never accepted the offer of six CDs or cassettes containing all my ‘favorite songs together at last in one collection,’ I still really liked watching and listening to the infomercials. I even went so far as to take notes on songs and artists so I could find their work later on.

If anything, the advertisements exposed me to some musicians who enjoyed a little time in the limelight before retreating into obscurity. Now, with few outlets for bygone music aside from some oldies radio stations, these commercials and the compilations they push might be one of the last remaining means of exposure for some of the songs that time forgot. I’m just glad that Time Life remembered.

The Killers the band

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with this band. When Hot Fuss came out in 2004 and slowly climbed the charts on the strength of its great singles, my faith in record-buyers was somewhat restored. Here was a band with talent, ambition and a sound that, while biting ‘80s synth-pop, was all their own at the time. To boot, they were selling enough records to rival the familiar pop, rap and country acts that tended to dominate the top spots.

I even remember seeing the band’s video for “Somebody Told Me” late at night on MTV2 before their debut even made a ripple (let alone a wave) and thinking “this band is going to be big.” Sure enough, four years and two other albums later, they are among the best-selling American groups and one of the bigger concert draws, counting both hipster elitists and TRL junkies as fans.

It comes as no surprise to me. They are a band of gifted songwriters and fine musicians. The production on their records is top notch and they seem to hold themselves to a high standard.

However, their shtick is becoming tiresome. With Sam’s Town, their second album, the band relied heavily on the epic grandeur of Springsteen’s open-road ballad sound. Though the release took them from the club to the arena, its derivative material did little to set them apart and make an original statement.

Their new LP, Day and Age, is another cut-and-paste exercise in style-biting. Perhaps an homage to the cheesy adult-contemporary sound of another (dare I say) Day and Age, it’s layered with synthesized grooves, tacky saxophone accents and more overdubbed tracks than a bustling rail terminal. The result is an over-the-top album that, while populated with catchy tunes, recalls a sound that was left to die decades ago and makes another weak case for the band’s originality.

As if their music’s overt sentimentality (now beginning to feel contrived) wasn’t enough, frontman Brandon Flowers’ ego is inflating. In the press, he is often quoted saying things like ‘my band is the voice of a generation,’ ‘we’re awesome,’ and so on. This point though, is moot. I don’t want to judge a band’s music by the people who make it—I’d rather let it speak for itself.

Either way, it’s speaking loudly and it’s telling me that it’s drowning in self-indulgence.