Band of Horses Poo

I thought I was never gonna write about Band of Horses again, but the dude just can't let it go. I saw this story on Stereogum a couple days ago about Band of Horses selling "Funeral" to be used on the Walmart website as well as an upcoming Ford commercial. I wasn't gonna say nuthin'. Then I see that it was addressed on Pitchfork and as they do there, they gave him a chance to voice his side of the story, or at least respond to accusations of "selling out" or whatever. Since he kinda brings me up again, I'm posting his letter here.

Dear friends,

As you may have heard, there's been some recent discussion of a couple of licenses for BoH songs. Just to provide some clarification...

I did allow Wal-Mart to use a song for a new website they created and have also given permission to Ford Motor Company to license a song from our new album. Because some people see Wal-Mart as a huge, evil corporation, they seem to be especially bummed about this license and see us as posers and/or corporate whores as a result.

I'd like to just state for the record that we let all kinds of folks use our songs in all kinds of mediums - TV, films, school projects, etc... My personal stance is that once that music is recorded and released to the world then I don't really care where it goes. "The Funeral" has been licensed to death (ha, wretch) at this point and if somebody wants to throw down some duckets for it, then feel free. It also beats the hell out of stealing batteries from Wal-Mart to sell them back for 8 bucks.

As for Ford: I drive a 1986 F-150 that still runs great. Maybe I'll get the a/c fixed with the cash they kicked down. I'm also stoked that people will hear our song on TV and we might pick up some new listeners in the process. I see no negative.

That's our reasoning and I'm okay with it. I hope fans of the band are, too.

We promise to use the money to buy camcorders (at Wal-Mart) for people to film "The Funeral," so I can get mad and crap my diaper. Fuck it.

-bb"

Does the guy have the biggest chip on his shoulder or what? Yes, Ben, the world is out to get you.

Incidentally, Band of Horses will not be playing San Diego on their fall tour.

One Thousand Posts! Trying to Make It Special

So this is my 1,000th post on this little blog, three times as many posts than I had on my original (and now offline) blog that I wrote for three years. I wanted this post to be special, but checking my sitemeter, I discovered that the whole Band of Horses thing just can't be put to bed. I made Rolling Stone Mexico! I'm half Mexican, but with a Polish dad, I, like everyone else, learned my Spanish in school, taking six years of it, allowing me to test out of the foreign language requirement in college. So here's the link. And to Chris, who left a lovely little comment which I deleted (thanks, but your insults had all been used before and that was SOOO last month...), if you'd like to chat, feel free to IM me on AOL at rosey928. Your positive energy was astounding and your comments were oh so constructive.

Somehow, the whole thing sounds so much cooler in Spanish.

Para terminar, entre verso y coro, Ben exclamó: ´se que me estás grabando´, cosa que no resistió más la fanática y se salió del recinto. Este video ha sido puesto en Youtube y la ex-fanática, de nombre Rosemary, ha puesto en su blog todos los incidentes.

Muchas gracias, RS Mexico. Te amo.

The Final Band of Horses Post

I'm gonna try to make this the last Band of Horses post ever on this site. But, since the whole thing is in this week's Blurt, I thought I would properly direct new readers to all of the links within this site.

From the Reader:

Whiny Foal- Rosey Bystrak's blog (www.sddialedin.com) has fueled the debate over fans shooting concert videos to post online. After a July 6 Band of Horses show at 'Canes, Bystrak posted, "So there I am with my tiny Sony digital camera... While playing the super emotional song 'Funeral,' [singer Ben Bridwell] flips me off and midsong yells, 'I see you recording me.' I look around and at least five other people are taping him, and he calls me out.... There's nothing worse than a...whiny baby onstage." After the song, Bridwell launched into a tirade against concert tapers who post on YouTube.

"Several bands have e-mailed me to thank me for posting pictures or YouTube footage of them," blogged Bystrak, "and [they] even link to me on their respective websites, but apparently Band of Horses is...too cool...to accept whatever publicity they can get."

Pitchforkmedia.com asked Bridwell about the incident. "It was really annoying," he said. "It was just scratching at the surface of what's happening to shows lately. Everybody's got a camera in their pocket, and they turn it on to just, I don't know, exploit us in some way or further their own projects or whatever the fuck they're doing with their websites and shit...as far as I'm concerned, it just looks like someone trying to record a really shitty performance to post somewhere and embarrass us forever."

Pitchfork's report then turned up on Idolator.com and the U.K.'s Drowned in Sound, with readers posting comments defending and/or berating both Bystrak and Bridwell. "In a day, I went from about 250 hits to almost ten times that," says Bystrak. "I opted to not respond to comments, and I still won't, because most likely they've come and gone and are now hating on the next indie-nation whatever."

-- Jay Allen Sanford

Here's the post that launched a thousand blogs. OK, more like 6. And not until a couple weeks after the incident happened. But still, it got under quite a few commenters' skins.

I mention it a little here. Then I read that the singer, Ben, was complaining about having to play his "hit", so I posted about that here.

Then the shit hit the fan when Pitchfork linked to my story and drove a whole bunch of new traffic my way. This post was written at the end of that long day, and has all the links of sites who picked up the story (that I knew about), including the original Pitchfork interview with Ben, and updated links throughout that weekend. Most of those posts have their own comments that are interesting, to say the least.

And here's a very old unrelated post about BoH when they won three Plug Awards. At the time, I thought they were joking. In a way, I now think maybe they were dead serious.

Now, I'm dusting off my hands and I'm done with this. Here's my sitemeter for the last 30 days and life has definitely gone back to normal. Just the way I like it.