20 pounds of words in a 10 pound commercial!

Caitlin Nebel, the DJ who follows me on WUSC-FM this semester is an advertising major and her show is all about the music we hear on commercials these days. She usually comes in a little early to participate in my show and we wind up talking about commercials while the songs are playing. You had better believe that we have some great conversations about the 60’s and 70’s songs that are featured on radio and television commercials. My theory about this phenomenon is that those feel good songs we danced to at sock hops and parties back in the day evoke positive vibes in the listener and that makes them good choices for background music in commercials.

When I sat down to write this, I racked my memory to check if we used music from the 40’s and 50’s in advertising during the 60’s and 70’s and for the life of me I can remember only one or two.

One of the reasons for that, I explained, is that radio station production managers relied on canned music libraries, a practice that has continued today but not as much as it was back then. I remember those big old 33 1/3 rpm record albums of production music. Most of them were generic big band tracks. And most of those cuts were recorded in 15 second, 30 second and 60 second lengths to accommodate the most common lengths of commercial copy coming from the copy writers in the traffic department or the ad agency. The ones we tended to use the most started with a bang and ended with an even bigger bang with a musical bed in between to use under our voice-overs.

Talking about music in commercials usually brings up a discussion about too many words in a commercial a struggle that still exists today. Commercial copy is typed on special paper with every other line blank. If each line was kept between the margins, that would give you the appropriate amount of words in the copy for the length of the commercial that you were recording. That is a big “If”! On many occasions, sponsors want to put more information into a commercial than fits comfortably. In order to accommodate the sponsor’s wishes, the copywriter often fudge words into the margins of the copy paper in order to get them to fit on the paper.

More than once, I look at the written copy and say “You’ve gotta be kidding!” to myself. There is no room to breathe in this spot! Not only that, but the wording is so complicated that it is difficult to convey the images that the sponsor wants. Taking it back to the copywriter is a fruitless task as they would say that this is what the sponsor approved and this is what will be in the commercial. Making it all worse is that you can’t “run over” a second or two for two reasons: number one; if you do that for one all the rest would expect the couple of free seconds of air time, and number two; you can’t put a 32 second commercial into a 30 second slot in a network spot break.

Back in the day commercial copy that came from national accounts such as Coca Cola or Pepsi was always better, but that did not happen often because they usually produced their own commercials and sent them on reel to reel tape. Those commercials were always timed out perfectly.

So, I would sit down and do the best I could. After doing my best and finding the spot a second or two long, I would resort to whipping out the grease pencil, razor blade and editing block to remove the inhaled breaths and other “blank” spots in my spoken words, similar to “kerning” in typography. Only then would I grab that record and lay down the backing music track. One thing, all the work the musicians did on the opening and closing of the track would be lost because I didn’t have the time to allow the music to establish itself before the first word and the last word was presented over the ending stinger.

Today, that razor blade is replaced by digital editors such as Adobe Audition or Audacity and that kerning process is easier. Almost too easy, we’ve all heard those commercials where every possible gap between words has been cut out. It sounds like Max Headroom caught up in an endless loop. What! You don’t remember the 80’s ABC television series? Where is Matt Frewer when you need him?

So Caitlin and I will talk about music in commercials again in the morning while the songs are playing. Topics for consideration; 1965’s “Barefootin’” by Robert Parker and from the same year, The T-Bones – “No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)”, 1971’s “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” by The Hillside Singers, and even one from 1980, Diana Ross - I'm Coming Out. Do you remember the commercials that featured these songs? I’m sure you remember others! Oh MY!