For Fear I May Lose [Them] Again

I was just talking with a friend of mine a couple of days ago - Wednesday, actually - about how the single-song download shouldn't be taken as the major offense perpetrated by the iPod (whose offenses are many and come in various flavors); the album really only existed as the primary form a popular-music artifact could take during the 70s and 80s (if I'm not mistaken, The Beatles certainly had something to do with the album-as-semantic-unit-of-fetishism's rise in popularity), and in fact, the Album, especially in its Compact Disc form, especially in it's egregiously price-fixed CD form, should be an affront to people of only mild taste. The notion that a single should be tied in any way to its album of backing, generally worse material was only a passing fancy (with the obvious exception being the band that made a radio-friendly single in one vein of music only to put it on an album of generally otherly-styled music (for instance, say, the terrible single "Circles" from the otherwise listenable Soul Coughing album El Oso or there's always a track or two that can be labelled similarly on Radiohead (most overrated band since The Beatles, right?)).

What is more concerning to me, then, re: single-song downloads, is the now-several-years-old model of being an "indie rock" band that has a song in an iPod, GAP, or car commercial which instantly becomes a hit because of the airplay it gets backing images of the latest commodity. This seems really too bad - it was okay, I guess, for the occasional Hollywood movie to chock its soundtrack full of small label bands, thus launching some to a brief flash of known-ness (and making money for both the artist and the small label - can't really complain about that). My general sense, as of last Wednesday, when I was talking to my friend about this, was that it was kind of crappy, but not that completely terrible - the difference between being played uninterupted but sandwiched with commercials on the radio or being the relatively foregroundy background music to some visual commerical.

But then, as I settled down yesterday afternoon to write the post below this one and watch some football (seeing the Dolphins beat the Patriots was surprisingly entertaining (the Steelers game did not air locally so I did not watch it)), I happened to hear one of my favorite songs ever, "AM 180" by the band Grandaddy playing from the TV, for what turned out to be a Toyota commercial. What the fuck? That song is already a decade old - it doesn't need to be popularized! Fucking ruinous. But also an interesting case, because the song was used in a mainstream movie with an indie-rock soundtrack - 28 Days Later - the part where they're getting food from the grocery store, it's playing then, if memory serves me correctly (which is additionally interesting, as a movie soundtrack, since it also featured the notoriously pretensious (and therefore liked by me, despite myself) band Godspeed You! Black Emporer (if Mogwai is a balloon, then GSYBE was a Zeppelin (with cello)) who I would have thought would have been, like, way too punk to soundtrack any movie).

But, can I really be pissed about it? It's a legitimately good song. How do fans of The Beatles feel about hearing their favorite (overrated) songs on commercials? Does it ruin the song?

One can assume that most indie-rockers (Grandaddy, at least, was legitimately indie, back in the day (I mean, like, back 11 years ago)) are just hipsters and can use the money (since they've disavowed all the money they've gotten from their parents over the years), right?

And what the hell am I doing watching television?