One hit wonders and pop longevity

18 May 2008

The Whitburn Project: One-Hit Wonders and Pop Longevity

Are there more one-hit wonders in the music charts today than there have been in the past? Andy Baio analysed data from 1900 to this year, in search of one-hit wonder trends.

The longest-charting one-hit wonder to hit the #1 spot is Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” from 2006, which stayed on the charts for 32 weeks. The one-hit wonder that stayed at the #1 longest is Anton Karas’ “The Third Man Theme” from 1950, which stayed in the #1 position for 11 weeks. Finally, the longest-charting one-hit wonder to appear anywhere in the Top 100 is Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” from 1997, which peaked at #16 but stayed in the top 100 for 55 weeks.

I wonder if it’s a little too early to make a call on Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” which was released only two years ago though? He may yet enjoy further chart success in the not too distant future.

Originally published Sunday 18 May 2008.

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Gilligan’s Island conspiracy theory alternative synopsis

18 April 2008

The story about a seemingly random group of people setting off together on a three-hour cruise somewhere around the Hawaiian Islands, has, if you’ll excuse the pun, never held much water.

It’s quite clear some people expected the “cruise” to last a little longer than three hours.

First there’s Ginger, the movie star, who was carrying more luggage than any sane person would take on a three-year voyage.

Then there’s Mr Howell, the millionaire, and his brief case stuffed with “thousand dollar bills”. And what about the professor and his stash of scientific paraphernalia?

What possible utility could any of this have had during what was meant to be a three-hour cruise?

Gilligan’s Island fan Adam-Troy Castro has written an interesting dissection of the (still) popular TV show, and he may have unearthed the actual purpose of the “three-hour cruise”.

Mr Howell, rather than Gilligan, was in fact the pivotal player here.

One of the glaring questions that’s bothered us for a quarter of a century is: Since the snobbish Howell can presumably afford to buy his own yachts, why would he be interested in a “three-hour tour” aboard a dinky little charter vessel owned by two ex-navy men? And why would he take along a briefcase filled with thousand dollar bills, when one of the perks associated with great wealth is unlimited credit?

To be shipwrecked on an (apparently) unchartered and unknown island, means the Minnow, the cruise boat, had to be a long way from the main group of Hawaiian Islands, so what had they gone out to look at in the first place?

Certainly not the local reefs, since there’s no scuba equipment aboard. And certainly not the local shoreline, since when the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was not only unable to make it to port, but was blown outside Hawaiian territory. It must have been an unusual distance from shore to begin with. And still, no normal tourist site, let alone one miles from shore, can possibly explain the amount of money Howell brought with him.

It’s obvious something incredibly below board was planned, and cash stashes and superfluous scientific equipment, don’t really leave too much to the imagination.

Howell chartered the Minnow to make a multi-million-dollar drug buy. He’d paid off Gilligan, and the Skipper too. He’d brought along the necessary cash. He even brought along an extensive wardrobe, just in case the coast guard showed up and he had to leave U.S. territory in a hurry. And just to make sure he wasn’t ripped off, he brought along an expert to evaluate the merchandise he was getting.

So who was in cahoots with who though? Apart from Mary Anne, it seems everyone else was in on the drug buy.

Mary Anne appeared to be a bona fide tourist intent on some sightseeing, and the “gang” felt that not allowing her to board the Minnow, which to all intents and purposes was a tour vessel, would have looked suspicious.

Mary Anne, a Kansas farm girl … had won a Hawaiian vacation in a contest. Howell and his cronies must have let her on board because failing to do so would have raised undue suspicion among harbor authorities; they probably intended to dump her body at sea.

In a twist to proceedings however, Mary Anne was not exactly who she appeared to be either…

Vacations given away in contests are always for two people, not one! And Mary Anne, who claimed to have a fiance back home, had no real reason to be travelling alone. Therefore, she must have been maintaining a false identity as well – and since everybody else on the Minnow was frantically putting on a show for her benefit, she must have been putting on a show for theirs. The conclusion is inescapable. Mary Anne was a Fed.

The producers of Gilligan’s Island didn’t follow through with the planned fourth series, thus leaving the story… unresolved. Therefore the alternative synopsis advanced by Mr Castro may be quite plausible.

Originally published Friday 18 April 2008.

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Del Kathryn Barton wins Archibald Prize 2008

7 March 2008

Sydney based Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton has been named winner of the 2008 Archibald Prize, with a self-portrait featuring her children: You are what is most beautiful about me, a self-portrait with Kell and Arella.

Born in Sydney in 1972, Barton has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, where she taught for three years until 2003. She has had regular solo exhibitions since 2000 and has participated in national and international group shows including the Helen Lempiere Travelling Art Scholarship, the Blake Prize for Religious Art and the Sulman Prize. She was a finalist in the 2007 Dobell Prize for Drawing.

The Archibald Prize Exhibition opens to the public tomorrow, Friday 8 March 2008, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Sydney.

Update: for those interested, the portrait measures 180 centimetres (cm) wide x 280 cm high, and as far as I can tell the work is a combination of illustration and painting.

Originally published Friday 7 March 2008.

The Aussie Bloggers Forum launches

1 January 2008

A brand new discussion forum for Australian bloggers — which I was invited to help setup — goes into soft launch (I hope: this is the timestamp speaking again…) today: Aussie Bloggers Forum (update: no longer online).

Of course it’s not just for Australians, and everyone, where ever you are, is welcome.

So whether blogging is your major or minor, head along and say hello, network, and strut your stuff.

How’s that for an easy, not too demanding way, to spend New Year’s Day?

Originally published Tuesday 1 January 2008.

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Five Questions: Duncan Macleod, TV advert blogger

10 September 2007

Five Questions is where I talk to bloggers about their projects and some of the other things they are doing. I ask {Q}uestions, and hopefully get some {A}nswers.

TV ads: are they a necessary evil, an outright distraction, or do they make for useful intermission breaks? Not all TV ads are forgettable though, and some are almost an art form says Duncan Macleod who reviews TV ads for his blog TV Ad Land.

{Q} What prompted you to become a TV ad reviewer of all things?!

{A} I started Duncan’s TV Ad Land back in 2003 in response to requests at conferences for copies of TV ads I’d been using as illustrations. I was aware that passing around digital copies of the ads could be breaking copyright law and so undertook to show people where to find the ads on the internet for themselves.

I was already working on a blog focusing on my research on generational change and thought it might be an interesting side line. What started out as an occasional post on Blogger has turned into a domain name duncans.tv with five blogs, read by approximately 5000 people each day.

{Q} How much time a week would you spend doing research, and watching TV, for the blog?

{A} I do my research and writing for TV Ad Land in the evenings and the weekends. Ironically I don’t get to sit down and watch TV much — it’s going on in the background.

Most of my information comes from press releases, emails and other web sites. All up, counting the posts I write on TV ads, print ads, music videos, popular culture and faith, I spend between 10 and 20 hours a week blogging.

I maintain a few blogs in my work with the Uniting Church during work hours.

{Q} In your opinion what makes for an effective TV ad?

{A} I’m interested in the ads that tell a story, providing plot and characters, like the Ikea Tidy Up series. Even better are the campaigns that show some kind of character development, like the Geico Cavemen series that morphed into a television series.

And then there’s humour — the ones that don’t take themselves too seriously — like the Big Ad from Carlton Draught. Just like at the movies, music makes all the difference to the way we engage with the ad.

The recent Tooheys HarvesTed ad, in which a guy grows clones from his hair, puzzled a lot of people. But people were drawn back to the ad time and time again by the Yama Yama track.

{Q} What sort of things do you think ad makers should avoid doing when producing commercials?

{A} Effective creative teams have to work out how much information is required in the thirty seconds. Is the ad about developing interest, curiosity, loyalty, pride or love? Or is it about giving people facts and figures that they must remember?

There’s been a bit of debate over this question in relation to a recent ad for the Honda CRV in which a guy constantly changes clothes as he walks through a Sydney street. More and more we’re seeing TV ads that attract viewers to online sites that can provide the details required.

Another tension faced by advertising teams relates to irreverence. The Nandos Fix Patch and Gum ads struggled to win wide support when they showed a working mum using the fictitious nandos-fix patch and gum in a strip club before taking her family to Nandos.

The ads are funny, but have left a bad taste in the mouths of many parents I’ve spoken to. Very few people get the joke.

{Q} So are TV ads underrated creative genius, or merely a distraction TV viewers must tolerate?

{A} Some TV ads are appalling and deserve to be muted. They’re loud, hard sell and unimaginative. But we’re seeing the growth of the television commercial as an art form, a short form of the short film.

The only problem for the people behind the scenes is that they go uncredited. In most cases we’re not sure who the actors are.

As I research for Duncan’s TV Ad Land I try to tell the story of the people behind the scenes: creative directors, art directors, copywriters, film directors, producers, editors, directors of photography, visual and special effects teams, colourists, sound designers, composers and of course the actors.

Many of these people are involved in long form film work. The director of the movie Halo, (coming out in 2009) is Neill Blomkamp, known mostly for his TV ads for Nike (Evolution and Crab), Citroen Transformer, Gatorade Rain and Adidas Adicolor Yellow.

My challenge now is how to connect the popular culture angle back into my original work on generational values and spirituality.

When I talk to groups about Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y I find the TV ads, print advertisements and music video are great illustrations, texts for discussion. The Virgin Blue Get What You Want in Todd’s Life provides a way to talk about the dominant culture of choice, change and variety.

My brief with the Uniting Church in Australia has included helping people explore what faith might mean in an environment driven by consumerism. Do we ignore the lessons of the advertising world and settle for poor marketing? I suggest not.

But at the same time it’s important not to be sucked into the danger of continually presenting faith as a product that can be bought now and discarded later.

Thanks Duncan!

Originally published Monday 10 September 2007.

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Spider-Man 3, a film by Sam Raimi, with Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst

28 May 2007

I’d heard a lot about the third Spider-Man movie before I saw it, and not all of it was good. Terms such as “spider cheese”, and the like.

But this is the third and final instalment of the franchise as directed by Raimi Smith, and given he needed to tie up a few loose threads that have run through the series, I suppose some cheesiness can be forgiven.

Some things seemed a little rushed though (such as Harry’s turnaround). I still liked it. I don’t really like to say a movie was crap, but Spider-Man 3 wasn’t quite as fun as the previous two.

Originally published Monday 28 May 2007.

The History Boys, a film by Nicholas Hytner, with Richard Griffiths

21 May 2007

While I enjoyed The History Boys, it wasn’t quite the hilt at the British class system, or epic struggle against the odds, sort of tale I had expected. It was more or less a fly-on-the-wall look at the lives of a group of gifted students who had the opportunity to gain places at two of England’s oldest, and most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

I actually thought the epilogue like ending was the best part, a scene which kind of melded onto the end of a teacher’s funeral. Given the story was set in 1983— just fourteen years ago — this is one of the best “where are they now” sequences I have seen in a movie so far.

Originally published Monday 21 May 2007.

Scoop, a film by Woody Allen, with Scarlett Johansen, Hugh Jackman

16 May 2007

Scoop is the latest Woody Allen production, and combines elements of his earlier work including Manhatten Murder Mystery, and the more recent Match Point, plus of course Scarlett Johansen. The result is a quirky, yet fun, murder whodunit set in London and the neighbouring Home Counties.

Allen plays a touring magician — who’s often surprised when a trick seems to work — who meets Sondra (Johansen), when she takes part in one of his shows. Together they find themselves trying to solve a murder, working only with scant clues supplied by a recently deceased journalist (Ian McShane), who has managed to return from the afterlife.

Fans of Allen’s trademark neurotic banter will not be disappointed.

Originally published Wednesday 16 May 2007.

Bobby, a film by Emilio Estevez, with Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore

14 May 2007

Bobby is a “what if” movie. What if Robert (Bobby) Kennedy had been elected president of the United States in 1968, as he seemed destined to be? What if he managed to stay in office for eight years, thus by-passing the Nixon era? What might the United States, and the world, be like today as a result of his influence? While the big picture is enthralling, the smaller one is no less so.

Bobby is a dramatization exploring the stories of some of staff and guests working, and staying, at the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles, on 5 June 1968, the day Kennedy was killed. We also are left pondering “what ifs” of their lives. Kennedy is only seen in the movie by way of archival footage, but nonetheless makes the strongest screen impression.

Originally published Monday 14 May 2007.

Progress? Coming soon, the disassociated WordPress blog

13 May 2007

The wordpressing (my new favourite word) of disassociated is well under way. It’ll be a while before anything happens though, as I’m trying to convert four years of static HTML file blog entries into a format I can upload to a WordPress database.

It’s not all cut and paste work. There’s quite a bit of formatting still to do. Redundant CSS styles and HTML tags need to be removed (to say nothing of dead links, but later for those), and there’s still the risk it won’t work. It should though.

As part of the redesign I have created (and uploaded) photos to a new-ish Flickr page, so go check it out. More photos will be added as I go. Bye for now…

Originally published Sunday 13 May 2007.

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