Modest Mouse
mp3: Fire It Up
Dear Modest Mouse,
I am not going to go on and write about how things used to be better, and how I have been with you since the beginning (even though, frankly, they were and I have), but instead I have another, more productive idea. I have listened to your new spinner We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank for a few days now, and while my friends are busy looking for “This Charming Man”-like licks in your new songs (courtesy aging/original hipster Johnny Marr), Mike Nations and I have been picking out songs to play at Baseball games. We have agreed that your soon to be single “Fire it up” will soon be blaring from the speakers at Safeco field. They will loop that phrase over and over, because you don’t say it enough times in a row, and really, who cares about all of that noodly guitar in between. So just remember that we were the first to say it — and if you want we already have a t-shirt design, a big foam finger, and 2/3 of a shooting script for a Chili’s commercial.
Fire it up brother, fire it up.
Rob
It most likely will be played over the Safeco field speakers. Why? Because it’s a sellout song? No… because it’s catchy and fun and people will like it. The curse of the popular band – when many people start enjoying them. I don’t think Modest Mouse has sold out, in fact, their very album title seems to indicate they haven’t.
Selling out is not the word that I am looking for, I think we are past the point in the industry where we are so hung up on people selling out — because it has to happen — in one form or another. The band needs to sell records. I am simply commenting on the cultural mechanism that seems to latch onto these new products and exploit them. I think “fire it up” is a good song, but it is also ripe for the commercial plucking.