Para os piquenos e piquenas que leem este blogas e acham que o êxito e o sucesso no mundo da música consegue-se apenas por mérito e bons costumes, vale a pena lerem o que David Byrne escreve no seu diário online, a 30 de Julho, sobre a indústria da música e como as bandas conseguem tocar nas rádios. Byrne dá um exemplo concreto sugerindo como os Talking Heads chegaram às playlists das grandes rádios americanas.
Ficam aqui dois extractos mas acho que devem ler tudo para compreenderem o contexto destes pedaços:
"[...]By the mid eighties, when Talking Heads had had some hit singles, the biggest of which was “Burning Down the House”, I got the news. “Burning Down The House” had some serious “indie” promotion money behind it. It got played on some college and other stations without financial prompting, but the jump to “commercial FM”, as I think it is called, was helped by cash and whatever else was used at the time — probably coke and women.
The band was in the midst of a tour, the one that was eventually filmed as Stop Making Sense. As we crisscrossed the continent (due to technical miscalculations this tour never really went to Europe) I could see that audiences were reacting more and more vociferously and positively to this relatively new song. How exciting! But as I began to hear rumors about the promo money being spent to help the song on radio all sorts of thoughts ran through my head.[...]"
"[...]In case some of you think this only applies to rap or mainstream pop or dance music or whatever you and your friends don’t listen to, think again. Alt rock, the symbol of “integrity” and “authenticity”, along with hip hop, is just as guilty of payola and promotion as the songs of Madonna and J.Lo. There’s a reason you think so-and-so is cool, and the reason has nothing to do with how good it actually is. There’s a reason writers write about certain artists, etc. etc. (The writers and magazines may not have been paid off, but the popularity of something makes it a valid subject, for example.)[...]"
O comentário de David Byrne surgiu após a leitura de um artigo no New York Times sobre o sistema da payola - pagar às rádios para passarem os temas. É uma espécie de mensalão que, pelos vistos, pode ser pago com diversos tipos de géneros.