Corey Vidal and Moosebutter were nominated for the People’s Choice Awards for Vidal’s video rendition of Moosebutter’s song. Moosebutter is an acapella group, and they took several of John William’s soundtrack themes and wrote Star Wars lyrics to them. What’s ironic, now, is that whenever I hear John Williams’ Indiana Jones theme, I think of Star Wars—“Fly the Fal-CON through an as-ter-oid!” and when I hear Jaws, I think, “Wooooo-KIE, Woooooo-KIE; Some-one get this walk-ing car-pet.” Fitting, perhaps, because John Williams is identified with Star Wars —and while we may remember all these great themes, I wonder if when we hear them, we say: Williams also wrote the Star Wars theme. Notice that Moosebutter doesn’t sing anything from Star Wars but you feel as if you’ve heard that theme too. An Aural Illusion, or an Aural Allusion. Hmmm.

Enjoy.

Corey got a lot of flack for lipsynching to Moosebutter’s song—but if you look at Youtube right now, there are hundreds of imitators of Vidal’s video. Though scolded for being unoriginal, Vidal brought a new form–the Brady Bunch Look Four Part Harmony Video. He deserves credit for the form, as well as the idea to take Moosebutter’s song and put it in a popular venue like Youtube. In many ways, Vidal has bumped up the recognition of Moosebutter’s songs–like a mass market ad campaign. In the same way a commercial that borrows a song from an obscure group can suddenly bring attention to that group, Corey brought attention to Moosebutter. The video received more than 3 million hits. Moosebutter thought it was great, and rumor has it, they have a contract with Warner Music–which may be why the video on this blog entry might not work. Moosebutter gave Corey their blessing to do the video–and Corey gave his blessing to the Video Response that Moosebutter made. Corey even put it on his Youtube showcase so it would get as many hits.  Vidal, in the end, was showcasing his video talents–what he could do with an interesting song. This is the heart, by the way, of Creative Commons License—and lookie there, the attention got people a big contract!  Woo-hoo!  (Except there’s bound to be more control on HOW things are distributed, shown, played with….)

Anyway, reception of creativity is often just as interesting as the creativity itself.