One of the wireless phone companies, I think it was, some years back concocted a crazy service to help identify random songs by calling them in to some all-knowing, tune-analyzing super computer. You know — hear a great tune on the radio, dial up the supercomputer, hold your phone up to the speakers, and find out the title and artist. I don’t think it got off the ground but in this age of ever-more-conveniently-downloadable entertainment to satisfy the long tail proclivities of each and every everybody, there’s more room for binding the small bits of media more closely together.
Today’s case in point, with a big (and rare) thank you to HBO, is music clips from the series Entourage. Every week’s episode ends with the boys ending up in some great or terrible spot and as the screen flips to black for the credits, an awesome and just-right tune comes on. For a few weeks, building to a crescendo after the August 19 episode called “Snow Job,” I’ve been dying to know exactly to i.d. the songs so I could, as the Borg say, add their biological and technological distinctiveness to my own. I never really checked HBO’s web site out because they seem so lame when it comes to all things digital. They’re ok with Comcast on demand but nothing for sale on iTunes or other services. I feel no guilt in slipping their shows off my Tivo and onto my iPod — thanks Toast Titanium. Then today, I stumbled across a link to a tune used on Entourage and discovered that the HBO web site actually publishes song lists for every episode. And click on the magic green button for almost every song to be whisked to iTunes to buy it! Wow. Nice set up. I never would have remembered it’s former KISS lead guitarist Ace Frehley, on a solo album, singing “New York Groove” at the end of Snow Job. Thanks, HBO.
Many years since I was here, on the street I was passin my time away
To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky
It’s outta sight in the dead of night
Here I am, and in this city, with a fistful of dollars
And baby, you’d better believe
I’m back, back in the New York groove
(This post is corrected from an earlier version that attributed the song to KISS itself)
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