Recently, long-time Jingle Punks artist, Mike Errico, was placed in the MTV reality drama Teen Mom.  Mike is no stranger to placements but this one ended up being more than meets the eye.  His song, “You Could Be Anywhere,” which was featured in the finale of episode 3, ended up catching the ears of the good people over at iTunes.  They liked Mike’s song enough to post about it on their Facebook page, informing over 16 million fans about Mike’s music and almost crashing his website!  Don’t be the last to find out about this great song, make sure you stop by Mike’s site/iTunes and check out “You Could Be Anywhere”.

Add “Soundtrack for Roid Monkeys” to the Jingle Punks repertoire. We crafted a little bit of Rap-Rock parody and fun for MTV’s Bully Beatdown with this track “Creatine Rage”. High-energy montages will never be the same although there’s still the gold standard – courtesy of Joe Esposito in the original Karate Kid as a basis of humble comparison.

One of our favorite new shows is Bully Beatdown on MTV. It helps that this is a show that:

A- We do music for
B- Involves Bully’s getting their asses whooped by MMA fighters for cash and cheap laughs
C- Is bringing back the Rawk to MTV

And one of our favorite bands of the moment is Angus Kahn. These guys are rude, loud and rock really really hard. So it’s no surprise that Bully Beatdown is featuring their debut single “Big Balls” in this Thursday’s episode during the MMA fighter intro.

Angus Khan

Please tune in and watch the madness. Help spread the word anyway you can. This show is a must watch and this band is going to be HUGE! Take it all in and enjoy!

Starting my trip off the Jingle Jared way.

I am at the airport in Colorado waiting to fly back east.  This week made me remember what it used to be like to be on tour.  I spent 5 days on the road, but instead of rocking a stage every night covered in sweat and whiskey, I rocked some board rooms covered in…well…sweat and whiskey (just kidding).  

Tired at the airport after countless meetings over the past week.

Day 1.

-Touched down in LA

-Took a jog (thats my 4th jog of 2009. Eye of the Tiger Baby!)

-Went for drinks with our friends from VH1 music (we had some laughs, some margaritas and called it a night at some time in the wee hours of tuesday morning…note to self, this is not the best way to cure jet lag. In fact it has the opposite effect.

Day 2.

-Electronic Arts.  I met a really cool music supervisor at EA and we talked about getting Jingle Punks music in the mix.  So if you are one of our artists and are reading this and think your music could work well in titles like Madden and FIFA AND you have distribution or a release coming up for late 09 or top of 2010 please send us your latest and greatest.

Recording at DJ Lethal's studio on day 2

-Playboy TV.  Went to the Playboy production facilities to give a Jingle Demo.  We discussed which shows our music would work best for and I showed them some examples of some of the recent work we did for A&E, Bravo and MTV.

-Fuel TV.  Met head of the music Dept. and a new friend Patrick.  Both of them are super nice.  Patrick helped us play connect the dots in LA with other places he thought our music would be a good fit.  He also set us up with a meeting at Berman Braun which took place the next day.  The music guru from  FUEL figured out we knew a lot of people in common because he used to winter in Florida with all the old people (like me.  If you are a Jew from Toronto, like me, you would know exactly what I am talking about).   We also had friends in common from NYC’s music scene.  Apparently his best friend Grant used to be in a band The Fiasco which my old band Group Sounds played with often.

Day 3.

-CAA.  Went to the DeathStar.  Yes. CAA is a frightening place to go. It is designed to give the visitor a psychological disadvantage.  We discussed Jingle Punks future plans to work in the medium of film.  Made it out unscathed…phew!

-Berman Braun. This company is also huge.  They do a bunch of shows on NBC including a new hospital drama Mercy.  We discussed Jingle Punks getting integrated into their production departments.  Our new friend at B&B was super smart and really nice.  She got what we were doing and had some good suggestions of how we could get in the mix with them.

E!. Met with Daily 10 producer.  They are already a client so we just shot the shit and talked about some of the new features we have in our player.  He asked us to make some new bins for him of our latest and greatest in each genre.  

Drinks.  Met with my friend Stan M and Jen B.  We had drinks then met up with my other LA friend Brian  who I believe is the next Spielberg….he even wears a Panavision Jacket and carries a directors chair and megaphone with him everywhere he goes.  He turned 30 so we got him, um, drunk…I guess thats the best word for this.  

My final meeting place...Starz in Colorado.

Day 4.  Woke up a little under the weather but headed right to ITV.  This was possibly the most interesting meeting yet.  Met with  VP of Current programming there walked me through their immediate music needs.  He seemed to have all sorts of good ideas about music in TV and he also has a roster of really cool content that we hope to be part of.

VH1. Met with the line producer at Creature films.  They do tons of Rock Docs and Behind the Music.  We already have a deal in place so this was just another chance to get feedback on the player and see what we could do to improve our services.

Downtime.  Finally got to relax for a few minutes by a pool.  Exhausted.

Flight to Colorado.  Delayed.  Finally got into Colorado at 1am.  Was ready to crash but alas, no cars could be rented to get to my hotel so I took a monster cab ride.  Checked into the hotel and a raging party was going down.  Drunk ass hooligans (damn I sound old) were causing a racous in the lobby and I was unlucky enough to be on…yes you guessed it, 1st floor.  Music finally stopped around 4am, but then the fist fights in the parking lot ensued.  I thought I was gonna be a victim of a home invasion (I know Im a paranoid Jew…I know!)

Day 5. Woked up and felt pretty beat but had to rock a 30 person meeting at Starz.  Pulled it together with some Coffee and hydration.  The meeting went great. Starz is officially our new client.  We are servicing a bunch of channel that they own.  The facility was awesome state of the art everything and they had some great things to say about Jingle Punks.

There you have it.  I survived a hard week on the road.  Not quite like the way I did it in my 20′s but I’d rather be doing this than anything else in the world.  Now I am off to Toronto to see my little ones.

Jingle Punks has a deal in place with the History Channel and as part of this deal we get to put some rocking tunes behind some really cool content. This promo is a tie in with a show called Gangland which is frightening show (it literally makes me pee when I watch it)…so I guess this ties in nicely with the new Brad Pitt film called Inglorious Basterds which also looks pretty disturbing, and was directed by none other than Quentin Tarrantino.  This film has been in the works for a while and the buzz around it is huge.  We are happy to have been part of this promo.

This promo features one of Jingle Punks favorite sons “Cortez the Killer”. These guys are making some major waves these days so I suggest you check em out before you they get too huge to personally befriend you on Facebook.

So this week has already started with a bang. First off. Jingle Punks has finally moved into our new office. We are so excited to now have a space where we can meet clients, compose music and hang out with all our Jingle bands when they swing through town. We also just put the finishing touches on our first ever compilation of Jingle Punks key tracks for the month of July.  If you are on our mailing list you will be getting a link to this shortly.

As well, Jingle Punks has been busy working on some really cool new projects. MTV recently asked us to do some pitches for a new show and to make these songs extra awesome we brought in some hired guns. Check out the below video and enjoy.

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned as our next Jingle Blog is going to feature some behind the scenes shenanigans from our epic move.

These first videos will not make anything clear except for the fact that everyday is completely different for us.

Some days we are recording with street musicians in Brooklyn…

Other days we are in LA taking rapid fire meetings to get our roster of artists placed in shows…

First off, we should mention that your music is greatly appreciated and we have been planting the seeds to make sure that it gets placed in the most possible places.  That  being said we are pleased to announce that Jingle Punks is currently in use in these following projects:

-ABC (The Unusuals)
-Bravo (Real Housewives of Atlanta)
-IFC (Z-Rock)
-MTV (The Hills, Engaged & Underage, Teen Cribs)
-VH1 (The Pick up Artist)
-A&E (Hammer Time)

On top of this we have closed deals to do overall music services on the following networks:

-History Channel
-E!
-G4
-Style
-CW

Several other new deals are pending and we will announce them as they lock in.

Please be patient in terms of getting solid info about placements, I assure you we are doing everything possible with our pool of artists to get you placed in the most ways possible.

In the meantime, we want to ask all the Jingle Punks to help us out with a little bit of grassroots marketing.  On a basic level we want to invite all of you to become our friends on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. We are using these sites actively to let composers and artists know specifically what we are looking for. For example if we are working on a show that needs cool reggae cues, punk rock tracks or just a jazz number, we can alert you and in tern we can let our clients know what is available.

LINKS:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1505386338&ref=profile

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jingle-Punks/58194155185?ref=ts

http://twitter.com/jinglepunks

http://www.myspace.com/jinglepunks

On a more detailed level we would love it if you could start mentioning us on your Facebook , Twitter and Myspace pages to create a broader awareness of what we do.  Anything you can do from announcing your affiliation with us, to making mentions of placements we get you…once they firm up, would be greatly appreciated.

Again, I thank you all for joining the Jingle Punks army and want to let you know that great things are ahead for all of us!

Jingle All Da Way!

Jared Gutstadt
CEO Jingle Punks Music

In other MTV news it should be noted that we will also be featured in Johnny Knoxville’s new show called “Nitro Circus“. This show is truly crazy and features some of the sickest stunts ever aired on TV . Nitro Circus will premiere on MTV Sunday February 8th, at 10:00 ET/PT and will contiuntue to fill the 10:00PM slot every sunday

As if this news wasn’t enough to blow our minds, we have even more news to report. Z Rock, which is a hilarious scripted series on IFC has opted to use the Jingle Player to support their prodcution. I can’t wait for this to air, because I am a fan of the show and love the concept. We feel very lucky to be part of all these projects and look forward to announcing more great shows as the year goes on.

Jingle All Da Way!