September, 2006. Berkeley, CA
i was approached on the playground of my daughter’s school one morning by james horner – a parent that i hadn’t met, but knew worked for an advertising agency. i was drinking tea from a beer mug, and he made the comment that i might be just the guy he was looking for – a musician that drank beer for breakfast – to do the music for a commercial he was working on.
the spot, called “beer ape”, took place at a backyard pool party; everyone sitting around bored because someone forgot the beer, then an ape parachutes down with a backpack full of rolling rock, causing everyone to jump up excitedly and start dancing to an 80’s hair metal inspired song.
that’s where i came in.
i spent two days in the studio with jon evans recording the song. i did most of the writing, he did most of the playing. we took turns on cowbell.
the song was enthusiastically received.
the ad was never intended to be aired; instead they would run an apology for it, saying they were sorry if it had offended anyone.
hopefully people would then look for it on youtube to see what was so offensive about it.
the plan worked amazingly well: the spot got over a million views the first month, and the wall street journal wrote an article about it.
that job lead to others, and to me eventually becoming a full-time composer
thank you beer ape