After all the work that went into compiling this year's Westword Music Showcase ballot, we needed a break last weekend. A break that involved watching Pretty in Pink, a flick we hadn't seen in a dozen years or more, on VH1. Although it wasn't quite as good as we'd remembered, the movie at least boasts a decent soundtrack -- one that time's been considerably kinder to.
Anyhow, we took special note of a scene in which Andrew McCarthy and James Spader are seen chopping it up at the record store. As the pair, dressed in their best Miami Vice duds, grab ass about, well, whatever it is grown men pretending to be high-school dudes in a John Hughes movie chat about, we couldn't help but notice a big orange album divider with a band name we recognized.
As you can see from the picture above, there it is, right there next to the Smiths: "VAUX" scrawled crudely on a florescent orange poster board. Yeah, VAUX, exactly the way the beloved bygone Denver band wrote its name. Crazy, considering that this movie was made more than a decade before that act stormed onto the scene. And as far as our friend Google knows, there wasn't a band with that handle in that era. John Hughes -- late, great pop-culture Nostradamus? It appears so.
But wait, there's more. Even as we were trying to wrap our heads around Pretty in Pink's inexplicable prescience, the Video Hits One network paused for the cause. And while we normally tune out during such tedious commercial diversions, we somehow managed to keep our goggles from glazing over long enough to catch a Flip commercial produced by the Lockerpartners. Wait, what the...? Did we see that right?
Indeed we had. Turns out the lovely Lockerpartners, also known as Emily Crenshaw and Mary Grace Legg, were commissioned by a San Francisco-based agency called Urgent Content to create a series of spots for the Flip HD video camera's latest ad campaign. Good on the gals; looks like their efforts are finally paying off. For the past few years, the Lockerpartners have been working tirelessly on everything from videos for local bands like The Laylights to putting together electronic press kits for acts like The Pirate Signal and, most recently, Bop Skizzum.
And speaking of hard work paying off, local R&B artist Ali Pierre has been enlisted for his songwriting ability by OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder, with whom he has reportedly worked out a co-publishing deal. Although we haven't been terribly impressed by Pierre's output thus far, Tedder -- who's made exactly several million dollars more than us as a songwriter -- must hear something we don't. And not for nothing, dude's off to a great start. For his first few projects, Pierre is working on tracks for Rihanna and Britney Spears. Fittingly, his next local appearance is Friday, May 14, at Suite 200, for Rihanna's Last Girl on Earth pre-party.
