Music

707 go retail

By Sam Pfeifle

There's more than one way to make a record, and there's more than one way for an up-and-coming band to attract attention. Portsmouth rockers 707 are going the retail clothing route.

In the next few months, 707's song "Penny," a heavy rock tune about a girl who spends a lot of time on her back, will be featured on the in-store soundtracks of clothing giant Abercrombie & Fitch. That's 142 stores nationwide. And plans are in the works for a video to accompany the song on the video monitors that reside in some of the larger retail outlets.

Rather than send off CDs, bio information, and 8 x 10 glossies to every industry insider from here to LA, or hire one of a thousand promotional companies to try to get them on the air, 707 decided to take one big swing and see if they could hit it out of the park. Three month ago, drummer Dave Nebbia contacted CMJ New Music Monthly to find out how to get "Penny" on the 20-song CD of new music, the Certain Damage Sampler, that accompanies each issue. He found out that anyone could be included -- for a $600 one-time payment. "The way it was expressed to me," says Nebbia, "is that if the recording or the production isn't up to snuff, they won't take it, but they don't care about the genre. It could be country, or rap, or whatever."

CMJ is a powerful magazine, going straight into the hands of radio DJs, college radio programmers, and record company A&R folks each month. "The disc we were lucky enough to get on was passed out at the San Francisco CMJ ChangeMusic Festival [Sept. 14-17]," says Nebbia, which is one of five major events CMJ sponsors during the year, culminating in the Music Marathon, October 19 through 22, that features over 300 bands in and around NYC.

Apparently, the Abercrombie & Fitch corporate offices receive the magazine, too. The head of their marketing and imaging department heard "Penny" and immediately contacted their in-store music programmer, Seattle's AEI Music, who also programs the music for American Airlines and a number of other corporations.

"He called up our programmers and said `I want this song,' " says AEI's music resources coordinator (who, strangely, did not want her name used). She adds that the song will have an initial run of about a month and a half on the four-hour in-store program -- though she's not privy to any other songs that will be included -- and that AEI is also considering using the song for Miller's Outpost, a line of clothing stores mostly in the Midwest and on the West Coast.

"It's a great opportunity at no cost to us, for our music to be heard across the country," says Nebbia, and the band will be played a flat fee for each time the song is burned onto an in-store program. "And," he adds, "it's a forced listening audience," something they won't have for their October 7 show at the Better End.