Music Blogs

Another indie band lands a hot ad spot and lots of attention.

A guy drinks from a bottle of Snapple Antioxidant Water, and hears bubblewrap popping. He looks scans his surroundings and notices the entire city is covered in the stuff. Off he goes, bouncing and rolling down stairs. In one single bound, he leaps off a rooftop.

Check it out:

The song playing in the background is "Cat's Meow" by the Bad Eliots. These relatively unknown artists hail from New York City. Their name hasn't become a household legend yet--but the musicians who make up the band are pretty close to it. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist James Rotondi boasts an impressive career with the band Air and Mike Patton's Mr. Bungle. Drummer Ant Cee played with Megadeth, the Deftones, and on the Warped Tour. Bassist Jony Matias runs a studio and is a member of the Crash Moderns, and guitarist Paul Riario is the maestro behind a successful cover band called the Monster.

So what's so grand about these fellas? Well, everybody who is anybody is searching for them. Last month, they posted the song for their video to "Cat's Meow" on YouTube. It's pretty inventive, considering the band dons 2-D boxed images of themselves on their heads:

So how did Snapple come to court these gents? Apparently they competed against a bevy of other bands. Frontman James Rotondi says, "There was some spirit in the studio that day which was light and fun," and this put the band on the map.

Since 2001, small, independent bands appearing in commercials have sold thousands of records, been placed on numerous Billboard charts, and culled the respect and admiration of music fans.

Some say a band is "selling out" if they promote themselves and their tunes this way. But Rotondi counters, "People have an idea that music for commercial use means selling out. I never had someone from a commercial client come to me and say, 'We'd like you to do something unoriginal that no one will notice.'"

The Bad Eliots are an amalgam of the Psychedelic Furs, Magazine, and Gang Of Four. Find out more at thebadeliots.com.