The promotion of Out of the Cradle

[SuperFleetwood]

yeah say you will was well I remeber them drawing stevie lindsey, and playing peacekeeper in the backround!!! so I had to get it around the time, I was like 8 years old of the time! lol!

Originally Posted by elle

i'm deleting my original message in meaning of OOTC and moving it here (don't know how to do it appropriately, sorry):


not sure whether this is the right thread but i'll ask anyway... my question is about OOTC promotion:

i've been reading here on the ledge that WB heavily promoted OOTC but it still didn't do well. so i thought about 1992/93, and my conclusion was that OOTC timing was all wrong - this was the time when grunge became huge, and i think in europe house/techno was still front and center, if i remember correctly.

i believe when you all say that OOTC was heavily promoted, however... this was the time when MTV, VH1 etc were a constant background for me, and when i would go and see all kinds of concerts in venues large and small, anywhere between atlanta and florida... nirvana, STP, metallica, pearl jam, smashing pumpkins, you name it, everybody was touring at the time. this was also the time when clinton ran for presidency and don't stop was everywhere. however, i don't remember hearing anywhere that the guy singer from FM has a solo album out... whereas in 1997/98 i remember the dance being all over tv vividly. and in 2003 i remember syw coming out and hearing peacekeeper. i didn't follow what FM was doing at any of those times. when lindsey was touring with OOTC in 1993, you'd think that any promotion could have been riding the wave of don't stop re-emergence nicely so i wonder why i didn't notice it if it was so pronounced... and the timing maybe was not that wrong?

so - can it be than OOTC promotion may have looked more pronounced than it actually was to a FM fan who was following everything happening with any FM members anyway?

[drzubritsky]

Originally Posted by LukeA

Yes, absolutely. Few people seem to remember/want to admit this, but a major reason why the OOTC songs failed to resonate is because the songs sounded 4-5 years dated upon their release. When a work of art is meticulously labored over, you hope (as the artist, or as a fan) that its considered ahead of its time (ie. "Pet Sounds"). OOTC is Bizzaro World "Pet Sounds".

I think you hit the nail on the head. While the songs are quite strong, the production on OOTC has a very 80s sound; in fact, the arrangements and production style sound very much like TITN from 5 years earlier. That glossy 80s style sounded extremely dated in 1992, which undoubtedly made it a tough sell at radio.

About the only act that could get away with issuing dated-sounding records in 1992 and still receive strong airplay was Genesis, whose songs from "I Can't Dance" did quite well that year. But LB as a solo act was never anywhere near the same league as Genesis/Phil Collins in terms of mass popularity.

[MissLadyLoki]

Thanks to Luke and Elle for helping me out. Even though my specialization is marketing, we don't get into specific industries or talk about people being marketed (the closest thing was celebrity endorsement and some of the ways it could backfire), but now that I think about it, the music industry works the same way with promoting stuff.

In Lindsey's case with OOTC, the reason why it probably backfired was, like Luke said, the music sounded horribly dated by the time it was released and that music like that was considered "uncool" at the time. That aside, OOTC is still a great album