The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 47

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE Pan Monday, November 6, 1978 Section November 7, 1978 S1.25 Steve Karmen: Jingle Genius -'K in m-s ft' a err trm ir ui it By DANIEL RUTH Tribune Staff Writer -g-pr imnnniij i i i. jn imuf ipiwhiiii irmmtmmmmv mm i im i 1 1 1 ISA Kr- 4 it You've heard of Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Henry Mancini, Irving Berlin, Richard Rod-gers and Johnny Mercer, all of them creators of some of our most memorable music. Well this story isn't about any of them. It is, however, about a man whose music is probably hummed around the house and in the car with more frequency than any of the aforementioned musical geniuses and you very likely have never even heard his name. Steve Karmen.

Hardly a household word, is it? But Karmen has played a major role in what you eat, what you drink, what you drive, and how you might have accomplished a degree of financial security. For it has been Karmen who has predicted "Sooner or later, you'll own Generals;" it was Karmen who told us "Hush-Puppies are dumb;" and it was Karmen who confidently stated, "When you say Budweiser, you've said it all." You think the world is against you? Not so. "Nationwide is on your side," according to Karmen, who cari also be like a nagging mother when he tells us, "You got to pitch-in to clean up Amer- ica. Because if everybody won't pitch-in to clean up America, it won't be America any more." Karmen, who was in town over the weekend to address Creative" Seminar 4, a national forum on advertising at the Airport Holiday Inn, is a professional jingle writer for many of the commercials we watch on television and listen to on the radio. Karmen's lyrics have become identifiable symbols for scores of products we eat, drink, wash with and drive and it all-started about 10 years ago in the midst of a bunch of naked bodies.

Many of us get career starts in sometimes bizarre ways. For Karmen, a young struggling song -writer, the beginning of what has become a very successful career was on the sets of low-budget pornographic films which he both scored and appeared in. "I acted in one once, but I wasn't in any of the nude Karmen said, "But I learned the craft of scoring music in a small budget industry." Karmen scored more than 30 porno films before being asked to write a jingle for Salem cigarettes. With expected youthful vigor, Karmen wrote a jingle using a big band sound and lush orchestration. It was 63 seconds long.

"Now there is no way in the world you can buy 63 seconds worth of time," Karmen explained, adding that attempts to simply fade out the music or speed up the tempo simply didn't Consequently, when the jingle finally aired, Karmen's three-second composing faux pas was corrected in a way that made the lyric unforgettable in advertising annals and "You can take Salem out of the country but became history. Karmen also wrote the first jingle for Hershey's Chocolate in 1970. Prior to 1970, Hershey's had never before advertised, and it was Karmen who took a box of chocolate bars and filmed a bunch of kids eating the stuff, to come to the inspiration to write, "There's no-' thing like the face of a kid eating a chocolate bar." Jingle writers find themselves under the most demanding of writing forms: Coming up with an identifiable message which must be conveyed to the consumer with very few words, over a very brief period of time. Karmen's most successful jingle so far was comprised of only four musical notes. Yet the return on the ad's investment has brought in $5 in revenue for every dollar spent on the commercial, Karmen said, referring to the "I Love New York" campaign he wrote for the city of New York and which has since been adopted by the State of New York's Department of Tourism.

Karmen said the New York legislature is considering making the "I Love New York" theme the state song. "My mother is starting to call me Francis Scott Karmen," the 40-year-old writer joked. It seems so nice to have written catchy themes for Budweiser, Nationwide Insurance, Jack-in-The Box, General Tire and Hershey, but Karmen has had his fair share of odd products to write music for over the years. Karmen said a hemorrhoid company once wanted to turn its product into a suntan lotion, and someone suggested the theme of 'It's the "And I was once asked to write music for a product called Chaste, a vaginal deodorant," Karmen offered. "Now I don't know if you could imagine what it takes for a man to get inspired to write music for a vaginal deodorant." Karmen said he called up a gynecologist friend who advised him, "Don't spray below middle Karmen said one of the biggest restrictions on a jingle writer is that he cannot really write about emotion in his work with the exception of public service ads.

"And the frustrating part Is the damn stuff (public service ads) never runs till the middle of the night." But Karmen hopes to change all of that with the release next spring of his first album, making it one more former jingle writer to enter the field of popular music along with Joe Brooks You Light Up My and Barry Manilow. Still, Karmen loves his work, although he said he constantly tries to remember how influential advertising is upon the American scene. are what we watch and what we watch is created by Madison Avenue," said Karmen, who regards the impact of advertising as an art form so much that he now signs his work. From porno films to vaginal deodorants to art, Steve Karmen has come a long way, baby. He didn't write that, but it seems to fit.

1 Ni" 4" 4 $4 hi nmnKmmmm iu "i mi 4 "a -r 1 'V'iu Ik ill 7 Would You Let This Man Revitalize Your Magazine? ill immmmm-mmm Steve Karmen They Hope To Visit Hollow Earth Folks Bob Greene on instead of being bored by those long pages of gray type," Glaser said over a cup of collard green soup at Cafe Sevilla. And in implementing those ideas at New York Magazine in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Glaser created a a new style of presenting and packaging journalism which has set the trend for the rest of the country in both magazine and newspaper publishing. It is a trend that Glaser sees as essential to print journalism's ability to compete with the electronic medium. are more sophisticated," Glaser observed. "They tend to see things on television in terms of visual effects and complexity in a much more dramatic way than what was customarily presented in the past.

"As a consequence perhaps, although 1 can't really support this, then maybe there's more visual interest now or at least more acceptance of a variety of visual forms than there was. "So information, in order to compete with an electronic medium, has to be presented more dramatically. See GLASER, Page 2D imitated graphics designer in journalism today. Together with Clay Felker, who formerly published the Village Voice and New York Magazine and who now runs Esquire Magazine, Glaser has almost totally reshaped the way magazines look and the way many newspapers are beginning to look. Glaser, now a vice president of Esquire Magazine and the publication's design director, was in Tampa over the weekend to address Creative Seminar 4, a national advertising forum conducted in the area each year, held at the Airport Holiday Inn.

The tall, stocky, bald Glaser is a man in search of clarity. He is a man with a mission in life: To be able to pass along information in a clear, concise' manner, be it in the arts, a restaurant menu or a magazine. It was Glaser who introduced in a workable fashion the idea of giving readers quick pieces of information in their reading a magazine which could compete with the electronic media, full of interruptions, large headlines, subheadlines with variety. "All of which is intended to interrupt and dramatize the information so the reader will continue to press By DANIEL RUTH Tribune Staff Writer Just bear with me a minute while I try and figure all this out. Okay, let's see what we have here and how it all makes sense.

To begin with, Milton Glaser is a man with influence, if influence can be something you attribute to a man who is largely responsible for cultivating many of our magazine and newspaper reading habits. Glaser, also likes food an awful lot. It's more than that, really he likes the things you cook food in and the places where food is eaten. But Glaser also enjoys prowling around strange supermarkets in the cities he visits. And the point of all this is that Glaser believes places like an Albertson's supermarket and Esquire Magazine share a common bond a concern for clarity.

And if you find that comparison confusing that's all right, it bemused me as well. But if you really want to be confused, just wait until you start to understand what Glaser means. It is all so clear, it is well, it's confusing. It is important to understand that Milton Glaser is probably the most low Earth Society say that they already know what to expect once they enter the Hollow Earth, based on legends and unconfirmed reports from earlier visitors. "There is a tall, blond, blue-eyed super race living inside the Hollow Earth," Shoush said.

"They are the dominant beings there, although there are also Oriental types called or small-statured yellow people. "Inside the Hollow Earth are several cities built of shimmering crystal. The inhabitants of these cities are far more advanced than we are, both technically and culturally. There is more land and less water than on the surface world. The inhabitants speak a language very much like German.

"During World War II, Adolf Hitler sent a U-boat, specially outfitted, to find the Hollow Earth. The boat never -returned. Whether the boat made it to the Hollow "Earth or not, we do not know. Hitler was a firm believer in the Hollow Earth theory." (This is probably as good a place as any to interrupt the story and mention the somewhat disconcerting fact that Shoush has a seemingly inordinate fascination with the idea of a "tall, blond, blue-eyed super. race," with Hitler and See GREENE, Page 2D CHICAGO Winter is on its way, and all over the United States men and women are preparing for vacation journeys to take them away from the dreary existence of daily life.

Seventy of their fellow citizens, however, are planning a trip that, it can safely be said, promises to be more unusual than any foray to Acapulco or Hawaii. The 70 are members of something called the Hollow Earth Society. And for five years they have been planning their adventure that they say will take them well, let their leader, Tawani W. Shoush, explain "The Earth is hollow. There are apertures, or openings, at the North Pole and the South Pole; Once we descend into the openings, we will be the first surface humans in 30 years to view the wondrous secrets of the people who live inside the Hollow Earth." Shoush appears to be deadly serious about the project.

He has devoted his life to planning the trip inside the Earth, and he runs the project from a small town in Missouri called Houston. Shoush speaks in great detail about the world he believes exists inside the Earth. Basically, it is this: There is an advanced civilization that lives in the Hollow Earth. Great cities are set up, populated by beings superior to Because the people of the Hollow Earth do not approve of the way we on the surface have run our lives, they do not want us to visit them. But Shoush and the members of his.

Hollow Earth Society feel that if they, with their compassion and understanding for the Hollow Earth beings, make the journey, rather than a government organization attempting it, the Hollow Earth people will welcome them and let them in. "We will need an airship if we can acquire one," Shoush said. "A dirigible. We are looking for one in Germany. We will fly the dirigible to the Arctic region, and then proceed on foot to the opening that leads to the Hollow Earth.

We will attempt to make contact with the beings inside, and assure them we have come in peace. Then, hopefully, we will reboard the dirigible and descend into the Hollow Earth." Shoush and the members of the Hol Follow 'Rainbow' For A Nostalgic Musical Television Ben Brown 111 I A iiyil'fiilMf 'mm" A i 4 1 1 1 1 She's supported in "Rainbow" by a cast of big-timers: Don Murray (as her father); Piper Laurie (her mother); Martin Balsam (studio head L.B. Mayer); Michael Parks (her accom-paniest); Rue McClanahan (a sympathetic assistant to Mayer); Nicolas Pryor (as the other man in her mother's life). All of them perform as the script seems to require', most of them better than the script deserves. True to the old style, "Rainbow" is in top much of a hurry to get to the music to worry about dialogue and narrative deveopment.

Relationships are quickly painted in. Crises are poorly prepared for and shoved aside when the band begins to play. And there's plenty of music -r everything from "Puttin' on the Ritz" to a tearful version of "Over the Rainbow." None 'of the tunes sound weak or inappropriate. "Rainbow" does not begin to approach the-dramatic quality the Judy Garland story requires. Yet it could have been far worse.

And if you let it, it will certainly pull you into the nostalgia and the sentimentality. In fact, if your eyes don't tear just a little when you 1 watch it, you're just not JSaying enough 1 In this era of wishful thinking, it was an "idea made in heaven or in whatever place deals are sealed: "Hey, I know, let's put on a play. All we need is a heavy hit of nostalgia. How about a young Judy Garland, singing her way through the misery of a tormented child- hood to that place where bluebirds fly?" It's a potentially tasteless, but very commercial, idea. And it could have been awful had not the producers of "Rainbow" (an NBC made-for-television movie airing tonight at 9 on WFLA-TV, Channel 8) been really good at two things: recreating the sentiment of those '30s musicals and casting the right person in the starring role.

"Rainbow" is the story of Baby Frances the youngest member of a vaudevjlle sister act, who became Judy Garland, M-G-M and heart-tugging songstress for a genera-T tion of Americans. The NBC movie, however, just takes a slice of her unhappy life the childhood years which led to her big role as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." The sense of '30s romance is there, manu-, factured with the help of the old conventions: shlow character denlelopment, trite dialogue, tear-jerking separations and that old need to But the sense of nostalgia would never have been enough to carry "Rainbow." In fact, it would have been downright embarrassing without young Andrea McArdle. At the ripe age of 14, McArdle comes to "Rainbow" fresh from her phenomenal Broadway success as "Annie." This production desperately needs her, even though she looks and sounds nothing like Judy Garland. Her success, ironically, may be based upon her refusal to try. What she does instead is portray a parallel character on her own terms, an entertainer gifted with the voice of a woman in the body of a child.

And what a prodigious gift Garland and McArdle so prodigious, in fact, that it's easier to grasp the power of one when it's reflected in the talents of the other. That's what gives the movie some substance in all the nostalgia. McArdle is not yet a full-fledged actress. She has trouble letting loose whtjp the. scene demands it.

But what a voice! l. transcend depression with a song. "Do me one favor," Garland's accompanist says near the end of the movie. "Reach down deep inside of you and put those feelings, that hurt, into your music." Even the technology the color tint of the scenes, the dreamy closeups and the contrived establishing shots (newspaper datelines and the years on auto tags) are borrowed from the old days. That's understandable.

Jackie Cooper, childhood friend of Garland and veteran of more than a couple sentimental flings of this sort, directed the project. But the sense of nostalgia would never have been enough to carry the movie, In fact, it would have been downright embarrassing without young Andrea McArdle, who plas the central role. It "Annie" McArdle Andrea as the tonight young Judy Garland in "Rainbow" at 9 on Channel 8..