Tapping Into the Social Unconscious

Hi, Will Faeber here again from Cathouse Thursday continuing my last discussion about the origins of the name Cathouse Thursday, and how that came to be. One thing I wanted to touch on that’s so important for every band and every songwriter, whenever your branding your band for instance, tap into the social unconscious anytime you can.

<iframe width=”450″ height=”259″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/u7BOnXSkWOU” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

What that means is something is in the social unconscious like the song “Yesterday” by the Beatles. Everybody, or at least 90% of the people in the world probably know that song or know the melody of that song. And certain words are as well. Now certainly Cathouse Thursday doesn’t ring a bell in the same way some Beatles song might, but on the other hand, lots and lots of people have seen the movie “The Great Scout In Cathouse Thursday”. When they see that title Cathouse Thursday, they go hmmm, I remember that from somewhere.

The same thing has been done with many other bands. The Beatles for instance, what people don’t realize is that they didn’t come up with the name. The Beatles is the name of the motorcycle gang in Marlon Brando’s movie from the 1950s called, “The Wild Ones”. Another example would be The Rolling Stones, which is from a blues song. Led Zeppelin is talking about the Hindenburg disaster, which they used on the cover of their first album. So, anytime that you are writing or naming a band and are branding something,  you want to also bring in something that people are going to go hmmm I remember that.

Interestingly, there is an artist now calling themselves Roy Rogers and another guy in which I ran into not too long ago is calling himself John Wayne. Richard Burton for instance, which people don’t realize, is that Richard Burton is actually a long running British actor. The Richard Burton that we know, the one married to Elizabeth Taylor, that was not his name at all, he was just the next guy to brand himself with that name. We can tap into these things and use them. Madonna is a perfect example, now there is something tapping into the social unconscious. That’s not her name, but we can see how everyone knows that term as soon as they hear it. It’s not only a term, it brings up an image. The way she used it was obviously not like the term Madonna, her whole image was more easy virtue so to speak, at least in her early albums.

So try to tap into the social unconscious when your writing. I did it in a song on our album “Nashville Baby” called “Funky Hang Loose”. There is also a video for it online that you can check out. But in that song, I basically list all these dances from the 50s, 60s and 70s that we danced to. So every time anybody hears one of those things, they are hearing something that they have heard before and they go hmmm, I heard that, I like it! Anyway, that’s it. Tap into the social unconscious and you can’t go wrong. Go see “Funky Hang Loose”!