If you are a child of the Eighties, the theme song for Transformers immediately sparks the “more than meets the eye” follow-up line. It’s like the “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” jingle_ it never leaves you. So, passions are already playing it out online as artists are creating their own transformations of the theme song.
Special thanks to C.C. Chapman for pointing out the Black Lab version. I like the story he tells about why the band Black Lab (also known for being a part of the Bum Rush The Charts online initiative) chose to do their own version, grab the footage of the film that is available online and create their own video with their music:
“_in true new media fashion they didn’t just sit around and complain about it. They went into the studio and recorded their own version. On top of that they took all the footage out there from the trailers and cut together a music video for it as well.”
The result is: Transformers Theme by Black Lab:

I’m fascinated by this on so many levels.
Passionate consumers with big talent really can produce much more than a shaky handy cam YouTube video. This production could only have only been augmented had the music video been interspersed with shots of the band. There’s also no doubt that as the ability to create and share media gets easier and easier, the barrier to be creative and market your ideas gets easier and more accessible to the mass general public.
There’s also a long tail of content effect that begins to take hold. As fans of Transformers start to dig for more content beyond the soon-to-be-released movie, they’ll start weaving through both authorized and Fan Generated Content (or Consumer Generated Content) with little concern or care as to which is which – as long as it’s entertaining. This enables brands to create multiple extensions while satisfying their consumer’s demands for more without much work or budget. Again, passionate people are creating high-end content as media.
Lastly, this flips the music industry on its ear (again). The entire music industry was built around a major label’s ability to have the largest share of voice in the marketplace. This enabled them to take a relatively unknown artist and give them mass exposure. With one upload to YouTube, the creation of a MySpace page and then nurturing open relationships with their fans, artists now have the same share of voice. I recently heard that one of the main tactics major labels are using to connect to music fans is through the artists’ own website. Huh? That like the major label coming back to the artists and saying, “let us put some advertising in front of people you already know, because we can’t seem to reach the general public as well as you can.”
In the meantime, Black Lab’s re-versioning of the Transformers theme really got me pumped about the next level of Consumer Generated Content.
While the band may not have liked the theme that was done for Transformers by Mute Math (which I thought was cool), their dislike of it was our gain. Now, all I have to do is get the lyrics to Transformers out of my head.
“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz_”