Monday, September 24, 2001

The Lowdown
Watchmen forgo video for TV ads>br> By Karen Bliss
For JAM! Music

Given the TV ads that have been created for The Watchmen's new single, "absolutely anytime" could succeed "bootylicious" and "it wasn't me" as the next catch-phrase.
EMI Music Canada hired Pete Henderson -- director of the "I Am Canadian" beer campaign and music videos for The Tragically Hip -- to create commercials to promote the band's fifth album, "Slomotion". There will be no video for "Absolutely Anytime," which is top 10 on BDS Canada's "rock audience" chart. Instead, three 30-second ads will run for the next two months on MuchMusic.
"The commercial is a funny scene of a guy in a record store that sees a really cute girl singing the phrase 'absolutely anytime,' and he thinks she's singing about him," says The Watchmen's manager, Jake Gold. "There's three different cuts. One is from his point of view, one is from her point of view, and one is the combination of the two. They're going to be aired at different times."
The decade-old rock group has taken a different turn with "Slomotion". After exploring their outside interest in electronic music -- singer Danny Greaves and bassist Ken Tizzard actually performed in Toronto with a live side project, Audio Playground High + Wide -- The Watchmen decided to incorporate technology into their next album.
Since then, drummer Sammy Kohn has left the band. Greaves, Tizzard and guitarist Joey Serlin carried on, recording much of their "Slomotion" parts separately at their homes with Pro Tools. They later took the tracks into the studio with producers Rhys Fulber (Delerium, Fear Factory) in Vancouver and DJ Iain in Toronto to incorporate dense programming into them.
"Slomotion" is a two-CDs-for-the-price-of-one album. The first disc features eight new songs plus a remix of the past hit "Stereo". The second disc has nine songs from the band's previous albums, including "Boneyard Tree", "Any Day Now", and "All Uncovered".
This week, The Watchmen will embark on a four-city tour. Starting Tuesday (Sept. 25) when "Slomotion" hits stores, buyers of the album will receive two free tickets to the concert in their respective city: Toronto (Sept. 25), Winnipeg (27), Edmonton (28), or Calgary (29). A full Canadian tour follows Nov. 21 to Dec. 20, with By Divine Right and Smoother. Ryan Ahoffs has stepped into the drum seat for the live dates.