Finding “Commercial” Success

Papas Fritas – a band formed by three Tufts graduates – is experiencing a new wave of commercial success after one of its songs was used in a Dentyne commerical.

Boston [09.12.03] Since Papas Fritas was founded in 1992 by three Tufts students, the band has released four albums, toured around the world and earned critical acclaim from music critics. But it was a recent commercial that gave the band its first mainstream hit.

Watch the Dentyne Ice commercial [here]. (Requires Quicktime)

“If people have seen the commercial, they think I’m a celebrity,” Tony Goddess, Papas Fritas’ lead singer told the Boston Herald, describing the attention around the band’s popular song “Way You Walk.”

Featured in a TV commercial for Dentyne Ice, the song (which was released on the band’s 2000 album Buildings and Grounds) has received a lot of airtime – both on TV and the radio.

“The script: Boy on subway platform makes eye contact with girl, she enters subway train and writes her number on the train window (with the help of frosty Dentyne breath), and every other guy on the platform copies it down,” reported the Herald. “After a few months of heavy rotation, the spot’s soundtrack is so familiar, it can be considered a pop hit.”

With little warning, the catchy tune has given new life to the group’s music – even though two of the band’s three members have gone on to pursue careers outside of music.

“Goddess is the only member of the intuitively gifted, guilelessly clever trio determined to make a living as a musician,” reported the Herald. “Bassist Keith Gendel and drummer Shivika Asthana (whose angelic, vibrato-free vocal complements Goddess’ ragged, earnest wait in classic style) have pursued graduate studies and careers in other professions.”

The band members – who graduated from Tufts in 1994 (Gendell) and 1995 (Asthana and Goddess) – aren’t likely to revive their former lives as the globe-trotting musicians were in the late 1990s when Papas Fritas toured the world with Beck, the Cardigans, the Flaming Lips and Blur.

But they have released a new anthology of their music.

“It’s weird. It’s really become so defining,” Goddess told the Herald. “All of a sudden we get to have a new record out, because of a TV commercial, and there’s a sticker on it that says ‘as heard on the Dentyne Ice commercial.’”

For Goddess, the new-found popularity has given him more room to pursue his passion for music. “[I feel] like an artist who finally got a grant,” he says.

“Even if that sticker fails to sell a million copies of the new Papas Fritas anthology Pop Has Freed Us, Goddess can stave off day jobs for another year, at least, thanks to revenues from the commercial,” reported the Herald.

Music, like the rest of life, isn’t supposed to be easy, he says, but that doesn’t mean it will always be hard.

“People like to say that I’m naïve, or childish – that’s even in style now – but I don’t think so,” he told the Herald. “I personally like the kind of music that acknowledges the world’s a hard place, that refers to the existence of cloudy days ahead, or in the past, but draws strength from that sadness. If it’s about heartbreak, you can tell the heartbreak isn’t fatal.”