Saturday, March 14, 2009

Gimme that Fish


OK, evil may be a little harsh to direct at him personally, so let's call his work wicked, his creativity nefarious and his musical ability to worm into your brain downright sinister:

"Gimme back that filet-o-fish,

Gimme that fish.

Gimme back that filet-o-fish,

Gimme that fish."

That is Josh Peck, and his 26-second earworm has moved across the country like a fast-spreading virus, taking over everything from kindergarten classrooms to executive boardrooms.

It has reached Saratoga as well, where a pleasant daytime manager named Maddie stands beneath a big sign that reads: The Fish-Fry Event at the McDonald's Restaurant on Route 50. She estimates she has sold two to three times the average amount of filet-o-fish meals since Peck's song hit the airwaves.

Gimme back that filet-o-fish, Gimme that fish.

"I wanted to do something fun and quirky," says Peck, who scribed the tune with writing partner Joey Auch.

"It's funny, I've been doing this work for years, but occasionally something like this will happen that is unpredictable," said the songwriter, who has written TV commercials for Mercedes-Benz, Disney and General Motors, as well as working with musical artists such as Mos Def and Eartha Kitt.

The Arnold Worldwide agency in Massachusetts created the McDonald's advertisement, which depicts a bearded man in a garage chomping down on a filet-o-fish as a talking wall fish starts singing to him.

"A buddy of mine who works at Arnold gave me a ring and laid out the spot. I thought it was hilarious as a concept," says Peck, who works for the Manhattan-based company, Pulse Music.

"He referenced the Bobby McFerrin track 'Don't Worry, Be Happy,' as a possible direction," Peck says. "The ultimate goal was to be funny -- to have a fish on a wall pitching a fish sandwich to a guy eating one."

Peck moved to New York City in '03 to work on his career as a musician. He says he grew up plunking down "old-school synth beats" on a Casio SK-1, a mid-sized keyboard that brought basic, low-cost digital sampling to would-be musicians in the '80s.

After making a recent journey home only to discover that his mom didn't hold on to the keyboard of his youth, Peck -- a classically trained pianist -- found one on eBay and started having some fun producing quirky synth-like tones.

From this, a talking fish was given a voice, which a good part of the country today has stuck in its head: "What if it was you, hanging up on the wall? If you were in that sandwich, you wouldn't be laughing at all! Gimme back that filet-o-fish, gimme that fish. Gimme that filet-o-fish, Gimme that fish ..."

So, has he ever tried one?

"Ha! I was just talking to a friend about that; I've never had one," the songwriter says. "But I plan on dropping in to 'catch' one this week."

A temporary page featuring the work of Peck and Auch is at www.myspace.com/joeynjosh.

published in The Post-Star, Friday, March 13, 2009

Saratoga Bureau writer Thomas Dimopoulos can be reached at tdimopoulos@poststar.com.

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