Musical blenders
Cagnet, a name that suggests an American detective show or military aircraft, stands for Cat and Dog Network. A cable-television channel about pets perhaps? Wrong. Cagnet is a Santa Monica-based group that won an award for best new international act from Hong Kong's Hit Radio last week.
Group leader Daisuke Hinata said the name reflected the blend of styles. 'I had a lot of musicians around me, some from heavy metal bands, others from R 'n' B,' he said. 'I wanted to involve everybody . . . it was almost like cats and dogs living together.' Network is the guiding philosophy of this coterie of musicians, as Hinata believes the concept of a band is too rigid.
'My idea was if everybody commits to the band too much, maybe it would limit their ability. I wanted to be more like a network than a band,' he said during a visit to Hong Kong to receive the award.
The seven-piece group's greatest success has been in Japan, with the 1996 soundtrack to the soap opera The Long Vacation, and last year's soundtrack to another soap, Love Generation.
Given Japan's fascination with pop culture, Hinata was not surprised the success of the television serials helped Cagnet. The Long Vacation sold more than one million copies, and the track Deeper and Deeper went to number three on the Japanese charts.
'In the Japanese market you have to connect the song to a commercial. If you see a drink commercial every 15 minutes, you connect the music to the drink; they automatically remember the song. That's very important to sell pop songs,' said the 40-year-old producer and keyboard player who formed the group specifically for the soundtrack project.
He is aware such blatant commercialism is the classical sell-out for professional musicians. And he is 'pretty disgusted' that even in the US, artists often do Pepsi commercials. 'It's almost like there's no way out.' But for all his claims to the moral high ground, Hinata wanted success. 'I was looking for a chance to sell my music or get popular with songs where you don't have to sing in Japanese. But it was almost impossible.' He considers himself fortunate the soundtrack projects gave him more creative freedom than he might have had with other forms of cross-promotion.