One of the trickier aspects of being a music fan is when the music you love gets appropriated by pieces of the pop culture that you, well, don’t have such strong positive feelings towards, let’s say. I remember being shocked and appalled when I first heard Material Issue’s “Everything” butchered by some nasty, yearning band called Stereo Fuse. And while I’ve long since given up on righteous indignation as a response to a band selling off their songs for use in slick commercials, there’s still a part of me that instinctively winces when a song I really admire is paired with some piece of marketing or other media that I find dismal.

So, as someone who doesn’t especially care for the outlet for Mike Myers’ particular brand of cheeky bawdiness, I’m somewhat saddened that the Quincy Jones composition “Soul Bossa Nova” will forever by associated with Austin Powers. This isn’t because I feel especially attached to that precise composition. Certainly, it has been used plenty over the years in multiple films and as the theme song to the long-running Canadian game show Definition (Mr. Jones always seemed pretty happy to snap up any opportunity to turn his songs into paychecks). Instead, my disappointment arises from my preference that the song be known as the beautifully utilized sample that drives the first single from the Canadian duo Dream Warriors.

It is, I’ll fully admit, a fairly roundabout way to arrive at a sense of compromised musical integrity. This is sometimes how my college-radio-rattled mind works.

Dream Warriors, “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style”

(Disclaimer: The fine salespeople at Amazon have led me to believe that the Dream Warriors’ album And Now The Legacy Begins is out of print and this song is posted with that understanding. It is available digitally through that outlet, and others undoubtedly, but I continue to operate under what I refer to as The Quirk Rule, which presumes that monies garnered by the record companies don’t make it to the artists in question. Still, if someone with due authorit to do so asks me to remove this from the Interweb, I will gladly comply.)