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We pointed out charming website LloydGroveIsAScumbag.com and naturally assumed it was the handiwork of some disgruntled Page Six freaks. But you know what happens when one assumes, so we did a smidgen of background research and found out that the site is owned by one Ernie Savage.

So who the hell is Ernie Savage and why does he have it out for Lloydie? Because Grove quoted Savage, a composer and band leader, of course! Savage isn't portrayed negatively, however, so we're not sure why he's so hot and bothered by the Lowdown. Perhaps his comments on his involvement in composing music for John Kerry's campaign ads lost him his job, and he consequently went batshit insane with web design? The internet was invented for that sort of thing, we hear.

The archived article, which likely started it all, after the jump.

July 6, 2004 Tuesday
KERRY ADS, IN THE KEY OF GS
By Lloyd Grove with Hudson Morgan

BODY:
Now that John Kerry's presidential campaign team has money to burn - on first-class hotels, gourmet cuisine and a luxuriously appointed 757 that would make Donald Trump lime-green with envy - they're even commissioning original music for political commercials. "Mostly the commercial production people end up using stock music," said Manhattan composer and bandleader Ernie Savage, who with partner Greg Laporta wrote the notes for a new Kerry bio spot coming soon to your home television screen. "It's a lot cheaper to find things in the public domain or just license existing music."

But - as the 37-year-old Savage was overheard explaining the other night to actor Chris Noth at an East Side cigar bar, Lexington Bar & Books - the Kerryites are spending big bucks to do their own thing. In this case, Savage told me, "They wanted it to sound 'soaring' and 'majestic.' They basically want music that will get him elected."

Soaring, majestic and electable background music for a 30-second spot can cost from as little as a couple of thousand dollars to as much as $15,000, Savage said. He and Laporta produced that distinctive Kerry sound - which did, I have to admit upon listening, make me feel like a million bucks - by initially spending about six hours noodling on their state-of-the-art Synclavier, a 1980s-era synthesizer no longer in production, and then revising at the direction of Kerry admaker Sarah Callahan:

A little more soaring here.
A little less majestic there.
And, please guys, pump up the snare drums.

"You know, I hear that this is the first presidential campaign where, between Bush and Kerry, they're going to spend over a billion dollars," Savage said. "I'd sure like to know where it's all going. Maybe I'll give myself a raise."