It's Like Punk Rock, Only It's a Car: JSBX in a Subaru Ad

I'm not sure "recent" is really the word so much as "ongoing." In any event, it depresses me. Y'see, I don't want to conjure the image of a specific product in my head when I hear a song.

Yes, and now many of them are currently my age (mid-thirties)...or, more worryingly, EVEN YOUNGER. That said, because they do listen to music, I just wish they'd have consideration for those people who possibly take music more seriously (justifiably or not) than they do and leave it alone!

Oh, and btw, I'm just being a pesky pedant here but it's actually the song "Bellbottoms" that's in that commercial.

I mean, whatever. Rockers got bills to pay. As long as they don't start choosing their material specifically to tie-in with ad-sponsorship ala Celine Dion with her (I think) Chrysler deal, where they sponsored her album and she cut Orbo's "I Drove All Night" for her lead-off single. That's dirty pool.

Too right. My mistake; Orange is the album.

Well it might not be slow, ugly and dengerous but it would keep going all day and all night on only a teaspoon of petrol and would somehow still be on the road and inexplicably keep passing it's MOT's without any problems, years and years and years and years after even the people who built it expected it to have fallen apart completely.

And I do know how to spell daynjeruss, really, honest I do.

This is just marketing, right?

And I'm surprised no one mentioned Radio Birdman being used in some SUV-type vehicle ad recently...took me 3-4 viewings before I keyed in on what the song was.

3 reasons why Your Special Music in ads can be a Shitey Thing:
i - it makes the musicians richer
ii - more ppl get to hear music you think is great
iii - it changes the context in which you hear the work

or the the UK tory party ?

The only political ads/promotions I remember were:
Clinton - Don't Stop
Some Republican (Reagan?) - Born in the USA
Mondale - Teach Your Children

.. None of those songs affected me either way before or after they were used....

Other songs that should be in ads:
"Rippin Kittin"
"You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)"
"Gay Bar"
"She is Beautiful"
"Rockaway Beach"
"Paco!"
"So Fresh So Clean"

I'd immediately buy anything that used those songs.

Let's see them use the song and actually include the lyrics. ;-)

Nominate campaign songs for U.S. presidential candidates

*immediately goes to scour every single Salvation Army store in Manhattan* Dude! If I ever, ever went to concerts besides that goddamned Go-Betweens show, I'd have such cool shirts.

Oh, I have a really slutty shirt from Madonna's last tour, that's pretty cool. BUT STILL.

Did I mention that I'm totally in love with Jon Spencer?

Another song that I'd like to see in an ad would be "Bank Holiday" by Blur.

I'm slowly realizing my claim about buying "anything in an ad using JSBX" is totally false because I have no need for a Subaru.

Does anyone use "Electricity" in an ad yet? Because they should.

Since the move, I've been feeling the urge to purge m'self of stuff that I simply don't need/use/wear/want anymore, having already stored half of my stupid collection of crap in Manhattan Mini-Storage. I sort've lost my affinity for the Blues Explosion when it became rather abundantly clear that they weren't going to progress any further. Moreover, while I do think Jon Spencer is one cool motherfucker, he doesn't need another lanky white guy like myself extolling their merits through YET ANOTHER black t-shirt (as if I don't already have enough of those).

I still have my black "Blues Explosion!" t-shirt though. And I probably won't sell Orange or Now I Got Worry. Acme and maybe Extra Width might go though. He tries too hard.

Which actually is sorta my thought on him too, but anyway.

Yeah, `cos Good Charlotte are so effortlessly GENUINE aren't they.

HOW THE HELL CAN YOU FORGET THE POSTER IS AUTOGRAPHED???? Jesus. I convinced someone at Sony to give me a massive subway-poster-sized thing for Generation Terrorists that was signed by the entire band including Richey. It was bizarre, why would someone give that away? Besides having no need for a gigantic picture of Richey Edwards's nipple.

Haha! Emotwee MCs.

I thought everyone wanted a gigantic picture of Richey's nipple?

Makes for memorable wallpaper.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. Like I said, he was a bit fuzzy.

Nicole OTM.

no gorrila suits in "Wail."

And I give up on the gorilla suit motif. I have no idea where that came from.

that Levis ad kills me.

I think it's for Tommy Hilfiger, as they're label is red, white and blue. No matter, though: I agree, it's one of the worst distortions of a song for the purpose of selling merchandise. Criminal.

using songs in ads because they're cool songs = okay
using songs in ads because they've come to represent something and you want your shitty jeans to represent that without actually having them do anything = sucks

YOU AND ME BOTH SISTAH. You can DL the (rejected) song off of Ween's website though.

The world has gone musically mad

Music in Ads

I can't stand Spencer's fake-ass accent. The power of his fake accent is WAY STRONGER than the power of the rhythm section, which is a shame, because it's a great rhythm section, but it goes to show you my strange priorities. If your fake-ass accent sucks YOU ARE DEAD TO ME. And I dunno, the shirts, the shades, the total SCAREDNESS you can smell through the lights and the crowd, the impossibility of allowing anyone to see any of his vulnerability, even if it's an angry vulnerability, just kind of adds up to = first-class A-hole. YEAH, I SAID IT, A-HOLE. I still kind of like "I Dig You" though.

John Fogerty's fake-ass accent, on the other hand, rules.

And that Carnival use of "Lust for Life" is absolutley absurd/genius. "Do you like hard drugs and the dole? Then you'll love our cruise line!!!" Like Kathie Lee Gifford hanging out in some Glasgow shooting pad.

Tracer - I did ask him about it, on the WHGMM thread:

'mark s - I really hesitate to question, but I don't know about what you said: I don't know what kind of contextless 'power' a piece of music can have?
Can't this be just a matter of personal connectivity and conditioning?
Isn't there any music you love that carries some cultural/personal meaning to YOU that you feel would somehow be sullied by a more generic use - do you really appreciate everything you like in that kind of isolated or socially-abstracted or impervious-to-recontextualisation way - or is it that there's no context for it that could conceivably piss you off? '

OK - that might not be a 'serious' challenge by yr (or his!) standards, but I do find his notion sort of puzzling at the same time as logically coherent.
looking at it again, i guess i'm comparing diff ways of liking diff sorts of music -
eg i like some baroque music but would not be bothered by its use in ads because it does not mean much to me wrt personal history/cultural-personal identity-formation/representation/metaphor of understanding
(but it might do to someone of a different background - or who was 300 yrs old)

mark's contention asserts its own criteria of (music)love:
'i loved that song and those gits have spoiled it now'
'well, if its that easily ruined you never *really* loved it in the first place'

so to those of us caught in the middle - 'loving' it beyond context and only 'liking' it regardless of context look like they => the same comfort-in-the-face-of-marketing-use, so each can suspect the other of being the opposite of what they think they are

i think to regard sensitivity to context as a 'lesser' form of appreciation because its makes yr love more a hostage to fortune is not an attitude we carry through unreservedly to other things unless labouring under romantic idealism - and sensitivity to those factors can be more than just 'darling they're playing our tune' sentiment or pavlovian drool

they can be regarded as part of the timber framework constituting yr music-love, not just a load of airbags attached to its barnacle-encrusted leaky hull

ppl who love the whole pop panjandrum can't have it both ways here