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Can You Spell "Sell-Out"?One feels disdain toward the rock band Journey for allowing their hit "Any Way You Want It" to be used as a musical sales pitch to hawk Ford automobiles. Likewise, jeers to every musician that has similarly prostituted their music to sell products. Even the historic mega-rock band Led Zeppelin has traveled this troubled road; rest assured, mates, that whenever I hear the classic "Been A Long Time," I no longer think of a talented and historic group of four hard rock/blues musicians and the unique musical craft they cultivated and produced so prodigiously--instead, I am now cogently and immediately reminded of Cadillac automobiles. Is this to be the legacy of this historic supergroup?
This inappropriate and misdirected commercialism may have been embodied most pointedly in a remark I heard recently from Gene Simmons, notorious bassist of the rock band Kiss, during a radio interview. He actually stated: "Why be a band, when you can be a brand?" I guess Gene means it, because one of my most depressing moments was the day, about a year ago, that I saw Kiss hawking Pepsi-Cola in a television commercial.
The youth and countercultures in America (and elsewhere) have historically criticized, or even rejected, what they viewed as the uptight, money-centric attitudes of the "older generation," specifically their parents and other authority figures, and this nonconformity and rebellion has always comprised part of the impetus and driving force for rock-n-roll.
Has everyone forgotten?
Follow Ups:
"The youth and countercultures in America (and elsewhere) have historically criticized, or even rejected, what they viewed as the uptight, money-centric attitudes of the "older generation," specifically their parents and other authority figures, and this nonconformity and rebellion has always comprised part of the impetus and driving force for rock-n-roll"Only among bourgeois youth who played at being counter-culture before comfortably slipping back into the mainstream. For the poor and working class people who originated Rock and Roll music success and the materal pleasures and security it offered were always a strong motivation and one they needn't apologize for.
And there was Rock and Roll music before there were hippies and all the counter-culture bullshit. Just thought you might want to know that.
I forget what product was using the Buzzcocks, now that was a surprise. Can't wait to hear God Save The Queen ( I mean it maan, I love the Queen, God saves)
Caddy originally wanted to use "Break on Through" from The Doors, (in fact that was the slogan that appeared on-screen during Led Zep's "Rock and Roll") but John Densmore refused to allow it. Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek actually sued Densmore but the judge denied them, citing an agreement made after Morrison died that any future use of Doors material had to be unanimous. Big kudos to John Densmore!
IIRC. Very brave woman who the voters gave the short end of the stick, in a fit of racism. But she is back where she belongs in all her radiant glory.
if I had a hit record, I'd sell it out while the getting was good. ;)
... or at least the early 80s, a VP Communications for Sony gave a speech in Japan in which he prophesied that within 20 years "pop" music would exist only to promote other products. Now would you like to buy into that download ringtone club? $5 a week and $5 sign up...
many, many years now...Arthur Jensen: It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.
The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
Paddy Chayefsky knew...
"I always play jazz records backwards, they sound better that way"
-Thomas Edison
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