In 2020, it’s probably considered a bit rich, passé and precious to still be getting riled about one’s favorite music being used for advertising purposes. Ever since Nike first used “Revolution” by the Beatles to plug their sneakers, the floodgates have been, for all intents and purposes, blown off the doors. It’s no longer considered shocking, disrespectful, inconsiderate, inappropriate or even consequential in any capacity to hear certain tunes used to promote and sell goods and services, the overarching rationale being “well, at least the artist will see some money.” That’s true, I cannot argue with that, but it still comes — to my mind — at a cost.
And we’re not just talking about the Beatles or Zeppelin anymore. This many years after the fact, I’ve heard The Cult and The Ramones used to sell beer, Gary Numan to plug cars (how original!), the Buzzcocks used to promote AARP and — most notoriously — Iggy Pop used to advertise cruise ships. Even my beloved Cop Shoot Cop had a track of theirs — the instrumental “Migration” — used in a Nike ad — and, to be fair, the ad itself was quite striking. I don’t *think* anyone’s used Killing Joke, yet, but I might be mistaken.
There’s also the strong argument regarding exposure. A quintessential example of this is Nick Drake. Prior to a certain Volkswagen campaign that artfully employed said troubled troubadour’s song “Pink Moon” in a clip about swooning teenagers eschewing a keg party in favor of driving around in the moonlight, the oeuvre of Nick Drake was largely known only to a comparatively furtive cabal of esoteric music geeks. One ad later, I had colleagues who previously only listened to indefensible offal like Hootie & the Blowfish and Edie Brickell suddenly extolling the merits of “Pink Moon.” It’s a damn shame that Nick Drake — who died broke and embittered, long prior to his work garnering any semblance of wide recognition — never got to reap the financial rewards nor the long-delayed mainstream kudos for the genius of his music. That the song in question is arguably about encroaching doom is another matter entirely.
In any case, this ponderous preamble is all to tee up the anecdote that while watching TV last night, I spotted a commercial for a Marc Jacobs perfume. The clip featured comely blonde temptresses frolicking in a golden field. I immediately snapped to attention at the sound of the music scoring this otherwise banal clip. The music in question was “Cheree” by Suicide.
Invoke the name Suicide in certain circles, and watch scowling nerds light up like Christmas trees. Groundbreaking pioneers — punks long before punk was punk — Suicide made unfathomably forward-thinking music with a confrontational approach in an environment that could not possibly have been more hostile (a hostility they fed off of). While records like Never Mind the Bollocks and Rocket to Russia might sound just like regular rock’n’roll today, the eponymous debut by Suicide remains as brazenly unconventional and jarring in 2020 as it was upon its release in 1977. To use a stupid, phallocentric cliché, it’s a record that separates the men from the boys. The music of Suicide — to say nothing of their notoriously pugnacious live-performance style, steered by the late, great Alan Vega — was not for weak-hearted dilettantes.
That debut album, which arrived in a fittingly blood-slathered sleeve, gives no quarter and makes no apologies. At the risk of lapsing further into purple-prosed hyperbole, it is a singular work of art, undiminished by creative compromise or ambitions of commercial appeal. It is both incalculably influential and criminally uncelebrated.
While not an exception to their palette nor a hit single, however, there is “Cheree” … a sparkling three-and-a-half minutes of gobsmacked amore in an otherwise filthy, black subway tunnel to Hell. A minimalist, erotic ode to a leather-clad seductress, Vega gasps and whispers his devotions over Marty Rev’s twinkling and humming keyboards. Both beautiful and profane, it’s like watching a strip-tease in a cathedral. It was allegedly “Cheree” by Suicide that U2 sought to emulate with their signature single, “With or Without You.”
Meanwhile, …. here it is in a Marc Jacobs ad.
Longtime readers, here, might be familiar with my long-simmering disdain for Marc Jacobs. I got nothing against fashion, but two things I do hold sacred are my native New York City and punk rock, and Marc Jacobs’ unwieldy hubris routinely shits on both.
Marc Jacobs incurred the justifiable ire of Greenwich Village residents in the past decade by avariciously snapping up several storefronts on the western end of Bleecker Street, almost single-handedly evicting the old neighborhood’s character and morphing the once-sleepy West Village backwater into a new high-fashion shopping zone. But, like a callously tawdry one-night stand, Jacobs’ investment in Bleecker Street was not to last. As fortunes changed, by 2017, most of his ventures— ones previously owned by longtime local businesses — decamped, leaving countless empty storefronts dotting the street. Regardless of your predilections, your money no longer has many places to go on that stretch of Bleecker. Go ahead and blame Marc Jacobs for that. I know I do.
Secondly, there’s the music. I have no beef with anyone who shares my affinity for certain music and its accompanying subculture. But, if you’re going to express it, at least do your fucking homework. Like John Varvatos, Jacobs' equally vain fashionista peer at the other end of Bleecker Street at 315 Bowery, Marc Jacobs sure likes the trappings of punk rock, but doesn’t really do the research. He just cherry-picks whatever iconography he digs at the time and appropriates it for his purposes. Witness his witless co-opting of images from Skrewdriver as a prime example. You’re doing it wrong, Marc.
While harrumphing about all this on social media today, my friend Vicki came up with a damning bit of evidence that singularly sums up my arguments against Marc Jacobs in this capacity. Here’s the press release to Jacobs’ new ad. Pay attention to the last line.
Typically, Marc Jacobs is getting it laughably wrong again. Suicide were not “London-based” in any way, and to hear Vega sing/speak, you’d have to really not be paying attention. Suicide are New York City to the fucking BONE.
But, of course, Marc Jacobs doesn’t know that, because Marc Jacobs doesn’t care enough to invest.
Music touches people. Music means something. Music is powerful. Respect it.
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