Back With Another One Of Those Blog-Rockin’ Beats

I've complained more than once about the song "It's Your Thing" by the Isley Brothers being used in commercials. Specifically, that it's been used in commercials for a variety of different products, with each company seemingly oblivious to the fact that it's already been associated with a different brand.

So, imagine if I'd been asked, "What do you think will be the next song to get overused in commercials for multiple brands at the same time? Hint: it's from another group with 'Brothers' in the name."

I would have said, oh, no, not "Unchained Melody!" That's such a classic song that so many people love. It would be such a shame if it became associated with dog food and denture cleaners

But no, it's "Galvanize," by the Chemical Brothers.

It started with a series of Michelin ads, which used the song for its distinctive "dun dun dun" part. That got it recognized enough that stadium DJs started playing it at sporting events. I thought that was a weird enough path for a song to go through pop culture: being revived by a commercial almost twenty years after it was released and getting attention beyond what it originally got. So I thought about remarking on it, but never got around to it.

But then, I hear it again on a Hummer ad. They're using the "Push the button" part to advertise their four-wheel steering. That's a different part of the song, so people may not even realise it's the same song. I suppose that's a way around the problem of over-using songs in ads: each company uses a different part of the song. Maybe that will even have a positive effect on music: You’ll put more effort into the complexity of your songs if you know you can sell different parts to different companies.

Oddly, we still haven’t seen the most obvious use; the song is, after all, named after an industrial process. It just seems natural that eventually we'll hear, "Ziebart reminds you..." (start music) "The time has come to…Galvanize!" (cut music quickly, because Michelin owns the dun dun dun part.)

But I'm also thinking about the demographic implications of this. It was all fun and games when it was another generation's songs getting overused. I could feel cheapened, but I'm trying to look on the bright side: We won the demographic competition (where "we" refers to late Gen-X, early Millennials, or in my case, Mid-Xer who stayed in university too long and thinks he's a borderline Xer-Millennial.) And now our music is being used to sell expensive stuff like high-end tires and SUVs. Yes, I realize it's a fleeting title, since it's only a matter of time before the next music takes over. But we could get a bit of an extension while advertisers struggle to make ads out of emo.

Wake Up, You Need To Make Money

I read this interesting article about why the current generation of kids is so stressed. The main reason is that they have so much pressure to plan for their career. Teachers and parents make them keenly aware of how big a difference a career makes in the current environment. So from an early age, they know that their education is a make-or-break situation.

I can kind of relate to this feeling myself. When I was in high school, Teachers worked hard to communicate the idea that we were building our future. I remember one correcting people who talked about the world outside of school as “the real world.” He reminded us that school is part of the real world, since our actions in class would have real consequences.

But it was clear that our elders were fighting an ingrained perception that we’d be alright no matter what. I think everyone understood that life would be better if you got more education, but there wasn’t a sense of disaster if you failed to get it. But by the time I was in university, the manufacturing sector was shrinking, and people were really getting the idea that there wasn’t much of a Plan-B. That’s when the Millennials were starting to go through high school and college, so I’m assuming that was the message most of them were given as they grew up.

But a point from the article is that while Gen-X’ers and Millennials may have been exposed to threats of failure, we were at least promised a payoff. The message of study-or-you’ll-always-work-at-McDonald’s might have been stressful, but we were also assured that we could have a good life and feel good about Making A Difference if we got a good job and worked hard. In contrast, the article says that we no longer give that carrot along with the stick. Now we just present the message that you have to get everything just right or you’ll face disaster. So kids are growing up with the idea that you have to work hard just to get a middling existence, with any sort of good life out of the question.

This follows on a popular article in Buzzfeed (cited in the above article) about burnout among millennials. My reaction to that was to ask for some respect: we Gen-X’ers invented early burnout. This multigenerational freak-out is just confirming something I’ve suspected for a while: Though the media may talk about the different generations as though they are different, we really don’t have distinct generations anymore. It’s now just a slowly-changing set of circumstances. So we divide ourselves into Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation-Hurry-Up-And-Get-A-Name-Already, but really it’s just one long spectrum of angst. It seems like we’re having this societal conversation that goes like this:

Millennials: We sure hate adulting. We made a meme about it and everything.
Generation X: We hated adulting first! But seriously, great word, “adulting.” Wish we’d thought of that.
Post-Millennials: Adulting sounds terrible! We’re never leaving home!
Baby Boomers: The millennials are such wimps that they can’t stand adulting. And they keep inventing stupid words.

See, the media keeps telling us that the millennials are completely alien and can’t be understood, but really it’s the boomers are the only generation that don’t fit in and don’t make sense to the others. Indeed, it’s been them that have been the primary drivers behind making society as unforgiving as possible. And that brings us back to the central problem that the exceptional make plenty of money, but for everyone else, the effort-to-outcomes ratio doesn't seem very promising. It would be nice if there was something to reward the average person who works hard, even if they aren't a superstar.

But you know what they call a reward for doing your job even if you’re not the best? A participation trophy. Yes, the concept that's come to symbolize millennial-bashing, and the general point of view that we’re too forgiving of our young people. But if we were too nice to young people, we’d all be less stressed. Really, we've got it all backwards. We're so obsessed with the fear of rewarding people for doing nothing that we've created a world where almost nothing gets rewarded. As much as the world portrayed in the article seems alien to us, we also have to admit that it's the world we've spent the last four decades crafting: one in which there is as little help as possible.

Is Pepsi Okay?

I'm amazed by these new diet coke ads. Coke seems to be rebranding it, with energy-drink-style cans, and young-person-based-ads. I know I'm not the target market, but they look awful. You know, the ones where they're walking down the street talking to you.

(And here's the other. I have to admit: it's cute that if you're watching closely, you'll see them pass each other. I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to notice that.)

I may not be the target market, but I do remember some of the embarrassing ads that tried to appeal to me when I was part of the hot demographic. Both then and now, it was clear that they were print these ads together based on what the ad execs had seen on TV or overheard in malls, not by actually talking to young people. "Maybe you're into friends who leave voice mail"?!? What does that even mean? Can you be into friends who don't use voice mail anymore? It's like they wrote the script using Mad Libs Millennial Edition.

I guess there is a certain challenge in understanding new generations. In my case, they were trying to figure out what Generation X cared about, before finally realizing it was nothing. Now they're trying to focus our what Millennials have in common, and are realizing that is also nothing. Well, one thing most of them do share is a disappointment in an economy that isn't giving them opportunities for rewarding or prestigious careers. You know, like jobs in advertising, where they could have prevented this embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Pepsi had an ad that walks us down memory lane. That's a big departure for them. As I observed previously, one of the few constants throughout my life had been Pepsi constantly trading to align themselves with whatever young people idolize. But one of the necessities of that strategy is that your ads have to live in the now: if you're appealing to today's kids, you can't mention that you were also trying to appeal to their parents. In this case, they not only admit that, they go on to tell you that they helped your grandad score at the drive in.

The fact is, we've entered a new pop-cultural epoch, where time no longer exists. Between reboots, rehashes and remixes, we're experiencing everything at once, so nothing can be hot, cold, retro, or camp anymore. It's like at the fall of communism, some people claimed it was the End of History. I didn't believe that then, and it turned out to be totally wrong, but somehow Pepsi rejecting trendiness feels even more monumental. It's like the concept was dying on us, and society needed Pepsi to give us permission to let it go, and herald this new era.

With The Price Cut, It's Less Frivolous

Yesterday, I strolled through The Bay. Do people still call it that? The store wants to be called "Hudson's Bay," so I don't know if any normal people call it that. Anyway, I often do this, even though I never buy anything. I guess I find it relaxing; I can go through looking without pressure, knowing I probably won't find anything tempting enough to force a difficult decision.

I can't remember the last time I bought something there. For one thing, the prices are pretty high. I find that when they have a sale, all it does is reduce the prices down to what would sound like a good starting price.

And then there's the brands. I think I've made clear that I don't really understand rich-people brands. Surely buying explicitly expensive stuff makes you look desperate. Buying a brand that everyone knows is associated with wealth? That's something poor people would do. So it doesn't make sense for them to exist. But apparently, lots of people will pay big bucks for Ralph Lauren, game theory be damned.

But on this day, I did find a shirt which met all the criteria I was looking for:

• reasonable price
• looked good
• non-bourgeois brand
• doesn't make me look retired

So I took it off the last-chance clearance rack and headed for the fitting rooms.

And they were locked, with no one in sight. Of course, there's no bell like there was at Sears. I wondered around for a bit looking for an employee, but couldn't find one. In retrospect, I suppose I could have just gone back to the cosmetics department at the entrance; there's always plenty of people waiting there to pounce. But of course, that would have been futile. One of the many perks of masculinity is being invisible to them.

So in the end, I gave up and went home, with my never-buying-anything-at-the-Bay streak intact. But on my way out of the store, I happened to notice another shirt on a sale rack, which I took a photo of for posterity:

I'm sure I've seen that pattern before somewhere. Now where could it be?

Not cool, Hudson's Bay. My generation doesn't have much, don't commoditize our touchstones. I should have gone to the women's section to see if they were selling the anarchist cheerleader outfits from the video.

Hey, does this count as cultural appropriation? Excuse me while I call some human rights lawyers.

What The Hell Are You Staring At (On TV)?

Recently we saw a bizarre news story in which fans of the animated series Rick and Morty went crazy over McDonald's Sichuan Sauce (Sichuan? Szechuan? Supposedly "Sichuan" is the new accepted spelling.) The whole thing reached ridiculous proportions when a woman in Michigan traded a packet of the sauce for a 2004 Volkswagen GTI. I mean, I could understand a Golf, but a GTI?

If you haven't seen the whole story, here's what I've pieced together:

• Back in the 90's, McDonald's briefly offered a Sichuan sauce for McNuggets (rumoured to be teriyaki mixed with ketchup) as a tie-in with the movie Mulan.
• Recently, there was an episode of Rick and Morty that focused on an obsession with Sichuan sauce
• McDonalds tried to get on board by offering limited-edition Sichuan sauce for one day
• Perhaps they were trying to set up a Tickle-Me-Elmo style craze, but more likely they just greatly underestimated the popularity of Rick and Morty, and they didn't have nearly enough for the throngs that showed up, some after driving for hours.
• Angry fans vented online. 

I don't want to turn this into a kids-these-days rant, or more precisely, a young-adults-these-days rant. After all, Rick and Morty fits into a longish tradition of cartoons that drop into the sweet spot between children's programming that displays imagination and flexible reality, and the fertile subject matter of the adult world. And I’ve been through that too.

In the past I’ve mentioned Ren & Stimpy being popular in my early years of university. In my later years at school, Teletoon was starting up, and we wasted many hours watching Duckman. Unfortunately, it’s been largely forgotten, but if you've ever wished that Family Guy and South Park had ripped off The Simpsons’ cleverness along with its irreverence, then it was the show for you.

After leaving University and getting my Adulting Licence, I watched a few cartoons in the same vein, such as Undergrads and The Boondocks. But mostly I’ve drifted away from the genre. Recently, I've seen slightly childish adult geeks like myself making references to Archer and Adventure Time, getting that same enjoyment out of it. I do feel a little jealous.

So I actually watched a few episodes of Rick and Morty once it started getting big, and it was indeed a fun show. But it will take a while before I get to the obsessed level. I have no desire for collectable McNugget sauce, though I wouldn't mind a Mr. Meeseeks.

And that's where we get to the kids-these-days part: I can't imagine my generation going this crazy to try to get limited-edition Gritty Kitty brand kitty litter.

So I can't really explain the current obsession. It could be that adult-oriented animation has become a big enough pop-cultural force that it's now attracting a wider swath of society. Where it was once followed by a few bored students, it has now reached a critical mass where it even appeals to a number of extreme fans who will band together to do things others find strange, like swarming a fast-food outlet.

Or it could be that this is just another aspect of society's already crazy priorities. People have long paid ridiculous amounts of money for items of nostalgia. If you don't have money to spend on your obsessions - but you do have time on your hands - then spending a few hours waiting in line at McDonald's for your cultural touchstone makes more sense than spending thousands on a rare lunchbox. Fittingly, some of the more expensive items of pop-cultural nostalgia are old animation cels.

Policy Of Alternative Facts

I don't want to sound like I'm obsessed with the musical tastes of conservatives.  Yes, I know, I've only written a couple of articles about it, but that seems like a lot. But we just keep getting stories about right-wingers and their love of the same bands I love.  The latest is Richard Spencer coming out as a fan of Depeche Mode, and declaring them "the official band of the Alt-Right."

Once again, I don't really understand how that happens.  A lot of their early music seems to be directly out of the Communist Manifesto. And one of their most popular songs, "People Are People," is as clear an anti-bigotry song as there is.

I think it's pretty weird for a person to listen to music with a message so different from their own beliefs. And most people seem to see it that way.  A few years ago there was a young pundit in Britain who became a laughingstock for suggesting that Morrissey was responsible for the country's turn to the right under David Cameron.

Okay, you may have been so distracted by the thought of someone thinking that left-of-Marx Morrissey could be a conservative icon, that you may have missed the irony that we were talking about David Cameron being shockingly right-wing.  Ah, simpler times.

Anyway, you can kind of see where she was coming from: Cameron - and many others in his government - would have come of age in the eighties, at the height of Morrissey's career. (Cameron has claimed to actually be a fan.) And consider that Morrissey is the sort of cult-level celebrity that means a lot to some but will be largely absent from the mainstream pop-cultural record.  Young people are forgiven for not knowing who he is, or why my generation cares about him. Just imagine hipster Millennials trying to explain to their kids who Jack White was. So when Morrissey's autobiography came out a few years ago, and people in Cameron's generation couldn't stop talking about this guy the young journalist had never heard of, she put two and two together and got the idea that he was the genesis for modern conservatism.

I still don't understand this concept. I mean, it's not like being a Sir-Mix-a-Lot fan who's attracted to svelte women. In that case you could say you disagree, but can respect his opinion, as well as his self-professed honesty about it. But with these alt-right alt-rock fans, they've dedicated their lives to fighting against the ideas in their favourite music, and their musical idols would despise their values.

Of course, it cuts both ways. If you're a left-leaning person, you probably don't have a problem with musicians unless you're into country. But there may be other areas of your life. Take sports, for instance. Massachusetts may be one of the most liberal parts of the US, yet in the Superbowl, they had to cheer for a coach and quarterback that supported Donald Trump, at least in as much as they are aware of a world beyond football.

And I'm feeling it too. Normally this weekend I'd be looking forward to the Daytona 500. But I've been put off by NASCAR and its overt support for Trump. Yes, despite this being the first time in a generation that a Canadian will be in the race. And even though that Canadian, DJ Kennington is a local boy from St. Thomas, who cut his teeth at my beloved Delaware Speedway in London. But I can't bring myself to watch the race, not even out of morbid curiosity of how many Confederate Flags will be in the audience, and how the TV coverage will avoid showing them. Unlike Spencer, I can't ignore the fact that someone is working against what I believe in.

Will You Still Click Me, When I'm 64

I keep seeing clickbait ads that say something like, "You Won't Believe What The Cast of Major Dad Looks Like Now!" Sure, I will admit a little curiosity (probably not for Major Dad, but say, for a show or movie I actually watched.) But generally, it's easy to resist the urge to click, since I can guess the answer: they look twenty years older. In addition, since they're in the entertainment business, they started off better looking than most, and they probably have better than average knowledge of make-up and clothing, so they'll look significantly better than others the same age. But still, they'll just look good, but older.

I know this, because I have particular insight into how people's appearances change as they age. That is to say, I'm on Facebook. So I constantly have the experience of seeing what people look like after a couple of decades. It's a little intriguing, but in the end it's a pretty mundane part of life.

I suppose my generation is the first to see this as commonplace. It used to be that you either lost contact with people, or you stayed close enough to them that you weren't conscious of their aging, since you saw it one day at a time. Your only opportunity to get a real perspective on aging was at a reunion. But now I get a reminder of the aging process quite often. I have to say, I think my generation has actually aged fairly well. You'd think Generation-X would have developed more Worry Lines.

So I really don't want to see what such-and-such celebrity looks like now. I'm sure that years ago, this sort of clickbait would have made sense, If clickbait had existed back then. You're looking at the cover of the Entertainment section of the paper, and you see the page-turn-bait headline, "You Won't Believe What The Cast of My Mother The Car Looks Like Now!" You'd probably turn right to page C6.

Fully, Completely

I've gotten to the age where I've seen things through from start to finish. Athletes, TV shows, politicians, etc. And somehow, that hasn't seemed like a big deal. Free agency has made sports careers so disjointed - you don't think of a twenty-year career so much as a series of episodes with different teams. And I saw Stephen Harper go from nobody to Prime Minister to retirement, and it didn't really seem that long. I've seen musicians go from unheard-of to the Rock hall of fame, yet that hasn't been really emotionally impactful. It hardly even makes me feel old.

However, it's been different with The Tragically Hip, playing their last concert. Obviously, thats partly because of the unfortunate circumstances of singer Gord Downie's health. But it's also because they were making it big around the time I was becoming musically aware in the late 80's/early 90's. Essentially, I've been around for their whole career, from that moment of wondering "What is this song about New Orleans that Muchmusic keeps playing." Which I guess is why it seems more personal. And I deserve bonus points because my family visited Bobcaygeon years before the song. Of course, as a Gen-Xer, I'm not really used to this feeling of something I grew up with becoming a cultural touchstone. I'm not sure how that happened.

That's just one way in which the band has seemed to defy pop-cultural gravity. They're also famous for being the only band that has become big in Canada without becoming big in the U.S. It should be impossible to get enough exposure in Canada to get so well-known unless you use the power of American media. But somehow The Hip have spread without it. On a similar note, I haven't really listened to them much in the last decade or so. And yet even if I'm not actively following their career, they've always been in the background. When people have described them as being the soundtrack to the nation, it may sound like hype, but it's actually an apt description.

I read this article by Damian Abraham of the punk band Fucked Up. He describes coming to appreciate The Tragically Hip's music and Gord Downie as a person. First of all, praise for The Hip written as an introspective and self-depricating article by a foul-mouthed pink may be the most Canadian thing I've ever seen. But more to the point, I think he has a good handle on their place in the country, including his attempt to describe them to foreigners as our Bruce Springsteen. After all, the have the same odd blend of intellect and blue-collar appeal.

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised, coming from the country that gave the world Rush. Again, we may be seeing the emergence of a distinct culture here in Canada, just be patient.

Speaking Words Of Wisdom

So I recently stumbled across the fact that both Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles covered both "Let It Be" and "Eleanor Rigby." If you'd like to hear them, um, consult this handy chart:

	Let It Be	Eleanor Rigby
Ray Charles	here	here
Aretha Franklin	here	here

I don't know, I just feel like someone should have mentioned this.  Yes, I know, you Baby Boomers were busy telling us we were lazy and should stop doing drugs and playing video games.  But if you were sitting on some intriguing musical nugget like that, you could have slipped it in there.  Say, tell us that we should get a job and be a productive member of society, like when Franklin collaborated with Duane Allman to cover The Band's "The Weight."

I guess the entire cultural heritage produced by a generation is a lot to pass on the younger folks.  Despite all of our society's celebration of the Beatles, there were still many people who didn't put two and two together and realize that Paul McCartney used to play bass for the Beatles before his solo career.  It's like, whoops, did we forget to mention that?

So now I'm wondering what we in Generation X may have forgotten to mention.  It's not necessarily weird covers necessarily, though if that's what you're looking for:

• Tori Amos covering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
• Alanis Morissette covering Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees"
• R.E.M. covering U2's "One"
• AlexisOnFire covering Midnight Oil's "The Dead Heart"

Hmm, what else.  Well, the guy from Foo Fighters was the drummer from Nirvana.  Don't fall for the conspiracy theories passed around social media - they're just trying to make fun of you.  And if you haven't heard, you should really know about Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke's fathers, just so you get the full ironic appreciation of their careers that we've been treated to.  Oh, and we're really sorry that we almost erased "Under Pressure" and "Superfreak" from the musical cannon by making half-assed samples into hits.  Check out the originals if you haven't already.