Advertising. It can be evil, subliminal, insidious, sometimes genius. Advertising companies can spend millions trying to get brand names into our minds and often fail. Thank goodness then for our old friend Rock and Roll and it's uncanny ability to capture zeitgeists and enshrine aspects of popular culture in musical aspic in ways that ad men (and women) can only dream. Here are just a few examples, as celebrated on this week's Centrelinked:
What Got Played
Know Your Product - The Saints
She Don't Use Jelly - Flaming Lips (Vaseline)
Vaseline - Elastica
Paninaro 95 - Pet Shop Boys (Aramani, Armani, A-A-Armani)
Wearing My Rolex - Wiley
My ADIDAS - Run DMC
Razzmattazz - Pulp (tights)
Perfume - Sparks (every perfume under the sun)
Hymn to the Cigarettes - Hefner (every brand of cig you can think of)
Valium - Ffa Coffi Pawb (housewife's friend)
Under the Milky Way - The Church
Mars Bar - The Undertones
I desperately wanted to play I've Got a New Hoover by Reeves and Mortimer, which is one of the best starts to any comedy show in history (and certainly the best ever song about vacuum cleaners) but sadly copyright wouldn't allow. Here's some others that I had shortlisted, plus a few suggestions by our lovely listeners:
Advert or Blue Jeans - Blur ("Air Cushion Soles")
Man at C&A - the Specials (menswear)
National Express - the Divine Comedy (coach travel)
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana (deoderant)
Supersonic - Oasis (Alka Seltzer and BMW)
Down Under - Men at Work (Vegemite)
By far the most common suggestion was for car songs (Little Honda by the Beach Boys, Prince's Little Red Corvette, Natalie Cole and Pink Cadillac etc) but the undisputed king of the road for me is Y Reg by John Shuttleworth. sadly I ran out of time to play it, but you can watch the video here...
Centrelinked: Saturday mornings at 10.30am on 98.9 North West FM. Listen on your wireless or online at http://www.northwestfm.org/. If you'd like to play along, follow @mintcustard or use #centrelinked on Tw*tter.
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