The Fascist March of Time

I don't like commercials. A good commercial gets you to remember the brand and the product. In that regard, those damn Head On! (apply directly to the forehead) commercials were "good". They were successful but not clever.

Oftentimes the very clever commercials - the ones people talk about - lose connection with the brand that someone put a lot of time, money and creativity into promoting. Like that one with the guys herding cats? Was that Monster? Or a tech company or something?

I don't know. I don't remember.

I do remember a truck commercial from when I was younger, though. I associate it with night time and foreboding - so I think it must have come on during interminably long Sunday night football games. This was many years before I was able to select my own Sunday night programming (Air Force One/Firewall/Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie block).

Harrison Ford you magnificent bastard!

This commercial - this truck commercial - had a very crappy, soulful song that accompanied it. Apparently that song was "Like a Rock" and it was written by Bob Seager. These are things I didn't know at the time. What I did know was that it sounded an awful lot like this truck commercial man was singing about Fraggle Rock.

Watch the commercial now and fail to hear "Fraggle Rock" over and over again. You will not succeed.

That is, you will fail to hear it any other way than "Fraggle Rock".

Somtimes I think I should re-write stuff instead of launching into long, drawn out explanations.




I'm reminded of the fraggle rock commercials because there's a new truck commercial making the rounds. It's for GMC -- not that I or anyone who would be reading this cares.

Now, the backing tune for this commercial has been foretold for quite some time.

The "Now That's What I Call Music!" series marched in lockstep with newer and stranger tunes as I aged.

The late night infomercials for massive piles of greatest hits CDs grew closer and closer to the decade of my birth and veered sharply away from a bunch of golden Motown crap.

I don't like Motown.

Also one time I saw "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on some kind of best of the 90's thing. That sucked too.

Finally, this unstoppable Juggernauth of musical memento mori crushed me when I heard this fucking thing on TV:



It's Collective Soul. This is a song I remember. I remember.

I was alive when it came out - I might have even counted it among my total faves at one point.

Now they're trying to sell me trucks with it. That means when I was younger, they wanted to sell trucks to people who thought fondly of Bob Seager and now that I'm not younger they're trying to sell trucks to people who fondly remember Collective Soul.

Also though, fuck. Collective Soul? They don't make me think of trucks. Collective Soul makes me think of a shitty band from the 90's. They also make me think, "Man. I'm getting old."

Let me be absolutely clear on this next point. When life insurance is being endorsed by an aged Tom Araya and electric pickup hover trucks are being marketed with System of a Down in the background,  I will buy the living fuck out of those products.