Bands and Commercials

Is nothing sacred anymore? I just heard The Violent Femmes "Add It Up" as background music for a Wendy's commercial. There are some bands that you expect this from and it doesn't surprise you at all. There are others though, that are profoundly shocking to those who follow music closely. Rush is one of my favorite bands of all-time and my last two cars have been Maximas. Was I pleased when Rush sold Nissan the intro to "Tom Sawyer" to use in commercials? No. Geddy Lee planned for the backlash by saying he was careful not to sell any singing but just the music. What are you going to do? At least it was a favorite song of mine selling my favorite car. Others I was surprised by were Sting getting together with Jaguar and literally concocting an ad campaign to promote both of them and Robert Plant selling out to Pepsi years ago followed by the entire Zeppelin gang with Cadillac. I expect Biz Markie. I don't expect KRS-One. I expect Jessica Simpson. I don't expect Mary J. Blige. Freaking Moby was selling music to commercials like Wendy's sells french fries to fat people. Then he had some bogus statement like "the more people that hear my music the better". If it wasn't for Eminem, i might not even know who Moby is....or was? I guess I just had the Violent Femmes down as one of the groups I would least expect to hear shilling for a product. If I remember correctly, REM turned down Bill Gates and $25 million when he wanted to use "It's the end of the world as we know it" to launch Windows '95. Who took over? The Rolling Stones with "Start Me Up". Like they needed the money. I've soured on Michael Stipe over the years anyway. The man who was begging people to "Ban G.E" on MTV's music awards in the early 90's turned up on "Saturday Night Live" a few weeks later on NBC. Guess who owned NBC. Right....G.E. So, I guess it won't be long before I'm sacked out on the couch watching the tube and Pearl Jam's "Evenflow" comes on as Kathy Rigby pitches some sort of feminine pad for menstruation. Worse yet, Radiohead's "Creep" will be used for...oh, I don't know....John Edward's campaign commercials? I'm no fan of Eddie Vedder's politics, but I like their music and I'll look for the falling sky when "Jeremy" is used to sell anti-depressants.