Wednesday 26 July 2017

Bye-bye (b)adman

I've ranted posted before about how unhappy I get when a song I love gets co-opted for an advert (Pixies and Violent Femmes sadly inspiring those past posts). You'll be unsurprised to learn it's happened again.

McPunk
The McPunk girl

Whilst on a long journey at the weekend, I was station-surfing in the car and chanced upon What Do I Get? by Buzzcocks, blaring out of Radio X. I'll have some of that, I thought. But my musical happiness, like so many forms of happiness these days, was crushingly short-lived. For the band's second single proper, and 1978 chart debut, has been appropriated by corporate American cow-pedlars McDonald's! Yes, Mc-sodding-Donald's! Pete Shelley's 2½ minute punk paean to loneliness is soundtracking a TV ad, and associated radio spot, in which a callow youth goes to the drive-thru and falls for a McDonald's girl who is an ad-man's idea of alternative, i.e. she has subtle, non-specific tattoos, wears slightly more eye make-up than might be considered average and dyes what little of the hair you can see beneath her uniform baseball cap. You can imagine the scene as a gaggle of modern-day Don Drapers mull over what music says alternative, and yearning, and can be tied in with having to choose which of our new wraps to get at the drive-thru. Of course! 40-year old punk! And we can make the in-store signage and associated press graphics look a bit like the cover for Never Mind The Bollocks, yellow and pink with cut type lettering, even though that's a different band entirely, because kids today won't know, will they? It's all punk, right? And we're so punk!

All of which leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like an unwanted gherkin or a dollop of special sauce. I prefer to reclaim the song, so put all thoughts of garlic mayo wraps from your mind and watch this instead:

And a bonus for you. Remember in 2014 when the cow-pedlars were "celebrating" 40 years in the UK, by allowing users to create their own "40 Together" memory with an online poster generator? Well, I had a McDonald's memory from the 70s and, although it was quite hard to capture the whole story within the prescribed word limit, this is what I came up with. Curiously, it was quickly taken down from their website, but not before I screen-capped it...

10 comments:

  1. Oh, don't get me started! I feel just the same. Everything that was once alternative/dangerous/disapproved of, etc. gets appropriated into the mainstream eventually, it seems. (If you're interested, here's something I wrote along similar lines:
    http://sundriedsparrows.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/this-wasnt-supposed-to-happen.html )

    Anyway, yep, it happens and we just have to suck it up! Mind you, here at SDS Towers we've had a joke or two about what the reaction from certain ex-members of Flux of Pink Indians would be should an advertising agency approach them wanting to use one of their tracks. Let's just say it seems that everything has its price, including principles... ;-)
    I love your 40 Together poster. Haha... inspired!

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    1. Everything has its price, indeed. And I, in no way, begrudge Pete Shelley his burger-related pension windfall!

      Thanks for the link, by the way, a fine read as always.

      As for the 40Together thing, my parents had taken me on the train for a day out in the Big Smoke and at some point we walked down, I think it was, Oxford Street. This was back when just seeing a McDonald's was still an unusual, exotic thing. And there, sat in an adjacent doorway, was a beautiful but bedraggled blonde in a ragged fur coat, hoovering a line of something up her nose right off the pavement with a Maccy-Dee's straw. If my parents noticed, they pretended not to. I knew that the girl was "doing something wrong", even at my tender, single-digit age, and the image has stuck with me ever since.

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    2. That's a great story, I honestly thought you'd made up the scenario but to find out that it was real...
      Thanks for reading my post too, btw. Just having a quick look through the Guardian and saw this too, re. the whole co-opted band T shirt thing...
      https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/jul/26/nirvana-nevermind-fashion-co-opted-band-t-shirt

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    3. Great Guardian article, C. Seems that even the shirts off our backs are being co-opt...

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  2. I don't begrudge Pete & co a few bob, but it's all a bit depressing.

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    1. It is, isn't it? Still, I guess it could have been worse - they could have styled a punk Ronald McDonald, with a red mohican and safety pins in his oversized shoes...

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  3. Brilliant! (Your McDs ad, not theirs.) Still, it's not as offensive as their last ad where a young boy visits their establishment to remember his dead dad.

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    1. Oh yes, I'd forgotten that. Still, as long as the obesity-burgers keep on selling, eh?

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  4. Glad you posted the poster. Far too good to waste.

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