The Soapbox: Rants and Commentary: Dead Rock Stars Find A New Vocation: Salesmen Composed by Dan O'Leary (dano@raven.cybercomm.net) Summer 1996 The TV commercial has been running here in the states for nearly a year, so I'm assuming that anyone who is able to see it already has. I'm talking about the latest commercial by Mercedes, where the camera pans in over the sleek lines of the status-symbol-on-wheels, to the tune of Janis Joplin's "Mercedes-Benz." Does this bother anyone else? I think it's ridiculous that a song sung by an icon of the '60s counterculture is bought like some nameless product, and used as a nostalgia tactic to sell overpriced automobiles to hippies-turned-yuppies who want to show they've "made it" and buy back a piece of their lost youth. The irony is that the song in question is a sarcastic protest against materialism. I guess the adage that parody is often unnoticed by the parodied is true, and that it won't be much longer before we hear Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" as a jingle for American Airlines' Business Traveller Service, or the Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones" in an ad for Amtrack. Back To Rants and Commentary

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