jack’s musings

My brother and I have had a long understanding. Certain music absolutely drives us insane, and we should have the right to automatically turn off the stereo should one of our forbidden songs appear. We say that these songs are dead to us, and number one with bullet on my brother’s list is Bob Seger. (Those Chevy commercials from the 90s did it for him.) At any rate, I figure this would be a pretty good venue to establish a continuous list of songs/artists that are dead to me. With that, I’m going to go into my first “Dead to Me” song, Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” of of their album IV.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Led Zeppelin. I do feel that they might be overplayed to a level of absolute insanity, and there is no better example than the line of Cadillac commercials that ran earlier this decade that featured this “Dead to Me” song:

This may not be the best example as the song is only featured at the end of the commercial, but it’s a good indicator of how commercials can absolutely murder a good song. I can’t even listen to it anymore because I just feel like I’m getting worked. Plus, what about Led Zeppelin is embodied in Cadillac? I understand the company is trying to revamp their image, but could they please not take the greats of rock down with them? They had another great example of a misguided ad choice in their 2007 ad that featured the Teddybears’ “Punk Rocker.” But you hear that in the background? That would be Iggy Pop. (The same Iggy Pop signed off on allowing his iconic drum intro to “Lust for Life” to be featured in featured in a Royal Carribean Cruise Line ad campaign that was mercifully shortlived enough to avoid being added to my “Dead to Me” list)  But I digress, Cadillac murdered “Rock and Roll” for me, and I’ll never forgive them for it.