A truly annoying trifecta was completed for me last night as I watched a Scrubs rerun on Comedy Central. My problem had nothing to do with Zach Braff and his remarkable success at turning emo acting into serious dollar signs... at least this time... it was instead with the commercial for the latest baseball video game running in between his tears. The song that they were using, it was familiar, it was... no, it couldn't be... HOLY S@!T SINCE WHEN DOES NIRVANA SELL OUT!!!

Using "Breed" to sell MLB Baseball 2K7 was a capper of sorts for me, as I have seen two other keystone songs from my youth bite the corporate big one in the past month. It started with seeing a Lays potato chip commercial and suddenly recognizing the feel-good song playing behind it as "Feed It" by the Candyskins, a song that came out as I was just getting into college radio in Ithaca but stuck with me to the point that it was in my IPod when I first saw the ad just weeks ago. Then came the latest Wendy's ad campaign, which uses a tune everyone knows: "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. I loved the Femmes so much in high school that I was one of only two or three kids who could name two other songs by the Femmes despite their Grosse Point Blank-led mini-resurgence in the mid-90s.

It was sad to hear "Feed It" and "Blister" go the way of the $$$, but I could understand it to a point. You've likely never heard of the Candyskins and I never would have either had I not been playing "Feed It" every other hour when I was starting out in radio. They've done little to nothing since despite the fact that they are still active (check out their myspace) and are likely using the cash they made from Lay's to pay mortgages and loans rather than buying jets and gold teeth. As for "Blister," it does border on being an unforgivable act committed by a seminal alternative band with serious cult status, but cult status don't pay the automobills these days and the Femmes' need for dough finally outweighed their need to be taken seriously. Yes, I know that sounds snarky, but there's one more thing about the Wendy's sellout that truly burns: the Femmes' lead singer, Gordon Gano, is a VEGETARIAN. The ad is for BURGERS. Ugh...

Those two disappointments combined and multiplied by a million still wouldn't equal how I felt when I heard Kurt Cobain yelling "we can plant a house, we can build a tree..." while I saw a bunch of animated baseball players doin' their thing, however. Selling "Breed" (from the legendary album Nevermind, no less) does mark the first time a Cobain song has been used for commercial purposes, a move made possible when Cobain widow and American freak-show Courtney Love sold 25% of her stake in the Nirvana catalog to a music publisher/licenser. She told Rolling Stone "we're going to remain very tasteful, and we're going to [retain] the spirit of Nirvana and take Nirvana places it's never been before." Using your dead ex's song to sell a baseball video game despite his well-documented hatred of sports and the people who play them and the sport-in-question's serious drug problem... not exactly what we were thinking when you said tasteful. Then again, many of us were too busy being amazed at the fact that you could use that word in a sentence to care.

I guess I was stupid enough to believe that there were things the global marketplace and/or the capitalist society's constant drive for the dollar just couldn't touch. I also guess people my dad's age running these companies aren't exactly gonna feel bad for me as they were subjected to hearing their own dead iconic voice, John Lennon's, of course, being used to sell Nikes (a move that revolutionized using music in ads, according to adtunes.com), which also was given the stamp of approval by a wife the world will never truly like. In the end, I guess I'm just trying to protect the memories that are invoked by these songs: hearing "Feed It" and being transported back to the small studio in Ithaca where I was learning to express myself in ways I had only dreamed of, hearing "Blister in the Sun" and remembering how much that song and the album it was on embodied the strange trip that is high school for those who dare to be at least a little different, and hearing "Breed" and remembering junior high (damn, it was that long ago) and the powerful force that was Nirvana sweeping me from the grasp of Top 40 drivel like Color Me Badd. Memories are likely what the corporations are going for, thinking that invoking a song, and therefore, a memory, from a desired demographic's youth will inspire them to buy their product by association alone. I just hope my generation will be smarter than that.

-Ryan

p.s.- there are still quite a few acts who resist the pull of commercials, one of the biggest being R.E.M., one of my favorite bands ever. Should "Losing My Religion" be used to sell Jesus Camp or "The One I Love" be used around Valentine's Day, however, my new address will be a cabin in the woods of Montana and I will not be able to be reached by phone or e-mail. I will grow a very long beard. I will also shoot at things every time I hear music.