Monday, November 29, 2010

#297 The Rolling Stones and the Black Ops

Via my friend Niels Post in ran into an article this weekend on Alternet.org called "7 Rock Songs Exploited for Commerce and Conservatism". As the title suggests, an article written from a "corporations are bad and so are the bands that are involved with them" point of view.
As a person working in an industry that helps evil corporations connect with bands that are willing to be evil's minions, I mainly noticed a lot of strange song-with-commercial match ups.

Most notably there's the recent Call of Duty - Black Ops commercial. The commercial uses the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter, a song based on the despair of Vietnam. That song is now being used to sell a game that glorifies war. In bad taste? Probably. Strange choice? Most definitely.

Meanwhile the band, that has never shied away from any corporate cooperation, working on commercials in the 60's for Rice Krispies and licensing in the 90's for Microsoft, is laughing all the way to the bank not only making a nice buck from the commercial but also seeing a huge spurt in general sales.

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