Should I Care or Should I Yawn?

     

     My views of the use of songs by rock and roll bands, particularly from the punk and new wave communities, has evolved over the years, and I have extensively written about the topic here and elsewhere.

We're selling what to who?

     While always recognizing the artist’s right to use, license, etc., his or her work in any way he or she chooses, I used to feel and express serious outrage over some perceived insult when a song was used for some product too trite, from an enormous corporation or that the song was too important or meaningful or other way sacrosanct. My favorite band, or at least one of its main songwriters/creators, has all but put the stake in the heart of my outrage.

     In its recent advertising campaign, Westin Hotels is/are using the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” to try to entice people to stay at their hotels. The song, the second-most popular US single in the Clash’s history (“Rock the Casbah” obviously number one), is a simple love/love ending song sung by guitarist/vocalist Mick Jones.

Paul Simonon is not a Cadillac fan.

     It is hard for me to get offended by the sale and use of this song (with singer/guitarist and the band’s other songwriter Joe Strummer dying in 2002, Jones and Strummer’s estate apparently made the decision). I mean, it’s not like the band sold one of its most political and meaningful songs, the title song of one of rock and roll’s all-time best albums, to a car company; oh, wait. I mean, it’s bad enough his baby drove off in a brand-new Cadillac, but a Jaguar?

    You really can’t blame musicians and other artists in the end for supporting themselves with their art, although someone selling a song to say, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal or the GOP national committee would deserve derision in my book. So maybe it’s time I put this topic away after this entry, unless someone shocks the hell out of us all; that becomes harder every day.