|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
UK: Marijuana Marketing? It's Just Money For Old Dope
The Scotsman
Friday 28 Jun 2002 MONDAY night, Channel 4. On Six Feet Under we've just seen Brenda and Nate share a joint. She complains that bereaved undertaker's son Nate is "spoiling her buzz" by talking about, oh, death and stuff. She is clearly also a heroin addict, but Nate hasn't noticed yet. Then an ad break. Ministry of Sound plug their new Smokin Beats compilation. It features Morcheeba - their name taken from a slang name for marijuana - and various other purveyors of slow music made with keyboards. The sleeve image is of a sinuous lady, twisting as wreaths of smoke curl up across the screen. Obviously, Afroman's Because I Got High, last year's Number1 hit single, is there. Then a commercial for a new product from McVities. Munch Bites are tiny bits of chocolate biscuit. The ad features a bloke chomping them on the sofa while talking to an Action Man about the foxy lady making tea in the kitchen. What a loony! Except he's not a loony. He is the cleaned-up face of the demographic that dares not speak its name - not in adverts for big grocery brands anyway. He' s eating Munch Bites because he's got the munchies, and only stoners get the munchies. Ministry, meanwhile, with their nose for the prevailing cultural winds, are saying: get cool by getting "relaxed". Honest, this isn't music to wash the car by. This is Morcheeba, and they are - to quote another classic compilation title - dope on plastic. The market has spoken: cannabis culture is mainstream culture. David Blunkett may be tarrying over the reclassification of cannabis, and police drug squads across England are rattling their sabres ahead of the summer festival season. But in adland, it's most certainly all right to use the ciphers of marijuana consumption as a vehicle for commerce. Spliff: another counter-culture signifier becomes an over-the-counter mechanism. Drum and bass went on to sell air freshener, psychedelic rock guru Jimi Hendrix's ghost is punting a new car, Daft Punk's cool robots rusted over the day they accepted the Gap dollar. It was left this week to Oasis to resist the blandishments of the Man by refusing the Highlanders regiment permission to use two songs in a recruiting video. But only, one suspects, because the Army had nicked the songs without asking or paying. The marketing of the Ali G movie was the last time commercial marijuana references were funny. At least there was a contextual link there. Anything after that either looks dodgy, naff or sad. Just as crazy Brenda in Six Feet Under would be a smackie whether or not she was a stoner, Morcheeba are listless AOR tosh if you're a student poleaxed on a beanbag with crumbs and burn holes in your shirt or a disaffected Dido fan looking for your next buzz. As discussed last week, the whole chill-out concept is the refuge of the scoundrel. It's a fallacy that if you're stoned, you want slow, pedestrian sounds. Away with the herbal fairies, you want more from your music, not less. You want to dive in, not conk out. You look for colours, imagination, inventiveness, lyrical flights of fancy. Not songs about moping through a rain-streaked window 'cos your lover's left, or all the biscuits are finished. This summer, three records prove that where there's puff there's class. Queens of the Stone Age have made no secret of their fondness for all manner of drugs. The chorus of their feelgood hit of the summer was a shopping list of their favourite illegal and prescription substances. Daft, but rocking. The desert Californians' new album, Songs for the Deaf, shows that "stoner rock" doesn't have to mean Tangerine Dream. Intense, cathartic and vivid, it is rock that likes to party. It is the anti-Morcheeba. The Coral are Liverpool's teenage nutbags. Their debut album (out in three weeks) is an astonishing and inventive mixture of folk, R&B and acid rock. It features a song about heading for the Spanish Main, a song seemingly sung by monks and clowns (Shadows Fall) and a character called Simon Diamond ("changed from human to plant form, now he's swapped his legs for roots"). I think it's fair to assume that they like their draw. Finally, Lemon Jelly's first album proper is now completed. Previously, the studio duo were tarred as the kings of chill-out. Now, in Lost Horizons, they've turned down the ambience and turned the atmos-amps all the way up to 11. The first single, next month's Spacewalk, takes you beyond the clouds, if Oliver Postgate had retooled Ivor The Engine as Ivor The Space Rocket. With Lost Horizons we have lift off, not nod off. Meanwhile, back in adland, Rowntree's new bags of sweeties boast of their "fruit rush". Anyone for The Shamen's Mr C advertising chewy Es?
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!