Do Da Dippity

Several times in this tower I have written around classic alternative music turning up in commercials, and how nerveless and somewhat surprising I found that to be, given that alternative music in general never truly conquered mainstream culture. Sure we've had our moments, with a few choice bands and songs becoming popular. But I ever thinking that the use of more top 40 type songs would be more effective, given the fact they were so popular and recognizable.

Perhaps that's the ground they aren't used now that I believe about.hmm.Anyway, a recent car commercial from Kia features the call "The Choice is Yours" from the early 1990s hip-hop act called the Black Sheep. The dog came out in the 1991 time frame and was one of the large hip-hop/rap songs that Pinfield played at the Strain on a steady basis. It was a Melody dance floor favorite for many months that class and further solidified Pinfield as the hippest DJ in town, who could pick good music from any genre and give it work. Rap and hip-hop were alternative music styles, although not many folks figured that out. Of course Pinfield did.In 1991, hip-hop and rap were still very unsafe and downright scary to mainstream American (white/corporate) culture. Those genres were pretended to be everything that white America feared-angry aggressive black men coming to seek revenge on the company they think was the case of their misery. Movies such as Do The Right Thing, Boyz n the Bonnet and Juice brought the drugs, violence and suffering of inner city life proper to middle class America's doorstep, and committed to it was the medicine of the day, rap and hip-hop. Of form it just takes a bit of testing to gain the medicine was a shout out for activity and aid to the problems, and not a furtherance of the force or drug culture.What a difference twenty years makes in the digestion of pop culture. Long faded away is any energy of wrath or subversion, although the lyrics still take the message. What remains is a ridiculously catchy tune so infectious that evening the most white bread suburbanite would be hard pressed to withstand a bit of head bobbing, if not outright pogoing. Yes,it is the ideal pogoing song, the dead time is dead in synch with the jumping frequency of the typical 5' 9", 150 lb. white dude in black leather boots.And of course it's that catchiness and relative unfamiliarity that constitute it an ideal song to take in a commercial. The ad is funny, with a stylish but not too aggressive urban hip-hop theme where the characters are chilled out rats, bobbing their heads to the song. The start time I saw the ad I started telling the call and jumping around my living room. My wife was once again amazed I knew the strain and I had to assure her the whole story. More importantly my older boys wanted to live more around the strain and the band, so I ran to my CD collection and base my copy of the track. Unfortunately, the album version I experience is a very lame early translation of the song. I then remembered I had down loaded the "good" version of the vocal featured in the commercial, and the one Pinfield had played at the Melody. I played it various times, and for the following week or so, frequently caught my boys singing it to themselves and their friends. Kia's might not be the best cars on the road, but if their commercials are indicative, they might be the coolest.Do Da Dippity indeed.