Posted on 07/28/2005 6:38:29 AM PDT by weegee
Many music-minded viewers of the MLB All-Star Game earlier this month were shocked, astonished and disillusioned at the newest truck commercial Chevrolet unveiled. I know I was when I saw it a week or so later -- there were the standard shots of Chevy trucks sending up billowing clouds of dust as they thrummed down rutted dirt roads, crashing and splashing through rocky streams, and burly, flannel-shirted rednecks tossing bales of hay around -- but what was that music playing in the background? It was infinitely familiar yet, given its surroundings, completely out-of-place and exotic, like running into your spinster aunt at your local dive bar. And then the standard truck imagery faded to black, and the Chevy logo and new slogan appeared simultaneously, accompanied by the gravelly voice of none other than Steve Earle: "The Revolution Starts Now!"
"I was STUNNED to see the Chevy commercial," thundered one poster at Steveearlefans.com. "What a sell out!" "I thought Steve Earle would be the last to allow one of his songs to be used for a commercial," chimed in another. " 'The Revolution Starts Now' no longer holds the same 'power' as it once did." A third said that Earle had become overly consumed with his politics and his new young girlfriend (alt-country heartthrob Allison Moorer) and had lost track of his art. In closing, he wrote that he would never visit the fan site again.
The same Steve Earle who has been known to boast that he is to the left of Chairman Mao. The same Steve Earle who dared to write a sympathetic song about John Walker Lindh. The same Steve Earle who likens his music and politically charged radical lyrics to a weapon, whose hero Woody Guthrie scrawled "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar.
Over the course of his career, former Houstonian Earle busted out of several creative ghettos -- first country music, then one of the nastiest drug addictions anyone ever survived, and then music in general. He has recently become a full-fledged pundit of the left, called on by sages at Mother Jones to tell us what it's all about. Al Franken and Michael Moore have championed him to all who'd listen. (And even with as much of a firestorm as this has created among his fans on the left, wait until his detractors on the right pick up on the identity of Chevy's new pitchman. Rest assured that Chevy's PR department will have its work cut out for it soon enough.)
Now this man is a common shill, another Toby "I'm a Ford Truck Man" Keith? And of all his songs, why did it have to be "The Revolution Starts Now," a call to arms against Dubya and his war for oil, in an ad for gas-guzzling Chevy trucks? What ever happened to that Bob Seger "Like a Rock" tune we've been hearing over and over again during every major sporting event aired on TV since, what, 1990?
Last question answered first, only with more questions. Could it be that "Like a Rock" sounds a little too close to "Like Iraq"? Does Chevy want people making a subconscious connection between their beleaguered company and that equally benighted site of "liberation"?
And as for Earle, it must be remembered that this is a man with no fewer than six ex-wives and close to an equal number of ex-managers, some of whom he still owes money. (Full disclosure: My father is one of the latter, and he once sued Earle for more than $40,000 and won.) Earle also supports his retired parents and several of his children, including an illegitimate one that surfaced after he beat his drug addiction, not to mention other kin and even friends. (More disclosure, though this one kind of balances the first one: Earle once gave my stepfather -- his old San Antonio running buddy and later guitar tech Chip Phillips -- and now-deceased mom the down payment for a house in Nashville.) In his 2003 biography, Earle told author Lauren St. John that, all told, his overhead was then $35,000 a month.
Kinda reminds me of a quote from bluesman R.L. Burnside, a musician with similar family obligations, if on a smaller scale: "Man," he once told a reporter, "I got to put 12 biscuits on the table 'fore I get to eat even one."
Chevy ad deals buy a lot of biscuits, people. What's more, Chevy is an American company that provides a lot of increasingly rare, blue-collar living-wage jobs. Sure, it will rob one of Earle's songs of some of its pure radical power. Get over it. He'll write more, and as it happens, Earle was wrong. Dubya won. The revolution didn't start then, anyway.
I can't believe Chevy got in bed with this anti-American turd.
Looks like they'd better extend that "Employee Discount" thing.
Steve Earle had one good song "Guitar Town" I think it's called. Otherwise he is a useless POS. How do we freep chevy to let them no what retards they are?
Sounds like the "lefties" in the marketing team are in charge at Chevy.
Well, then you can count this FORMER Chevy guy as a "Ford truck MAN" NOW!!!
For those who care, Chevrolet is owned by GM.
General Mistake strikes again.
A sorry-ass musician singing for a sorry-ass truck. What's the problem?
Note to self: Call credit card company, cancel GM card. Hell with rebate, since I'll never by a GM product again.
I was walkin’ down the street
In the town where I was born
I was movin’ to a beat
That I’d never felt before
So I opened up my eyes
And I took a look around
I saw it written ‘cross the sky
The revolution starts now
Yeah, the revolution starts now
The revolution starts now
When you rise above your fear
And tear the walls around you down
The revolution starts here
Where you work and where you play
Where you lay your money down
What you do and what you say
The revolution starts now
Yeah the revolution starts now
Yeah the revolution starts now
In your own backyard
In your own hometown
So what you doin’ standin’ around?
Just follow your heart
The revolution starts now
Last night I had a dream
That the world had turned around
And all our hopes had come to be
And the people gathered ‘round
They all brought what they could bring
And nobody went without
And I learned a song to sing
The revolution starts now
These lyrics aren't particularly innovative, insightful, stirring or radical.
"Just follow your heart", "movin' to a beat I'd never felt before", etc. Trite crap.
I assume the writer of the article is either the son or grandson of Commie folkie Alan Lomax.
Dang! I was seriously considering taking them up on the employee discount thing on a new Suburban. I'll call them and tell them I changed my mind.
SURELY Chevy-GM understood this lyric when they hired a man to the left of Mao....
I just did two weeks ago.
Uncle or granduncle...
If you hurry, you can get Employee Discount with Ford on an Expedition, though they call it Family Pricing. It's a shame they discontinued the Excursion!! We just traded in the wife's little Escape for a Freestyle, and I drive an Explorer.
Who is steve earle?
I believe the geneologically correct reference is "Uncle Dad" in the inbred world of libralism/socialism Earle inhabits.
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