Ads' use of rebellious rock ain't nothing but a sellout

It's been a long time since I've rock and rolled."

Well, maybe that's not quite true. I do recall attending a concert by the Who a few years back.

Still, my taste in music has evolved, so it has been a long time since I've listened to those lyrics from the song, titled Rock and Roll by '70s rockers Led Zeppelin.

Except, of course, when I'm watching the tube and on comes that Cadillac commercial with the familiar Led Zeppelin lyrics.

Yuck.

I can't help but cringe about that one -- especially when I think back to the days when I wore out an old record player needle in my second-story, black-light-postered bedroom listening to the untitled album that came after Led Zeppelin I, II and III. It brings back memories of my dad banging the downstairs ceiling with a broomstick and demanding that I turn down that "x#%& crap you kids call music."

I felt like a real rebel then. Now that the music is used to sell luxury cars to aging baby boomers, it just makes me feel old. The trend started years ago, when a Mercedes Benz ad used a raspy Janis Joplin singing, "Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."

Of course, Mercedes left out the latter verses that poked fun at the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality.

It was like Ronald Reagan trying to reach a younger generation by mentioning Bruce Springsteen and Born in the USA during a speech.

Most of us giggled. Just listen to the song's rather unpatriotic lyrics, for crying out loud. Now the trend is getting out of hand as advertising agencies target baby boomers.

Sure, there is good competition from our kids' generation, which appears to be spending its share -- mostly, it seems, on CDs, DVDs, tattoos and body piercings. But those of us who have had to bail them out of a 25 percent APR credit card balance are well aware that the money trail leads right back to our pockets.

Witness the advertising execs who shamelessly use Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son to sell Wrangler blue jeans. Remember that tune that starts with: "Some folks are born made to wave the flag; Ooh, they're red white and blue."

It sounds plenty patriotic in the commercial, which plays just a few bars of the first verse. But the song then goes on to decry: "It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son. It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one."

Then there's the middle-aged lady strapping a laundry basket on top of her SUV and heading out of the city so she can hang her washables in the fresh mountain air while a Canned Heat lyric plays "I'm going up the country, baby don't you want to go?"

Makes me want to go right out and buy a jug of Tide laundry detergent -- and throw up while I'm at it.

The feminist in me wants to know why the middle-aged lady gets the basket of laundry and the middle-aged guy gets the Caddy?

And the crotchety middle-aged rebel in me can't help but think that our generation is selling out now that Led Zeppelin is a vehicle for selling luxury cars in the 2000s.

That commercial features some fortysomething guy -- or possibly he's fiftysomething with hair implants -- tooling the back roads while sitting in heated leather seats and listening to Led Zeppelin blasting those memorable lyrics "let me get it back, let me get it back, let me get it back, baby, where I come from."

That's just not going to happen. No matter how much cash we lay out for Botox, hair implants or luxury cars, there's no going back to the days when Led Zeppelin and the like were part of a youthful rebel cry.

Face it, that guy in the Cadillac listening to Led Zeppelin on his CD player is old. The fact that he's getting such satisfaction driving a new Cadillac, to me, just makes him look older.

The bottom line is, if we could go back to the old days, most of us would be driving something along the lines of a beat-up old Chevy, a fuel-efficient Toyota or maybe a Volkswagen Beetle with no heat and only an AM radio.

Or if we were lucky -- an old eight-track tape deck.

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