They died young, but the rock icons in an ad campaign for Dr. Martens are still stirring controversy and outrage.
The bizarre Dr. Martens footwear campaign shows four famous dead rockers as angels in heaven clad in white robes and wearing the brand's trendy boots.
One of the oddball posters features a rather surreal Kurt Cobain , the legendary frontman for grunge band Nirvana who killed himself in 1994, resting his weary, steel-toed tootsies on a throne of clouds.
The ads also feature in various states of heavenly bliss punk legends Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, who overdosed in 1979, Joey Ramone of the Ramones, who died of cancer in 2001, and Joe Strummer of The Clash, who passed on in 2002,.
The dead-rocker ads, created by Saatchi & Saatchi London, however, hit a sour note with the footwear company.
---I heard about this a while ago, im glad I found a story about it. Im just pissed they put Cobain in the same ad with real legends like Strummer and Ramone, but I guess it comes down to marketing there.---
8 comments:
it makes me sad to find out that you don't think Kurt Cobain desrves to be considered a Punk rock diety.
No I dont. I think Cobain changed the face of music for maybe 20 minutes, not an entire generation like Joe Strummer or Joey Ramone did. I dont think "grunge" did much to change anything. It influenced a bunch of small time musicians to do pretty much nothing all that big on the music scene for a very small amount of time. Cobain was not punk rock.
Where is Eddie Vedder now? Gone. Chris Cornell? Gone. There all gone, thank God. Layne Stayley? Dead and gone. All the grunge "greats" that Cobain helped create, all gone.
Cobain did indeed influence some musicians, there is no doubt about that, you cant argue that, but these musicians will never change the face of music.
Guys like Strummer and Ramone CHANGED the face of music. They created a new sound. They took something and made it out of nothing, thin air. The Ramones created punk rock! They created that 3 chord sound that became punk rock. Without The Ramones, there would be nothing that we have now listened to over the years.
Strummer changed not only the music scene, but the political one. Cobain was a selfish, drug addicted person who thought about no one but himself. He didnt care about his fans, he didnt care about the scene. He didnt care about anything but his next damn fix.
His death was tragic, as was Sid Vicious' death, another pioneer who wasted his life on bullshit addiction.
I just dont think Cobain deserves to be mentioned as a punk rock legend. He didnt do enough to change music.
I will say this though, I do see why they put Kurt in the ad. He did speak to generation X. Ill give him that.
Whats really sad is half those kids wouldnt even know who Ramone or Strummer is.
Chris Cornell fronts Audioslave, Dave Grohl heads Foo Fighters, these guys are still around. I was never a really big Sound Garden fan, but I do like Nirvana and Foo Fighters. I think Alice in Chains was a great band. Punk, no, but they were good. Lost in the Supermarket by the Clash wasn't really a punk rock anthem, even the punks aren't always punks.
I agree that Kurt Cobain may not be punk in it's purest sense, but in terms of talent he's definitely not on the bottom of the list. In fact the one most associated with punk, Sid Vicious, was probably the least musically talented. Don't get me wrong, I love the Sex Pistols, but honestly, Sid was a crappy musician. But that was kind of the point, you can be a crappy musician and get your message out there, you just had to be loud and angry. All in all, these guys represent movements in music that started out in the underground, they were unconventional, sometimes even counter cultural. While not an old school punker, Kurt deserves some respect.
Kurt does deserve some respect sure, Ill give him some, but not as much as I think his peers hold him to. Not in my opinion.
hey Mike, more importantly, hows school?
im 90% certain audioslave broke up. No big loss there. Cornell I think is producing now I think?!?!?
Didn't really follow Audioslave. I personally was never a Chris Cornell fan, whether he was w/ SoundGarden Temple o/t Dog or Audioslave. He never really did anything for me.
As far as the punk label goes, true it wasn't the green mohawk, safety pin through the ear kind of scene that the Pistols and the Ramones had.
Scruel is going fine, got class bright and early tomorrow at 08:00. I'm actually running multiple tabs on my browser right now checking the class syllabus online and making sure I've got all my homework done.
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