Marlena Shaw - California Soul in Dockers ad
This is hilarious, saw the for the first time last night the Dockers commercial featuring Marlena Shaw's California Soul. I was never a hug fan of this song but in many soul lists and compilations it exists as an essential track. The ad displayed a montage of clips of people wearing dockers in California.
I don't know about you but when I think of dockers I think of cape cod, chrysler seibrings, sailboats, chardonnay and brown boat shoes. A while back I posted about songs being ruined by commercials, for me the most egregious example was the Isuzu trooper cruising through the woods with Pusherman by Curtis Mayfield blaring.
To me the subtext of this message was it used to be rebellious to sell drugs on a street corner in Harlem and now the rebellious guy is the one who takes his SUV and trashes some nature. But the Dockers ad is even more of stretch, just look at the album cover versus most of our perceptions of people wearing Dockers! But then when I look at these two photos I realize that Marlena Shaw was oddly prophetic, she envisioned the dockers guy and said, "Who is this bitch, anyway?"
