Many years ago, I
used to get guitars thrust at me at house parties, and be asked to
play a song. Now, being an arse as I am, rather than doing some
beautiful, meaningful, self-penned love song in order to win the
hearts of every girl in the room, or even some popular hit of the
day, that would get me the approval of my peers, I would invariably
sing some tv theme tune, or advert, in order to get a cheap laugh. It
turned into its own bizarre kind of routine, and in a way, I am still
doing it twenty five years since I began.
Now this is all
well and good, but since there is now an entire generation of
punters, all old enough to be in licensed premises where I may be
playing my amusing, not-quite-comedy songs for small and faintly
insulting sums of money, that have no idea why I am singing about
shake and vac, I am encountering a problem. Modern adverts are just
not funny enough. Whereas in 1996, Lean
Against the Washing Machine could play a huge heavy metal intro
before launching into 'I feel like Chicken Tonight' I feel that if we
were to do the same trick now with 'We buy any car, dot com' it would
not be as funny.
It could be that it
wasn't actually that funny in the first place, I am getting old, and
the puerile jokes that my 18 year old self made don't work on thirty
seven year olds. Some of that is undoubtedly true, it is equally true
that I don't bother watching much commercial TV now, thus the songs
from adverts might be passing me by. I don't think so though. I think
that the current swathe of adverts now try to be funny, and as a
result, really aren't. You have the terribly ironic, knowing, ukulele
tinged bollocks of Hive is busy controlling your heating at home, or
that dick on the train platform, also with a ukulele, or the twats in
the second hand shop that don't seem to believe that the Godfather
part 3 is a godawful load of shite that should be purged from
cinematic history. Um Bongo, Um Bongo they drink it in the Congo it
is not.
I could maybe have
a try at those, but I have a feeling that launching into
'wooooooaaaaaah, bodyfo-orm' will still get the bigger laugh. At
least from those in the room that are old enough to know what the
hell I am on about. Same with TV theme tunes, you could happily do
the Rainbow theme tune, get a few giggles, then drag them across to
the A-team theme, do a quick chorus of 'He Used To Bring Me Roses'
(theme tune to Prisoner Cell Block H) and the Minder theme tune and
finish them off with the snooker theme. Sadly, nobody under thirty is
going to get any of that now. Not even the snooker, and that's still
on, but you're less likely to be stuck watching it on a sunday
afternoon with your Gran now, because you'll have satellite TV with a
million choices, or an iPad full of movies and youtube clips to watch
instead (which is a good thing for you kids, I am just jealous).
There are a lot
fewer cultural references that everyone can get now, like the
snooker, or the A-team. I mean, everyone has seen Breaking Bad, and
Game of Thrones, or whatever the new must see TV show is. Even those
'oh no, I don't have a television' holier than thou guardian reading
tossers. Because they all have iPads, and they all watch endless TV
boxsets on them anyway. Smug twats, but that's a whole different
rant. But I doubt they will evoke the same misty eyed nostalgia as 'I
ain't getting on no plane fool'. And none of us are watching them all
at the same time, you have to wait until your friends have finished
before telling them that you are the one who knocks (and lots of
people don't get it, as it is mostly just a subsection of twats who
watch this shit).
TV theme tunes are
now more knowing, or just songs from proper bands, who give them away
for peanuts, 'for exposure' and it works. The songs you hear on
adverts, and on TV shows stick in your head, and people like them
now, and they go and buy a copy, or download it for nothing. And the
exposure that they have given their music away for has given them a
hit single. Sadly, it's usually just the one, as the song being on an
advert has made most people utterly sick of them, and they never want
to hear them again (see Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo, and whoever wrote
that godawful Hey Ho thing recently). So it's technically a good
thing, as adverts and TV are less crap, and bands get the exposure
that radio and TV no longer bother giving them.
Ever since Friends
used that Rembrandts song, and changed the face of sitcoms forever
(for better, or worse? You decide) my life has been a sadder place. I
liked Dennis Waterman writing and singing the theme tune, plus, if I
did a version, it got a laugh. I was much happier when a show like
the Fall Guy had it's utterly straight faced and marvellous Unknown
Stuntman theme tune, but I am running out of punters that recognise
it, along with the Good ol' boys from Dukes of hazzard. The last
advert that I managed to do an amusing version of was the 'everybody
get into a big canoe, and row on down to phones for you' one. And
that was funny without me helping, sadly.
I do hope that it's
just that I am not seeing the adverts and Tv shows that don't know
they're funny, and it is just that I am old, and my references are
out of date. But I have a feeling that the modern world, with all
it's very knowing irony, and slickly produced, excessively expensive
adverts leave no room for a piss-taking git like myself. It is much
easier to grab a recording of an unknown band and stick it on your
advert than to pay some poor failed musician a small amount of money
to write a classic like Waffley Versatile, and yes you end up with a
classier product. But you lose valuable laughs in the process, and
nobody will remember the words to your advert a quarter of a century
later.
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