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Ian Curtis' Swedish Vodka

Written By Culinary Pen on Thursday, September 3, 2009 | 7:17:00 PM

Quick note on something that's been bothering me: those new Absolute Vodka commercials that use the twangy guitar opening to Joy Division's song Ceremony. One of the last songs that lead singer Ian Curtis recorded before he became a swinger, Ceremony is a wildly haunting song but not one I'd choose to sell booze. Or sell anything. I don't really get the connection between their slogan, "Doing things differently leads to something exceptional," being put to the music of a guy who hung himself at 23.

Sure you could say that they're just lifting the musical aspects and I should forget the lyrics of
Watching her, these things she said,
The times she cried,

Too frail to wake this time.


But I don't buy that. Joy Division is/was too complete of an artistic experience to deftly divorce the lyrical content from the music in the aspirations of selling a distillate of potatoes. Is this really food related enough for my blog? Only tenuously, but I wanted to throw it out there after gnawing it over in my mind for the past week.
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4 comments :

Carla said...

When I read this, I had to listen to the song... To anyone else who has that desire, here's a link.

http://blip.fm/~ct4lq

I liked this post, different from most, but you can still acknowledge the tie to food/beverages.

Carla said...

Nevermind, that doesnt seem to work anymore...

Here's the Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRYvRdPKbhA

Try this for a video of Ian Curtis and the song...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaiOgToofBo

Great song, btw...

and

Steve said...

That's even stranger than using Lust for Life ("Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs
/And the flesh machine/He's gonna do another striptease") to sell Royal Caribbean. At least Iggy lived....

mfb said...

I was amused when I saw Wrangler jeans use CCR's "Fortunate Son" to sell jeans. Certain lyrics were completely cut out, and changed the entire meaning of the song.