In the Mix

Bob Dylan, Cadillac Escalade Commercial Rock and roll and Cadillacs have always gone together. They're pink in Elvis' "Baby, Let's Play House" and brand new on the Clash's London Calling. It was a long white one in which Hank Williams' spent his last night on Earth in a Dave Alvin song. Bruce Springsteen used them as a symbol of the graveyard we're all headed to in "Cadillac Ranch," and Dwight Yoakam made them as America as guitars and hillbilly music.

So I don't begrudge Bob Dylan for making a Cadillac commercial - hell, he already made a Victoria's Secret commercial. (Though the song he sold to the underthings company, "Love Sick," was satisfyingly twisted.) And really, what would be the point of begrudging Bob Dylan anything? He owes us nothing. I like his XM show Theme Time Radio Hour, and just the image of him driving a car is frankly enough to blow my mind. Never mind the leather gloves. And though I had to be told what in the world he was mumbling about - "What's life without the occasional detour?," it turns out to be. I must say that's a sentiment I heartily agree with. And I even approve of the music used as Bob barrels past cows on the side of the road: It's not a Dylan song, but Smog's scratchy, spooky "Held."

The only thing that really bugs me about Dylan's new Cadillac ad, in fact, is that slogan at the end: "Life. Liberty and the Pursuit." Shouldn't Thomas Jefferson be getting a piece of this pie? Since when did it become an inalienable American right to pile in an Escalade and blow past an 18 wheeler in the desert? And when did Dylan sign on to a materialist American Dream that reduces the Declaration of Independence to a marketing slogan?

What's that you say? It may not be an inalienable right, but its always been the American dream to put the pedal to the metal and leave your competition in the dust. That's mighty cynical of you, Bob. And that black cadillac sure does look like a hearse, riding on a lonely reaper's journey into the middle of no man's land. I guess the joke's on all those stuck-in-the-past fans of yours still hung up on thinking you're some sort of counter cultural firebrand. You get the last laugh, as always, and the check to drive all the way to the bank, in your big black Cadillac.