This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.
American Beauty holds a special place in my album of music memories. It marks one of my “a ha” moments. What I mean by that is that I didn’t understand the Dead for quite a few years, but then one day it just clicked. I can’t really explain the shift. I’ve never seen them live. And for a band whose identity is so closely tied to the live performance and touring, that probably presents quite a gap in understanding and appreciation for their music. In eighth grade, Jimmy Karger tried to turn me on to the Dead and played me some of their songs. I just didn’t get into it, and preferred “heavier” rock like Rush, Zeppelin and Rush. But at some point, the gateway album American Beauty climbed its way into my consciousness and one of the standouts was “Sugar Magnolia”.
I first heard “Sugar Magnolia” on the compilation album, Skeletons From The Closet. Jerry Garcia plays a pedal steel guitar on this one, which gave the song an ethereal quality that balanced well with the more grounded Dead qualities anchored by the vocal harmonies and rhythm guitar. The song helped me to see what all the fuss is about. This is a band whose identity cannot be pinned down to one style or approach. They are an amalgamation of folk, country, blues, bluegrass, rock, and psychedlia.
“She can dance a Cajun rhythm. Jump like a Willys in four wheel drive.”