Well, at least some of you.
VS. 
More from the "Within the Context of No Context " Dept.:
Everyone I know who won't shop at the Wal-Mart seems to have no trouble with Target. They hire talented designers like Michael Graves to design their store-brand products and supposedly give all their employees health insurance. Plus it's almost impossible to buy anything with a plastic wood-grain finish.
Target knows this and further flatters its customers by using groovy garage rock in a lot of its commercials, something that's worked pretty well.
Until now.
The new campaign shows happy customers dancing around the red bullseye while some presumably anonymous band wails that "nothing can change the shape of things to come."
Genuine Prefab Garage Rock.
Except this time, the band's not anonymous and you have to wonder if the clever boys at the advertising agency bothered to explain exactly where the song came from.
"Shape of Things to Come ," credited to Max Frost & the Troopers, is the theme from Wild in the Streets a 1968 American International Picture starring Christopher Jones, Shelley Winters and Hal Holbrook. (The film also features Richard Pryor's breakthrough performance as Troopers drummer Stanley X.)
Genuine Youth Exploitation Movie.
Most '60s exploitation films were made by middle-aged Hollywood lifers trying to cash in on a youth culture they didn't understand (cf. Riot on Sunset Strip, a completely clueless movie saved by a truly mind-blowing performance by the blindingly underrated Chocolate Watch Band ), but "Wild in the Streets" has a wicked insight into the absurdity of the time.
Fast-rising rock star Max Frost creates an overnight national sensation (imagine the Arctic Monkeys times 500 million) and leverages his new-found influence over the Youth of America to force a change in the Constitution that allows him to become President of the United States.
Once Max has the power, he sends everyone over 30 to internment camps and doses them with LSD.
Does Target, with all its hipster pretensions, really want everybody over 30 locked behind barbed wire, tripping their brains out?
Maybe they don't think anyone's going to make the connection. In the new world order, context is nothing.
footnote: Max Frost & the Troopers never existed as a real band. "Shape of Things to Come" was performed by unknown studio musicians (although an educated guess would say that at least some members of the famed Wrecking Crew played on the date) and the song was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil . Production is credited to Mike Curb , but the record is so good that it makes me wonder if he was even in the room.
