Aug 16, 2009

"Well turn it up, Man!"

In honor of the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival, I present the Woodstock of my generation. No, I'm not talking about Woodstock 94, and I'm especially not talking about Woodstock 99. I'm talking about those awesome commercials for Freedom Rock!


From the opening chords of "Layla" to the dude's little guffaw when he tells you that the original hits are "by the original artists!" to the bright blue screen that tells you how to order, the commercial for Freedom Rock has been etched into my brain. All the song snippets have locked themselves into this order so that The Byrds "Turn Turn Turn" is inextricably mashed with Skynyrd's "Freebird". Heck, some of these song are only known to me still as 5-second snippets.
The gods of rock must have made sweet hippie love to the gods of donations because half of my dreams came true when disc 2 of Freedom Rock (albeit a bit scratched-up) arrived at the Junk Store.



In truth, Freedom Rock does not "have it all, man". In fact, this compilation is pretty awful and certainly not worth $24.95 (from 1987, which, with inflation, would cost $47.15 today). There are a lot of bullshit, not rocking, unfree filler like James Taylor swamping up the true rock classics. I'm still glad it came in though, if only for giving me a reason to post the Freedom Rock commercial on this blog.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

I'm curious if that 800 number still works! I can't call it from outside the US, but otherwise I would just to see......

May Morrison said...

Generation Jones, eh?
Too young for Woodstock, too old for Nirvana.
But the perfect age to live it up in their mid-twenties with, you guessed it, Freedom Rock. 40 original hits from the original artists.