I was going to post a comment to Tiny's music blog about how Bill Simmons had covered similar Mellencamp ground on his webpage. Then I continued reading Simmons and was smacked in the face by his bush league shots at Bob Seger: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/061025. I figure a spirited defense of the frontman of our humble blog's namesake deserved an entry of its own.

First of all, no artist from that generation carries him or herself with more class than Bob Seger. Calling him a sellout for doing Chevy ads (which were actually good, albeit overplayed) is just uncalled for. Might Simmons feel guilty knowing that Seger didn't sell out his snowy hometown roots at La La's first beckon?

Secondly, there are two prominent ways for a musician to sell out:
1) Use their music, likeness, and/or image to sell a product.
2) Allow their bread and butter to drop in quality because of a priority placed on other ventures.
Number 1, if an offense at all, is far less egregious than Number 2 (Method Man's Right Guard commercials never bothered me until I paid $13.99 for Tical 0: The Prequel). Seger may have have gotten a fat check from Chevy, but he never went back to the well and asked people to pay for an album he pumped out as an afterthought.

Lastly, I knew Simmons' Boston bias was bad (DJ more hall of fame worthy than Joe D?), but I didn't realize how rampant it was unti I read him calling Bob Seger "the sellout rock artist of his generation" over Beantown's own Steven "Tyler:


Milk!









Dodge!






Sony!