MARIJUANA MARKETING? IT'S JUST MONEY FOR OLD DOPE

MONDAY night, Channel 4. On Six Feet Under we've just seen Brenda and Nate
share a joint. She complains that bereaved undertaker's son Nate is
"spoiling her buzz" by talking about, oh, death and stuff. She is clearly
also a heroin addict, but Nate hasn't noticed yet.

Then an ad break. Ministry of Sound plug their new Smokin Beats
compilation. It features Morcheeba - their name taken from a slang name for
marijuana - and various other purveyors of slow music made with keyboards.
The sleeve image is of a sinuous lady, twisting as wreaths of smoke curl up
across the screen. Obviously, Afroman's Because I Got High, last year's
Number1 hit single, is there.

Then a commercial for a new product from McVities. Munch Bites are tiny
bits of chocolate biscuit. The ad features a bloke chomping them on the
sofa while talking to an Action Man about the foxy lady making tea in the
kitchen. What a loony!

Except he's not a loony. He is the cleaned-up face of the demographic that
dares not speak its name - not in adverts for big grocery brands anyway.
He' s eating Munch Bites because he's got the munchies, and only stoners
get the munchies.

Ministry, meanwhile, with their nose for the prevailing cultural winds, are
saying: get cool by getting "relaxed". Honest, this isn't music to wash the
car by. This is Morcheeba, and they are - to quote another classic
compilation title - dope on plastic.

The market has spoken: cannabis culture is mainstream culture. David
Blunkett may be tarrying over the reclassification of cannabis, and police
drug squads across England are rattling their sabres ahead of the summer
festival season. But in adland, it's most certainly all right to use the
ciphers of marijuana consumption as a vehicle for commerce.

Spliff: another counter-culture signifier becomes an over-the-counter
mechanism. Drum and bass went on to sell air freshener, psychedelic rock
guru Jimi Hendrix's ghost is punting a new car, Daft Punk's cool robots
rusted over the day they accepted the Gap dollar. It was left this week to
Oasis to resist the blandishments of the Man by refusing the Highlanders
regiment permission to use two songs in a recruiting video. But only, one
suspects, because the Army had nicked the songs without asking or paying.

The marketing of the Ali G movie was the last time commercial marijuana
references were funny. At least there was a contextual link there. Anything
after that either looks dodgy, naff or sad. Just as crazy Brenda in Six
Feet Under would be a smackie whether or not she was a stoner, Morcheeba
are listless AOR tosh if you're a student poleaxed on a beanbag with crumbs
and burn holes in your shirt or a disaffected Dido fan looking for your
next buzz. As discussed last week, the whole chill-out concept is the
refuge of the scoundrel.

It's a fallacy that if you're stoned, you want slow, pedestrian sounds.
Away with the herbal fairies, you want more from your music, not less. You
want to dive in, not conk out. You look for colours, imagination,
inventiveness, lyrical flights of fancy. Not songs about moping through a
rain-streaked window 'cos your lover's left, or all the biscuits are finished.

This summer, three records prove that where there's puff there's class.
Queens of the Stone Age have made no secret of their fondness for all
manner of drugs. The chorus of their feelgood hit of the summer was a
shopping list of their favourite illegal and prescription substances. Daft,
but rocking.

The desert Californians' new album, Songs for the Deaf, shows that "stoner
rock" doesn't have to mean Tangerine Dream. Intense, cathartic and vivid,
it is rock that likes to party. It is the anti-Morcheeba.

The Coral are Liverpool's teenage nutbags. Their debut album (out in three
weeks) is an astonishing and inventive mixture of folk, R&B and acid rock.
It features a song about heading for the Spanish Main, a song seemingly
sung by monks and clowns (Shadows Fall) and a character called Simon
Diamond ("changed from human to plant form, now he's swapped his legs for
roots").

I think it's fair to assume that they like their draw.

Finally, Lemon Jelly's first album proper is now completed. Previously, the
studio duo were tarred as the kings of chill-out. Now, in Lost Horizons,
they've turned down the ambience and turned the atmos-amps all the way up
to 11.

The first single, next month's Spacewalk, takes you beyond the clouds, if
Oliver Postgate had retooled Ivor The Engine as Ivor The Space Rocket. With
Lost Horizons we have lift off, not nod off.

Meanwhile, back in adland, Rowntree's new bags of sweeties boast of their
"fruit rush". Anyone for The Shamen's Mr C advertising chewy Es?