Beer Giant Busted for Unauthorized Use of a Dead Kennedys Classic

Talk about extreme irony: about 20 years ago, a major soft drink manufacturer sought the rights to the Dead Kennedys’ Holiday in Cambodia for a tv commercial. As you might have guessed, the band’s label, Alternative Tentacles, turned down the request. Fast forward to 2011: as reported in NME and the Guardian, Heineken was supposedly forced to remove a Spotify banner ad featuring Nouvelle Vague’s sarcastic loungey cover of the DKs’  Too Drunk To Fuck because of complaints that it would “encourage binge drinking.” The official story is the ads were removed not because of copyright infringement, but because an industry watchdog group flagged them as being inappropriate. As a matter of principle, the DKs remain unwilling to sell out their music for use in commercials: the band’s attorneys have been in contact with the beverage conglomerate, which might be a more plausible explanation for the ads’ sudden disappearance. Stay tuned…