Iconic blues

If you’re a music geek, you had to be a bit disturbed or confused when you saw the Volkswagen commercial featuring British singer/songwriter Nick Drake’s song "Pink Moon." Yeah, yeah, perhaps it means more people will be exposed to this great, relatively obscure musician, but this commercial makes me feel cheap and dirty. The same feeling may hit if you’re a jazz fan and come across the new line of Kind of Blue T-shirts that feature the images of John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Horace Silver. What is interesting here is that the shirts show only Warholish images of the artist’s faces — no words, names, nothing. Available at www.urbn.com for $24, this line of shirts also features more, um, traditional icons such as Che Guevera and Bruce Lee. While it would be nice to think jazz legends are such cross-cultural icons of cool that they’re recognized by face alone, the fact that those super hipsters at the Urban Outfitters Web site can’t even spell John Coltrane’s name correctly (Coletrane?!) sadly suggests otherwise. What grabs your attention? Tell Attention Span at [email protected]