If it’s fake, it’s funny enough. But if it’s real, it’s funny because of the way the music industry commoditizes itself.

My opinion is that Bad Religion saved punk in 1988 by releasing their album Suffer, showing how punk music could actually be melodic and sound good and how punk lyrics could be more than just whining about life as a teenager or trying to be shocking. But few people outside of underground punk circles even really heard the record.

Bands like NOFX saw that poppier punk music like Suffer was the way forward and changed their sound. Then, Nirvana (heavily influenced by punk bands) released Nevermind in 1991, and guitar-centric music made a comeback in mainstream places. A few years later, Green Day blew the roof off the punk world with Dookie which is now probably multiple times a diamond record, and showed punk bands they could actually make money doing recording and performing this genre of music.

So I think at the time of that commercial, most consumers probably didn’t know any better. Now, because punk made a comeback and people bought the old records and defined the genre, that commercial seems even more ridiculous than when it was made.

Sources:
• Smash by Ian Winwood (about the 1990s punk explosion);
• Do What You Want by Bad Religion;
• The Hepatitis Bathtub and other stories by NOFX; and
• Serving the Servant (biography of Kurt Cobain).