It is during this time of great confusion, that we must make the most of our surroundings in new and creative ways. Come with me, if you will, to a place of great excitement that is aged to perfection. It’s the Utica Club: a hazy and happenin’ spot, tinted by psychedelia and the promise of a far-out future. And all it takes is the crack of a beer.
The straight corporate suits have been trying to earn the respect of one counter-culture revolutionary since they began teaching it in universities. Some of the hippies even fell for it. During the radical late 60’s, just about anyone with long hair and an out-of-sight sense of freedom could pass as a child of this new wave of thinking.
Random beer fact: Utica Club was the first beer that was sold when Prohibition ended in 1933. Imagine how good it must have tasted that night. Which is funny, because online reviews for the cheap lager describe it as tasting like shit. Regardless, they sure knew their demographic. Early ads by the brewery featured the lovable Schultz and Dooley, bumbling beer steins and regional ambassadors to the watery brew. One of company taglines was “We drink all we can - the rest we sell.”
Utica television spot from the 60s
Commercial exploring the emerging beatnik culture
In 1968, something was really happen’ in the American underground and Utica Club really needed the beatniks to think their beer was hip. They hired ad agency Wells, Rich, Greene, Inc, who brilliantly conceived the fantasy of Utica Club - a mythical mod nightclub of kaleidoscopic delight. Think Laugh-In meets the Electric Pussycat Swingers Club from the first Austin Powers. Jingle composer Sascha Burland (know for creating the Nutty Squirrels, notorious Chipmunks rip-off) and Chicago garage rock band The Trolls wrote the soundtrack to this youthful setting, summed up as the “Utica Club Natural Carbonation Band Beer Drinking Song.”
The song was included in a series of television ads that ran throughout upstate New York. It featured partygoers sneaking around the Utica Beer Brewery looking for a taste of the nightlife. Later they would discover that one could only achieve the vibe by twisting open a cold one. Thousands of promotional 45s with the theme song were given away to brewery visitors during the era, as a reminder of where Utica Club can take you.
The back cover to the record described the dreamlike utopia as follows:
There’s nothing totally sane about The Utica Club. Waitresses slide down fireman’s poles. Life-sized paintings come to life. A friendly gorilla’s in charge of the swings. You know the ones that hang from the ceilings. With girls on them.
I’ll have what they’re having.
h/t WFMU
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Evolution: Psychedelic Levis commercial from early 70s
Fruitopia commercials scored by Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins
LSD TV: Robert Abel’s mindbending television commercials of the 1970’s
Must-see Pabst beer commercial from 1979 featuring Patrick Swayze
The Who Sell Out…to Schlitz: TV commercial from 1982
A video compilation of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Guinness commercials