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Posted 7:13 AM by Dave

I've never been a big fan of the ageless technique of co-opting songs for use in ads. That said, I'd like to publicly chide Toyota for taking Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" and turning it into possibly the next "Nobody But Me" (classic song turned into a commercial pass-around). Everyone's gonna glom onto this song, and that's pretty sad, considering it's one of Mayfield's lesser-known treasures. I'm not sure I wanna hear it every five minutes in commercials touting gas-guzzling, too-big-for-their-own-good SUVs.

Paul Shaffer took the tune down a few keys and arranged it as bumper music (remember that?) for the Saturday Night Live Band, and later pulled it out on episodes of "Late Night With David Letterman" on nights when the Tower Of Power Horns sat in.

The only nice aspect of the whole deal is that a few bucks is going to Mayfield's estate (he died in 1999, years after an accident that caused neck-down paralysis).