So we all remember the Energizer Bunny ads from the mid-to-late-1980s, right? The first one were simply the bunny drumming and rolling and not stopping. Then, the commericals got creative; they’d start with ads for fake products and thent he bunny would interrupt (“Still going … nothing outlasts Energizer”). For its time, it was a pretty innovative idea for a commercial. I’m not going to say that it ushered in an era of humor or parody in commercials or anything; maybe it did. But there were definitely a few copycats.

The one I remember the most was, for, of all things, TV Guide.

It’s kind of weird to me that TV Guide had commercials. After all, it was one of those things that was always just … there. You know, that digest-sized magazine you threw around and sometimes read just beyond the listings (or in my case, always read the articles). But in the early Nineties, they launched their own ad campaign using fake commercials. I don’t know how many there were, but I do remember one, a music video named SKUM and the song “Screaming at the Top of Our Lungs.”

So in case you are wondering, the band in the commercial doesn’t exist. A comment from 11 years ago made by YouTube User @rhino6849 says:

This was written played and sung by Chuck Duran. We were in a band together called Loud and Clear which was quite a departure from this.Sorry to disappoint some of the metal heads but this was written with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. I was on the floor laughing the first time he played it. Funny stuff!

p.s. That’s an actor, not Chuck.

Another user, @painebobby, adds, “Chuck sang and played guitar But did not write it.”

And even Chuck Duran himself, whom I found on the website “Demos That Rock”, has posted about it in some places. He is also a working voice-over artist who has a podcast about that work. One of his guests was E.G. Daily, which is pretty cool.

For me, the commercial still holds up, especially because of the over-the-top nature of the video. I’m not sure if GWAR was getting any rotation on MTV (this is about a year or two before Beavis and Butt-Head premiered), but that’s what it reminds me of. With a … tap … of Spinal Tap (I’ll show myself out).

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