I love this. I grew up watching Madness on videotape (I know) and we had these ads. Just today I cycled past a red Honda with my dad and I said HONDA HONDA HONDA 😂 had to google where it came from. Amazing the shit you rememeber.
I've always thought that it's strange how Japanese adverts often contain some English language. How does that work? Why do Japanese people seem to just automatically understand English, when we can't speak a word of Japanese? 私は本当に知らない。
De reclame's voor de Honda City waren dusdanig populair dat het nummer In the City (alleen) in Japan is uitbracht als A-kant van een single. Nu ook in mijn verzameling als Madness single nr. 51
Wow, never thought I'd see Madness wearing hakama and geta 🤣🤣🤣 I heard their famous dance, the nutty walk, was known better in Japan as the "centipede dance!"
and the colgate toothpaste ad using baggy trousers`song? I remember watching it in uruguay in the early 80`s ) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gdcVRueT2cw.html by the way, Madness made another 3 honda ads in japan Many famous artists made Honda ads, Honda City was targeted for England and Julian Lennon made like 4 ads as well.... Michael J fox made like 10 ads for the honda Integra that at the beggining, was targeted for LGbt couples, (for that model also we have Brad Pitt)....Both Peter Fonda and Chad Mcqueen, son of the late Steve Mcqueen made like 6 ads each for Honda bikes, Matt Dillon too--- in Europe Sofia Loren y nikki Lauda made bike ads too, ----- Also Jodie foster, Eric clapton, Geena Davis were IN Honda C ars ads... just to name a few....
Hello - Do you still have your original uncompressed VHS rip of these ads? I am making a doco - seeking best cuts of these clips. Most on youtube are in very low resolution. Please reply here if you have the original rip (or even the original VHS?) and let me know what's possible.... thanks for your time!
I have them somewhere as I put the old VHS to DVD using a stand alone DVD recorder, so they are around. Of course they'll be 720p, but that's just a recording of a lower res VHS, so it's far from perfect, but probably better than the RU-vid version. As some of my friends and subscribers live in the sticks with slow internet I tend to go for compatibility i.e. lower res, but plays smoother than do full HD that some can only watch in 2 second chunks before re-buffering. If I get chance I'll put a higher res copy of the ads up though.
Thanks. What would be great is if you could put the pre-youtube raw file up on mediafire or wetransfer and post the link here briefly - I'll get a reply alert. This would avoid needless additional loss from youtube compression...
I wonder if Honda first tried to get The Jam (since they had a big hit with "In The City"), but Weller surely would've laughed and told them to "fuck off".
Well, I heard Suggs retell the story last night at the gig I was at. According to him they did it because they were almost "broke" and therefore needed the money Honda offered them. Not sure if Weller's economy was in a comparable state. Anyways, never mind that. Honda wanted an effective and upbeat song for their car and I wouldn't call The Jam's "In the City" a particularly good song for a commercial however fine a composition it is on its own. It also was a hit back in 1977 which would be a bit out of date for a 1982 commercial, by comparison Madness' "Cardiac Arrest" and its B-side "In the City" was released in February 1982. Here's the thing too. Doing commercials in Japan is like doing it on Mars. Nobody except the Japanese will ever see them so the rest of the world is none the wiser and any artist can easily agree to this without sacrificing any "integrity". Also, it's very likely Madness had quite the following in Japan in those days so I suspect they weren't just chosen arbitrarily out of the British bands making a name for themselves back home.
