Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 Source: Spokesman-Review (WA) Copyright: 2001 The Spokesman-Review Contact: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/417 Author: John Leland, New York Times DRUG MAKERS, DRUG CULTURE JOIN FORCES Viagra sponsors funk band's tour to promote pill to baby boomers There's the thumping, utopian music; the hordes of bliss-seeking baby boomers; the drug that enriches all experience. The sex. It could be the Autumn of Love, made possible by a corporate sponsor and a prescription. This summer, Viagra, the enormously profitable blue pill, is the official sponsor of a concert tour by the funk band Earth, Wind & Fire. Ads for the tour have already appeared in newspapers, including The New York Times. The drug culture, in other words, is making friends with the drug culture. For popular music, as for the pharmaceutical industry, this is a symbiosis long coming. "At first we thought it was going to be a joke or whatever," said Philip Bailey, one of the group's singers. "Then we sat down and discussed the facts about men's health and erectile dysfunction. It's not something to be ashamed of, and that's part of the message." Besides blizzards of promotional literature, Viagra and its manufacturer, Pfizer, will offer screening tents at concerts, where fans can be tested for high levels of blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, all factors in male sexual problems. As part of the sponsorship contract, the band will encourage fans to hit the tents, but will not flog the pills from the stage. Pfizer is "making a subtle psychological pun on the drug culture," said Nick Bromell, a professor of American studies at the University of Massachusetts and author of "Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s." Bromell added, "Of course, they can't explicitly say, `All you who smoked marijuana 30 years ago are now about to get another drug that allows you to live your life more fully."' Historically, rock concerts have been test markets for the drug culture, places where new pharmacologies are marketed via word of mouth to the unresisting masses. The infamous brown acid at Woodstock, source of so many bad trips, did not make the grade. But Ecstasy, which fueled the all-night rave parties of the early '90s, now courses through your local high school. Drugs that enhance sexual opportunities have always held the upper hand. For the new drug culture, illegal drugs have been replaced by pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors, yet their purpose remains in kind -- not extending life but enhancing it. As the 76 million baby boomers bring their sense of entitlement into their declining years, drug companies have invested heavily in quality-of-life products like Viagra, Zoloft, Prozac and other substances that offer what used to be called attitude adjustment. The generation that once defined itself by its appetite for sex, drugs and rock and roll has decided what it wants when it grows up, and the answer is: sex, drugs and rock and roll. - --- MAP posted-by: Kirk