In terms of crossover events that shifted the tides of pop culture in the 21st century, there’s Steve Jobs putting music, then the world, in your pocket. Then there’s the Doritos Locos Taco, and the iconic beyond its wildest dreams track Taco Bell used to sell it.
THE SONG
“All these kinds of places
make it seem like it’s been ages
Tomorrow some new building will scrape the sky
I love this country dearly
I can feel the ladder clearly
But i never thought I’d be alone to try
Once I was outside Penn Station
selling red and white carnations
We were still alone, my wife and I
Before we married, saved my money
Brought my dear wife over
Now I work to bring my family stateside
But off the boat they stayed a while
then scattered across the coast
Once a year I’ll see them
for a week or so at most
I took a walk!
Take a walk, take a walk, take a walk, take a walk…”
THE COMMERCIAL
Cut to Passion Pit’s “Take a Walk” – the lead single from the indie electronica act’s best-performing album, Gossamer, and released nearly ten years to the date on May 8, 2012 – the commercial is one of the sales-savvy Mexican fast-food chain’s more ingenuous advertisements. It encompasses a montage of customers sharing the buildup to their respective “big bites” on Instagram.
The voiceover tagline that follows sums it all up best:
“No matter how hard you try, pictures just don’t do it justice; Doritos Locos Tacos – taking tacos where no one thought they would go.”
“From a marketing point of view I just have to say Taco Bell did an incredible job with this commercial,” commented one YouTube user in their reaction to the 31-second spot. “They made something as simple as eating a taco feel like being a part of something.”
THE FAME
Rolling Stone Magazine called Passion Pit’s “Take a Walk” the third best song of that year. Led by their multi-talented frontman, Michael Angelakos, the band saw an overnight rise from Boston College scene-beloved to universally known, Saturday Night Live stage-gracing entity. This was thanks in no small part due to the musical stratosphere something as optically simplistic, yet renegadably executed as Taco Bell and FritoLay’s’ prescient collaboration helped catapult them into.
Of the song, Angelakos claims each verse, like the above, is sung from the perspective of rotating members of his immigrant family.
“Take a Walk’s” narrative follows a businessman burdened by socioeconomic problems while in pursuit of what was billed and sold to him as “The American Dream.” It’s aesthetically resemblant of the “upbeat sounds to offset subversively dark lyrics” template made famous during the same era by the band’s shared-subgenre contemporaries, Foster the People, and their breakout, “Pumped Up Kicks.”
“It’s not about promoting celebrities or giant corporations or anything like that,” Angelakos told NME, refuting a notion espoused by a small portion of the fan base, that Passion Pit had “sold out.” “It’s just airtime…It’s an amazing opportunity. I say no to about 90 percent of the offers, but we just want people to hear the music at the end of the day.”
Hear the music, and its message, they did.
THE LOCAL LEGACY
It was November of 2012; the Dorito Locos Taco was still in its honeymoon phase, the lone Nacho Cheese option still sweeping the nation, but not quite enough to stall the clamoring for its eventually March 2013-introduced, but since-benched “Cool Ranch” counterpart.
At the power outage-plagued time, a dozen of my classmates and I who still compete in a yearly Fantasy Football League first formed early that Fall spent our Sandy-caused off-days convening to play pickup football; if not for the heat of battle, then to keep warm period.
We then spent our evenings at the closest and most affordable energy replenisher.
Taco Bell’s Central Islip location on West Suffolk Avenue had recently opened, and was typically packed. Factor in “Sandy,” and you’ve got one filled-to-the-brim house of seasoned ground beef worship. Needless to say, when a fight broke out amongst unruly young adults with fixations on filming their inopportunely violent outbursts, a trio of us Hauppaugians waiting in line were left unsettled. Jaw-dropped. And, along with a sea of fellow patrons, as hungry as we were exhausted.
Anxiety quickly increased two-fold when these troublemakers began shoving each other into the storefront window glass panes, coming awfully close to fracturing them. It was only when a father of a few young children seated to eat in the dining area marched over to the boys, sternly – and successfully – commanding them to leave “the family establishment” at once, did all of us on-hand feel safe enough to let out a sigh of relief in conjunction with serenading the man with a well-earned standing applause.
This everyday hero’s behavior clearly harkens the song. The American Dream is to make it here. And the dream, when realized, is to earn verification you belong.
With one gesture, he overrode fear and replaced it with a feel-good story for all those who witnessed it, and a model for them to follow for the rest of their lives. It also served as a reminder that, in reality, heroes don’t wear capes. Undisguised, and operating in plain sight, they may even get in your face if the situation calls for it, not relenting until those unfairly put into harm’s way can relax again. All in the name of family. And at a place where the passion is as present as it is in the name of the band who inadvertently penned what can be argued as the restaurant’s theme song, once upon a time in 2012.
Only at Taco Bell: bringing families and strangers together since 1962, and vying for them to “Live Más” since 2012, too.
THE TACO
This Cinco De Mayo, and in ten-years-past commemoration of too many things to list, yet we happily just did in extensive detail, remember this: don’t cry because the Doritos Locos Taco killed the Volcano Menu star; smile because it’s still happening. The Cool Ranch taco may have been discontinued in 2020, but the inaugural Nacho Cheese-flavored option is here for the count.
“I was working there [at Taco Bell’s Smithtown Bypass location] on its first day when we were handing them out free,” said Paul Bisono, 27, a Hauppauge native and founder of Townline Digital, an online marketing firm named after the road connecting his first home and his first job. “I really felt like I was doing important work. I’m glad it’s [the Doritos Locos Taco] still around and I don’t anticipate it going anywhere anytime soon.”
Neither do we.
THE FUTURE
Here’s hoping Passion Pit, mostly dormant since self-releasing Tremendous Sea of Love in 2017, return with a vengeance soon. After all, Angelakos is the type of man who would forgo convention to instead independently publish a record that’s proceeds exclusively went to brain science research. The type of man who would stop an entire encore performance at South Street’s Pier 17 in May 2019 to make sure a fan who had fallen halfway through a “Take a Walk” mosh was okay before promptly taking it from the top, essentially performing an encore of an encore of the song his fans most adore.
He’s a one-man wrecking crew, a literal show-stopping act that knows how much he means to his followers. Ergo, he has no problem whatsoever with putting on entire album anniversary tours – oftentimes in lieu of producing new music; nostalgic commitment one can expect from someone who’d name his foremost artistic outlet after slang used to describe drive-in movie theaters back in the day.
Sadly, there is no news on the Gossamer 10-year anniversary tour front — as of yet. Though Covid seems further behind the concert-going world than in front of them, it looks like it will have to be quarter-four slate if it unfolds this year.
Should it, then Angelakos, like The Beatles did via the Peter Jackson-edited Disney+ docuseries last year, will finally get back. Get back. Get back to where he once belonged.
And forever will.
