“Smokin’ US-30 Dragstrip . . . where the great ones ride!”  Words on a screen can’t do justice to the tag line of that (in)famous commercial.  If you listened to WLS or Super CFL as I did in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll never forget the turbo-charged voice of Jan Gabriel who, with the help of some technical wizardry, made that commercial blast its way out of your little transistor radio.

Jan Gabriel died Sunday at the age of 69.  There’s a wonderful obituary on him at ChicagolandRadioandMedia.com.  For five decades he worked as a disc jockey, TV personality and executive of an ad agency.  But he’s best known for his US-30 Dragstrip commercials, the concept of which he conceived himself.

Interestingly, those commercials were held up by station management everywhere I’ve worked as examples of what NOT to do in a commercial.  In fact, every boss I’ve ever had reviled them.  And, whenever a client submitted a commercial produced in that style for us to run, I was ordered to do two things:  a) request that the client give us a different commercial to run; and, if they didn’t, then b) bury it in the middle of a commercial break so it wouldn’t butt up against the jocks’ voices and result in a jarring transition.

Sometimes it seems just the right kind of irritating can work, ironically.  The US 30 Dragstrip campaign so universally despised by management had incredible staying power.  If you heard it once, you remembered it for life, as I’m sure many of you do.  It’s like little Timmy’s nails-on-a-chalkboard voice, calling out “Extra, extra, read all about it” for Long Chevrolet.  That’s another commercial high on the annoyance scale that will live on forever.