Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Any Publicity Is Good Publicity

"For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts." - Gertrude Stein

These Chicks mark the destruction of corporate rock, that bloated commercialized monster. CoS declare they are not interested in practising guitar-playing for hours in garages. They don't want to "keep it real" -- they want to keep it surreal. They "can't sing" but sing nevertheless. They challenge rock's male dominance and its (questionable) preoccupance with "real" -- "real" instruments, "real" virtuosity, "real" attitude. At the same time they're not a music business-manufactured product like the Spice Girl or Britney Spears, but instead they have manufactured themselves. D.I.Y.! The annoyance and hatred of rock fanboys can barely hide their confusion and fear in front of the new and unknown; anything that does not fit to their limited world of guitar solos, raising fists in the air and the pathetic sentimentality of a sea of cigarette lighters during the obligatory power ballads. They have no other recourse than to claim in their limited vocabulary the desperate cries of: "You suck!"

Any publicity is good publicity. The more hate messages, the more (free) publicity.

In the end all these hastily set-up "Chicks on Speed Suck" sites and message boards will only have a reverse effect to what was wanted and just generate more interest toward them. If someone hates something fiercely enough and wants to make it public, there are always bound to be rubberneckers who want to find what the fuss is all about. Hate sites of musical acts are just an indication that they've managed to reach of certain level of fame. Face it: does anyone want to create a hate site for an artist who's virtually unknown, and no one has heard of? Chicks on Speed should thank all you haters for free marketing. The provocation has finally done its job. Likewise, all booing and bottle-throwing is just bound to create extra sympathy for CoS. But it's probable the dust will settle very soon when the Red Hot Chili Peppers fans will find some other act to despise, thanks to people's generally short attention spans these days.

If you really wanted people to forget about Chicks on Speed, you'd just keep quiet about them -- but thanks to you, now even more people want to find about them. So big thanks to all you fanboys for creating such a great publicity stunt for Chicks on Speed.

As an interesting side note, the bottles were thrown from within 'The Golden Area', the so-called area for the privileged or at least the more affluent.

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