Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Crickets / Music Street Art Is Lame, but Not as Lame as Roger Waters
Posted by Miles Raymer on Wed, May 5, 2010 at 1:12 PM
I don't think that the widespread adoption of street art by viral marketers has killed street art any more than I think that commercials using rock 'n' roll songs has killed rock 'n' roll. But the practice does draw attention to the disappearance of the gap between "art" and "product," which artists like Shepard Fairey still insist is there (even though it was gone before he sold his first OBEY T-shirt). And it might raise some interesting questions about street-art-as-commerce and/or street-art-as-an-advertisement-for-itself, if there were any interesting questions left in that area.
Pink Floyd cofounder and world-class cunt Roger Waters recently hired a viral marketing group to promote his upcoming re-revival of the live Wall experience by wheat-pasting ads, which feature a fifth-rate Banksy knockoff stencil of a soldier and a quote from Dwight Eisenhower, all over walls in New York and LA. Because there's nothing that the young tastemakers who are presumably the target of such a "guerrilla-style" marketing campaign enjoy more than throwing large bills at grandpas performing turgid, self-important rock operas, and there's nothing baby boomers like more than destroying property values with greed-fueled schemes. Great plan. Works on two levels.
Anyhow, one of the walls in Los Angeles that these daring marketers plastered happened to be outside Solutions Audio in Echo Park. It's the same wall that Elliott Smith's standing in front of on the cover of Figure 8, and since his death it's become a shrine to his memory.
After several blogs picked up on the defacing yesterday, Waters apologized in an interview on the Los Angeles Times music blog. "I admit I didn't know his music," Waters says, "but I've talked to people who do and it's clear he was a young man who felt deeply, and any empathetic person wouldn't have an issue with publicizing that quote." (He's referring to the quote on the poster—one of Eisenhower's more powerful antiwar lines.) This is, I think it's fair to say, a dick move: making assumptions about how a dead man you've never met and are only vaguely aware even existed might feel about having a memorial to his untimely death defaced by an ad campaign, and even implying that he would have given a thumbs-up to the campaign itself.
But Waters didn't quit while he was behind. Noting the non-Smith-related graffiti that frequently appears beside the fan tributes that have covered the wall since Smith's suicide, Waters notes, "It's not like this was some pristine monument and Roger Waters is the Big Bad Wolf who covered it up." Which is true. Roger Waters is not the Big Bad Wolf. He's just a terrible person.
Comments (6)
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It would be more fucked up if a giant cheeseburger was wheatpasted by somebody paid by Jimmy Buffet.
the writer of this article is the only cunt.
a pretty funny cunt, but a whining, dramatic
cunt nonetheless. a cunt that most likely listens
to coldplay and unwinds from a long day of talking shit
with a chilled bubbling drink... cunt.
Wait, Eliott Smith is a young artist who became famous & rich in a short amount of time however he became depressed and eventually killed himself? It's like The Wall, but with a different ending Writing it on Eliott's memorial wall is more of a tribute than anything else.
I guess, if you don't support this action, you do support war and it's uselessness?
Quote from Roger Waters: “The loss of a father is the central prop upon which (The Wall) stands. As the years go by, children lose their fathers again and again, for nothing. You see it now with all of these fathers, good men and true, who lost their lives and limbs in Iraq for no reason at all. I’ve done Bring the Boys Back Home in my encores on recent tours. It feels more relevant and poignant to be singing that song now than it did in 1979.”
Roger Waters has probably helped out more people than you ever will, and if he has the money not only to stop the effects, but to actually make people think about stuff and maybe stop the cause.. Go listen to Justin Bieber or Kesha if political stuff hurts your head.. To some people music is more than just an industry to make lots about money. Think about that mister wonnabe paparazi cunt.
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