I Eat Music

So, now that Rage Against The Machine have made it to Christmas number one, the conspiracy theorists have moved into overdrive. People all over the internet are devoting their Christmas holidays to uncovering the mechanics of the ’scam’. The claim being that the whole thing was planned and run by Sony Music.

“Look at all you people,” the conspiracy theorists say with a smug grin. “You all mindlessly bought into this campaign and you were just lining the pockets of Simon Cowell and his cronies.”

Of course, both Killing In The Name and X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s single The Climb were released and published by divisions of Sony Music and the company stands to gain the most financially. The same was true in last year’s unsuccessful campaign to get Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah to Christmas number one ahead of Alexandra Burke’s. As rats go, this one stinks.

Then, of course, there’s the question of who Jon and Tracy Morter, the people behind the RATM campaign, are. A couple of people who love music and hate X Factor? Or evil scheming marketing people? There are those who are determined to prove the latter, who will tell you that Simon Cowell’s claims that he offered them marketing jobs after they beat him on Sunday were empty, as they are already working for him in exactly that capacity. His apparent anger at the pair in the last few weeks wouldn’t be the first time that he’d used clunky misdirection to boost the popularity of something (Jedward being just one example).

I have a feeling these questions are going to hang around for some time. But should we care? Is it really that shocking that a company whose sole reason for existence is to sell records – gasp – might have tried to sell us some records.

It’s not the first supposedly grass roots campaign of this type, of course. And not the first with two Sony-owned songs pitted against each other. Or even the first with two Sony-owned songs pitted against each other run by the Morters (though, if you’re looking for consistency in the conspiracy theory, the Jeff Buckley campaign wasn’t them). All of which does make it easy to think this wasn’t as spontaneous as we’ve been led to believe.

Sure, either way, it’s all money in the bank for a major label, but this campaign had to be fought on major label terms. Yes, the message of Killing In The Name can be bent to fit the message of the campaign, and that is partly the reason it was a success, but it’s the major label money that was put behind it seventeen years ago that sealed the deal. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there in the world for whom that song meant something in their teens, and who also grew up at a time when the charts were an exciting and important part of pop culture. What’s more, they’ve also had time to grow nostalgic for both of those things. A more worthy, independent artist is unlikely to have had the fanbase of the right size and age to pull this off.

Even if it was orchestrated by Sony, it still needed that public feeling to work. And the intent of all those people was to stop X Factor’s monopoly of the Christmas number one and make the charts more fun in the process. On those terms, I’d say it was a job done. I don’t think many went in without knowing that both acts were signed to the same label. No one thought they were supporting independent music, surely. It was just something half a million people thought might be funny.

That’s why I forked out 29p. I loved Rage Against The Machine when I was a teenager, my entire childhood was mainly planned around hearing the charts on the radio on Sunday and watching Top Of The Pops on Thursday or Friday, and I think that inappropriate swearing is funny. I don’t think I stuck it to Simon Cowell and I don’t think the charts will be changed by this. Joe McElderry will almost certainly be at number one this Sunday, and he’ll probably be followed by something equally tedious at some point in January. But I don’t care that much.

I did consider the possibility that Sony could be behind the whole thing, but I went and bought the song anyway. If anything, I think this is the sort of thing the record labels should be doing all the time. If all music marketing enthused people like this, maybe things would be going a bit better for them.

Okay, if it turns out the Morters were in the employ of Sony (and I’m still pretty sure they weren’t), all those claims of independence are going to irritate a lot of people. But it’s marketing, people. Even if they were acting alone, they were still running a marketing campaign. Companies lie to you every day and some of them lie to you about things that actually matter.

Bill Hicks used to come on stage to Killing In The Name and rant about the manufactured pop acts of the day, like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, in a routine that peaked with a scream of “PLAY FROM YOUR FUCKING HEART!” He didn’t care that both Rage Against The Machine and those pop acts were products of the major label system. Still, he also used to say, “If you work in marketing or advertising – kill yourself.”

I’m not a big fan of Lady Gaga, I’m not sure if I’ve made that clear at any point this year, but it does always fill me with a warm glow when an artist makes a slow climb to the number one position. It’s like the olden days when everything was much better and there was no war or sadness in the world. And these days, spending seven weeks on the chart before hitting the top counts as a slow climb.

Back in the olden days, I would now have spent a whole paragraph questioning whether or not she could hold out for another week and get the Christmas number one (you know, when I was seven years old and writing about this stuff). But we both know that’s not going to happen, so I won’t waste any valuable space on such things. Let’s just say, Rage Against The Machine fans will be pleased to know that the X-Factor winner’s single is one of the most boring pieces of music ever recorded.

Lady Gaga’s ascension to the top does mean that ‘The Official Children In Need Medley’ has now slipped to number two. So Gaga is now officially responsible for children continuing to be in need. Next time you see a child in need, just remind them of that.

There’s just one new entry in this week’s top ten, a track by Chuckie & LMFAO which you may know as ‘Let The Bass Kick In Miami Bitch’, or ‘Let The Bass Kick In Miami Beach’, or ‘Let The Bass Kick In Miami Girl’, or ‘Let The Bass Kick In Miami’, or just ‘Let The Bass Kick’. Whatever you’re favoured title for the track, it’s at number eight.

There are three other new entries on the whole chart. They are these: Terry Wogan & Aled Jones with the double-A side ‘Silver Bells/Me And My Teddy Bear’ at 27, ‘Ego’ by The Saturdays at 35, and Wham!’s Christmas classic, ‘Last Christmas’ at 39. The other two Christmas singles on the chart are currently fairing better, with The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale Of New York’ at eighteen and Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ at nineteen.

The album chart is really, really boring this week, so I reckon we can get it done in just one sentence. Susan Boyle is still at number one and new entries this week come from Bette Midler’s best of at 26, 30 Seconds To Mars with ‘This Is War’ at 31, and Seal’s ‘Hits’ at 37. Yep, I was right.

In fact, all of this week’s charts are so dull that, while announcing them on Radio 1, Reggie Yates had to be constantly slapped by people from The Official Charts Company.

Simon Cowell has spoken out against the campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ to Christmas number one instead of the debut single from whoever wins this year’s ‘X-Factor’. He seemed to suggest that the campaign would do little to harm him, but might upset the eventual ‘X-Factor’ winner who has worked so very, very hard to get where they are today.

Of course the cynic in me is whispering that Cowell’s outburst might be a clever ploy to generate more interest in both singles and raise a bit of extra cash for the entertainment group he works with, Sony (whose subsidiaries both released and published ‘Killing In The Name’, as well as working on ‘X-Factor’ winners signed to Cowell’s SyCo label). If that’s the case, I probably shouldn’t even be writing about this. But the teenager in me is screaming that it would be funny if Rage Against The Machine got to number one with their sweariest track. I just don’t know who to trust.

Anyway, at a press conference yesterday, reports The Guardian, Cowell said: “If there’s a campaign, and I think the campaign’s aimed directly at me, it’s stupid. Me having a number one record at Christmas is not going to change my life particularly. I think it’s quite a cynical campaign geared at me that is actually going to spoil the party for these three ['X-Factor' finalists]“.

It is, of course, fairly unlikely that Zack De La Rocha and the boys will beat the ‘X-Factor’ machine, but with more than half a million people signed up to the Facebook group where the campaign is being organised, it could give it a run for its money. Last year, a similar campaign (similar largely in that the real winners were also Sony Music and publishing company Sony/ATV) to get Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ to the top spot did result in a number two position for the song. However, Alexandra Burke’s sales of 576,000 units were just too high for anyone to hold back.

Okay, so if everyone in that Facebook group actually buys a copy of ‘Killing In The Name’, it could happen (previous ‘X-Factor’ winners have got the Christmas number one with a lot less than half a million sales). But, as anyone who’s ever done any direct marketing, or organised a guestlist, or tried to sell counterfeit drugs via spam email will tell you, they won’t. What we really need to cross our fingers for is a complete lack of interest in whoever wins the ‘X-Factor’, meaning their sales don’t get anywhere near matching those of Burke’s debut.

Speaking of the crappy pretend music competition, the celebrity guests who will perform with the finalists on ‘X-Factor’ this weekend have been announced. They are Robbie Williams, George Michael and Michael Bublé. Unless Elton John drags George Michael off to rehab before then.

Well, we were all convinced we made Middle Class Rut SNAP Of The Day months ago, but a quick search of the archives suggests we are wrong. Which means either the server ate it (which is possible) or we’ve completely failed to tip one of the most exciting new rock bands around right now. If it’s the latter, consider our wrists duly slapped. MC Rut is comprised of vocalist/guitarist Zack Lopez and vocalist/drummer Sean Stockham, formerly of the DreamWorks-signed band Leisure. Our good friend Eddy TM saw them live last week and tells us “Sean hits the drums like they raped his entire family, and Zack threshes his guitar like a medieval peasant on a serious deadline”. With the hooks of Rage Against The Machine, the delivery of Fugazi and the power of Refused, they are indeed a force to be reckoned with. There are eight awesome tracks streaming on their MySpace page, but the best place to start is ‘Busy Bein Born’, a song so good it probably shouldn’t be allowed.

www.myspace.com/middleclassrut

Three of Soundgarden’s four members reunited on Tuesday evening to perform a short set at the newly opened Crocodile Cafe in their hometown, Seattle. Frontman Chris Cornell is currently, of course, on tour promoting his much-derided new solo album, ‘Scream’, and so couldn’t have been there even if he’d wanted to. Instead, the band was fronted by Tad Doyle of semi-legendary Seattle band, TAD.

Marking the first time the three Soundgarden members, Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd and Matt Cameron, have appeared on stage together since the band’s split in 1997, Doyle reportedly screamed his way through three Soundgarden songs – ‘Spoonman’, ‘Hunted Down’, and ‘Nothing To Say’. In between songs he reportedly told the audience not to be sad about Cornell’s absence, before lifting his shirt to reveal his ample stomach and saying: “That’s half a Cornell right there”.

Tad wasn’t the only guest vocalist during the six song set, though. They were also joined by Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, and MC5’s Wayne Kramer for a rendition of MC5’s ‘Kick Out The Jams’. Morello was then joined by Steve Earle to sing Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Ghost Of Tom Joad’ and ‘Shake My Shit’ by Morello’s Nightwatchman project.

You’re probably wondering what all that sounded like. Well, you can listen to the whole set here: www.earcandybeat.com/?q=node/38

This article originally appeared in CMU Daily on 27 Mar 2009