Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Not so cunning stunts

Yacht's now infamous fake sex tape has (quite rightly) earned the duo a great deal of flak, but as this BBC article points out, they're far from being the first people within the world of music to cock up horribly when it comes to a PR stunt.

In probably the best-known incident, in 2014 U2 were guilty of forcing their new album - the somewhat ironically titled Songs Of Innocence - on unsuspecting iTunes users, with Apple ultimately having to bow to pressure and make it easier to remove it and Bono cornered into apologising for what he referred to as "a drop of megalomania".

Arguably more interesting, though, is the story of Disco Demolition Night - particularly in view of the fact that I've just read the chapter on no wave in Simon Reynolds' superlative Rip It Up And Start Again, in which he discusses the (possibly racist and homophobic) antipathy towards disco within punk circles, which meant that some no wavers' belated embrace of it was seen as a profoundly provocative act.

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