Saturday, January 21, 2006

Boycott Sony and Their Love Monkey "Love Monkey" is a front. Sure, I almost got sucked in, too.  The premise called to me - a young hipster who founds his own record label.  It sounded tempting.  And one of the real life indie tastemakers, Nic Harcourt, was signed on as music supervisor.   This might be worth looking into, says I to myself.  But oh, no.  Hell no.  The beast that is "Love Monkey" will never illuminate my tv screen.  Why?  Because it's a goddamn front.  A shill.  A scam.  Newsweek said "there's nothing else like it on tv," and they didn't know the half of it.  In the ultimate example of cross-pollination and secret product placement, Sony BMG is calling the musical shots at "Love Monkey."  As Thomas Bartlett pointed out on Audiofile, they're promoting their own artists through the show, putting up their new acts to be the new signees at the new "indie" record label.  So all of those people who are supposedly new and unsigned and being "discovered" by Mr. Indie Hipster Lovemonkey are really part of the giant monstrosity that is SonyBMG.  I'm sure there are those who might defend the creators of this commercial chimera.  It's a show about rock bands, they might whine.  How are you supposed to find good bands now without the help of a label?  Oh, let's see.  "Square Pegs" was able to get Devo on their show and the Waitresses to do their theme song back in the day - they sure weren't owned by any goddamn music label.  Shows like "The O.C.," "Joan of Arcadia," and "Gilmore Girls" are able to come up with lots of good, compelling, occasionally indie artists, and they aren't owned by any goddamn music labels.  (I'm willing to believe that there's a little bit of product placement fees going on there, but I can overlook that.  It's a difference of degree.  The above-mentioned shows exists as shows first, and have music as an incidental part of the show.  LoveMonkey is looking to be a music promotion machine disguised as a tv show.)  Y'all might remember that I've got a bit of antipathy towards Sony for hating their customers.  They hate their customers so much that they planted rootkits surreptitiously on millions of CDs to keep them from doing things with "their" CDs that Sony didn't want them to do.  The rootkits have destroyed computers, allowed viruses to seep in, pissed off the world in general and set Sony up for lawsuits by the score.  So now unsuspecting millions are going to watch what they think is a tv show, but it turns out to only be an infomercial for the SonyBMG beast.  Don't be taken in. Fuck Sony.  If you end up watching it, then you only have yourself to blame.  You've been had.  You've been took.  You been hoodwinked.  Bamboozled.  Led astray.  Run amok.  8:59:12 AM    Speak up!  []