Russell Crowe and Middle Aged Women Are Destroying Rock And Roll

This morning, while I should have been thinking of insightful things to say and planning a fluid schedule of great music (aka doing my job) I was instead, on Facebook. While on Facebook I saw a couple of videos posted by friends. These videos follow.

The official video from Gotye for “Somebody That I Used To Know”


And a web sensation cover of the same song by Canadian band Walk Off The Earth
I realized a few things at that moment;

First, I don't personally like either that much, but that isn't the point.

Second, I should probably record the weather forecast before I spend any more time screwing around on Facebook.

Third, Russell Crowe and middle aged women are ruining Rock and Roll.

Perhaps that requires a little more explanation. You see, the original song was a huge success in Australia (spending 8 weeks at number 1) and enjoyed respectable success around much of the rest of the world, in particular Europe and New Zealand. Most of this chart success came around summer of 2011, having mostly faded by the new year.

THEN Russell Crowe stepped in. According to Wikipedia Crowe, and a few other celeb types have been fans of Walk Off The Earth for years and Russell posted a simple tweet. The result was a gillion Russell Crowe fans, mostly middle aged women I assume went on the Internet, Googled the tune and ended up at the video above.  Then the Internet madness began, the video shoots to the top of search algorithms, lazy media people looking for a story (myself included) pick it up and, of course, the other "middle aged women's media" jumps on it (They're on Ellen on Monday).

So now a band that may have created a great deal of music, good or otherwise is being brought to the forefront of some very large (but not very Rock and Roll) audiences because they shot a novelty video.  Whoever shot the video of the damned talking dog should be bigger than The Beatles (and by extension Jesus) using the same logic


So I ask you Rock and Roll generation of today... are you going to let Russell Crowe, Ellen and people your mom's age dictate what succeeds in music?  Because that is what we're doing.  Every time we let a viral video, with limited music credibility decide what we listen to the bad guys win.
We got Justin Bieber from YouYube and I hope you agree that has become a huge problem.


We can also thank viral web media for this one


I'm not saying "WotE sucks". I haven't LISTENED to enough of their ACTUAL MUSIC to decide that, in fact here's a taste for yourself, with the record cover instead of a parlour trick for a visual.


Was that a great tune? Would you "share" that? Would you be more likely to share it if it had a video shot with treadmills


or a clever 1 take psuedo-bollywood dance number

And that's all fine, love a music video (or any art) for what it is, just don't mistake novelty for quality.  Certainly don't mistake fame or popularity for quality. I wish WotE all the best in their adventure in Rock and Roll, I hope they can use this momentum carry them further down the road of a life in music.  I hope that music lovers... listeners... simply remember to LISTEN, not to Russell Crowe or even to me but TO THE MUSIC and let the music tell them, not the hits on a YouTube video, what music is truly great.

Thanks for listening to Long Beach Radio.  -Geoff