Aging Rockers Pose as Teenagers to Hit Charts

[Sarge]

Aging Rockers Pose as Teenagers to Hit Charts
Fri Feb 20, 8:35 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!



LONDON (Reuters) - An aging UK rock group gave themselves a facelift by getting a group of teenagers to stand in for them on the video of their latest song, helping them score their first chart hit for some 15 years.



Convinced the music industry is prejudiced against wrinkly rockers, The Alarm gave themselves the pseudonym The Poppyfields and persuaded a group of fresh-faced youths to mime their part.


"They did it to show they wanted to be judged on music and not on their image and haircuts of 15 years ago," said a spokesman for the band.


The single, 45RPM, went into the UK charts this week at number 28.


The Welsh band were previously best known for 1983 hit "68 guns" and said they pulled the stunt to show how much image affected sales in the music industry.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=8&u=/nm/20040220/od_nm/life_rockers_dc

[PHOENIX]

Hey i remember that band. Geez i'm old.:D

[The Knockz]

they just did a VH1 Bands Reunited.

[PHOENIX]

Originally posted by The Knockz
they just did a VH1 Bands Reunited.

Them or the teenagers? :D

[FORD]

I love the Alarm, but they made one serious miscalculation....

Assuming that today's teenagers would even know what "45 RPM" means. Most of them have probably never seen one. Hell, some of them think a turntable is a musical instrument..

[LooseMenace]

I heard about this. I think it's brilliant, in terms of exposing the music business for what it really is: a sham based on image and a total lack of substance.
Of course, nobody will learn anything from it, but one can dream.

[Mr Badguy]

Ageing rockers pretending to be teenagers to score hits?

Who is it?

The Darkness?

Oh, someone else is doing it as well?

[Susie Q]

Well, it's all thanks to modern technology. Who was the band YEARS ago, that you never saw, just heard? MTV was a good thing when it first came out, but it ended up just a joke, basically. I say good for the Alarm to do that. Smart move! Hope they get a lot of press, and more bands do that to prove even more points.

[Big Troubles]

Originally posted by FORD
I love the Alarm, but they made one serious miscalculation....

Assuming that today's teenagers would even know what "45 RPM" means. Most of them have probably never seen one. Hell, some of them think a turntable is a musical instrument..

I like The Jam myself. They should bring it back. The turntable that is. We could put Van Hagar on "78" and finally rock n roll with the bastards! Then again I do have a box full of 8 AND 4 tracks. So maybe a re-invention of the 4 and 8 track player would be cool.

[degüello]

Wild. That's an interesting story.

[Big Troubles]

no its not. dont humour me. :lol:

[degüello]

I meant the main story. ;)

[FORD]

Originally posted by Big Troubles
I like The Jam myself. They should bring it back. The turntable that is. We could put Van Hagar on "78" and finally rock n roll with the bastards! Then again I do have a box full of 8 AND 4 tracks. So maybe a re-invention of the 4 and 8 track player would be cool.

My early 80's model turntable doesn't even have a 78 speed, but there certain tracks on the 5150 album that sound better at 45 RPM ;)

I can proudly say that I never owned an 8 track deck though.