[Rumori] lars owns the chords of E and F

[King Wilson]

   and on an even more revealing note....


The band behind the Internet hoax that duped media organizations 
ranging from radio stations to Jimmy Kimmel Live and MSNBC, has offered 
up an official statement about what they did and why they did it. The 
statement is below: 

UNFAITH’S OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON THE METALLICA E-F CHORD CONTROVERSY
by Erik Ashley

You might have heard about this on CNN, MSNBC, Ananova, or on one of 
the thousands of radio stations across America since Wednesday.

International rock superstars Metallica is suing an independent [sic] 
Canadian band over unsanctioned usage of the E and F chords ; that band 
being Unfaith ; us. Let’s make this clear: This story is SATIRE.

But as with most parodies, it is also a statement in sheep’s clothing ; 
one that inadvertently[sic] ended up making a point FOR the band, as 
much as anything else.

We all know about the Napster issue, the perfume company, the lipstick 
company, the tire makers... Metallica has sued them all. Rightly or 
wrongly, no one is judging that. However, the idea behind this parody 
was to gauge, after all that litigation, just how willing America was 
to buy a story as extraordinary[sic]—as outlandish—as them claiming 
ownership of a 2-chord progression. 

If this week was any indication, America is all too willing to believe 
it. It all started here :  The story was originally planted on 
411mania.com, who were in on it. 

Within minutes, literally hundreds of message boards lit up, including 
those of legitimate music news sources. Then, Fark.com jumped on board 
and promoted the 411 link. With the help of these two websites, the 
story got rebroadcasted from one news source to the next. 

Jimmy Kimmel treated the story as fact on his ABC talk show, his 
researchers never bothering to contact any of the parties involved. 
MSNBC’s Jeannette Walls printed the story as fact in yesterday 
morning’s “The Scoop” column... and retracted it minutes later with no 
explanation.  

Dotmusic.com did the same, as did Ananova.com in the UK. 

Radio stations across America have been broadcasting the news as fact 
for days, going so far as organizing boycott petitions against 
Metallica on the stations they work for... and even playing our MP3 
samples on the air simply to spite them. What is wrong with this 
picture? If you want to play us because you enjoy our music, that’s one 
thing. But playing us just to spite another band..?

Rolling Stone was the first publication to contact the parties 
involved. Then came Court TV / CNN, and MuchMusic. They took the time, 
and got the real story. 

As for the hoax itself, it generated over 200,000 hits in just two 
days, and crashed our servers repeatedly.

Beyond the numbers, however, I think it was TANSTAAFL — one of the 
thousands of internet message board posters discussing this story this 
week — who said it best : “I’m not sure what’s worse, that the story is 
a fake, or that it was actually conceivable that Metallica would do 
that.”

In truth, none of us ever expected the parody to reach as far and wide 
as it did. What originally began as something of a psychology study on 
Metallica’s reputation instead turned into an exposé on how dangerous 
the internet — and its media — can be.

“Because if it’s on the net, it’s got to be true” ™

Both the supposed “MTV.com” and “Metallica.com” pages were 
painstakingly recreated for the parody to be effective just as Saturday 
Night Live goes through great lengths to recreate a celebrity’s facial 
features and voice — but both pages have a clear “ScoopThis.com” notice 
at the bottom. And although ScoopThis.com had been technically offline 
since 2000, its documents still very clearly state that anything found 
on its domain is fake. So who should Metallica be St.Angry with over 
this? Us, for what we thought was an obvious parody (we didn’t even 
bother masking the url fields)... or every single so-called legitimate 
news outlet for spreading it as truth? It’s hard to ignore the fact 
that the runaway hoax ended up exposing the internet for what it is, 
with legitimate news sites spreading one of the most incredible 
fictional stories we could come up with without pause, much less 
research.

You would think it was 1938, and this was War of Worlds.

I can’t help walking away from this whole bit actually sympathizing 
with the band. Because even as the hoax was exposed, diehard 
Metalli-bashers maintained their positions on the grounds that this was 
something Metallica COULD have done. Overlooking one very important 
fact : They didn’t. 

In the end, I am left wondering... is this the kind of unbiased  
journalism I can expect if I become a public figure?

Reactions now that people are slowly catching on to the hoax have 
ranged across the board from people thinking it was a brilliant and 
well-executed prank, to people being upset by what they feel is a cheap 
publicity stunt... to those people, I can only offer the reminder that 
we have nothing to sell. No CD’s were printed in preparation for
this, and we haven’t responded to a single donation offer made to us 
towards our fictional upcoming legal battle.

Unfaith may have received some short-term exposure out of this, and I’d 
be lying if I said I didn’t think this was great. Wouldn’t you? Sure, 
some people will stick around with us when this is over, but most 
won’t. As James Hetfield once put it, however, the Memory Remains.

As for the fallout, Jimmy Kimmel has already apologized for spreading 
an astonishing story as truth. MSNBC, Ananova and others, however, 
haven’t — content in simply laying low after eliminating the evidence. 
To each their own.

As for me? I’ll quote from an interview I did with UGO.com last year, 
which you could easily Google-up. On the subject of my influences, I 
answered, among other names, “the ‘commercial era’ Metallica. 
Everything since the black album. Yep, that includes Load and Reload.”

I didn’t mind saying it then, and I don’t mind repeating it today. This 
hoax was merely a joke that America wished so hard to be true, that it 
slowly stopped mattering if it was or not.

In the end, this leaves us with two ultimate ironies :

First, none of our songs were ever based on an E-F progression (I can’t 
sing that high). 

And second, MTV.com remains the only entertainment news website never 
to have touched this story.

Erik Ashley
Singer/Songwriter
Unfaith | www.unfaith.net
Montreal, Canada

http://www.antimusic.com/news/03/july/item27.shtml