Last year, in the downtime between shows, I used to play table tennis. Basketball's my game usually, 'cause I'm really tall and have the eyes of an axe murderer, so people back the fuck off. People won't play contact sports against me any more though, 'cause they've seen me tear guitars apart with my bare hands, and they know if Barack Obama wins the election then I’ll just need to make one phonecall and have them killed. But sometimes I can still get a game of table tennis in against some Eurotrash fucker who doesn't know what's what, and that's how I ended up playing a few games against Chris Martin from Coldplay.
Chris is a nice dude. He's all like "make trade fair" and "don't act like a shithead to animals" and whatever. I'm from Texas, so I like executing shit all the time and extracting oil from politically and environmentally sensitive areas, but hey, that's his call, whatever. His wife's nice too, but she can't play whirlyball for shit, so I don't get it.
Anyway, so that was last year, and our bands both went our separate ways, and I thought that was that. We’re not touring this year, we’re just hanging out around my Church, arguing about religious philosophy and politics, or whatever the fuck it is you people think we do all day. I’ve got a fucking Church, bitches, the fuck do I care? Anyway, the Church is built in the middle of nowhere, because that’s the only way we can get Pitchfork to stop fucking bothering us, so we don’t get out much.
We had to head into town a while back to contribute to that movie we’re not contributing to, so we loaded up whatever we needed onto the sled and mushed the dogs into town. Lemme tell you man, strapping a hurdy-gurdy onto a pissed off husky is not fucking easy, so I was in a shitty mood by the time we got back. Imagine how pissed off I was when one of the servants told me that, while we were out, all our shit had been stolen. Our themes, our style, our look, and any of the instruments we hadn’t brought with us, all of it was gone. I was so fucking pissed off, I beat the shit out of the servant and retired to the throne chambers to brood. We’re a fucking indie band man, we can’t afford to keep replacing our instruments all the time, and it’s not like I’m up to my ass in mandolin companies throwing freebies in my direction.
Anyway, Régine was way calmer about it than I was. I was like "Fuck this shit, man, I'm from Texas. Somebody's gonna die!" but she was all “Well, first we need to find out who it was”, but the servant was kind of hazy, so he just kept saying “Chris! It was Chris!” and then he’d need more painkillers.
I thought he meant Chris, as in “Chris H”, that whiskey-addled babykicking meth-head on the internet. You know the guy, he had some fucking crack fantasy about me stealing his basketball last year, and started yelling about it to the whole world. So I found him, and we had a goddamn eye to eye - and man, believe me, he’s not gonna be playing any more fucking basketball any day soon - but he didn’t have our stuff. Régine was all “Well, let it go, we’re going to be going all disco funk for the next album anyway”, but I was still kind of burned about it. Word gets out that your band can’t protect it’s turf, then before you know it you’ve got every indie rocker from fucking Andrew Bird to Zach Condon trying to muscle in on your racket. And Mr. Saturday Night keeps his fucking shit in order, man. You ask Brendan Reed, he’ll fucking tell you.
Anyways, we don’t have any internet connection or phone lines to the Church, ‘cause we really believe in that old timey shit, but a few weeks ago, I downloaded Coldplay’s Viva La Vida by semaphore, and I was like “Holy Shit, that’s where our stuff went!” And I wound up the TV, and what the fuck, there they are: fucking Coldplay, wearing our clothes, playing our music on our fucking instruments, and singing our lyrics with all the good parts taken out. They have our themes, our look, even my fucking mannerisms. And I was pissed off, man, tell you what, pissed off, and creeped out, and I wanted to strangle the son of a bitch.
But I get these rages, I don’t think straight, so we all had a sit down to think about what to do. Richard was all like “Whatever man, this is your problem. Bell Orchestre’s shit didn’t get stole, I don’t care.”, and if he wasn’t the double bass guy, I wouldn’t let him away with that shit, but I guess he’s right. Sarah though, she wanted to fuck Coldplay up bad, I swear man, that girl’s got violence in her heart. That’s why she doesn’t get a megaphone, she just yells racial slurs at the crowd all through the show, and we have young kids up front who don’t need to hear that shit. She scares the shit out of me sometimes. I mean she rocks that violin and all, but she draws these pictures, I can’t tell you how fucked up they are.
So then Will speaks up. Will, Will’s all about the damn internet, and he says “Man, you remember that whole thing with Chris H?” and I was like “I don’t remember nothing that can be proved, and I‘ve got an alibi”, and we all laughed, especially Sarah. But Will said “Naw, man, I mean the whole Berkeley thing. Once that took off, we were finished. Nobody ever really recovers from some rambling anonymous blog post on the internet. That’s like cancer to a band.” And he was right, I mean Christ knows, after that, Neon Bible was done for, and there was barely anybody gave a damn about our live tours. The Internet barely has any interest in us anymore. Bruises heal, but making vague unproveable accusations on the internet, that’s like carving it in stone. I thought about it for a while, 'cause there's no taking back something like that, but then I thought no, fuck it, he deserves it.
So yeah, here it is, I’m pushing the button:
Chris Martin, give me my stuff back. My mandolin, my resonator, my slogan guitar, my pipe organ, my Markus Dravs, my drummer boy gimmick, my old-timey ideas, my quasi-militaristic stage costumes, my onstage circle screens, my good natured earnestness, my accumulating-momentum-to-the-big-chorus thing, my political undercurrents, my beats, my lyrical style, my anti-interview thing, my themes, my audience participation, my momentous orchestral rock stylings, my sincere emotive gestures... and whatever the hell else you took.
Get your own stuff, man. And I don’t mean “Get Radiohead’s stuff” again, I mean, get your own stuff. Come on man, I know you’re a decent dude and you’re a fine table tennis player… but this just isn’t cool.
We know you have it, we’ve seen you using it.
Just give it back man. Seriously.
luv
win
