by James Goss
Amber shook her head emphatically. “No, absolutely not. No. And you know why? Because none of us had a copy of the album. The label didn’t trust us with one.”
“So who did it—the label? In a weird conspiracy way...?”
Amber shook her head. “Maybe. Or maybe someone at the studio.” She picked around on her phone and showed me a screenshot from a forum:
Hey guys—who are HiVizKev? I’ve been sent a copy of their album to bounce down and tag for iTunes. Anyone want a preview copy? S’okay.
> Torrent plz. I’m they’re number one fan!!!
Lots of people had replied asking them to seed a torrent. And away it had gone.
“The irony, the ankle-biting irony is that we’re a success. Such a success that our label has dropped us.”
Amber finished her glass of wine, slurping away at the dregs like a kid with a milkshake.
“Basically, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this, but I am so screwed.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Someone needs to be—”
“Don’t,” said Amber sharply, and then softened. “You’re bloody useless.”
I WENT HOME, feeling a bit weird. Column A gave me ‘Odd situation that needed fixing’ and Column B supplied ‘She kissed me on the nose when she said goodbye.’
I stayed up playing with the cat and, thanks to bittorrent, listening to the HiVizKev album. It was so bloody easy to get hold of. Lots of people were sharing it on music forums, with encouraging notes like, ‘HiVizKev album drops! Give it a spin’ and ‘Love those guys!!!’ The SoundCloud posting was similarly littered with ‘awesome!!1!’ and ‘wooo.’ It was... anyway, the point is, not my cup of tea, but I’d never dare say that to Amber.
It was just incredible hearing her voice. On a proper record. Whenever I’d been to see them live, it had been a bit lost under the speakers-made-out-of-washing-machines that most music venues use.
Over the next few days, there was a lot of discussion. First about the album.
Then when Digital Spy reported ‘Label “cans” HiVizKev.’ That brought a lot of people out onto the forums.
Curiously (and many people admitted to pirating the album) no one accepted that the label dumping the band because of piracy was their fault.
Yawn! When are lables gonna catch up with C21? Piracy boosts sales. I bet that 000s of people have now heard of HiVizKev who wouldnt have otherwise and so if only 1% of them converts into buyers of the album thats still a massiv profit. Stupid lable. Boycott there stuff.
was the most highly rated comment.
AND HERE’S WHERE Amber weighed in on Facebook:
A month ago, I was going to be in the lucky position I never dreamed I’d be in. Quitting my job in order to be able to work on my music full time. I wasn’t going to be a millionaire, and maybe it wouldn’t work out in the end—but for maybe a year, I and my best friends in the world were going to be High Visibility Kevin full-time. It was my dream to be in a band since I was 12. And I nearly had that dream come true.
But now, I have to go and explain to my 12-year old self that dreams are never gonna happen. Because the album got pirated and the label invoked a clause in our contract. Simple as that. We’re not happy about that. Neither are the label.
So, listen, for all your arguments about how piracy is basically “free speech” and “good for sales” and other BS... please remember: I nearly got to be in a band for a living. Now I don’t.
BY PIRATING MY ALBUM YOU HAVE STOLEN FROM ME.
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Within about 5 minutes Digital Spy had made this ‘HiVizKev Singer “Slams” Pirates.’ And Amber was on the receiving end of a huge amount of criticism.
I CALLED HER to see if she was okay.
“Jeez,” she said eventually. “It’s like when I first dated Guy. Only more... hatey.”
Bitch didn’t deserve a career. Goodbye.
Don’t understand music? Loser gets out of the game.
Whore singer screams at fans. Nice.
I WON’T BORE you with any of the arguments about piracy. Hell knows, you’re probably reading a pirated epub of this on your phone and thinking Thank God I didn’t waste my money on this before passing this on to ten of your friends. Thanks. I hope your cock falls off. If you don’t have a cock, I hope you grow one and then it falls off.
I’ve done my bit of charity—I’ve killed some arseholes. The least you can do is buy my manifesto (I guess that’s what this is). Also, I’ll tell you the other thing I hate—when people say “I hated it. Glad I didn’t pay for it.” Guess what? I don’t think you’re allowed to hate something you haven’t bought. It doesn’t work like that. Remember when you’d buy a book and you’d start reading it and then about thirty pages in you’d realise you’d rather tidy the kitchen? That. That’s earned hatred. Picking up a pirated ebook and throwing it to one side? No. Doesn’t count.
SAME WITH MUSIC, really. Like emails from an ex, the arguments about piracy are complicated and long and whiny. Basically, all you need to know is that I was on Amber’s side. Probably because I fancied her rotten. But also because I thought she had a point.
WE MET FOR coffee one day.
“Guy’s kind of glad it’s all over,” she said. “He’s sort of glad they’ve stopped hating on me. A bit. But it’s also a bit as if... well, my friend Michelle says maybe he didn’t want me being in a band in the first place. You know. Maybe being a little bit famous. Is Guy the jealous type?”
I was stuck right there. True answer: “No.” False answer that may make her like me: “Well, no... maybe a bit... I mean, I certainly wouldn’t call him jealous.”
I went for the latter, and she nodded at me gratefully. I realised that it had been a while since I’d seen her not crying. Like Britain in winter, I thought her beautiful even through the rain.
“The band were thinking... well, you know, do we split up now, or do we do one last fuck ’em gig?”
“Yes!” I laughed, “You should totally do that. And you should call it that.”
And that was how The Fuck ’Em Gig was launched.
IT WOULD HAPPEN in a week. And it would be streamed live. Just to prove that HiVizKev actually had understood the internet after all.
THE DAY BEFORE, Amber was in despondent mood. “To be honest, I was expecting more of a fuss from the label.” The ex-garage in Shoreditch had been approached to see if they’d have a problem. “They sort of muttered and shrugged,” Amber said. “But they were basically waving us on like Nina Simone used to wave the white people into hell at her concerts. Apparently the label think what we’re doing is ‘interesting.’ Someone even wrote ‘paradigm’ on a vintage chalkboard. As they did that I wondered whether we were better off without them.”
She gave me a bleak smile.
“How’s Guy been about it?” I asked.
Amber’s smile didn’t waver. “Oh, fine,” she said. “He’s going to try and come along.” She squeezed my forearm in a gesture that either meant ‘marry me’ or ‘I’m fairly absent-minded’ and dreamily stared out of the steamed-up coffee shop window.
“You will come, won’t you?” she asked. I guess this was exactly how Mary Queen of Scots went round when she was inviting people to her execution. “It’ll be interesting.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, “I’ll try.”
Truth is, I had other plans that night.
EVEN THOUGH I wasn’t there I can still describe the venue to you. You’ve probably been to the sort of place. A basement in a bit of London that’s borderline fashionable. Currently it said ‘performance space’ but very soon it would say ‘coffee shop.’ Musty, damp-smelling curtains were draped over the concrete walls. A sharp whiff of mould and urine hung in the air and didn’t vanish, not even when the club filled up with people spilling beer.
There were a lot of people there for ‘High Visibility Kevin’s Fuck ’Em Gig.’ The poster on Facebook promised ‘Breaking Up Live On Stage.’
Amber strode out
along with her bandmates who I didn’t fancy (although, turns out, I had kissed one of them drunkenly at a party a couple of years ago). They were faced by a pretty decent crowd. About half of them had heard of the band before, and the rest were a collection of music bloggers and social media rubberneckers.
“Good evening Wembley,” drawled Amber with huge irony. “Let’s have a car crash.”
Then the music started.
THERE WERE A lot of people tuning into the webcast. I was one of them, nodding my head along to the music as it played tinnily in the background. While I got on with my work.
“THANKS,” BREATHED AMBER. It was nearing the end of the gig. During the webcast, she’d mastered the pop star’s on-stage demeanour that was stand-up/cool teacher/messiah. “Even though you’re not here for the music, you’ll admit that was pretty good. And now it’s time for the band to disband. High Visibility Kevin will go back to selling shoes, filing and answering the phone. But first, we’d like to say goodbye with a few numbers that if you want to hear again—well, tune into a digital station at two am, or just steal the torrent. Everyone else has.” She shrugged and the band launched into the opening notes.
And that was the last music they played that night.
The speakers gave a horrid squeal of feedback and then cut out dead.
A projector fired up in the venue, bathing the band and the backcloth briefly in ‘NO SIGNAL’ and then a masked figure in a pirate’s costume stepped into the camera view.
THIS WAS MY moment.
“Avast there, me hearties,” I said. Three years. Three years at drama school. I thank you. “Oi yam a poirate.” I dropped the accent right there. That’s a professional simplification. I tailed it off. “You may have wondered why I brought you all here today. Well, a crime has been committed here. I’m a pirate. You’re a pirate. We’re all pirates.”
There was some noise at that. A bit of wooing. Some cheers. Some boos. And a pretty good amount of genuine confusion from the band. Amber managed “I’m not—I don’t—” then realised her microphone had been cut, so stood back, shaking her head, prowling the stage.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to judge—”
“Good!” screamed someone. Hecklers are dull. They’re like people who reply to a tweet with a lame pun. They’ve always existed. They’ve never contributed. Like wasps.
“I’m here because I love High Visibility Kevin!” (some screams) “As much as you do!” (more screams) “If not more!” (boos) “No, no. I am their real number-one fan, and I’m going to prove it.”
There was interest from the music bloggers by this time. A few of them were filming the video on their phones. They knew enough about the industry to know that it was possible to capture the live stream at source and convert it to a video file and upload it... but that it also relied on asking a favour of someone in the office the next morning who already had their day planned out and would probably just about do it at lunch time. So they were better off slapping up the shaky-phone cam feed at once and then sorting it out properly later. Doing things properly takes time, and the internet has taught us that none of us have time.
(Remember when you were young adverts said, ‘Please allow 28 days for delivery?’ Can you imagine if anyone tried that shit now?)
Anyway, I was about to offer everyone in the room something interesting.
“LET’S JUST CHECK, shall we—can all the numberone fans give a massive shout out?”
All the fans shouted out.
“Would you do anything for the band?”
Massive shrieks.
“Now then, who here pirated the album?”
Two people shouted. In the semi-defiant, semi-sheepish way that people do.
“Cool. Just two of you out of a hundred?”
There was muttering.
“I’ve a word for you naughty guys. Proxies. Good luck trying to find me, because I’m hiding behind seven of them. But what about you lot?”
Names started scrolling across the screen. People muttered. Some called out when they saw their names, or cried for the ticker to stop so that they could take a picture of their name.
“Okay. Cool. These are the names of people in this room who pirated the album. Who stole it.”
Some of the people crying to see their names on screen again stopped.
“Yeah. Thought so.”
There was muttering.
“Now, the thing about you all is that it was pretty easy to find you. I’ll tell you how. This’ll get boring, but here we go. You told Facebook you were going. I could use that list of names to find usernames on blogs and torrent sites. I could also use that list to find out where you lived on the electoral register. And, of course, I already knew that you’d be out tonight.”
The camera panned back. And back. “It’s been a bit of a rush job, I’ll admit. Seven of you, well done on your home security arrangements. Two of you, brilliant news about your dog. The rest of you... well...”
By now the camera showed the pirate figure was standing in a floodlit supermarket car park. A pretty empty car park. Apart from a couple of sofas.
“You’ve had a car boot sale. Of the contents of your homes. Everything I could cram into a few trips in an easyVan.”
There was muttering and shouts and howls.
Amber burst out laughing.
“You fans, you said you’d do what you could for the band. Well, we’ve made quite a lot of money. On behalf of High Visibility Kevin, I’d like to thank you. And with that, perhaps a round of applause for the band and an encore? Goodnight.”
The projector snapped off, there was another howl of feedback.
But the band didn’t play.
Instead a fight broke out. Some people were fighting to get to the stage. Other people were fighting to hold them back. I’d like to say something simple like, “The people who had had their stuff stolen were trying to get it back and the people who hadn’t pirated the album wanted to stop them,” but really it was a melee of screaming and shouting and spilled drinks and fists.
Up on stage, as a dozen camera phone flashes went off, High Visibility Kevin were trying to work out the right facial expressions for this occasion. I can tell you now that no one got it right. But that it didn’t matter.
And, in the middle of the crowd, most of a pint on his jumper, stood Guy. And he didn’t look pleased.
SO, NOW, HERE’S the aftermath.
Amber and the band had enough nous (thanks to the drummer having most of a law degree) to rush out a statement saying they had no idea about the burglaries and that they would not be accepting any of the money, and urging people who had got things from the car boot sale to return them. It wasn’t a terribly successful campaign. I’d sold off quite a few PlayStations for two quid a pop.
The webcast was quite the hit. The camera phone replays and then the proper video clips went into a lot of places. Digital Spy, HuffPo, BuzzFeed. UsVsTh3m did a little game where you could supermarket sweep round a fan’s house. It was only reasonably popular since it didn’t feature any cats. There were a few arguments about what kind of crime had taken place.
Naturally, I’d screwed up. When you’re carrying out so many burglaries in a frantic hurry dressed as a pirate, you’re going to put a foot wrong. I’d emptied the wrong bedroom in a shared house, and naturally, there was a lot of noise about this is why vigilante justice is the wrong thing. Guiltily, I made sure the victim received an anonymous envelope of cash, but he curiously made no mention of this fact to anyone.
Actually, this worked out in my favour, as, when his housemate found the envelope, she then called the police, so the utterly innocent housemate was, for a while, held up as the possible suspect. It helped that he was about my height and build and had once gone to a party dressed as a pirate. Serves the cheeky sod right.
The really important outcome was High Visibility Kevin. Their record label rang to invite them to a meeting in their ex-garage and offered to pick up their contract. High Visibi
lity Kevin told them to take a running jump, as they’d already received another offer. A lot of bits of paper were waved about. Turned out record-label-in-a-garage had lawyers who worked in a shiny glass office. But then, so too did HiVizKev’s new label.
New label rushed out the album (now retitled Heavily Torrented Album). The physical CDs looked home-duplicated and someone from the band wrote the album name in a sharpie on each one. Well, at least that was true for the first thousand or so copies. The handwriting was quite nice on the first few, and then really a bit shaky by the end.
Heavily Torrented Album sold really well, especially on CD. Which then generated a further gale of blogs and comment pieces. Did this prove that piracy had no effect on sales after all? Was this a rebirth of the physical medium for music? Should we think it was all an elaborate publicity stunt? Where were the truths and where were the lies? Who were the winners and the losers?
THERE WAS ONE final outcome.
I got a black eye.
“WOW,” I SAID. Actually, I didn’t even say that. I wondered who was making the squealing noise for a bit, then realised it was me and slowly picked myself up off the lino in the hall. I was rubbing my eye.
“Don’t rub your eye,” said Amber, “it’ll get bloodshot.”
“You just punched me in the face,” I pointed out. It really hurt.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. She was still standing on my doorstep. Through my one working eye I could see that she looked expectant.