A message from the NUWO
A message from Ashbury originally posted on Pete’s blog:
Dear Friends,
Dear Enemies,
I guess it’s time to break the fourth wall a little bit. We want to apologize to any of Pete’s fans who feel like we used or ‘betrayed’ them. These were never our intentions.
As Pete explained, the music industry has become increasingly difficult to penetrate, especially in the last few years. We’ve watched you guys post a lot of the bands that you’ve love and passionately plead for their case as well. And I think that further reinforces the point, that there are great bands out there that are flying under the radar, purely because there’s no bottle necking going on to concentrate them to a particular audience. We think as a result, the music industry has to transcend being just a “music” industry. I think it is evolving into a multimedia industry. That’s a big reason why we found it appealing, and necessary, to work with Pete. He understands that it is about the music, but it’s also about emotional investment, and entertainment.
We started our campaign in hopes of doing more than just dropping off a press kit to Pete as he passed by. Ian had a story to tell, and Ashbury had music that we wanted to touch people with. We thought it would be cool to go beyond the “webisode” or the music video, and create a story that people could not only read, but participate and become characters in. Ian, Jason, HateFilledBox… even Pete and his future counterpart are all characters that we hoped you would all get invested in, including Pete. The story didn’t completely resolve because in our opinions, there is so much to be told.
To us, this was like a television pilot, or an epic commercial. Honestly… we wanted Pete, even if for just a second, to think, “holy Shi….. what if a future version of myself really did this.” Just that trippy feeling of true immersion. It was so much fun for us to play along with everyone. There were a lot of speed bumps (like the imposter twitters) that we had to come up with solutions for at the last minute. Ultimately though, we have music and SO MANY IDEAS to share with the world, and we thought Decaydance was the perfect vehicle to that end.
We chose the songs Make a Scene and Figure Me Out to put on that final page because they were in context with the story and we weren’t sure that Pete or Alex would even play along. There was LOT of luck involved.
I know you asked me to communicate in private with you Pete, but honestly… I think everybody here deserves an explanation as to what our intentions were. We did this on our own, there was no label or any other company involved. We think Decaydance is the perfect place for us. I think Pete’s understanding of the music industry (and the fact that it’s a bands initiative and hard work coupled with creativity that gets them anyway) is exactly what we’ve been looking for as artists. We’ve seen a lot of positive feedback. Thank you so much for those of you who have give us support. For those of you who felt wronged by this, we apologize.
We also want to thank you, Pete for playing along. You didn’t have to give the final solution. You didn’t have to listen to the music, but you did, and this blog alone has been more than we could have ever asked for. I guess the ball has been thrown right back in your court. I’ve tweeted my email. I’m sure we have mutual friends that have a way of getting into contact with me. We would love nothing more than to be a part of what you’re doing.
Sin/Scene Surely
Brian Lee
Ashbury
