Ever since internet geeks worked out how to send songs to each other over the internet instead of HTML coding, the whole world has gone filesharing daft.
No longer do people have to pay money for albums when they can steal them off the internet. To try and stop this, record companies have gone to great lengths to try and offer deluxe packages.
Bands like Radiohead sold limited edition artwork packs with shiny photos and exclusive songs that couldn't be bought in the shops. Others followed suit, and we've heard a rumour that Chris Martin from Coldplay will include a single pube in the first 472 pressings of their new album. Josh Freese who was in Nine Inch Nails has gone one better – buy his album and you can play Ouija board and take drugs with him!
We admit we haven't really got that much interest in Josh Freese. For all we know, his music could be made from plucking a pig?s tale and capturing the sounds of a fat man’s wobbling tits. But it's the strange music packages he's offering that have gained our interest.
Usually, a CD will be on offer for a bog standard price of ?9.99. Another one will be there for ?15 which will have cardboard casing which melts in the rain and contains a few extra rubbish songs. Josh Freese, however, is offering a variety of deals from $7 to $75,000. He's either made a shit album and is desperate for money, or is totally crackers.
Whilst we?d love to explain each of the individual 11 packages that he's offering, but frankly you'd assume we're making them up. Though they are supposedly genuine and not the creation of a man who’s had a 12-hour crack binge. The most expensive packages for $75,000 offer a few basic items that you'd expect – a signed CD/DVD and T-shirt. But then it goes a bit crazy. NME reports:
-Go on tour with Josh for a few days
-Have Josh write, record and release a five-song EP about you and your life story
-Take home any of his drum sets (only one, but you can choose which one)
-Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool’s Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while
-Josh will join your band for a month ? play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.
-If you don’t have a band he’ll be your personal assistant for a month (four-day work weeks, 10am to 4pm)
-Take a limo down to Tijuana and he’ll show you how it’s done (what that means exactly we can’t legally get into here)
-If you don’t live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he’ll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for two weeks
-Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robin’s place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagne
So then, part of this seems slightly illegal and part of it seems like a ploy to kill you. Taking drugs with a rockstar! Who?d have thought that they?d do that? Imagine our disappointment that for $75,000 we wouldn't get to make cookies and deliver them with the local girls guides whilst we listened to death metal from Finland.
Getting someone to write an EP about you might be a chance for you to lie about your mundane life. Instead of getting Freese to write boring songs about how you ponder over ordering a latte or cappuccino, he can make you sound like you throw the overpriced coffee in the clerk’s face when they mess up the order. Grr, unleash the anger and rock on.
It's the last bit of the $75,000 deal we love. His wife will make you lasagne. But not any sort of lasagne. No, it'll be given to you raw. Yummy, as you chew the fatty mince and contract mad cow disease, just remember that it was a rockstar who was responsible for making you shit your kidneys out through the eye of your arsehole.
Will musicians follow this trend? Let's hope so, maybe it won't be too late for U2 to offer a package where we get to beat Bono senseless for ten minutes for a certain amount of money.
magnetite says
What, no reacharound? I’m taking my money elsewhere.
I hear you can get the whole lot of Savage Garden to give you a Lubricious Flume for a tenner. Or I might have dreamed it.
josh freese says
I met this guy in a big 5 parking lot..He was a real ass and declined a plug from my youtube channel