Gay For Johnny Depp
The Politics Of Cruelty LP
Friday 23rd of November 2007
Throughout the years, people have pulled a great many stunts that, essentially, boil down to PR. Stabbing the phrase "4 Real" onto your arm during an interview, saying a rude word on the Today programme, shoving explosives in your bass drum or beating up your girlfriend and writing a song about it. In some cases, there is indeed something worth all the press, but just as often it's all just a contrived attempt to offend, shock or disgust and there's little going on musically to justify the fuss.
Gay For Johnny Depp sadly fall, rather heavily, into the latter of these two categories. Presumably believing that their album wouldn't justify enough column space, their publicity approach was to include a rather sick fake letter, addressed to Johnny Depp, in which the writer describes a trip to see GFJD in New York and, essentially, performs a number of sexual acts not worth describing on these hallowed pages.
As a matter of fact, they stretch the story so far, it isn't actually funny. It doesn't come across as ironic and it isn't even shock-humour. If someone you knew had written this, you'd be passing it on to the police and they would probably end up on the sex-offenders register - but somehow they think it's perfectly acceptable to include this in a press-pack. This is a totally poor attempt to be controversial in order to get people talking and I'm actually sorry that I've given them any coverage.
Musically, the record isn't about to set the world on fire and I'm not the first person to say it.
Approaching publicity with this kind of material could seriously damage your reputation and the fact that the letter gets all the attention and the music requires so little discussion is a poor testament to the band. If it's all the same, I'd rather not receive any correspondence either.
Author: Saur
Label: Captains of Industry
Found in: Record Reviews
Official Rating
We rated this record 0.5 out of 5.