The LA Times is reporting that the punk-noise band No Age did a show sponsored by the famous sneaker brand Converse, in Barcelona on December 18th. But instead of accepting gifts from the company as it is often the case in these situations, the LA band cleverly ‘sneaked a 20-minute collage film of sweatshop workers, Black Friday consumer mayhem and weeping children into their live show’.
They projected the video in the middle of their set, after having requested to be surrounded by as much Converse advertisement and banners as possible, and that’s why they called it a ‘Planned Contradictory Action’,… and the funniest part of all this is that they thanked the brand for hosting them although the promoters had cut the video, which they nevertheless managed to almost show in its entirety,
Here is the statement released by drummer singer Dean Spunt
‘On November 21st, No Age was asked to perform in Barcelona at a concert sponsored by Converse shoes. After several discussions over email regarding where banners could be placed, in contradiction to our contract, I allowed and agreed to as much overt advertising as possible. We asked for a projector to show visuals while we performed. For our performance we played 6 songs, the lights came down and the projectionist played the video piece we had made, we kept playing sounds from the stage. It contained images of Black Friday consumers with abstract text I had written, images of sweatshop workers, crying babies, protesters and excerpts from an article about Nike owning Converse shoes and the conditions of the factories and the workers that had been written in November of 2011 by the Associated Press. The promoter tried to shut the video off after about 8 minutes, I yelled at him to keep it playing, he eventually shut it off at about 15 minutes, not allowing the video to finish its duration of about 20 minutes. We played 6 more songs, I thanked Converse shoes, we packed up and we left.’
I imagine Converse to be pissed off! May be some people are gonna think the band was not fair to Converse – especially since they had asked for as much Converse ads on stage – but I think it was a brilliant demonstration of what punk is or should be! Too many bands declare themselves ‘punk’ while accepting gifts from big corporations without thinking twice! It’s not a premiere for the punk duo, who had already protested against Walmart this summer,… and it is probably not the last time you’ll read the terms ‘protest’ and ‘No Age’ together.