Aaron Harris/Toronto Star

Today on the Scroll: Fucked Up explain why they’re taking on Big Tobacco for dropping their name; Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws reviews his own in-store performance.

“Plaintiffs Michael Haliechuk, Damian Abraham and Sandy Miranda compose, record, perform and arrange music with and for the group named ‘F****d Up’ (whose name appears in orthographically altered form herein so as to not needlessly afford opportunities for distraction from the merits of this lawsuit) …”

Thus begins the fourth point in the Complaint For Unauthorized Use of Artist’s Names For Commercial Advantage (Right of Publicity) and Unfair Business Practices, a class action lawsuit filed in California superior court by the San Francisco firm Bartko, Zankel, Tarrant & Miller.

“… The band has been performing since early 2001. Its members performed for many years both individually and with different bands and ensembles. F****d Up’s work is direct, sonically violent at times, and often characterized as hardcore punk, with the sometimes acknowledged influence of Spanish Civil War-variety anarchism, Viennese Actionism and the Situationist International.”

Honestly, who needs coverage in a punk fanzine when you’re being defended by San Francisco-based attorney Christopher J. Hunt, whose specialties have included intellectual property law over the course of three decades of practice?

The suit against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Rolling Stone responds to an apparent advertorial feature, where Fucked Up was cited among 91 other acts in the “Indie Rock Universe.” The foldout featured names “amidst what are apparently intended to come off as charmingly whimsical and childlike variations on the graphics styles which grew from the work of comics artists, including R. Crumb, in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s,” reads the complaint. But, back then, the lines between editorial and advertising weren’t quite so blurry.

The content appeared amidst advertising for “The Farm: Free Range Music” campaign sponsored by Camel cigarettes, and the use of cartoon-style graphics resulted in lawsuits from attorney generals in most of the large American states claiming the company violated agreements made in the wake of Joe Camel.  

Combined with this class action suit, and news coverage compiled at music-news aggregator The Daily Swarm, the graphic is surely the only thing that will be remembered about Rolling Stone’s 40th anniversary issue, dated Nov. 15, 2007.

But, the profane plaintiffs didn’t approach a local storefront lawyer to take on Big Tobacco. San Francisco group Xiu Xiu is also involved in the class action. Several record companies are implying that they’ll be fine with an apology. Some of the struggling artists might have even appreciated the exposure from Camel.

“I could never tell another band how to live their lives,” says Damian Abraham, better known as Pink Eyes, the frontman for Fucked Up. “From my perspective, though, this was really upsetting to see our name used against our will like that.”

Rolling Stone made the claim that they were the ones who produced the editorial content, independent of R.J. Reynolds, even featuring the graphics on their site without reference to that sponsorship. (Music-streaming service Rhapsody, which offers music from the cited artists, was linked to the online side of the promotion.)

“This might be a different conversation if Rolling Stone had an existing relationship with the band,” explains Abraham. “But we’ve never had a record reviewed in there, they never covered a show we played, they never mentioned us at all.” Nor have they generally covered such abrasive music, period.

Fucked Up, which was featured on the cover of EYE WEEKLY in October 2006, spent the past year furthering their dedication to making music scary again. They wreaked havoc upon the studios of MTV Canada (broken monitors + grates pulled off the walls = $2,000 damage + no screen time) and The New York Times (a glowing review by Kelefa Sanneh where the Paper of Record wouldn’t even hint at the band’s name in orthographically altered form), culminating in a riotous December 2007 performance in the basement of Bloor Street record store Sonic Boom.

“We set out to do really frightening live shows,” explains Abraham. “It was all about getting as insane as possible, where it was frightening and yet somehow appealing at the same time, where people can be equally enticed and repulsed by what we’re doing. And to really exert myself physically in the process — which is completely ridiculous in itself if you see the shape that I’m in.”

To this point, the effort has made them “a very large fish in a tiny, tiny pond,” says Abraham. “We’re definitely not famous from doing this. I don’t think you could even consider us at the level of, say, Sarah Polley.”

Fucked Up guitarist Mike Haliechuck, a.k.a. 10,000 Marbles was recently featured on music blog Stereogum, describing his overnight “day job” working in a light bulb factory, something he doesn’t plan to quit anytime soon. But he has publicly solicited the band’s endorsement of other products, from the Montreal Expos to In N Out Burger to Patriot brand dumpsters.

“If there’s one thing we can’t do from being in group called Fucked Up,” says Abraham, “it’s actually make a living.”

Glossy custom entertainment magazines underwritten entirely by tobacco companies were a trend in both Canada and the United States around the turn of the last century. They were legislated out of existence on this side of the border. All of them ended up folding stateside as a result of legal pressure, according to University of Mississippi journalism chair Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni.

The case against Camel cigarettes by Fucked Up is more contextual, though, since the advertiser likely assumed they would be flattered by the exposure.

“We feel we were misused,” says Abraham. “Something we’ve worked hard to create was exploited against our will. We want them to admit they were wrong.

“The fact that Fucked Up was mentioned in there wasn’t some great coincidence. This isn’t a case of subliminal advertising, where we’re claiming that there were penises in the shadows — our name is right there. Maybe they thought we were too stupid to know what was going on.”

THE SCROLLING EYE SELF-REVIEW: NADA SURF
Nada Surf followed in the footsteps of Fucked Up with an acoustic performance in the wood-paneled basement of Sonic Boom at Bloor and Bathurst on Wednesday night. The audience was smaller than you’d think, and older than you’d think, yet also bigger and younger than you’d think. Considering how the resurgent power-pop act writes crafty tunes that manage to appeal to both teenyboppers experiencing their first pangs of heartbreak and aging Gen Xers experiencing their first pangs of midlife crisis, they might have drawn a more diverse crowd in a suburban mall. Their pattern of accomplishment apparently continues on their forthcoming long player, Lucky.
  
But what’s left for a critic to say? For the first Scrolling Eye attempt at asking more talented people to appraise their own performances, frontman Matthew Caws writes:
 
"After a very full but good day of interviews and radio appearances to announce the release of our new album, guitarist Ira Elliot and I walked into the store about 20 minutes before we were due to play. What an amazing store, so effing huge! My first job was in a basement store called Record Runner on Cornelia Street in New York. it was and still is about the size of a station wagon. Sonic Boom is like a soccer pitch upstairs and a basketball half-court downstairs, where we were to play.

"We walked through quickly because we wanted to have a breather after our long day. There were a dozen people sitting around the stage and we went into the back room to tune up and have a drink. When it was time to get out there, the place was was totally packed, a very pleasant surprise. I said 'Hi' into the microphone and told everyone that setting up would take a couple of minutes. I tend to be rattled for the first few minutes of every performance, but this room felt good right away.

"Everyone was quiet and seemed excited. The guys at the club had kindly borrowed a guitar amplifier for me. I plugged my guitar into my tuner, my tuner into the amp. I was going to sit but decided to stand because it was so crowded. Ira was sitting on his 'cajon,' a flamenco percussion box that looks like a cheap stereo speaker, that goes, roughly, 'boom' when you hit it in the middle, a 'thwack' when you hit it near the edge. We both talked into our respective microphones for a while so that the soundman crouching behind us could adjust the levels. Then we were off.
 
"We didn't have a set list exactly, just a random list of song titles we could think of backstage. I just played them in the order they were on the page. The show was an extreme pleasure. The crowd was attentive and really enthusiastic. I love in-stores because people are generally much quieter than they are in a club, and in this case we were in the basement, far from any cash registers or doors. We were near an enormous wall of used cassettes. The walls were covered in wood paneling, like the ultimate rec room. Everyone was smiling and seemed genuinely excited to be there.
 
"There were no mishaps, no broken strings, no feedback, and no one in the front row doing the smashed potato. There were a couple of film cameras on tripods, a few hand-held video cameras and a lot of phones pointing at the stage. After about eight songs I said that we were going to keep going but that we knew this was longer than announced, so if anyone needed to go, they totally should, we wouldn't be offended. We played a few more, ended with a children's song called 'Meow Meow Lullaby,' whose incredibly simple lyrics I actually managed to blank on at one point, got offstage and signed a bunch of posters and CDs.
  
"A half-hour of hello-how-are-yous later, we went backstage and had yummy cheese and more wine. What could be better?

"I LOVE record stores. I agree that downloading music can be awfully convenient sometimes, but nothing beats doing it the old-fashioned way. And don't you get the feeling sometimes, looking at the long list of songs on your screen, all in the same impersonal font, that you have loads of music but nothing to listen to? Maybe it's just me…"

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