We hear all the time about
identity theft, a crime in which people have their identities stolen and how it
can ruin their lives if not caught in time, but we rarely hear about this next
scenario!
Who does this, creates an identity under one kind of genre to release their music, then ten years later claims it was all a mistake and something they never wanted! I recently found out that a group I liked was living a false life! I had been listening to their music for almost ten years; I even own five of their albums! They were a relatively unknown band from Seattle on the West Coast, but my niece had one of their albums and I began seeing their videos on a Christian TV station and started to like the sound of their music. As time went on I began hearing their music played on more and more Christian radio stations, so my assumption was that this band was Christian, what else would I think?
Since I live in Jersey on the East Coast and they are from the West Coast, I believe I wouldn't have heard of them at all, had it not been for the airplay on the Christian stations, I never heard them played on any of my local mainstream stations!
As I began to like their music more and more, I started collecting their CDs, because collecting music has been my passion for years. I started stock piling music back in the ‘60s with vinyl albums and continue to this day! Although it’s a lot easier these days, in the old days you only had two options, the single in vinyl which was actually two songs or the album which usually had about 10 to 12 songs all together. So if you were buying the album because of one or two favorite songs, you might not end up liking the whole album at first. Today it’s so easy to buy just a single song or as many as you want from places like iTunes and Amazon, where you can even listen to them first. I like having physical copies, whether I buy them or make them myself from iTunes.
So anyway getting back to this tale of woe and deceit, I liked them enough to buy their CDs and usually liked the entire album. I even went to see them live at a Christian music festival and their performance was really good! They recently released their latest album called “How to Be Human” and I heard they released a single as well, so I was curious about the album and the song. I checked them out on iTunes and was surprised to find the album marked “Explicit” along with the song!
Shortly after there was a big hullabaloo on FaceBook, because the lead singer Matt MacDonald had posted a rant in which he said in no uncertain terms was he or the band the Classic Crime ever a part of the Christian genre! His exact statement was “I do not associate with any aspects of the Christian genre, or the culture and belief system that comes with it.” I found this quite amusing, since their music was only played on Christian radio stations across the country and even overseas! Their albums were sold in Christian bookstores as well! Then Robbie Negrin the guitarist chimes in saying they signed with a Christian record company thinking the company was starting a mainstream or non Christian division. Something is very wrong if it took them almost 10 years to come out of the closet! Contracts or not, they could easily have extracted themselves from the Christian music genre, the record company would not have wanted to continue passing them off as something they weren’t, because that would have been fraudulent and against Christian ethics!
I believe, like it or not, they had found a way to sell their music and make money, doing big Christian festivals and concerts was bringing in a lot more money than playing in bars! The Christian radio airplay itself was getting their music out to the rest of us and increasing album sales! They used this ploy to build a big enough fan base so they could eventually get funding on future independent projects, smart or just plain evil?
What was even stranger, was the fact that there were two versions of the song "Wonder" from the album, a "clean" version was also offered, which made no sense. Why offer a clean version if the "Explicit" was what you were going for in the first place? The thing I find the most interesting is that even after the sheepskin cloak was removed, they still manage to show up in Christian music! A song from the new album was featured on a Christian music poll called Christian Rock 20 which is featured weekly on different Christian stations as a PodCast. So they seem to be still milking the Christian genre even though they have expressed their hate and disgust for it in multiple articles online and elsewhere!
I just don’t see the reason to continue using the disguise of Christian music, if they claim it’s limiting their exposure to the kind of audiences they want! Why not be real men by taking off all their music from Christian radio stations and stop submitting their new music to those stations and start submitting where it was intended in the first place, mainstream radio stations, either local or licensed streaming?
Something doesn’t seem right, was it really all just a case of mistaken identity or were they trying to kill two birds with one stone! It would seem as though in the end the Classic Crime is getting away with the “Perfect Crime”!
Who does this, creates an identity under one kind of genre to release their music, then ten years later claims it was all a mistake and something they never wanted! I recently found out that a group I liked was living a false life! I had been listening to their music for almost ten years; I even own five of their albums! They were a relatively unknown band from Seattle on the West Coast, but my niece had one of their albums and I began seeing their videos on a Christian TV station and started to like the sound of their music. As time went on I began hearing their music played on more and more Christian radio stations, so my assumption was that this band was Christian, what else would I think?
Since I live in Jersey on the East Coast and they are from the West Coast, I believe I wouldn't have heard of them at all, had it not been for the airplay on the Christian stations, I never heard them played on any of my local mainstream stations!
As I began to like their music more and more, I started collecting their CDs, because collecting music has been my passion for years. I started stock piling music back in the ‘60s with vinyl albums and continue to this day! Although it’s a lot easier these days, in the old days you only had two options, the single in vinyl which was actually two songs or the album which usually had about 10 to 12 songs all together. So if you were buying the album because of one or two favorite songs, you might not end up liking the whole album at first. Today it’s so easy to buy just a single song or as many as you want from places like iTunes and Amazon, where you can even listen to them first. I like having physical copies, whether I buy them or make them myself from iTunes.
So anyway getting back to this tale of woe and deceit, I liked them enough to buy their CDs and usually liked the entire album. I even went to see them live at a Christian music festival and their performance was really good! They recently released their latest album called “How to Be Human” and I heard they released a single as well, so I was curious about the album and the song. I checked them out on iTunes and was surprised to find the album marked “Explicit” along with the song!
Shortly after there was a big hullabaloo on FaceBook, because the lead singer Matt MacDonald had posted a rant in which he said in no uncertain terms was he or the band the Classic Crime ever a part of the Christian genre! His exact statement was “I do not associate with any aspects of the Christian genre, or the culture and belief system that comes with it.” I found this quite amusing, since their music was only played on Christian radio stations across the country and even overseas! Their albums were sold in Christian bookstores as well! Then Robbie Negrin the guitarist chimes in saying they signed with a Christian record company thinking the company was starting a mainstream or non Christian division. Something is very wrong if it took them almost 10 years to come out of the closet! Contracts or not, they could easily have extracted themselves from the Christian music genre, the record company would not have wanted to continue passing them off as something they weren’t, because that would have been fraudulent and against Christian ethics!
I believe, like it or not, they had found a way to sell their music and make money, doing big Christian festivals and concerts was bringing in a lot more money than playing in bars! The Christian radio airplay itself was getting their music out to the rest of us and increasing album sales! They used this ploy to build a big enough fan base so they could eventually get funding on future independent projects, smart or just plain evil?
What was even stranger, was the fact that there were two versions of the song "Wonder" from the album, a "clean" version was also offered, which made no sense. Why offer a clean version if the "Explicit" was what you were going for in the first place? The thing I find the most interesting is that even after the sheepskin cloak was removed, they still manage to show up in Christian music! A song from the new album was featured on a Christian music poll called Christian Rock 20 which is featured weekly on different Christian stations as a PodCast. So they seem to be still milking the Christian genre even though they have expressed their hate and disgust for it in multiple articles online and elsewhere!
I just don’t see the reason to continue using the disguise of Christian music, if they claim it’s limiting their exposure to the kind of audiences they want! Why not be real men by taking off all their music from Christian radio stations and stop submitting their new music to those stations and start submitting where it was intended in the first place, mainstream radio stations, either local or licensed streaming?
Something doesn’t seem right, was it really all just a case of mistaken identity or were they trying to kill two birds with one stone! It would seem as though in the end the Classic Crime is getting away with the “Perfect Crime”!
