oo br . m.
publicity stunts
cupid stunts
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Ministry Of Sound A Game of Patients?
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n In the mid-90s Ministry decided to give their then all-conquering brand another shot in the arm, coming up with a mad scheme to turn Guy’s Hospital into the world’s biggest nightclub. They even knocked out a mockup showing a right rave-up going off in the courtyard and clubbers queuing outside, which would doubtless have looked great from the paraplegic ward. Some of the newspapers rumbled that it was a stunt, but they covered it anyway.
Ministry Of Sound Projection Racket
n Seven years before FHM decided to add another arse to the Houses of Parliament, Ministry began their logo projection racket with a little-noticed assault on Battersea power station in 1992. However, it wasn’t until 1993 when they beamed one out all over Big Ben’s doorstep, for 45 seconds, that they hit the headlines. Further victims would include the Millennium Dome and even Buckingham Palace, despite one failed attempt which, after a tabloid tip off to the po-po, got their PR team arrested as they unloaded the projector from a van at 5am. Their fine? A parking ticket. Ouch.
i nee medicatdio
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For some club promoters and record labels, the usual flyers, posters and deluge of spam emails just simply isn’t enough. We present dance music’s daftest publicity stunts
where an i graec m park? e
Words Phil Dudman
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n Ah, the Haçienda. Dance music’s very own hazard-taped pearly gates – home to more legends than an encyclopedia of Greek mythology and enough ludicrous money-burning mishaps to rival the NHS. Main Manc and DJ legend Mike Pickering remembers them using a wheel of fortune every Wednesday to promote the ‘HOT’ night: “One of the segments said ‘free drinks for everyone in club’. Obviously the arrow was weighted so as not to land on it, but one night, in true Haçienda fashion it did. What a stampede!” Haç Barman Syndrome still haunts the survivors to this day...
n Mark Archer and Chris Peat of rave group Altern8 loved a cunning stunt in the days before they evapor8ed. In ’92, a year after boshing out a famous 2.30am rave in Shelly’s car park, Chris stood as an MP in Stafford for the ‘Hardcore – U Know The Score’ party. However, according to the sleeve notes for ‘Full On – Mask Hysteria’, the next goal was to drop free Christmas puddings onto “the OAP techno-crats below” – from a hot air balloon; “the poor know the score”, ran the tagline. The plan was shelved, however, “when someone more sensible than the rest pointed out that Christmas puds-turnedprojectiles arriving from 2,000 feet up might cave in a skull or two.”
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WOAH ! OUCH
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Haçienda Wheel of Misfortune
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PASSION Beauty and the Breast
n When Passion promoter Jason Kinch asked his flyering team to reveal their club night T-shirts during a Central TV news broadcast live from Loughborough’s local fair in ’99, one of them went for the jug(s)ular. “Unbeknownst to me, one of our girls, Shelly, had written ‘Get your Passion here’ across her bare breasts and flashed them at the cameras. The cameraman tried to quickly zoom in on the news anchor, but it was too late; Shelly’s bosom love for Passion was exposed to the millions of armchair news-watchers at tea time on a Friday!” All photos of the incident were unfortunately destroyed, but the clip is regularly shown on TV cock-up shows all over the world.
5 peter j. walsh, davide bozzetti, getty
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Altern8 Pudding Their Foot In It
off with my head
klf money to burn
n Did they or didn’t they? According to fansite www.klf.de they did indeed, on the night of the 23rd August 1994 on the Scottish island of Jura. It took over an hour, was caught on film by a guy called Gimpo – cryptically entitled ‘Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid’ – and was witnessed by writer Jim Reid for an article in GQ. It was supposed to make people think about the relationship between money and art. But if you were one of the worlds’ poor, perhaps you’d first think ‘what a bunch of twats’.
how was for you?it
Is it in yet?
mike & claire get it on. on stage n “It wasn’t really meant to be a publicity stunt,” says Claire Manumission of her and husband Mike’s notorious live sex show in front of thousands every week. “It was more an artistic statement and an expression of freedom. It didn’t start with us doing it. It was supposed to be me and a girl, a beautiful French dancer, but her boyfriend got terribly jealous and Mike had to step in. It was kind of comical, tongue in cheek. I don’t regret it. Well, maybe when our kids look at the pictures and ask “why’s mum not got any clothes on?”
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publicity stunts
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Gatecrasher Hugging the Limelight
n It’s Gatecrasher’s Summer Sound System 2001 and Crasher PR (and ex-Mixmag staffer) Miranda Cook gathers a crack team of people with logo T-shirts and big furry hands to go round giving anyone who was having a hard time a hug. Lovely… until they nearly get beaten up by loads of angry boyfriends. Moreover, Channel 4 rolled up to interview them for The Big Breakfast, as Miranda recalls, “at five in the morning when most of them were off their heads!” Still, after watching Zig & Zag, who’s going to notice?
rex
FANCY another half?
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moby Speedier than thou
Prodigy 10 The Oh My God That’s The Tasty Shit
n Mixmag’s favourite tea-shop owner released ‘I Feel It/Thousand’ in June 1993. The tune was billed as ‘the fastest tune ever’, having a BPM count, at some points, of 1000. It subsequently made the Guinness Book Of Records and number 38 in the UK charts, despite consisting entirely of: ‘Ohoh Yeah bmbmbmbmbmbmbm.’ Still makes hard house look like Cliff Richard to this day.
n It’s June 1997 and time for the launch party of one of the most heralded albums in dance music history, ‘The Fat Of The Land’ by The Prodigy. Ex-Mixmag top dog Dom Phillips takes off in a helicopter at the [huge] expense of the PR company from a launch pad in Battersea and is flown to a barn somewhere north of London. Imagine the excitement! “There was a big spread of food,” Dom dutifully recalls, “and we all had to stand in a barn and listen to the album.” Unfortunately for Dom, that was it. The Prodigy were nowhere to be seen.
ba b ba ba abba a…
A MEANWHILEsIN e BARN… ir h d hertfor
e seen Anyonit ke h?
…block rockin' beats?
Brothers 11 Chemical Shop-Flopping Beats
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MMM!…WHAT ’S THAT BRI HT looking GG RA OVER THERE?SS
credits
n “I’m not sure quite how I feel about this. I like it. But I’m not sure it’s a very good use of money”, opens Iain Tait on creative blog site www.crackunit.com. He’s talking about a shop front taken over and redecorated with album artwork by The Chems last summer to promote the release of ‘We Are The Night’. “It’s basically a shop front with a screen in it showing a video,” he says after visiting, also mentioning a supposed Bluetooth download, “which I tried. But nothing seemed to come.” We’ve all been there, Iain. For all the insane creativity The Chems have gifted us with over the years, that is pretty darn weak. Can we suggest a Ronnie Barker impersonator at the door – “Anyone ready for some ba ba ba ba block rocking ba ba ba beats”?