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Vice Blog

THE MAGICAL MISERY TOUR

Corporate giveback is very common these days. Companies, emboldened by Cameronian notions of the Big Society, create below-the-line user experiences, then selflessly plead with the press to give them loads of free coverage for it. Trouble is, these media outlets seldom do. If our inbox could cry, it would weep monsoons for the deluge of street gigs/awards shows/unique collaborations that arrive unloved, and remain unopened. It's a problem.

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The JD Set is just one whiskey-manufacturer's attempt to build a better universe by re-making The Human League's "Dare." This it is doing with the massed talents of some of today's heaviest-hitting acts. The Pipettes, Kids On Bridges, The Shortwave Set, Shy Child, Infadels. You know. The big guns. The same idea is playing out simultaneously in different parts of the country: The Buzzcocks' "Spiral Scratch" EP in Manchester; Madonna in Glasgow.

In London, the luminaries decamped to a studio on the Hackney Road, hellbent on cooking up a collaboration with the charisma of a spare room. "It's been a weirdly corporate week, actually," the keyboardist from Infadels tells us, "I've spent a lot of it writing a song for the new World Cup commercial." He clarifies, "well, we're only pitching for it at this stage." Their singer is ruminating on tonight's upcoming leaders' debate. "I think Alistair Stewart has good TV presence, but I'm not sure whether I'd enjoy his work as an interviewer," he muses as a nation of teen girls put down their Justin Bieber records to swoon a little bit harder.

The Pipettes are here too. Well, when we say, "The Pipettes are here!" what we mean is more, "the legally constituted holders of the copyright title 'Pipettes' are here!" They gone dun a Sugababes, see. Remember the three ladies who once advised listeners to "Pull Shapes" while wearing polka-dots? They are no more. Where once there was a Brighton trio, now there is a North Wales duo. Brilliantly, they've used the platform to make a cosmic-disco record with original "Dare" producer Martin Rushent. "Well, obviously it's a bit weird for the original fans when they see us," Gwenno Pipette informs us, "But we felt honor-bound to keep up the tradition of The Pipettes, because they meant so much to us."

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At the end of the day's rehearsal, the participants all upload themselves simultaneously onto the stage, lather-on the false bonhomie, and recreate "Together In Electric Dreams" for the cameras (or "Are Friends Electric," as the event manager seems to be going round calling it). The singer from Kids On Bridges is doing Oakey. The Pipettes are "the girls." Shy Child live up to their name, skulking abashed at the back of the stage. One guy from Infadels, who's wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "The Filth And The Small Fury," is pounding and thwacking like he's just been told his keyboards are the bellows inflating his mother's iron lung. The cameras soon train themselves on him, lapping up his raw passion. This is how rock music is--all about that soul that oozes out of every pore, it's about the magical moments that you live for, it's about true freedom, it's about a nice glass of bourbon.

The song? Terrible of course. Which is to say it sounds exactly how you'd expect it to sound: Like a dozen under-practiced, less-than-stellar musicians all bashing out the same notes at the same time, as though they had discovered some previously hidden musical formula that boils down to more notes = better music. The song ends, the Legally-Constituted Pipettes run away to their taxi, the Infadels begin to load-up, and Shy Child GTFO ASAP.

Who knows--perhaps the bands of 2040 will be giving the same treatment to Kids on Bridges' forthcoming second record? And maybe we'll all be pod-spawned slaves of cybernetic killbots? Either way's good for me.

GAVIN HAYNES