Last year around this time the music world was alternately shocked and delighted by the news that A Simple Plan had broken up. For those of you who don't know (and that would likely include the majority of people over the age of 15), A Simple Plan is an "emo" band very popular with ritalin addicted youth struggling with major depression.
When I found out about the group's dissolution, I wrote this letter that I sent to the editors of Rolling Stone magazine. In their infinite wisdom they decided not to publish it, so I would like to share it with you:
Big MTV newsflash...apparently A Simple Plan has
broken up.
No doubt this event will shake the popular music world to it's very foundations, the repercussions of which will effect the creativity of all musicians currently
performing and recording worldwide. The break-up of A Simple Plan may well go down in history as the most notorious disintegration of a band since the Beatles
called it quits in 1970. Fans and non-fans alike will one day find themselves wondering "what could have been" had the bozos in A Simple Plan worked out their
differences and continued on...
A Simple Plan is dead...
...Long live A Simple Plan
I can't stop the tears from flowing...My sadness at the close of A Simple Plan's reign is overwhelming. The look on John Norris' face when he broke the news to all those TRL teeny boppers said it all...it was the expression of a man whose entire universe has been sucked into a black hole, chewed up, swallowed down
and then vomited back out to continue on without the crutch of A Simple Plan's awesome tunes. It was reminiscent of Walter Cronkite's despair when he
announced to the world, on a CBS Breaking News spot in 1963, that president John F. Kennedy had been shot. The sorrow in Norris' voice put me in mind of the radio
announcer from whom I'd learned of John Lennon's murder almost 25 years ago, and the mourning was not long in enveloping me, drowning me in it's black acid grief. I cannot even begin to count the tears that have already fallen from my swollen eyes since first finding out about A Simple Plan's demise.
And to make it even more heart- breaking, Norris talked to the lead singer on the phone (I should be shot in the head for not knowing his name...shame on me) and he
explainied how the guys in the band were all wanting to move in different musical directions and how he just couldn't tolerate 'em right now. I heard no hope for a
reunion in his discouraged voice as he tried to bring optimism to the crushed audience members by suggesting a possible solo career. Such a concession was just not enough to soften the blow that A Simple Plan is no more.
But alas, A Simple Plan is no more...
What's worth living for NOW, I ask you???
I don't know about you, but I thought that was pretty doggone funny.
And it would have been even funnier if the whole thing had not been a prank pulled by the members of A Simple Plan, who had never really broken up. I figured it was some sort of test they were giving their fans, to gauge the level of dissappointment that would break out at the news of A Simple Plan's cessation. If I remember correctly, there were a lot of sad faces in the TRL crowd that day when the news was announced.
But none of them were nearly as sad as the look on my own face when I found out that A Simple Plan was still a force to be reckoned with.
No comments:
Post a Comment