I consider this column to primarily be a means to ensure that music industry stays relevant and rich during the Internet piracy age. I want to ensure that 50-year-old dudes who know nothing about music will keep their beach homes and magical, flying cars. With that in mind, let's talk about Gorillaz.
The Gorillaz concept has to be one of the most interesting musical projects of the past 20 years. The band is made up of cartoon characters with personalities that toe the line between rock star urban-myth and ridiculous (their guitarist Noodle was discovered by the band when she was 10 years old after she appeared on the band's doorstep in a FedEx box and only spoke one word of English. Noodle). Gorillaz are very unique sound wise as well. Their sound could be described as alternative trip-hop, which has to be the coolest name for a genre besides "dub step" or "David Bowie." Yes, David Bowie is a genre.
What best exemplifies how different Gorillaz are from all other bands though is their website.
Since their inception, Gorillaz has had an interactive websites created to coincide with the releases of their albums. By interactive, I don't mean that the icons make noises when you scroll over them. I mean you can travel through the world Gorillaz has created and find stuff. Their self-titled debut (which was the first album I ever bought with my own money) had a website that allowed for a tour of Kong Studios, the fictional home and studio of Gorillaz. This website would be considered big by today's standards, but back in 2001, this website was a monolith. Nearly every room in the studio had a character in it with something to say or something to look at. For example, if you were to go into lead singer 2-D's room, you'd find his dog, a plethora of keyboards, and a computer where you can check his e-mail. The CD itself was enhanced and it unlocked even more things including bassist and Satanist Murdoc's Winnebago. It was a dirty place, but you were immersed in Gorillaz. The music was good enough that you became interested in these characters and the website allowed you to be a part of their reality.
Their second album, Demon Days, took the Kong Studios website design and injected it with steroids. They added games to play in the studio such as traditional favorites like bowling and darts and some other original games to boot. Also, they added a few more rooms to check out and explore.
Recently, Kong Studios was replaced with the namesake of their upcoming album, Plastic Beach, which will be released March 9. Plastic Beach itself is a trash-covered island with a plateau topped off with a huge house creating a combination that would make Captain Planet throw up. The idea of this island is that all the trash and plastic washed collected here and formed land. One can tour the island and solve puzzles in an adventure game that has you do everything from dislodge a wrench (or "spanner," the Gorillaz are both cartoons and British who are like our own real life cartoon characters if you think about it) from a pelican's mouth while a disenfranchised seagull makes sarcastic comments all the while, to fixing an elevator that is being guarded by Tattoo from Fantasy Island. While this new website is fun like all the older ones, this site has an actual message to convey and doesn't depend on being just awesome. Scores of bands have some sort of message concerning climate change or pollution or what have you but no band does it the way the Gorillaz do and that is because no other current band can.
Gorillaz are the only band able to have these immersive websites for two reasons. The first reason is that the band members who make up Gorillaz are cartoons so we all ready perceive them to be in another dimension. Cartoons are a great means of escape since anything is possible within their constraints; even the creation of an alternate world. Other bands have this going against them since they are part of our dimension. Even someone like Lady Gaga couldn't pull it off and she seems like she is most certainly from another dimension. The closest thing that a real human band or musician could feasibly do to match Gorillaz on is have a "The Sims" like re-creation of their own band house or studio, but that sounds more creepy than fun.
The second reason is that every other band can't match the story Gorillaz created around them. All those back-stories as to how Russell ended up with the group or why 2-D appears to have no eyeballs were manifested through imagination. Other bands have the same basic story where a bunch of dudes bought instruments, met each other, they jammed, and they formed a band. It is automatically assumed by a person gazing upon Gorillaz the first time that the band must have a different back-story then everyone else since they are not like any of us. There is nothing to relate to, so thus it creates a mystery. How did they get here? Why are they all so different from each other? Seriously, what's up with 2-D's eyes? These questions are created so the answers will be pursued. Bands can have mysterious questions around them but the answers have to be possible, whereas Gorillaz don't have to do anything even relating to possible.
What the thousands of record executives who read my columns need to understand is that they should never create anything like this for any bands hailing from the world we all know and comprehend. It would cost too much money and it would be wasting everyone's time. You could have an interactive story that follows the album's trajectory but anything more than that is playing with fire. I am not saying bands shouldn't have cool interesting websites, but what we have with Gorillaz is a venue where this works. Bands that are on a level of celebrity not approached by other bands like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin could get away with grandiose websites with bells and whistles but that is because those bands were larger than life and they also seem to inhabit a different universe than ours. Unless the band is on a level where they are out of this world or seemingly out of this world, the crazy adventures involving the band should probably be left to our own imaginations instead.
Corey Nachman is a pop-culture columnist for TNH and he contributes his creative writing and stellar humor weekly for the Forum or Arts sections.
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