REEFER MADNESS REDUX: ABOVE THE INFLUENCE VERSUS INDIE ROCK

Indie rock has taken a lot of undue criticism these days.

Thanks to the genre's burgeoning popularity, due in part to
television shows like "The OC" and movies like Zach Braff's "Garden
State", music that's an alternative to empty-headed radio pop is
making a comeback in the charts at last.

But with this comes the inevitable backlash.

"Scene kids" are often maligned and stereotyped for their so-called
elitism, their fashion choices, and the obscurity of the music they listen to.

As an indie fan, this gets frustrating, but recently, anti-drug
organization Above the Influence has probably committed the greatest
atrocity against indie music and its fans yet.

A recent ad by the company featured a girl speaking of her recovery
from marijuana abuse.

In conclusion she states, "Now I don't pretend to listen to indie
rock or anything like that, and people think that's cool."

Whoa, wait a second.

Indie music has changed and enriched my life, made me a truly better
person, and on many occasions offered me the kind of hope and comfort
that meaningless popular drivel from MTV could never hope to do.

When I first heard this ad, courtesy of a story on Pitchfork, I was
mortified; how dare a company like Above The Influence use its agenda
to attack the kind of intelligent, wonderful music so many of us
enjoy, and how dare they attempt to enforce such a negative
stereotype by trying to link marijuana usage to a genre of MUSIC?

What is this, 1957?

This is unethical and slanderous, and infuriated me enough to write
many letters of complaint to the company's website.

Where was the motivation for such an outrageous attack, I wondered?

Well, then I did some digging.

Above the Influence has many corporate partners, which means at least
a portion of its funding comes from, you guessed it, big corporations.

Who are these corporations?

Through linking to the "corporate partners" page of
www.theantidrug.com, one discovers these "partners" include Cox
Cable, Geico, United Airlines, Lycos, Liberty Mutual, Mitsubishi,
Cellular One, AT&T Wireless and Capitol One.

So now comes the logical question: who are some of these companies linked to?

That's right, major record labels.

It would only be hypothesizing to say that these major labels used
their corporate push to try to discourage music fans from buying
through independent labels, and that they did so through the guise of
an anti-drug ad to try to target young viewers, but doesn't it seem a
bit suspicious?

Major labels are surely nervous at the growing trend of fans turning
towards indie music and away from mainstream pop.

For one, indie musicians tend to reject the common major-label notion
that you have to be attractive and shill corporate products in
big-budget advertisements to be a successful musician.

Indie rock is harder to exploit, in other words.

Hypothesis or not, what better way to attack indie rock directly than
to connect it in the public's mind with marijuana usage?

And really, who cares how unethical it is to use an anti-drug PSA
aimed at kids to do it, even if you offend millions of members of the
music-buying public?

It seems as if the days of Reefer Madness haven't died, after all.

Really. it's a shame Above the Influence didn't directly cite
specific bands or labels; I would've loved to have seen them taken to
court in a libel suit over their reckless and disgusting slandering
of an entire genre of music and its fans.

Above The Influence should be ashamed of themselves for using cheap
stereotypes to try to hurt fans of a specific type of music, and also
of possibly being a stooge to boost corporate earnings in doing so.

To me, you stand for nothing as an anti-drug awareness company if the
real motivation is malicious slander to encourage corporate gain.

In the end, Above the Influence may preach about saying no to drugs,
but it's clear that all they're under the influence of is typical
corporate greed.