Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: April 23 2009, 15:08 |
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Of course the thing is, the bells in some of those places may be rung at 6 every day anyway...
I'm not really certain how accurate their information is either; they haven't said what type of bells will be rung, but some of the venues mentioned - the Siegessäule in Berlin, for example - don't have any of their own. There's a carillon nearby, but that's the carillon, not the Siegessäule! That one's a fairly iconic location, but if they're going to, say, have handbell ringers around the Siegessäule, they ought to realise that it's basically the centre of a traffic roundabout, which is noisy and where I've never personally seen too many people gathering (I mean to say, it seems to do ok as a tourist attraction, from people who feel fit enough to climb all the stairs to the top, but it never really bustles with activity). The lack of activity can be made up for by somehow attracting an audience (Barack Obama seemed to get a big enough crowd when he visited...), but that doesn't help with the traffic noise (closing the roads would, but then I doubt they'll go to that expense). The Brandenburg Gate would make a nicer venue for that kind of thing (though gaining permission could prove tricky), or Gendarmenmarkt, or Bebelplatz, to name a few quite prominent places which are more isolated from traffic (not to say that there's none nearby, just it's not as heavy on all sides) and are likely to both be places where there's a decent amount of people passing through and enough space for them to be able to stop and watch. If they'd not gone with the whole 666 thing, they could have involved churches...
Going further with the whole Berlin thing, not only does one of the cathedrals on Gendarmenmarkt have a carillon, but there's a statue of Schiller (no, not Christopher von Deylen...) there too - author of (amongst other things) Das Lied von der Glocke (the song of the bell), a poem which features the idea of bells as a constant presence in life, ringing out at different stages through life...rather like the way different stages in Mike's career have been marked by Tubular Bells in its various forms. There's the beginnings of an event there...but not one which is compatible with the whole 666 concept.
I can't say I think the 666 thing is too sensible - Tubular Bells isn't a satanic album, after all. If it was "Tubular Bells - 6.6.6 - it's not just about the Exorcist" the thing would make a tiny bit more sense...but personally, I can see it alienating more people than it attracts.
There are more whacky - and ultimately probably more successful - things they could do. Going with a bells theme, they could get a load of Tubular Bells fruit stickers printed, stick them on oranges and lemons (in reference to the nursery rhyme) and give them out at London stations. Those would only serve as a reminder of a larger media campaign though (i.e. a way of making people think "Why the heck am I being given fruit?" and being sufficiently puzzled that it sticks in their minds and - if you can excuse the pun - rings a bell when people next hear it mentioned). Whether anyone would then accuse the album of being a lemon is another matter.
I've tried several times to discuss the possibility of us doing an event to tie in with this, but they refuse to give us any details, so I can only assume they don't really want our support there (silly, if you ask me - if they want to attract attention to these bellringing events, having large numbers of people turning out would help, and inviting fans would seem a good way of doing that). Maybe we'll all go down to the pub instead...
As for what Mike's objectives are here...I'd not ask him! He has very little to do with all this - he remixed the album, that's about it. Most of this, as far as I'm aware, is the work of Universal.
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