I remember the argument clearly. I was standing in the kitchen of my crappy studio apartment wondering what pair of Doc Martens to put on and saying that Green Day, were they ever to be heard by a conventional radio audience (this was pre-Dookie so they hadn’t been), would blow the fuck up. They were poised to go big in the post-grunge, punk resurgence of the early 90s and had so many incredible poppy hooks it seemed only a matter of time before they would break free of the bonds of indie recording and become global music giants.
The girl I was seeing at the time said “No way. They’ll never sell out.”
It was a dumber, simpler time, my friends.
Fast forward 20 years to present, where we find Green Day, in an attempt to prove that being an aging rock star is the most creepy thing you can be, signing on to a new advertising fad that is sweeping Japan – Thigh-vertising. They are paying Japanese teenage girls to wear stickers of their album covers on the patch of thigh between the top of their stockings and the hem of their skirts.
Apparently, they felt they were missing the key 18-55 year old pervert demographic in their album sales. Soon their music will be heard emanating from hundreds of windowless white vans parked in suspicious places.
The Japanese PR company that started this, Absolute Territory, calls it “thigh-vertising” and says that more than 1300 girls (all over the age of 18) have signed up to be human billboards since they began the campaign.
When asked for comment, a million lonely guys sitting in the dark watching anime girls with giant boobs said “Sounds great!”
The system works like so: a girl with parents who aren’t paying attention chooses a sticker to wear on her thigh and then has to show it off for a pre-defined period of time, usually in excess of 8 or more hours to receive compensation. To insure that they are following through on this terrible, horrible idea, they are required to take selfies throughout the day and post them on facebook, twitter or other social media sites, thereby maximizing the humiliation their families feel when they catch wind of what their daughters are up to and wonder where they went wrong.
Green Day, when asked for comment, just breathed heavily into the phone and made some grunting noises, which coincidentally is pretty much what their whole last album sounded like.
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About Kurt Specht
