Weezr’s Pork and Beans video turns the whole “viral fame” process on its head, taking in the personalities made famous in the last year or so by YouTube, and biting off their fame. It’s funny, self-referential and the tune burns (Full disclosure: I used to have “Hashpipe” as a ringtone on my old Sanyo. I like their riffs. Sue me.)
I’m not sure if this represents the final nail in the “Everyone famous for 15 minutes” meme, since time is no longer a delimiter for fame. 15 million pageviews? 15,000 friend requests on MySpace? How do we now categorize and describe inconsequential, perhaps accidental, fame?
On an artistic front, I really dig the throughline of Weezr’s stuff – they started out with the “Buddy Holly” video, biting off “Happy Days,” using the set & beloved character – and now they’re using anti-nostalgia, i.e. the ultimate in ephemeral phenomena, as visuals for their music. Oh yeah – and they’ve got a dedicated channel on YouTube now. Look for remixes and parodies of this springing up in the next week or so. Update: Oh God, they’ve started already.
Wired has a good take on this, including this quote:
“It was mayhem making the video,” Weezer guiartist Brian Bell explained. “We were performing with all these amazing YouTube celebrites, and I felt like I had walked into my own computer.”
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