Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?

Here we go, some stuff for the faithful Monkeys fans among us. It's an article from the Guardian last week:

"I've always had a soft spot for conspiracy theories. In our business, where it is often hard to tell fact from fiction, you need to be able to listen to wild-eyed lunatics as they rant and rave, if only to give yourself enough time to pick up a large object and batter them to the floor before they turn violent. These conspiracy theorists tend to think that everything they read in the tabloids is a PR scam. I have sometimes been accused of arranging an S Club 7 drugs bust that took the band on to the front page of the Sun (Spliff Club 7) and bought them a moment of unlikely rock'n'roll credibility. So it's a disappointment when I reveal that this was not a contrived attempt to generate publicity, but simply a case of three of the boys in the band getting caught with their trousers down by PC Plod.

Thinking about scams, it is interesting to consider the wild acclaim being showered upon the Arctic Monkeys, who release their new EP today, by media folk who are usually rigorous in their analysis of anything that might smell slightly fishy. There are a couple of things that make me scratch my head about this band, and these relate not to their music or the cut of their trousers but to the PR that has followed their swift rise to fame.

The first is the urban myth that has developed around their relationship with myspace.com, the US networking website that was set up a few years ago for sex-obsessed US students to post "dude where's my car" type gibberish on their bulletin boards. Legend has it that the site is somehow responsible not only for breaking the Arctic Monkeys but is also the force behind the upheavals taking place in the music industry. This all sounds logical. But if you quiz music journalists and fans of the band on the chronology of its development you quickly discover that they had built up a large and vibrant following amongst spotty northern teenagers some time before their music found its way on to myspace. Their trick was to ignore the usual paranoia many new bands feel about copyright and theft of original material and to give away their songs to their fans, firstly on free CDs at gigs, and secondly on any swap or file sharing website that would have them.

After a couple of No 1 records I can't help but feel that the poor Arctic Monkeys are being used to make myspace owner Rupert Murdoch lots more money by boosting the value of his brand. Perhaps I am being churlish and hypocritical in pointing this out. Our PR company has, after all, promoted several reality TV shows, and has encouraged millions of people to pick up their phones and vote for people like Michelle McManus. But at least a show like Pop Idol is honest in its presentation. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is.

There are many other points that perplex me about this band. Why isn't Alex Turner listed as their songwriter on their CD? Is it because other people are involved? How come their words remind us all of Dan Treacy and the TV Personalities? And while we're at it, why is it OK for them to endorse American corporate giant Procter & Gamble (sponsor of the NME Awards with their Shockwaves brand), and Rupert Murdoch's myspace, while refusing to play live on poor old Top Of The Pops as a matter of principle?

It makes me wonder then if the Arctic Monkeys are, in fact, an elaborate scam, cooked up by the great media brains of our time, as a means of getting young people to divert their income and their attention towards online music portals and youth brands that are supposed to be cool and underground.

I somehow doubt that the big UK labels are capable of coming up with this kind of devious plot when they are still plainly grappling with more mundane challenges, eg how to stage a half decent TV Awards show once a year without boring everyone to death. But I like the idea that the Arctic Monkeys might be an artificial creation, dreamt up perhaps by a creative outlaw - Laurence Bell of Domino Records for example - who is hell-bent on sabotaging the big labels by buggering up their model for selling music. And as we all spend more and more time being sucked into cyberspace on our computers, I suspect that this kind of hard-to-believe but technically feasible scam may be closer to reality than many sceptics might care to admit."

Hate to say I told you so, but...