A Remake of a Charity Song, by the Elite of Indie Rock By JESSE FOX MAYSHARK
If parody can be called a form of flattery, then Sir Bob Geldof has cause to blush.
Twenty-one years after he gathered a group of musicians for the all-star "Do They Know It's Christmas?" benefit single, a similarly sprawling group of performers is asking a snarky follow-up question: "Do They Know It's Halloween?"
The single, being released next week to benefit Unicef, features indie-rock luminaries like Beck and the Arcade Fire, and pokes fun at what many see as the original Band Aid song's culturally patronizing attitude toward the third world.
" 'Do they know it's Christmas?' What a ridiculous question to ask someone!' " Nicholas Diamonds, the Canadian musician who helped write and produce the new single, said in an e-mail message. He said the idea for the song just "popped into my head one day."
"I thought, why not take the absurdity one step further?" he said. "What about Halloween?"
Mr. Diamonds, leader of the recently defunct band the Unicorns and the new band Islands, proposed the song while visiting a fellow Canadian musician and old friend, Adam Gollner, in Los Angeles, and the two of them quickly wrote it. Then they used connections to assemble a diverse group of performers to record it, including the comedian David Cross, the punk-rock impresario Malcolm McLaren and members of Sonic Youth, the Postal Service and Rilo Kiley.
"We respect Band Aid's ability to raise so much money for relief efforts, but their lyrics seem so misguided and inappropriate," Mr. Gollner, 28, a member of the band Dessert, wrote in an e-mail message. "Africa isn't a land 'where nothing ever grows' and 'no rain nor river flows.' And how are lines such as 'Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you' supposed to be helpful?"
Where the Band Aid anthem aimed to export Christmas cheer, "Do They Know It's Halloween" is a trick entreaty credited to the North American Halloween Prevention Initiative that asks for global assistance in fighting the horrors of All Hallows' Eve: "Latvia, Laos, Chad, Peru," the lyrics plead, "we need their help or else we're through/ They don't know the fear/ we endure once a year."
The 30-some participants were recruited via connections and chance encounters, but there was no group singalong à la "We Are the World," the 1985 hit single for African famine relief. Mr. Diamonds and Mr. Gollner recorded the basic tracks in Los Angeles, and the vocalists either dropped by separately or, like the Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq, sent in their lines from afar.
On the resulting track, Beck recounts horrors like "children on streets, begging for treats," while Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs beg, "Help us! Help us! Save our souls!"
Connections also helped on the production end. Mr. Gollner, an occasional contributor to The New York Times, used to be the editor of the New York edition of the hipster lifestyle magazine Vice, and he and Mr. Diamonds approached the Vice co-founder Suroosh Alvi about releasing the song on the magazine's sister label.
The song's cheekiness resonated with Vice, a brand better known for cold-eyed sarcasm than bleeding hearts. "There's so much irony and comedy in this, it fits in really well with the Vice sensibility," Mr. Alvi said, in an interview at Vice's industrial loft offices in Williamsburg.
He initially struggled to find a way to finance the project before Sony Connect, the online music service of the Sony Corporation, provided the necessary backing. (The Connect Web site started selling downloads of the song two weeks before its wide release.)
Unicef's longstanding Halloween fund-raising campaign made it a natural beneficiary. Mr. Diamonds, Mr. Gollner and Mr. Alvi all said they collected money for the organization as young trick-or-treaters.
A Unicef spokeswoman, Marissa Buckanoff, noted the agency had no official involvement in "Do They Know It's Halloween?" But she praised the effort. "It's very impressive that they were able to bring all of these people together," she said.
Ms. Buckanoff said trick-or-treaters collect about $3 million to $5 million for the agency. That dwarfs the $10,000 to $20,000 in sales that Mr. Alvi said he expects the song to generate.
The participants in "Do They Know It's Halloween?" were alternately amused and confused by the project. Mr. Gollner said the singer-rapper Peaches at first thought the Bush administration was trying to ban Halloween.
The only contributors young enough to actually trick or treat this year, the middle-school-age sisters in the Seattle indie duo Smoosh, saw the project simply as "a lot of fun," Asy, 13, the singer-keyboardist, said in an e-mail message. "I thought the song was really cool," she added. As for what Sir Bob might make of it all, Mr. Gollner said he hoped the elder statesman of rock charity would take no offense.
"Sir Bob is not the enemy," Mr. Gollner said. "He's done some incredible things."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/arts/music/05hall.html
