Whoops, sorry. The voice I’m hearing read the bold headlines in my head today belongs to Grace Park, who plays Boomer on Battlestar Galactica. While it’s practically gospel in geek circles that Six, the sexy Cylon, is the hottest woman on this or any other planet, it’s Boomer who really gets my motor running. Rowr.
Anyway, to business: in our first post here on Op Drop, we established who Alizée is, and kinda/sorta established who I am. In the post that followed, we established the goal of Operation: Disque Drop—to spread awareness of Alizee in North America, and grow her fanbase to the point where it’d be viable for her to release an album or do a tour here—and reviewed some history which I believe proves this goal to be achievable. At the end of both posts, I dangled the question of what Operation: Disque Drop actually is and what it does in front of you like a proverbial carrot, and then rather rudely didn’t answer it.
OK...so what is Operation: Disque Drop, then?!
I’m glad you asked that question, Grace. Like I said in my last post, Operation: Disque Drop is a one-man (so far) grassroots fan effort designed to spread awareness of Alizée in North America.
One of the problems with being an Alizée fan in North America (aside from the obvious language barrier) is that, while our numbers are growing all the time, we’re still relatively few and far between. Online, we’ve managed to band together into a couple of fairly active communities—namely Alizée America and Lillytown USA—but when it comes to acting locally to spread the signal, a fair majority of us are own our own.
So what can one man do? Plenty, as Ben of Operation LTNY is concerned! Almost immediately after learning of Alizée’s apparent desire to “make the French language known in the United States”, he started putting copies of this poster (which he prints himself) up around New York City.
Not satisfied with just that, he began recruiting like-minded Lilimaniacs via Facebook, and set about printing up business cards (which he’s also started leaving behind on subways) and pressing sampler CDs. And this Saturday, August 16, the members of LTNY will be having their very first meet-and-greet in front of the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, to hand out all of the above to passerby on the streets of New York.
Not bad for one guy, huh? Ben’s efforts really impressed me, if only for the chutzpah and sheer determination behind them. There’s been a lot of talk in the fan forums about organizing an underground effort to gain Alizée some much-needed exposure in the States, but so far, most of it’s amounted to little more than posting cute graphics on her MySpace page that beg her to come to the States. Ben, on the other hand, is actually out there doing something to drive awareness and grow her fanbase, so that it might someday actually make sense for Lili to come to the States.
It was inspiring. I wanted to help…especially since, as I said in my first post, I’m currently between jobs and have all kinds of time on my hands. I just had to figure out how. And this is where the whim to start up Operation: Disque Drop came from…
OK...so what is Operation: Disque Drop, then?!
Patience, Grace! We’re getting there, we’re getting there…
One of the other problems with being an Alizée fan in North America is that finding her albums here can be a real pain inna butt. I was incredibly lucky to find a copy of Psychédélices at a little French bookstore downtown a couple of weeks after it came out—they had only one copy, and they haven’t restocked it since. The only other time I’ve seen one of her albums was when I randomly came across a lone copy of Mes Courants Electriques… in the tiny World Music section of one of the major chain stores a few months later. I snapped it up immediately, even though I couldn’t afford the outrageous ‘import’ markup, and had already bought the album on iTunes. You see an Alizée album in the wild? You grab that sucker, no questions asked! Again, it hasn’t been restocked since.
(Pretty sad, huh? Two whole discs, spotted several months apart, in the whole city. And this is in a large city that’s considered to be one of the most multicultural in the world, in a country where French is one of the official languages. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be an Alizée fan in Branson, Missouri or Des Moines, Iowa. You’d probably be SOL.)
Undaunted, and still lacking physical copies of both Gourmandises and En Concert, I turned to the interwebs, hoping to find maybe another hole-in-the-wall French bookstore, and plugged ‘alizée french music CD [insert city name here]’ into Google. And that’s how I stumbled across this:
Operation Disc Drop - How it Works
There's nothing more satisfying than sharing the joy of music. Disc Drop is your chance to turn a total stranger on to the tunes that changed your life. Who knows? Maybe you'll change some-one else's life while you're at it.
STEP 1: Make a mixed CD of your favourite tunes. Somewhere on the disc write: "DISC DROP - cbc.ca/thehour" Be sure to include a track-listing so people can track down more music by the artists on your disc.
STEP 2: Drop off your disc in a random public place.
STEP 3: Go to the "I Dropped a Disc - What Now", click on the comments, and write down where you dropped off your disc and the track-listing. Check back later to find out who picked it up, and where it's heading next.
A lightbulb went on over my head. This was a genius idea. It wasn’t a particularly new idea—as far back as the 70’s, kids were ‘dropping’ mix tapes in bus shelters and phone booths in an effort to spread the word about the underground punk scene—but it was still genius. This was something I could do, something I could manage on my own, that still had the potential of making a difference.
In short, this was an idea I could steal!
I would become an Alizée ninja…nay, an Alizée Batman…striking stealthily from the shadows to wage a one-man crusade against an indifferent city…by getting her music into the hands of one stranger at a time.
OK...so what is Operation: Disque Drop, then?!
Geez, Grace…weren’t you paying attention? OK, let me break it down for you…
Operation: Disque Drop is a one-man (so far) grassroots fan effort designed to spread awareness of Alizée in North America, by dropping mixed CDs of her music in random public places for strangers to find—and, hopefully, enjoy—along with information about how the recipient can learn more about her and get involved in the North American fan community.
Not bad, huh? Of course, there was still the small matter of choosing a track list, actually burning the CDs, deciding how to package the thing, and figure out how to do all this with next-to-zero dollars (because, Alizée Batman or no, independent billionaire-about-town Bruce Wayne, I am not)…
But I think all that can wait for the next installment. Tune in tomorrow, Op Drop fans! Same Lili-time, same Lili-channel!
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HA! Wow was I confused when I first took a peak at your site...coming from mine, www.alizee-music.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteHmmmm...I LIKE IT.
Good thing you added the part about adding a note that you left it there on purpose. Otherwise people would probably just throw it away or smash it.
ReplyDeleteOk, so I need to outfit two thousand CDs with little wings and do an "air-drop" over San Francisco. :P But seriously, I think this is a good idea. Something like that was brewing in my mind, but I'm glad you laid it out. We need a web site for it though. I suppose one could just put AlizeeAmerica.com and/or Alizee-Forum.com, LillyTown.com, etc. Though, it's good that other sites are brought along too, like this one. :)
ReplyDelete