Friday, September 19, 2008

Back to Basiques


Why's it called 'Operation: Disque Drop' again...?

Given how little I’ve written about it in the past few weeks, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Operation: Disque Drop had maybe lost sight of its core purpose, in that there’s apparently been precious little disque-droppage going on. Heck, the last time I even mentioned undertaking an Op Drop was back on August 28, when I summed up the last of my efforts at Fan Expo, almost three weeks ago.

Since then, it seems like I’ve written about practically everything but! I’ve been distracted, after all, by the rumors of Alizée changing record labels within Sony BMG (and hopefully getting a better promotional team behind her in the process). And then there was the hoopla surrounding Alizée’s nomination for an award at Los Premios MTV 2008 (and my ongoing efforts on YouTube to encourage fans and casual viewers alike to vote for her), which consumed me for the better part of this week.

So when is Op Drop going to get back to the business of actually dropping disques, you ask? Well, I’m happy to announce that, after two weeks spent upgrading, refining and stockpiling the reserves, the first of the Mark IV DVDs have made their way out the door, and hopefully into the hands of several enthusiastic Lili-converts. A grand total of thirty disques were unleashed Friday afternoon upon an unsuspecting public in and around the Toronto Eaton Center, downtown T-dot’s most highly-trafficked shopping center, and a popular destination for locals and tourists alike.

Though not as major an undertaking as the three-day assault on Fan Expo, in its own way, the concentrated burst appeared to be even more successful—I managed to unload all thirty disques in about half the time it took me to drop the same amount at the convention, with some disques being picked up mere seconds after I’d dropped them. I felt a little bit more exposed—in a mall that crowded, it’s nigh-impossible to pull off a discreet drop completely unnoticed—but while I raised a few eyebrows, nobody actually stopped me this time to try and return a disque. In fact, the curiousity translated into at least a few immediate pickups.

Also—bonus!—in the course of the afternoon, I discovered that the major chain music store across the street not only has a robust international music section on their third floor, but that they actually carry Alizée’s albums! Not Psychédélices, sadly, but they did have both Gourmandises and Mes Courants Electriques in stock. (Granted, it was only one copy of each, but that’s still two more Alizée albums than I’ve seen anywhere else!) I happily snapped up Gourmandises, at a relatively reasonable price, finally filling the only gap in my collection (if you don’t count Tout Alizée, which I don’t, but that’s a subject for another post). Bonus objective, achieved!

All-told, a very good day. I will definitely be making TEC a regular stop on the Op Drop tour, especially as the Christmas shopping season approaches.

Meanwhile, another payload of Mark IV disques is currently winging their way to an undisclosed location via international airmail, en route to Op Drop’s very first remote operative, for use in their mission to infiltrate one of Yelle’s upcoming North American tour appearances. More on this to come as the date of the operation approaches…

Want to get in on the action? You, too, can become a remote operative for Op Drop in your city and get in on the ground floor of Alizée’s North American revolution. Whether you’d like to infiltrate one of Yelle’s concerts (or that of another artist whose fans you think would be receptive), or you’d just like a hand getting set up to do smaller promotional things in your home town, Op Drop is here for you! Drop me a line either here in the comments or via email, and we’ll see what we can do about getting you started in promoting Alizée where you live!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Rocking the Vote for Alizée, YouTube-style!

My name is Disque, and I approve this message

If you'd told me a year ago that I'd spend every spare moment of three days working on a guerilla marketing video for a French recording artist nominated for an MTV Latin America video award, I would have looked at you like you had lobsters crawling out of your ears.

And yet, here we are. It's funny how life works, huh?

I literally just uploaded it to YouTube, so I don't think it's propagated through to the 'Most Recent Videos' listing, or shown up yet as a video response to that tactical nuke video I keep linking...so please consider this a sneak preview of the promotional video I made for Alizée with my own widdle hands:



A couple notes on the making-of...the director's commentary, if you will:

  • This is my first ever YouTube video, and only the third I've edited with Windows Movie Maker. It turned out alright, all things considered. It's not perfect, and it took me about three times longer than it should have, but I learned a lot while putting it together. The next one will be better.
  • Though it's a far cry better than the dual VCRs and jog-shuttle editing board I used in AV Club back in high school, Windows Movie Maker is a little skimpy on options, and is a bit of a bitch to work with besides. If anyone knows of a cheap-as-free alternative that's more robust, or at least a little more user-friendly (i.e. less prone to crashing repeatedly), I'd appreciate it if you dropped me a line.
  • My original plan was to use J'en Ai Marre! as the backing music, but lip-syncing it with the clips plucked randomly from throughout the original video proved to be too cumbersome, and not lip-syncing it just looked weird.
  • Plan B for the music was to use David Bowie's Heroes, a song I've always loved which I thought was oddly appropriate, especially given the ongoing superhero metaphor running through Op Drop. Unfortunately, there's about thirty gazillion versions of it out there, all of them different, and most of them over six minutes in length. I tried a few, but they also proved to be difficult to work with as far as syncing things up went. I finally just gave in and went with the Wallflowers' cover from the Godzilla soundtrack, instead. It's an inferior version, I know, but at least it's studio-quality and easy to sync to.
  • I have plans to do a version of this for La Isla Bonita too (the next most-watched Alizée video on YouTube), and possibly versions for Ella, Elle L'a, Mademoiselle Juliette and Fifty Sixty as well. We'll see--there's not a whole lot of time left before the voting ends. If anyone has suggestions on how I could improve upon this first effort, I'd be more than happy to entertain them.
Anyway, if you're reading this, if you could please take a moment to visit the video's page on YouTube to comment on it and vote it up, I'd really appreciate it. And if you'd like to spread it far and wide on any fan sites, Facebook pages, MySpace profiles or blogs you happen to frequent and/or operate...well, that would be totally cool, too.

And, of course, don't forget to vote!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Rocking the vote for Alizée, Latino-style


Lilly Town catches election fever! (Well, sorta...)

While it’s unlikely that anybody who actually visits Op Drop on a semi-regular basis isn’t already aware of this—it’s been posted on her official MySpace, and all the fansites I lurk on are all a-tizzy about it—it still bears mentioning: our girl Alizée has been nominated for an MTVLA award, and she needs our help to win it!

While it may seem odd for someone with eight years and five million albums sold under her belt to be nominated as a ‘new’ artist, that’s nevertheless the category Alizée has been nominated in—‘Mejor Artista Nuevo Internacional’—alongside the Jonas Brothers (ugh!), Katy Perry (yum!), Paramore and Tokio Hotel. That’s some pretty stiff competition right there, so Lili needs all the help she can get!

On the bright side, there appears to be no limit to the number of times you can vote…but on the down side, in order for your vote to count, you need to vote in every single MTVLA category, not just the one in which Alizée’s been nominated. Not only is this a major pain in the tuchas, but it appears to be a point that many of Alizée’s supporters who followed the link from her MySpace (myself included) have initially overlooked, resulting in a whole whack of votes not being counted in the first few days of the contest.

Just so you’re clear on how it works, then, here’s an excerpt of a post from AC Mix at Lilly Town USA, which gives the 411 on exactly how to rock the vote:

so here is what we need to do.................

1- the link:
http://www.mtvla.com/premios/ click on where it says Mexico or any other place... its just to know where the votes are coming from... but there is no USA.. so i guess mexico is best that will take you directly to the MTVLA awards home page...

2- click on where it says
"Nominados" http://www.mtvla.com/premios/nominad...questid=390870 that will take you straight to all the categories...

3- in the list on the left. click on where it says
"Mejor Artista Nuevo Internacional"... http://www.mtvla.com/premios/nominad..._Internacional it will take you to Alizée's category and she will be on on top left.

4- click on "Votar" http://www.mtvla.com/premios/votacio..._Internacional you should first see a cone like shape in the middle of all the categories. then automatically, it should take you to her category... alizee again top left hand corner...

5- click on "Votar" again... and it will take you out to another category so you can continue your voting.....

This step is extremely crucial, you MUST CONTINUE YOUR VOTING SO YOUR VOTE COUNTS... IF YOU DONT VOTE IN ALL THE CATEGORIES YOU VOTE WILL NOT COUNT..


i know its a pain in the but to vote for people you dont know and categories you dont care for... but it is a requirement... ill repeat!!!


IN ORDER FOR YOUR VOTE TO BE COUNTED, YOU NEED TO VOTE IN ALL THE CATEGORIES FIRST.

Lets all do it for Alizée so we can see her happy
so then.. we can vote as many times as we want... as long as we go trough all the categories..

so then
6- click again on "Nominados" http://www.mtvla.com/premios/nominad...questid=398484 and it will take you back to the list of actegories and repeat steps 3-5 as many times possible please...

Meanwhile, over at Alizée America, friend of Op Drop NarutoSoul drops a little more science and lends some inspiration:

I did the math, and if you devote all of your attention to the voting, you should be able to get 20 votes for every hour spent voting. If that sounds crazy and difficult, try this: Listen to a Lili CD. As long as that CD is playing, spend the time voting. ONLY vote, do nothing else. Promote Lili while you listen, and help repay her for some of the joy she's brought into all of our lives!

While I hardly needed an excuse to kick back and while away a couple hours this weekend listening to Psychédélices and En Concert again (my personal two favorites of Alizée’s albums), this sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

Vote early and vote often, kids. Let’s help Alizée take this one by a landslide.

"Hey, you! Yeah you, with the mouse! Why haven't you voted yet?!"

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

A mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan Alizée blog....


Great Scott!

OK, so I’m not so much the Alizée Batman this week…more like Alizée Clark Kent, what with the chasing down of news stories, and all. Fortunately for all of us, however, my ongoing investigation of Alizée’s rumored changing of record labels, from RCA Records to Jive/Epic, is unlikely to lead to me having to save Metropolis from Lex Luthor’s evil death ray…

While there still appears to be no official word on the subject, it sounds like I may have jumped the gun in assuming a move to Jive/Epic could increase our chances of seeing Alizée cross over to North America. Snatcher42 (from Operation LTNY) explains below, in this post excerpted from Alizée America, which expands on his earlier post from Sunday:

A few points of clarification and commentary:

-I don't know if RCA is shutting down worldwide or only in France, but it's probably just the later.

-Aside from the management team change, this
shouldn't really effect Alizée overseas in places like Mexico or potentially the United States, since there she's always just been with "Sony BMG", no sub-label.

- While this will hopefully be good for Alizée in the end, I Personally find it a bit hard to be so happy over what amounts to news of restructuring and layoffs. Some may say they deserve it, but as others have mentioned this could actually be an explanation for the lack of promotion. Apparently their fate has been in question for some time. It wouldn't make sense to be promoting a lot when you think you might close shop in a few months.

-The good news is that Lili will be back soon with new stuff!

Good news, indeed. At the very least, we’ll hopefully see the renewed promotion for Fifty Sixty that was rumored to be happening on Sunday, as well as the release of a third single from Psychédélices. Personally, I’m holding out for Lilly Town—it’s catchy, poppy and fun, and has the potential to make for a really trippy music video. I’d also love to see a revival of the Psychédéclips website, particularly the Lilly Town TV section, which would go a long way towards providing real, meaningful fan interaction, and really drive home just how truly international Lili’s fan base is.

More on this story as it develops, gang. Let’s just hope I don’t have to fight a giant spider in the third act...

Image courtesy of Operation LTNY

In other news…

Production of the new Mark IV Op Drop disques continues apace. It’s slow-going, what with the me-having-a-day-job getting in the way, but the first batch is just about done and ready to be shipped out the door…to Op Drop’s very first remote operative!

That’s right, folks—one brave soul has stepped forward to take up the challenge of performing an Operation: Disque Drop at one of Yelle’s shows on her upcoming North American tour. Remember, Op Drop is committed to supplying disques free of charge to anybody who’s interested in ‘infiltrating’ one of these shows on Lili’s behalf…so if you’re an Alizée fan who’d like to get in on the underground guerilla marketing movement for zero dollars, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Op Drop breaking news: Is Alizée moving from RCA Records to Jive/Epic?


Unsubstantiated Rumors: The Best Kind

Noticed this in a fan post Sunday morning on Alizée’s official MySpace page:

coucou ma belle,
c'est vrai??

Fini le label RCA ! Alizée va prochainement changer d'équipe (Toujours sous Sony) !

Une fois ce changement d'équipe effectué, la promo reprendra. FIFTY SIXTY aura donc sa promotion, et d'autres singles suivront.

Qu’est-ce que c’est? I dropped French like a bad habit in Grade 10—a decision that twenty-plus me now profoundly regrets—so my understanding of the above is incomplete at best…but ‘Fini le label RCA!’ doesn’t leave much to interpretation. Ruh-roh, Raggy!

Fortunately, for those of us who don’t speak fluent French, Snatcher42 (of Operation LTNY fame) drops some science over in the forums at Alizée America. Turns out this was originally part of a post was originally made by a gentleman by the name of julien over at AFC. Snatcher’s rough English translation of julien's post, and some analysis, appears below:

End of the RCA label! Alizée will soon change teams (Still under Sony)!

Once this team change is made, promotion will resume. FIFTY SIXTY will have it's promotion, and other singles will follow.

In October, Alizée will be in Madame Figaro for a special Gainsbourg issue. Several artists participated. Each artist took a picture and said a word.

Next Saturday, there will be an interview with Jean Fauque (And Alizée?) on the new program "Access private."

The Concert Tickets sell very well! (I wanted to add in the euphoria)


------

Basically, it sounds like she's getting new management that wants to re-launch promotion (hopefully better this time), first with Fifty Sixty and then with other singles. It's like a fresh start for the album! Edit, more info from Nidalizee: It's not just Alizée that's leaving RCA, the whole label is shutting down! The artists are being moved to other branches within Sony. Alizée is going to JIVE EPIC.

Hmm. Rumor or fact? It remains to be seen, as I’ve so far been unable to independently confirm that RCA is indeed being shut down. But if it does prove true…while Sony BMG’s shuttering of RCA Records—a label with a long and storied history behind it—makes for some pretty distressing commentary on the state of today’s music industry, could this potentially be a positive development for Team Alizée?

Almost as long as I’ve been an Alizée fan (which is admittedly not long, only since the end of last year) I’ve been reading complaints that RCA’s promotion for Psychédélices has been fairly lackluster, to the point of being virtually non-existant of late, and the time it’s taken for things to actually happen has bordered on ‘interminable’. For example, Alizée’s official site (the design and maintenance of which I can only assume falls under the purview of the label, RCA) hasn’t been updated since sometime in April…and though it’s certainly very pretty to look at and heavy on the bling, it’s sorely lacking in actual content.

And while there was a decent amount of promotion for the release of Mademoiselle Juliette as the album’s first single in December (despite the single having been originally released at the end of September), there’s been comparatively little for its second single, Fifty Sixty, which debuted in February. The beginnings of a viral marketing campaign looked to be underway with the unveiling of the Psychédéclips website in May, which features not one but two official remixes of the song alongside the original. But a major component of the site—Lilly Town TV, which is apparently intended to feature fan-created content (a la YouTube)—is still “Coming Soon” four months later. (This is an absolute shame, as I can think of at least a few fan-made remixes that could really rock the casbah, and one in particular that's so good, it positively transcends the source material.)

Jive/Epic, meanwhile, is another subsidiary label of Sony BMG, which publishes a stable of enormously successful American music stars such as Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Jordin Sparks and Micheal Jackson, as well as internationally (if not domestically) renowned artists like Lemar, Indochine, and Amel Bent. Will they have more on the ball than RCA Records did? Is there a greater chance of Alizée crossing over to America with Jive/Epic?

The rumor of increased/renewed promotion for Fifty Sixty gives me hope as far as the former is concerned. And as far as the second goes…check out these excerpts from the Wikipedia entry of another French Jive/Epic artist, Julien Doré:

Julien Doré, born July 7, 1982, in Alès (Gard), is a French singer, winner of the 5th season of the television show Nouvelle Star, aired on the French Television M6 channel.

His most memorable performances and revelations were while singing "Moi... Lolita" from "Alizée" and "...Baby One More Time" from "Britney Spears", Dance music songs, in acoustics.

Les Limites [the first single from Julien’s first studio album, Ersatz] is to be released June 16, 2008 worldwide. It was released March 31, 2008 in France. On Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip blog, the music video made its world premiere.

A worldwide release, for a French artist, with a video premiere on Perez Hilton’s blog. This is the kind of North American exposure that Alizée fans over here have been dreaming about for years! (Although, we could probably do without the naked guy with the banjo...) Granted, Les Limites hasn’t exactly set the US music charts on fire…but I’d be willing to bet that he didn’t already have an established fan base here who were not only entrenched, but were already actively evangelizing for him without any guidance or co-operation from Jive/Epic.

Alizée, on the other hand, does have that going for her, in spades. We’re already dropping disques, handing out fliers, infiltrating other artists' concerts, and spreading the signal. Imagine the possibilities if her label was on the same page…or if, dare I suggest it, they were working with us?

Attention Jive/Epic folks: if you’re reading this, we’d love to talk to you.

More on this story as it develops, folks...stay tuned!

Friday, September 5, 2008

The hardest-working Canadian in show business!

I yet live!

My apologies for the lack of updates this week, folks. Though I was between jobs when I first began this mad crusade of mine, I’ve since become gainfully employed. On the bright side, this means I no longer have to make the unenviable choice of either funding Operation: Disque Drop or eating this month. The downside is, of course, less time in which to actually devote to the many responsibilities of Op Drop, only one of which is coming up with new blog content.

It’s a vicious cycle, I tells ya.

This doesn’t mean I’ve completely abandoned my post, however—I am, after all, the hardest working Canadian in show business. (Thanks, aw!) Most of my free time this week has been devoted to finalizing the contents of the Mark IV disques I teased on Tuesday. The biggest upgrade to hit Op Drop yet, the Mark IV’s are DVDs, playable in most set-top DVD players, which negates the whole ‘will this obviously home-made disque give my computer a virus?’ drawback of the earlier CD-ROMs. Hopefully, the convenience and perceived safety of a DVD will entice more of the people who discover a dropped disque to actually play the thing!


Size matters not? Pfft, whatever!

The Mark IV’s also have one other pretty big edge over the previous iterations: they’re freakin’ huge! While a CD-R holds about 750 mb of data, a DVD-R can hold up to 4.6 gb worth! This translates into the ability for Op Drop to pack more Alizée into its ‘Alizée Fan Start Kits’. Much more Alizée—whereas the Mark I and II disques contained only five measly little AVI videos, the Mark IV now contains over an hour of fan-favorite music videos, television appearances, and live performances.

(The mp3s and desktop wallpapers from the previous disques are still there, but the end user is still going to have to pop the disque into their PC to find them, relegating them more to ‘bonus content’ rather than being the main attraction.)

It’s a veritable Alizée cornucopia, a collection of the videos that a large portion of Lili’s existing fanbase attribute to making them fans in the first place…playable not just in a little browser window on YouTube, but full-screen on virtually any TV and DVD player. If this doesn’t convert me some Lili-heathens, I don’t know what will.

More to come on the selections that made it onto the disque, and my rationale for choosing them later…and, as promised earlier, a few ideas on where the Mark IV’s will make their first appearance. For now, it’s time for Op Drop to rush off to its day job…

What can I say? A hard-workin' Canadian's work is never done.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Coming Attractions

I need a vacation from my vacation!

OK, now that was a long weekend...and I mean that in every sense of the word.

On the bright side, after much cursing and gnashing of teeth, the upgrades to the Batcomputer are finally done, and the design and prep work for the next batch of 'Alizée Fan Starter Kit' disques is just about complete. On the not-so-bright side, all of the above hasn't exactly left me with a whole lot of time to do much of anything else...including coming up with content for today's blog post.

So here, instead, is a sneak preview at the contents of the brand-spankin' new Mark IV disques, which ought to be ready for dropping before the end of the week:



Not too shabby, huh? I'm really excited about these--the Mark IV is easily the best, and most professional-looking iteration of the Op Drop disque to date. And now that most of the up-front donkey work is out of the way, they're surprisingly not much more expensive or time-consuming to produce than the Mark II's were.

More on the Mark IV's tomorrow, along with an idea where and when they might first start being dropped. Because, from the look of things, they'll be done just in time...