"Coal Aid" concert postponed amid acrimony
9 Jul 2007 by Adam Tan
Organizers of Coal Aid, a worldwide set of simultaneous concerts intended to benefit the coal industry, have announced an "indefinite postponement" of the effort. "While we believe that offering musicians sacks of cash to help improve the industry's egregious image is a superb idea, a few logistical problems remain," said the Competitive Enterprise Institute in a prepared statement released yesterday. The industry lobbying group added, "We remain committed to helping the coal industry shake its dark past, at least as long as they keep writing us handsome checks."Insiders are not surprised that the concert initiative is foundering. "We have suffered from a severe want of leadership," said a source with the Coal Aid project, speaking to DeadBrain on condition of anonymity. The effort got off to a bad start with its first marketing slogan: "Coal: It's the Pits!" "This was a well-intended but ultimately misguided effort to appeal to organized labour," the source said. Coal Aid project staff had several "difficult discussions" in an attempt to agree on a new slogan. According to the source, at least two of the meetings "descended into violence".
The failure to find an effective slogan "betrays deeper problems with the project's creative direction", said Douglas Ramsbottom, a media critic with Rolling Stone magazine. "There just aren't very many talented musicians willing to associate themselves with the carbon dioxide molecule." The US concert, which was to be held in a high school gymnasium in Parkersburg, West Virginia, had attracted a line-up that Ramsbottom described as "middle-tier at best – a few backlist country and western acts and a professional golfer with a drinking problem."
The outlook elsewhere around the globe was even bleaker. "Mainland China was the only place where top quality musicians came forward," admitted a rueful project staffer, "and their bands displayed an unhealthy fascination with annexing Taiwan." Ultimately, organizers decided that the Chinese bands would "detract from the concerts' intended message." The staffer denied rampant speculation that pressure from the Pentagon contributed to the decision.
Efforts to find a charismatic spokesperson for the coal industry also faced "strong headwinds" according to Gregory T Mullet, the project's former business manager who quit yesterday and plans to have his memoirs in bookstores "by the middle of next week". "Of course we wanted to have someone with Al Gore's drawing power, but Dick Cheney's more of an oil guy, and anyway he insisted on delivering the event's introductory speech from the bridge of his newly-constructed Death Star." Mullet said that "after acrimonious internal debate, it was decided that such a setting would be more of a hindrance than a help to our efforts."
Coal Aid organizers ultimately decided to employ an animated lump of coal called "Carbie" to speak for the industry. Coal Aid's website describes Carbie as a "cute, cuddly little piece of coal that will help kids and other living things embrace the coal-fired way of life." However, Ramsbottom dismissed the character as "a nauseating atrocity", and Mullet admitted that Carbie "can seem a bit nightmarish at first". A project staffer added that "the arguably grotesque nature of the character has created unnecessary controversy". A series of Carbie videos on the Coal Aid website was recently taken down without explanation.
Coal Aid organizers agree that the project stands at a crossroads. Some hope that the effort will expand beyond its thus-far unsuccessful focus on music and become more of a "coal products expo", in the words of an enthusiastic intern at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. A maker of coal-based toothpaste agrees. "We support any effort to educate the public on coal's myriad uses," said the president of Coal-Dent, who admitted that his product "has yet to really catch fire".
