Rage, because we want to

By Paul Flower on Dec 21, 09 02:20 PM

To the victor the spoils, I think that's how it goes. If in this case the spoils are a self-satisfied-smug-grin then I won. We won - we took control of the Christmas number one. In truth we always had control; we always had the choice (to an extent) of what singles we bought but we lacked the motivation and the organisation to give a damn. This year, something changed.

Perhaps it was about social media, the galvanising effect of noticing that others think in the same way and were prepared to take action. Few people want to take a stand on their own, none of us wants to stand and piss into the wind - which is what this campaign would've looked like without Facebook.

Ignoring the faceless corporation behind both the RATM single and Joe McElderry's effort, because it's covered elsewhere and is irrelevant, this was a victory for those of us who were tired of being force-fed this diet of pop-pap. It was a reaction to the tyranny of televised karaoke, the monopoly of one TV programme over the charts.

Truth is that none of us care much about the chart. This was about making a point. The point may be that it was all massively irrelevant, but we had fun making it. The X-Factor had a four year reign over the Christmas number one spot, which has now been ended.

It had been such a foregone conclusion that all the other big artists and releases had started to avoid taking part. They'd thrown in the towel which had made the race for xmas no.1 - once a source of fun - into a depressing repetitious reality.

This time around we didn't have to care about what the labels were releasing. Through the efforts of Jon & Tracy Morter and their Facebook group, we could take a rap-metal anthem and make that number 1 instead. Those who ask why RATM are missing the point that it's so far removed from the x-factor (lack-of) effort that it became a massive one-finger salute to pop: we wanted a sweary-shouty song at the top of the chart and by-God we got it.

In the process we all caught the sense of fun and the belief that we could make a difference. We made a difference, and it certainly is different from the norm - the drudgery, the monotony of the last four years.

At first I didn't think it could be done. I joined the group but had no intention of downloading the single. Then it got to Wednesday and we were still in the lead, so I stumped up the cash. I started to believe.

By the end of the week Rage had slipped behind Joe, his physical singles were in the shops and it looked like our hope had been misplaced. A couple of major master-strokes changed things: Rage went all sweary on Radio 5 Live and then promised their royalties to charity. At the same time Cheryl and Simon started to sound offended that we were winning, they couldn't see the point - which of course was the tipping point. To think we might actually be annoying them was the cherry on the cake.

This battle made us all interested again, got us motivated and got us all talking about something long-ago forgotten. I doubt very much that I could name more than two other number one singles during the whole of 2009 but I know what's number one now. Ha, ha!

I may return to conclude the Prague travelogue if I can recall the detail......! Otherwise have a good one.

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