"White Trash Wins Lotto" info/comments

[Eva GnRAxlRosette]

I came across this article/interview in the LA Weekly archives about the "White Trash Wins Lotto" musical.
link to the article/interview:  http://www.laweekly.com/ink/00/02/features-lewis.php
That'd give ya the background on the guy who created the thing....  and all about how it developed and whatnot.

What I found MOST interesting was this letter to the editor in the following week's issue: 

"DEAR EDITOR:

Re: Judith Lewis' "What To Do When Your Career Is Dead" [cover story, December 3?9]. The argument over the corporate music industry is old and tired. Music as big business is based on trends. Like it or not, this is how the industry has chosen to sustain itself. In a world where people are constantly outgrowing their tastes, it seems that rapid-fire reinvention is necessary to hold anyone's interest for any significant length of time.

Enter White Trash Wins Lotto. Andy Prieboy's play, which he considers an "anti-industry piece," is anything but. With White Trash, Prieboy is not telling the music industry to fuck off, as he wants us to think. He's joining it. To put it in his own words, he is helping to "clean the barn" by offering a disparaging view of another's success. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this called envy? [ ] This would make White Trash an all too cathartic work in which a character by the name of Axl Rose must bear the brunt and frustration of Prieboy's misgivings about the music industry.

Andy Prieboy has landed a comfortable position within the music industry's deconstruction department. Pick a band, preferably one whose front man wore a kilt. Demonstrate, through parody, how ridiculous it all seems in retrospect. Help create that "What was I thinking?" feeling among your audience, who are the ones who listened to Guns N' Roses in the first place. Get a buzz going. Play to execs at Largo. Take your show to Sunset Boulevard. Send a clear message to musicians everywhere what can happen if and when you make the wrong moves. The result? CD bins full of safe, generic, homogenized shit. White Trash isn't so much about Axl Rose as it is a blatant threat to anyone, anywhere, who dares try anything different.

Perhaps one of the reasons there is such a dearth of charismatic anything in (commercial) music these days is because people don't want to take the risk anymore. And who can blame them? People like Andy Prieboy are going to be waiting for you at the bus station, preparing you for the end before it ever begins.

--Josh E. Zuboff

Los Angeles"
source: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/00/04/letters.php

 
 Great response!? ? ?

much like the next from the same source link:

"DEAR EDITOR:

NEWS FLASH: If you are doing musical theater and you are, or were, any kind of artist, your career is dead.

--Richard Vidan

Los Angeles"

 

[Doc Emmett Brown]

thanks for the info

Prieboy's pretentiousness made me laugh, he asks:  'Have I really sold this incredibly anti-industry piece to the industry?'"

and I'm thinking:  the mere fact that you sold the play should tell you that it is not anti-industry at all, but rather something that fits "comfortably" within their allowed region of criticism - just like the letter to the editor said!

He cant rock the boat with his little play that took shape between 1995 and 1999 when GNR were at their lowest, in terms of popularity.  And yet he aims to criticize musicians who do rock the boat while simultaneously faulting the music industry for being too timid...sigh.


So what made you post this link?  Is this play resurfacing for another run somewhere?

[Eva GnRAxlRosette]

thanks for the info

So what made you post this link? Is this play resurfacing for another run somewhere?

ur welcome...

no special reason for posting it...  I only came across it searching the LA Weekly archves, and thought some might get a laugh out of it.

there's some pretty funny stuff comes up to if you google the actor who played 'Axl' in the production.  (I forget his name at the moment, but had looked it up when I read the article initially.)