Another version of the truth

If you have been following this blog in the past few months, you might have come across a statement from Dorian concerning his departure from his former band. It was released as a direct response to a public statement made by the only remaining founding member which distorted quite a couple of facts and made us realize that we had to break our silence and stand up to set some things straight that could not be left unaddressed. You might be aware that before that day we actually kept shut when asked why Dorian left the band, as there were a lot of personal issues involved that we felt didn’t belong to the public. So we did that and thought that would do to let the past rest in peace once and for all.

You can only start to imagine how disturbing it was for us to realize that a bunch of German music press outlets published almost identically sounding news features on their websites today which announced the release of a new album of Dorian’s former band later this year. We’re not getting into details here but we were slightly puzzled to read not only once, but three times in three different places that Dorian basically got kicked from his band for being a shitty singer. Now as much as everyone is entitled to their own opinion concerning Dorian’s singing abilities, this is just not the way things were happening back then, and once more, this is something we just can’t leave unaddressed.

We are very proud that we have managed to keep up to a certain degree of transparency in our affairs. There will always be the occasional surprise, but we are always concerned to let you know what’s happening behind our scenes and not bullshit you with PR rhetoric. But as much as we care to be honest with you, please do not expect us to get into anything even remotely resembling a mud fight and make ourselves look like monkeys throwing shit at each other. As much as we have a feeling someone’s trying to hitch a ride on our backs, we’re not going down there. Fuck you!

We could have pulled one of the options German press law provides us with to appropriately react to this and make everyone including ourselves look like a bunch of jerks. We’re not into that idea at all. What we did instead was get in touch with those people responsible for the publishing of said news feature and ask them to go to our blog and acknowledge our point of view on the subject matter of Dorian’s departure from his former band. They did and reacted by re-editing their texts or pulling them offline. We were offered to make a counter statement which we thankfully denied as we do not have anything else to say to this. We find it highly embarrassing to have to waste our spare time doing all of this at all and we do not wish to get deeper into it.

We’re not giving away any names here but please do not mistake this with us trying to silence someone or anything. What we are trying to do here is keep the noise as low as possible as this is the Internet and foul news tends to spread faster than you could look. This is basically because a frighteningly high amount of people involved in press outlets seem to have forgotten about the obviously lost art of back-checking facts and tend to copy-and-paste whatever comes in disguised as “news” from so-called press agencies. We have stopped being bothered by people misspelling our band name or song titles a relatively long time ago, as it is embarrassing them more than us. But this morning we couldn’t help but react. We are not going to tolerate anyone or their press agency talking shit about anyone of us for the sake of generating interest in whatever the fuck he or she is doing right now. At the same time, we are deeply concerned how easy it has become to spread what we would call an in-your-face-insult and have it actually published by press without any further editorial comment. This not only puts our credibility at stake but theirs as people actually tend to believe what they read on whatever they consider their trusted source of information.

Concerning his new, yet unreleased motion picture “Promises Written In Water”, filmmaker Vincent Gallo stated that he chose to disconnect from the “low frequency exchange required” when you’re dealing with “the press” or the media in general. Although both of us are/have been working in different press institutions, we can’t help but whole-heartedly agree. Even though all the people we had to get in touch with today were very friendly, they know that we know they didn’t do their homework. But the real plague here seems to be a certain press agency that allows itself to throw shit on someone else to gain attention. This is just utterly pathetic and you should be ashamed of yourselves. As an outside representative of the band you should consider their upcoming musical output strong enough to stand out for itself, which you obviously don’t as you have to drag us into this to make your client look good. We’re not blaming you since we know that working in public relations is the muddiest of work, but please just leave us the fuck out of it.

We were actually going to tell you today how you can support Astoria with the purchase of a great package, but this has got to wait until tomorrow as we basically wasted all our spare time today cleaning up this very mess. We are very sorry about this and hope you understand our point of view. This had to be dealt with, and we wanted to deal with it with our dignity left intact. We can only hope to have succeeded with this.

FTANNG!
Dorian Deveraux / Pee Wee Vignold