ASK MOJO
Who spoofed who?
Throw back the veil of rock-related ignorance, as nagging queries are resolved.
He started a hoax: Brian Eno, trifler with the Ambridge army’s affections; the law eyes the stoned bootlegbuying freaks at Virgin’s Notting Hill Gate shop;
Deep Purple’s offending release; gob-iron-playing rapper Doug E. Fresh.
Re: Dave Goodman’s bogus 1985 Sex Pistols record, by ‘The Ex Pistols’ (Time Machine, MOJO 340). I have to admit I fell for this one too, for longer than I’d like to admit. What are the other musical forgeries people believed?
Simon Holder, via e-mail
MOJO says: Like computer-generated postmodernist blather and the BBC’s famous ‘spaghetti harvest’ prank of 1957, someone has to take it seriously for it to really count. Leaving the unfortunate likes of Milli Vanilli aside, one ripe example was on April Fools’ Day 2004, when it was announced that the new theme to venerable Radio 4 soap The Archers was an electronic “urban” re-arrangement by Brian Eno; also on the BBC, in 1961, Mobile For Tape And Percussion was presented as a serious work by the Polish modernist composer Piotr Zak (it was actually a load of random drumming by classical musicologist and Pink Floyd interviewer Hans Keller and composer Susan Bradshaw).