Pitchfork

If you happen to turn on one of those TV things this holiday season, you might just hear a certain familiar jam wafting through the decked halls of your household. Seems the Arcade Fire have lent one of their Funeral anthems, "Rebellion (Lies)", to Bono and Bobby Shriver's Product (Red) campaign, dedicated to raising money to fight the AIDS crisis in Africa.

Product (Red) has partnered with a number of high profile companies (mega-corporations, some would call them)-- including American Express, Motorola, Converse, the Gap, Apple, and Emporio Armani-- all of whom are selling special (Red) merchandise and have pledged to donate a portion of their profits to The Global Fund, an organization bankrolling treatments for AIDS and other epidemics around the world.

But it's these corporate ties-- and perhaps the increased exposure for everyone's favorite indie treasure-- that might have some Arcade Fire fans seeing red, quite literally. By which I mean, figuratively. To preempt such grumblings, Fire-man Win Butler recently made his logic clear in a post on the Arcade Fire website.

"Having talked to all the people in charge of running the Red campaign," wrote Win, "and learning about how the whole thing works financially, I am convinced that something of this nature is the only way to get Americans to give large amounts of money to directly fight AIDS in Africa in a sustainable way."



"People are going to buy things at the Gap and wear Converse shoes regardless, so having a way for consumers to choose to direct some of their money to a worthy cause without having to pay extra, makes it possible for people to give money without really doing much of anything... To some people this seems crass and capitalistic, and I sympathize with that position, but in the first week of the campaign they have raised enough money for 10,000 women to have antiretroviral drugs for a year... money and medication which wouldn't have been there without a program like this...

"We don't give a fuck about the Gap or American Express, and we are in no way endorsing their products, but as long as scientists are developing drugs that you can give to a HIV positive mother and her newborn baby to help stop the transmission of AIDS to her child, the money could be coming from the devil for all I care, as long as people are getting the medication.

"We didn't want Rebellion to be the 'anthem' of the campaign, so we are just letting them use the song for a few weeks during the Christmas rush to help get the word out there; more as a gesture that we hope this sort of thing takes hold, and that it can be a sustainable way of our fucked up culture giving people something they can actually use.

"Just know that we made this decision with a lot [of] soul searching. It just seemed so snobbish to not engage with the reality of the absurd sums of money big business can raise without even noticing it."

Can't argue with that.

Read Win's complete statement by clicking the man's name here. And, bonus: "mixing is going really well," writes Win. Mixing! That's the stuff that happens after recording! And before mastering-- and then-- Happy New Record Super Fun Time!! Huzzah!