Just Be For Real

Every decade has had its own world of scammers’n’fakes but right now feels especially fucked up.

My social media algorithm is currently sending me non-stop ‘opportunities’ for artists of all stripes, funding, grants, bequests, competitions, scholarships, fellowships, residencies and retreats and obviously I linger on these long enough that that they send me more and more of them, especially complicated by the fact that I have my fingers in so many pies, making stuff-wise. But each time I allow myself to consider for a moment that one of these fortuitous prospects might be a good fit for me to apply for, some survival instinct kicks in, I decide its probably a scam, designed to get our entry fees, personal or bank details - its so easy to rip-off the hopeful and the desperate - and I keep on scrolling.

Last week, I was alerted to the fact that someone had created a fake version of my Substack profile and was following all my subscribers (thanks Chris Papps).

It truly pissed me off.

I write and work hard at making Loose Connections because I love to; its satisfying for my soul, gives me a weird sense of stability in a very unstable life and I enjoy challenging myself to keep coming up with ideas and exploring them, even though each post generally takes me hours and hours, and just the whole concept of building my own little Loose Connections world is meaningful to me really, and the idea that some cynical fucker could come along and trick people into believing they were me and stealing their money seemed really offensive.

However, not being a very angry person generally, and in fact being cursed with probably far too much empathy for people who do messed-up, bad things due to being misguided by their own hardships and miseries, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do beyond reporting them, which I did, as did some of you - thank you so much.

I was blocked by the perpetrator from being able to view the account at first, but then gave it another try and they must have unblocked me for probably nefarious reasons such as being able to copy more of my content, and I was able to send a self-righteous, aggrieved little message to the fake me, in which I found myself becoming strangely emotional about the invasion of my selfhood. Or something.

I’m sure the scammer (@locarmenn with a lower case ‘l’ and a double ‘n’) had a good hard think and vowed to be an upright, honest citizen from here on before heading off to attempt to swindle someone else. My work here is done.

Last night I started watching ‘Song Sung Blue’, the sweet and funny Neil Diamond-inspired biopic set in the world of musicians who pretend to be other, far more famous musicians, featuring a fabulous cameo from my buddy Jayson Warner-Smith as Earl, "the one and only Elvis impersonator in all Milwaukee". The lead protagonists (played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson) make the important distinction that they are going to be ‘interpreters’ of Neil Diamond songs rather than ‘impersonators’.

Though they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, in these dark, fake news days, keeping a hold of your self, your likeness, your sound, your music. your voice is increasingly challenging. My social media feed is also full of musicians I know (or know of) warning their followers to beware of fakes and scammers. Over the last few years I have also shut down multiple social media accounts pretending to be me, though why someone would bother with such small fry as me I do not know. Musician’s identities are stolen to catfish and entangle unsuspecting fans in romance scams. A scammer named Chinwendu Azuonwu tricked a Bruno Mars fan in her 60s into believing she was engaged in an online love affair with the singer while he was on tour, and that he wanted to quit the tour to be with her. She gave him over $100k for various ‘tour expenses’.

Fake profiles targeting musicians pretend to be high profile managers, journalists, A&R label scouts, podcast producers, gig bookers etc. Generally its easy to spot, but as its getting easier and easier to fake things well, all communications should be regarding with a high degree of scepticism.

There is an entire fake website, Wylde Audio, dedicated to selling fake guitars designed by heavy metal guitarist Zakk Wylde, taking advantage of the fact that he sells his actual official custom guitars via the Schecter site, leaving his name vulnerable to misappropriation. Weirdly none of the links go anywhere that works but the claims that Brad Paisley and John Mayer are big fans of the brand make for enjoyable reading.

In one of the wilder rock tales of stolen identities, a small timebooking agent in Bay City, Michigan, created three fake versions of UK band The Zombies in 1968, and set them to work all around the country masquerading as the real thing, complete with half-hearted English accents. The real Zombies, broke and disheartened, had disbanded after their album failed to do any business at home, and didn’t even know that their single ‘Time of the Season’ was roaring up the charts in America. Members of one of the imitation bands - Dusty Hill and Frank Beard - went on to become ZZ Top, although they don’t mention their brief period as fake Zombies in any of their official histories. ‘The True Story of The Fake Zombies’, the podcast that meticulously investigates this incredible act of deception is brilliant.

It’s still a maddening, sickening Wild West out there in terms of owning, keeping and claiming your rightful identity. There’s now outrageous AI identity theft scams targeting the indie music community. One folk artist, Murphy Campbell, has had her own videos of her own versions of public-domain traditional songs scraped and copyright claimed by fraudsters calling themselves ‘Murphy Rider’ who also fed her voice into AI generators and created ‘new’ ‘Murphy Campbell’ music. There’s nothing she can do about it - proving ownership of music is often a matter of who got there first in terms of making a claim and an ouroboros in terms of getting false claims corrected - a situation I am personally only too aware of having being involved in fighting fake claims made on my father’s music for many years with little satisfaction. Yet. I still believe in my heart of hearts that truth will prevail, but maybe thats the result of being brought up on happy endings.

Recently I find myself constantly humming the main refrain of the beautiful Leonard Cohen song ‘Be For Real’, from his 1992 album The Future - back when the concept of such a destination undoubtedly could not have been envisioned as quite this dystopian.

The X Files were right - Trust No-one! And also I want to believe. Stay sharp out there kids! x

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