Chris ‘Fronzilla’ Fronzak has a lot of haters. Haters he would no doubt encourage to divert their loathing away from him, the ‘player’, and toward its true cause, ‘the game’.
Now, ‘the game’ has long been a vague concept, identified primarily by the context of the player and said player’s haters; it could be anything from the entire music industry – Fronzak’s primary source of fame and income being the band Attila, best described as a hybrid of Asking Alexandria and Limp Bizkit for people who find Fred Durst’s lyrics a tad cerebral – to the more esoteric matters involved in the operation of an Instagram knock-off for scene kids in snapbacks.
But now, with his latest entrepreneurial venture, Fronz has come out as the metalcore scene’s answer to Mark Corrigan in the most recent season of ‘Peep Show’:
Let’s be clear: I quite like money, and I really like Things. There’s little I enjoy more than the convergence of these interests that occurs when I use money to buy Things and unlike my colleague Samarth, I don’t have a problem with artists earning money by selling of Zany Things (aka ‘innovative merch’). If Don Broco want to diversify their revenue stream via the medium of pun-based beverages, fair play. If The Wonder Years can find people to augment their retirement funds by purchasing branded beach balls, more power to them.
No-one’s forcing anyone to buy any of these things, and if people don’t want to then the brutal realities of commerce will dispatch them fairly quickly. You can’t download a t-shirt, or a mug, or a pair of flip-flops. This is physical product which your favourite artists are selling because so many people aren’t actually paying for… what’s it called…y’know, that stuff bands make when they’re not roasting coffee beans…used to come on little shiny discs that you’d put in that cupholder on the front of your computer… music, that’s the one. While I understand the arguments that these initiatives constitute fan exploitation, I have to disagree. Tacky? Sure. Tasteless, even. But, exploitative?
No, exploitative would be an adjective I’d reserve for, say, a situation where a musician began charging his fans a monthly fee for access to his phone number.
Yes, the latest business venture to chunder from the mind of this self-described “rapper/entrepreneur” is …well, I’m not really sure. Business advice, maybe? Click the link above and read this charming gentleman’s ‘About Me’ page. Watch the video. I’ll wait.
While watching the video, consider the following: Chris Fronzak is not a comedian. This is not a sketch. This man is genuinely charging his fans $50 a month, ostensibly for some kind of nondescript life coaching service but really – REALLY – he’s charging them for access to him. In just 14 short years he’s gone from ‘hustling’ Wrigley’s Doublemint to minors…
…to hustling himself for a mint to…well, minors. Put this guy on Dragon’s Den immediately. Preferably in front of an actual dragon. This odious scheme occupies a unique space in the ‘questionable merch’ category as it professes to be an ongoing service provided to Fronzak’s fans, primarily teenagers.
If you’re not sure about where your life is going, or where you fit in in the world, that puts you in an exclusive club called ‘Most young adults’. Combine that with the natural desire fans have to feel closer to their idols and what you have is a bottom feeder in a wifebeater cynically cashing in on self-doubt and insecurity, both of which are perfectly natural – if unpleasant – aspects of growing up.
Secondly, and more worryingly, this dude is actually pretty famous. If this takes off, it opens the floodgates for any chancer with a substantial online presence and the attendant legion of impressionable followers to set themselves up as some kind of spurious virtual guru, a shitty Citizen’s Advice Bureau – Shitizen’s Advice Bureau, if you will – as a front for selling one-on-one access to fans for a monthly fee.
This isn’t a simple case of a band padding out their Spotify-drained bank balances with novelty Christmas jumpers; it’s a move so gouging and cynical that it makes VIP Meet & Greet sessions look like charity work.
Beyond the blatant lies – no way is that phone number for the phone this dude keeps on him each day; clearly you’re going through to an online call management service – the concept of monetising people’s desire to communicate with musicians whose work they enjoy is almost as offensive as an Attila lyrics sheet.
Bands, musicians, fans, writers – ignoring this or laughing it off enables and perpetuates it. It’s the next stage of the jet-powered crap shower that started with bands selling dates on Kickstarter and this shit needs to be called out and shut down before it takes off.