Brian Boydon music.
There are a lot of good bargains to be had on eBay, but the one that's really taking up all my attention at the moment is the once-in-a-lifetime, history-making, a-real-showbiz-first opportunity to buy your own rock band. This is a real offer and has passed all the usual eBay restrictions and regulations about what can and cannot be sold. Imagine - owning your own rock band! Okay, technically they're not a rock band - they're a techno-country band. But I have it on good authority that techno-country is soon going to be the new Nu-Rave so, all things considered, this represents a very sound investment.
And we're not talking about desperate wannabes here - the band up for sale have a proven track record. They have sold over 10 million records worldwide and scored number one singles in over 15 countries. Their music has even been used in the classic animated film Barnyard, which featured Courteney Cox and Andie MacDowell.
If you're seriously considering buying the band (and I'm in the process of assembling a syndicate to do so - I already have 12 people willing to stump up €50 each), there are three small considerations to be taken into account. First, the band are Swedish, so the country music isn't exactly Nashville stuff. Second, the band are called Rednex (Cotton Eye Joe and all of that). Third, the asking price is €1.5 million (€1.11 million). But remember, the euro is strong against the dollar at the moment.
Rednex were manufactured back in 1994 by a select team of Swedish pop music producers. The perfectly whizzo idea they had was to mix twangy old-style country music with the thumping (some would call it mindless) beat of Eurodance. Their big international hit came with the Nick Cave-influenced Cotton Eye Joe - don't pretend you don't remember it. What you get for your $1.5 million is complete and legally binding ownership of (according to eBay) "the music, the trademark, the band, the tour, the record deals, the web site, the record releases, the plans, the contacts, the contracts, the styling, the catalogue and, of course, the opportunities and the future".
This is amazing - if you bought Rednex you could do anything you wanted with them. You could make them play Cotton Eye Joe for you anytime you wanted to hear it; you could pimp them out to those really crappy parties, charging them extra to have Cotton Eye Joe performed live by the actual band themselves. You could even strap their hands together and put tape over their mouths so that they could never, ever play Cotton Eye Joe again. The choices here are dizzying.
You could even get all experimental with them. You could shove them into the studio and make them record an album of Joy Division covers in their trademark techno-country style.
The great thing about this eBay sale is that most other potential buyers are going to be scared off by the erroneous belief that Rednex are just a bunch of past-it one-hit wonders who are having one last lunge at profile-raising. That is so not the case. I've done a lot of research on this and can reveal that Rednex are on a bit of comeback high at the moment. Just last year they came a creditable sixth in Sweden's Melodifestivalen (the competition the Swedes use to chose their Eurovision Song Contest entry) and this year - displaying admirable ambition - they tried to represent Romania in the Eurovision.
If you want to join my syndicate you'll have to show me the colour of your money - and have a genuine appreciation of techno-country music. No time-wasters please.
