Everyone wants to touch their favourite artist. In the sixties, screaming fans queued for hours to lay hands on Bob Dylan, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones (see the end of this great film of Bob Dylan in concert in Newcastle in 1966). In this age of all-pervading security and paranoia about freak attacks, it’s almost impossible to get that close to celebrity artists today.
Maybe it’s blogging and especially tweeting that lets the modern fan “touch” their particular idol. I’ve been surpised how fast artists are at responding to tweets that mention them, especially if the comments are appreciative (we all like praise!). Recently I’ve had great responses from both The Red Bullets and even from Chipmunk. In both these cases, I’ve no doubt whatsoever that the responses were genuine and from the artists themselves, but one can’t help but wonder whether, in this age of 24/7 media pressure, some might succumb to the temptation to let an assistant do that tweeting or blogging.
So, how can you tell whether you’re talking to the real artist? Perhaps we need a new version of the Turing Test – which the 1940s computer pioneer used to test whether people could tell if they were talking to a machine or not!
