Music: Mayfair Fusion Candy

Artists: FuzonSome warped advertising copywriter!Jami

Some Fuzon fans are suggesting a sumery execution. Of their favourite band and the director of the band`s latest 'video.' The video, of course, is a TV commercial and the 'song', an advertising jingle for a candy called Fusion.

Such a state of affairs is nothing new to me. Someone who`s been screaming about the free-for-all sponsorship spree that has been mocking and mutilating the Pakistani pop scene ever since Pepsi grabed the Vital Signs back in 1991 and asked them to turn one of their songs into a fizzy Pepsi jingle.

What`s so wrong about pop bands being sponsored? I was asked (not as nicely as it sounds).
Multinationals known more for making and selling soft drinks, soap and stuff, will only be interested in acquiring the modeling services of a pop/rock act to promote their brands within the youth market. They put chunks of money and PR activity on the sponsored acts and do little or nothing as far as the development of the aesthetic and economic sides of the scene are concerned. And sooner or later, it is an inevitable conclusion that the sponsors start to dictate the creative content and course of the sponsored act’s art.

The Pepsi-VS deal rolled out a mad, cynical race between top pop acts chasing multinationals, sometimes even before recording a single note of music.

Awaz, Junoon, Hadiqa, Javad Ahmed, Abrar-ul-Haq and a dozen or so more. In fact today the once 'revolutionary' Junoon is perhaps the most nauseatingly ubiquitous of the many cynical corporate pop acts in the country, as men like Jawad Ahmed’s sufi-rebel soul seem like a distant memory, casually and cynically forgotten for a rich cup of Lipton Tea.

And now this! Just when I thought a 'sober' band like Fuzon had put themselves above and beyond the cosmetic corporate pop game.

Just when their example was being set apart all the cola bubbles being blown so proudly by all the Junoons and Abrar`s, Fuzon decide to jump on the overbearing sponsorship bandwagon and that too with what is perhaps the WORST jingle and commercial this side of Naz paan mesala!
Why? Did all that hair colour they used to streak their hair blonde seeped inside their brains making their faculty to think vanish?

Most of their fans are asking `why Mayfair Candy?` (as in why not a more 'sophisticated' brand?).
A stupid question, as far as I am concerned. Mine would be why get sponsored at all? Why after doing so well and keeping a credible profile? Why all of a sudden transform from being young Nusrat Fathe Ali aspirants into chinchoray Salim Javed clones?
Was the money that good? If so, then that 'song' is anything but. In fact within a devestating duration of a mere 25 seconds, Fuzon`s image has come crashing down like a tumbling lead baloon. Candy-ass-pop, at best.

Ah, the horror, the horror.