15 minutes of fame is supposed to happen to everybody. It's happening right now to Carole Baskin of "Tiger King" and it happened to Christopher Ford of Christopher the Conquered. Nice that they would spend some of their post-15 time together in the new video for Ford's song on the subject: "Pick Up Your Telephone." The tune is the opening cut on Christopher the Conquered's self-focused new album, I Am Christopher (Grand Phony, Out Now).
A stunning irony surrounding Ford's story is that the way he got his quarter-hour is now something that can't really be referred to anymore. It's just one of those things: A copy of a previous Christopher the Conquered album ended up in the hands of a very popular indie musician. He dug it, he posted about it on his socials. Blammo! Ford hit the front page of Reddit, sold a few hundred copies of his album with a quickness, and calls came in from NYC and LA. Even Consequence of Sound (which is now called Consequence?) noticed.
"Now I had a whole legion of fans who were Reddit people," Ford says, going on to admit that he was unfamiliar with Reddit before all of this. "The most notable fan being John at Grand Phony, who signed me to his label. John wouldn't know my music if it wasn't for that Reddit post!"
As Ford was being contacted by industry types looking to tie him closer to the artist that discovered him, he realized that he probably wouldn't even appeal to that artist's fans.
"The next tour I did proved that intuition right, but now I was getting management and label interest, who were all trying to tie me closer to the artist in question, and I'm like 'I DO NOT KNOW HIM,' but I would send him messages at their insistence anyway and it just made me feel desperate and stupid. Because, of course, he didn't respond to my messages!"
But, lemonade, y'all, lemonade!
"Obviously, the original inspiration was the whole experience with this particular rock star, who loves cats, which is why Garfield is a focal point of the song," Ford says. "The song is mostly about the desperation of being a nobody artist with ego problems and insecurity, and how lame it is that after the nice things this person said about me, I would want more. And now his spotlight has dimmed, just like Carole's will, and she also loves cats, so 'Voila!,' there she is."
"I do think the whole brush with success made me a much better person," Ford concludes. "Before, I was prideful, I think. Not getting everything I want really humbled me, which I would say is what this entire new album is founded on."
