An infomercial for Tex Perkins and His Lazyboys album “No. 1’s & No. 2’s”. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time and it’s also the best viral marketing idea I’ve seen in ages. I think it’s going to go off. And the best thing about it is – this is exactly the kind of schmaltzy act you’d expect to see at places like Crown in Melbourne – but Tex is taking the piss out of them… and making money from doing it at the same time. Brilliant!

As Tex says:

Hi, my name’s Tex Perkins and I was huge during the early 90’s (a golden period for scumbag indy rockers). Having endured a 25 year career in the music biz, I’ve done and seen it all.

So here we are at the beginning of the new century and the record industry is on its knees, ravaged by years of careless self indulgent big spending and a complete inability to understand the potential of the new technologies, poor fools. It was within this context that I began work on my last contracted recording for Universal music. All was going well, and I was 3/4 way through the writing and recording of this ALL original album, when I was called in for a meeting with the biggest heads of the company. They showed me the figures, and they were very grim indeed. If things continued to slide, George Ash, the head of the company may have had to sell his private helicopter! They then began to openly beg me, that’s right, BEG me to help save the company and perhaps the entire record business.

It was then we came upon THE IDEA: I would record an album of classic cover versions, songs so good, so irresistible, so well known, so…classic, that the general public would have no choice but to hunt down, buy and love a bunch of songs that they can hear on Gold fm pretty much every day of the week anyway….. hmmm….