Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I fully like Crystal Castles, from their 8-bit blurbles to their semi-anonymous press photos to their sort of dickish overall ‘tude. (Not enough bands are willing to put out enough ‘tude to potentially evoke hatred or at least jealousy from their audience and too many seem overly focussed on their desire to be liked, rather than feared.) But there’s being a dick and there’s being a dick, and they seem to have crossed over into the latter category with their treatment of visual artist Trevor Brown. They’ve been using a piece of his–a portrait of Madonna with a serious black eye–on t-shirts and an album cover without crediting or paying him. Their not-so-brilliant justification:
we found the image on an old flyer, with no credit, so we didnt know who it belonged to or who to ask
we figured if we used it, the artist would eventually make him/herself known
