It started when Canadian musician Dave Carroll was on a United Airlines flight, waiting at O’Hara in Chicago. People on the flight pointed out the baggage handlers on the ground tossing around guitar cases, which turned out to belong to Carroll and his band Sons of Maxwell. Carroll’s pleas fell on deaf ears and he discovered upon arriving at his destination that his custom Taylor guitar, valued at $3,500, was severely damaged. There followed a year of Carroll’s attempts at getting United Airlines to even acknowledge the incident, much less pay for the $1,200 of repairs that still didn’t quite restore the guitar to its former sound.
Finally Carroll told the last representative, a Ms. Irlweg, that he would write and produce three music videos about his experience and release them into the wild.She may have been less than impressed. That was then.
His first one, “United Breaks Guitars,” (above) was a happy little ditty that sticks in your brain. It went viral in a big way, pulling in millions of views, getting picked up by CNN and MSNBC and boosting Carroll’s career (and adding a secondary one as frequent guest speaker about customer service) and humiliating United Airlines. United finally came forward with offers if he’d pull the video, but he refused, asking that if they paid anything they should give it to charity or to another inconvenienced musician. He promised three songs and three songs they would get.
The second was released a few months later, dedicated to the United Airlines rep:
The third has been promised and I’m eagerly awaiting it. This is what the Internet was made for. The military uses and the porn thing were just sidelines; the real power of the web is to give a single person the voice to outshout a major corporation.
And to spread cool videos around. The songs are available from his band’s site and from iTunes, by the way, and you can get more details of the continuing saga at his website.