I need you to sit down for this one, because the Black Parade just got served. The company that owns the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders brand is suing My Chemical Romance and Live Nation over the cheerleader bit from the Hollywood Bowl run, and the final two shows of that run are this Friday and Saturday. The timing on this is pure theater all by itself.
Here is what happened, per the filing. Pro Silver Star Ltd. sued in Dallas County District Court, asking a judge for a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, and monetary damages. The target is the sequence from opening night, October 21, the first of five sold out Black Parade shows at the Hollywood Bowl. During Teenagers, dancers came out in blue and white costumes the filing says mirror the famous uniform: shorts, a blue bolero, a white vest with stars, white boots. They did a cheer routine. Then, in Disenchanted, they picked up prop rifles, staged a firefight with the regime's soldiers, got shot, and crawled offstage. It is set in Draag, the fictional dictatorship the whole production lives in. Context, people.
“A lawyer wrote the funniest line of the week.”
Moe Train
Silver Star says it owns federally registered trademark rights in that uniform and has fought unauthorized uses for more than 50 years. The filing claims fans online believed the real cheerleaders were on that stage, and that tying the uniform to a staged gunfight damages a brand built over decades. Their lawyers sent a cease and desist on October 22, and the filing says the costumes showed up again on October 23 and 24 anyway.
My favorite line in the whole thing is Silver Star saying it has no problem with the music, the message, or even gun toting performers on stage. They just want those performers out of that uniform. Their words: "The universe of alternative costume designs is effectively unlimited." A lawyer wrote that. A lawyer wrote the funniest line of the week.
Now the clock gets loud. The run wraps October 30, Devil's Night with The Used, and October 31, Halloween, with Thrice. A restraining order aimed at those exact shows is a race against the calendar. MCR and Live Nation have not publicly commented, per the reports. So the question hanging over Halloween weekend in Los Angeles is simple: do the cheerleaders march again, or does a Texas court costume check the Black Parade?
Twenty years of The Black Parade, five nights at the Bowl, and now a courtroom subplot. This band does not do quiet anniversaries. I would not have it any other way.
Source: TicketNews
