Yorkshire rock band the Kaiser Chiefs have been accused of stealing design artwork for its new album from British hub gear specialist Sturmey-Archer.
And there does appear to be close similarity between the Education, Education, Education and War album cover and a box of Sturmey-Archer spares.
Sturmey Archer General Manager Alan Clark told BikeBiz: "For the makeover on their site they copied the logo from the 110 year-old Sturmey-Archer and even their new CD cover is copied from Sturmey-Archer packaging.
"I have worked for the company for more than 40 years and I have never known anything quite as blatant as this. We are used to this sort of thing from backstreet suppliers, but did not expect it from such a big band."
He said the company had been alerted to the artwork similarities by fans and had not had an overture from the band.
The Kaiser Chiefs – dubbed Kaiser Thiefs by Clark – have a time honoured tradition of appearing to be derivative. The band shares a name with a South African football club called Kaizer Chiefs which was founded in 1970, and their latest album title – still to be released – echoes a famous Tony Blair sound bite from speech on education in 2001: "Our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education," said the former Prime Minister.
While it might be easy to make cheap puns on Kaiser Chief song titles such as predicting a riot over the furore, we're above that. We only hope the Chiefs have learned their lesson and well and we're sure the heat will die down soon.
