This is major-label viral marketing gone wild.

Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has launched a "viral," "street" campaign for his upcoming The Wall Live tour, which consists of hiring street artists in LA and NYC to strategically place a pacifist quote by Dwight "WTF" Eisenhower on several "hip" locations.

We wrote about this weird piece of "uptown (big ad agencies, megalomaniac superstars and big labels) meets downtown (street art)" marketing ploy last week, but now it seems the project has gone too far.

This is the revered, totally impromptu/grass roots "Elliott Smith Memorial Wall" on Sunset next to the Malo restaurant. The mural was Smith's background on a series of photos taken by Los Feliz/Silver Lake portraitist Autumn De Wilde, was immortalized on the cover of the Figure 8 album, and after the singer's tragic death it became a repository for his fans' messages and wishes. (It has also been tagged by street artists many times.).

Damon Krukowski: We had a fight about songwriting credits just after finishing the first album. Naomi and I quit the band right then. Today wasn't even out yet. I mean, what was there to fight over? Naomi was preparing the album art, when Dean said he wanted to divide up credits for the songs. That's certainly not weird in the context of the music business. But you know, up to that point I think neither Naomi nor I had ever thought about the music as anything other than something we just did together. It wasn't about business, property, yours-and-mine. It was different from all that-- which was exactly why we were doing it! What followed was a farce. We said, well how are you going to decide whose songs are whose? And it turned out he didn't mean that any weren't his, just that some weren't ours! He said anything he had brought the guitar chords in for, was his. And we said OK, well then anything we brought the guitar chords in for, was ours. And he said but he wrote the lyrics for those, so they were his too. And we said, OK, so those will say music by us, lyrics by you. And now that's settled, we quit.

Dean Wareham: It was a challenge being in a trio with a couple. I thought that when we came to decide which songs would go on the first album, that they had decided together already, and that was that. I'm sure that's pretty hard to avoid if you're a couple, and they maybe didn't even realize it was going on, but it was problematic in a three-piece band.

Damon Krukowski: What happened next is what allowed the band to continue, but it also set the pattern for everything that was wrong with it. We drew up a list of whose music was whose, according to the cockamamie rules we'd worked out, and "Tugboat" ended up as ours, because I had brought in the guitar chords for that. And then Dean said he'd changed his mind. He wanted to go back to where we'd started-- we'd share everything after all. And would we consider at least playing some shows when the album came out, since we'd all worked so hard on it?

So we did, and we ended up writing and rehearsing and playing just like before, which is how and why we kept going. But I could never know for sure whether we were a band again because Dean had decided that the original spirit we started with was a good thing, or because I happened to have brought in the chords-- both of them!-- for our first single. I think I convinced myself over and over that we were back where we'd started, only to find out again and again that we weren't. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that we'd never really been there in the first place.

Dean Wareham: Kramer got me to sing some high backing vocals on the first album; on "Oblivious" he slowed the tape down so I could hit the note. I sound like a chipmunk. But it was on the second album that I got it going. There's that part at the end of "Blue Thunder" where I'm singing "I'll drive so far away," but I didn't know beforehand that I was going to sing it so high and loud-- it just came out of my mouth that way and I think we were all surprised.

Kramer: On Fire, it's a masterpiece. I love the way they captured this sense of like a longing, a desperation for love and joy, it was a search-- the way the music really matched the lyrics.

Dean Wareham: "Strange" is about waiting in line to buy Twinkies at a convenience store on Massachusetts Avenue. I ate Twinkies for dessert (at lunchtime) almost every day when I lived in Boston (at least when I was on a temp job).

Michael Azerrad (Writer): The first time I saw Galaxie 500 was at the first Knitting Factory on Houston Street in New York, somewhere around On Fire. The thing that struck me right away was Dean's very intense stage presence. He glared out at the audience like that angry teenaged kid in the original Star Trek who would make people disappear by grimacing with his eyes rolling back in his head. Then this elegant throb from Naomi, who was the picture of Zen-like poise in a slo-mo maelstrom. Damon worked up a constant oceanic wash of cymbals; he barely seemed to hit the drums and yet clearly drove the music, it was just extraordinary. I knew they were influenced by the Velvet Underground but to me it sounded like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons doing heavy trank.

Naomi Yang: Making On Fire was a very happy experience. I think we were at a point where we were accomplished enough musicians that were able to play what we had in our head. There was a generally optimistic feeling about the direction of the band and we were getting very positive attention from the critics. It was a lot of fun and the possibilities seemed endless.