Rock ‘n’ roll roadway

Are the Imperial Stars the most cataclysmically idiotic rock band since Spinal Tap, or the most outrageously successful self-promoters since Madonna?

The Orange County trio gave an impromptu concert Tuesday morning in the middle of the 101 Freeway, parking a truck diagonally across three lanes of traffic near the Sunset Boulevard exit, climbing to the roof and firing up their microphones and electric guitars to belt out a rendition of a song titled, appropriately, “Traffic Jam 101.” That’s precisely what the group created, delaying some drivers as much as an hour, endangering commuters and wasting police time.

In the world of publicity stunts, success is unrelated to popularity. Hardly anybody outside Gainesville, Fla., had heard of pastor Terry Jones until last month, when he threatened to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11. If his aim was to get attention, he succeeded wildly; he may have been burned in effigy in Afghanistan and publicly rebuked by President Obama and the pope, but he’s now probably more famous than the Monty Python troupe member of the same name. Similarly, the road show Tuesday by the formerly obscure Imperial Stars made the band nationally known overnight.

So if any publicity is good publicity, how does one judge when a stunt has backfired? One good indicator is when it gets all over the sidewalk. That’s what happened to Snapple in 2005, when it tried for a Guinness world record by erecting the world’s biggest popsicle in New York’s Union Square. Unfortunately for the promoters, it was a warm summer day and the frozen fruit-pop melted into a gooey mess before a crane could stand it upright. The stunt was good for some mocking coverage in the New York Times, but it didn’t move many Snapsicles.

A better indicator that a dog-and-pony show has failed is when lawyers get involved. Embarrassingly, that happened to this newspaper in 2006, when it teamed with Paramount Pictures in a promotion for “Mission: Impossible III.” Marketers put devices in Times news racks that played the movie’s theme song whenever the doors were opened, but customers mistook the devices for bombs, prompting a sheriff’s arson squad to blow up one rack and leading to the evacuation of a Veterans Affairs hospital in West L.A.; the VA sued and won a $75,000 settlement.

But maybe the all-time top clue that your pseudo-event has flopped is when it gets you arrested. The members of Imperial Stars were busted on suspicion of multiple criminal acts and would be in bigger trouble if anyone had been injured or killed in the tie-up they created. If life were an episode of “American Idol,” we’d vote down their quest for fame in the first round.