>Waylon J had a song where he says: "I don't think Hank done it that way..."
>(referring to drugs, sex, etc).
um... that's kind of a strange of Waylon, to talk like that about a guy who drank himself to death before he was 40. (or was it 50?)
>
>Anyone whose tried to seriously "make it" in music, knows how tough it is.
>I'm not sure that Hank had to work under the exact same conditions as Sabbath,
>but in fact, you need a lot of help - just to survive to play another day!! I
>don't see the point of "authenticity" of "doing it your own way" NOBODY does
>it there own way!!! Commerical success is by definition a collective action -
>Marx notes this.
Well, Black Flag and Ian MacKaye's bands in the '80's/'90's--Minor Threat, Fugazi--among others, demonstrated that the above NOT be the case, that a band could release its own records, tour on its own terms and, in the above instances at least, do better than survive--Fugazi I think topped 100,000 in sales on a record or two, and Black Flag sold out 3,000 to 5,000 capacity shows in LA. (Another example would be the long-running Dutch band the Ex.). The lessons of the '80's independent music scene show that it can be done. Which is not to say it's easy, but neither is aesthetic whoring.
My intial response was too hasty, tho--I was referring to the assumption that many performers HAD to have a big guiding hand on the creative side--e.g.: songwriting and arranging, etc. Which I fervently disagree with, and cited the above examples for. I f**ked up by scrambling the original message,
attribution on this one lost:
>> >A lot of leftists don't know this, but there has been an underground
rock
>movement in this country going on for twenty years, and these people
are
>not "bound up w/
>some sort of disgusting firm that is a union buster/sexist/racist."
Sure,
>some of these people in the independent movement are money-grubbers,
but
>for the most part they are people who work really hard to do good
things,
>and do so for very little recognition and even less money (no matter
how
>you slice it, it's hard to make money when you sell 5000 records) >>
to which Alec responded:
>> I worked at Revolver USA for a few months, a punk/indie distributor in
SF, and they did work hard, and long hours. They were also conscious of
the culture industry--that's how one gets "indie cred" after all. Part
of that cred, though, seemed to be very selective recognition. Very
little recognition was fine, as long as it was from the right people.
Sure, we busted on the Man and everything at work, but it seemed to me
it was more about the local scene(s) than politics at large.
There were some cool people and pleasant music. But I'm not sure I'd say much of what I saw and heard was "truly dissenting": after all, it's about selling albums and playing shows (at clubs like "Bottom of the Hill," itself a big ad for Lucky Strike cigs). I'd make an exception with bands like Team Dresch, on the identity politics front. I mentioned the Donnas, and their's nothing radical about them--indie though they are--except maybe their age. But then they're run by a guy, who writes some really creepy lyrics, kind of a laugh, I guess, to hear from teenage grrls. I was working there during the UPS strike, and didn't see much concern for that. David James has an interesting book called _Power Misses_, with interesting stuff on Rock and Roll and the Vietnam war, also the punk scene in LA. >>
Full Disclosure: I was in a band that released records on the in-house label of the distributor Alec mentions, and have generally been thru the wringer, good and bad, with the '80's into '90's indie music scene.
Though I sense a very specific political dimension to being in an independent band that exists outside the bounds of major-label affiliated industry--and in the '80's, there was much less crossownership and cross-over between the two speheres--my experience was that the politics of it rarely went beyond that. I met and still like--and played with--quite a few people in those general scenes whose views are to the right of Gingrich. This did not affect their aesthetic sense one bit--which is to say, they recognized they weren't going to get rich from plying the music they actually wanted to.
What Alec identifies as a depoliticized music scene is, I think, largely on-target. I don't read this as a failing, tho. I'm suspicious of the assumption that art requires an explicit political aspect, and I don't read LBO-list for music recommendations any more than I read music-geek 'Net lists for economic analyses. And though there's (a few) exceptions, almost of the bands I can think of that espouse any kind of overt political stance kinda suck: It's difficult to get the nuances of political discourse into a fucking rock song, after all, and slogans set to music does not strike my ears as being particularly worthwhile artistically.
As for the point that the person to whom Alec responded made: Black Flag, who I mentioned above, were one of the most radical bands of their time--through hard work they essentially built the entire framework of labels and a touring circuit from scratch that bands still use today. I know one of the guys who co-owned Black Flag's label--SST--which, obviously, had a very big hand in getting that framework going. That guy later wrote the book _Rock and the Pop Narcotic._ Which espouses a hideous right-wing populism, and is also the single best book written about the actual aesthetics of rock music.
point being: the political dimension we read into the act of running a legitimately independent label is often completely different from how the people actually running the label see it. And that I don't see a direct connection between politics and aesthetic worth.
By the way: though I have no complaints about the label Alec worked for, many of my peers got royally fucked financially by indie labels. Money-grubbing in the indie sphere does exist, but it's pretty damn stupid--there's just not much money to be had, and those grubbing usually have an unseemly reek of desperation about 'em, like they've already failed all the more obvious money-grubbing scams.
Alec again:
>>
Lots of indie labels are connected in some ways with big labels. >>
Very true. But some important ones arent--Touch & Go, Dischord, Southern, and, uh, those affiliated with Revolver USA.
jf