If I understand your argument, the animus comes from the fact that some fans are young and pathetic. Fair enough.
Hypothesis: The value of a song is due partially to its "merit" and partially to its popularity and associations. Therefore fans feel like part of the value of the song is due to them, and that a musician who sells the song for a commercial is partially benefiting from value that the fans have created.
Compare this, perhaps, to the argument that I was recently making against banner advertisers that try to make money by collecting information about my usage patters. I object less to the invasion of privacy, and more to the idea that the company is taking value from the consumer without their consent/benefit.
That said, I am generally in favor of the idea that musicians are free (and encouraged) to make money off their music however they like.
. When a band gains exposure, either by going big or appearing in a commercial, the meaning of that self-expression is changed or lost entirely, and the cohort so diluted that there's no longer any real felt sympathy.
Is that a polite way of saying that the bands are making it harder for their fans to believe that their (band member and fans) souls run deep? I could see that. I find it hard to dredge up sympathy for the fans, though.
The cohort problem can be really annoying for fans, not because they deserve a cohort, but that the cohort leads them into false assumptions of likeness with other fans. There were quite a few bands I liked in the 90's whose other groupies would do things like drive with me to out-of-town shows, share hotel rooms, and so forth. Looking back, I obviously could have been in great danger, but I wasn't. It wasn't long before exposure made that kind of thing impossible and I started griping about concerts full of yelling teens and supersquare flailing yuppies.
But what was false about that was not the exposure itself; what was false was those weird years when we all assumed fans of the same band were somehow friends. Those relationships were formed solely on the constant reiteration that we, as co-fans, were not like other people, not on the basis of some real similarity. The exposure that those bands got simply revealed what we dared not admit--that everyone likes good music, and you can't separate sheep from goats that way.
I genuinely don't care if songs by a band I like get used in a commercial except where the commercial is for some corporation I have a particular dislike for. This, when songs you like are being used to sell a product or corporation you despise, is a pretty harsh situation to be in, but otherwise, who cares?
Musicians have always been in a fairly compromised situation and searching for music makers unsullied by commercial concerns seems a fairly fruitless quest.
the meaning of that self-expression is changed or lost entirely
And that's why we have organic unity in an infinite fullness as our ideal.
Art, anyone? Surely the presumption is that these bands (sometimes called "artists") are attempting to create some meaningful form of art. It's not a big stretch to say that the meaning of the art will be changed if its purpose turns out to be pure commerce.
"Be a Pepper" is as catchy a pop tune as anything by, say, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but most people instinctively see a line between the two. When CYHSY (or whoever) sells a tune to BK, then that line is blurred/erased. Making a chump of anyone who might have thought that CYHSY was in some meaningful sense different from whoever the ad guy was who wrote "Be a Pepper."
You can argue all you want about art, intention, context, blah blah blah, but that's what's going on here. Yes, people care because of the emotional attachment they formed to the band, but the emotional attachment isn't what's harmed; it's the identification of the band's music as having meaning beyond "buy this 3rd party product."
That's well-put, AWB. Though it seems a little harsh to say that the years of being part of a fan group were "false." Maybe that the ostensible basis of the relationships wasn't nearly as important as just being part of a group.
7: But when buying a product is how people "express themselves," the association with certain kinds of art is not beside the point.
8: Maybe the experience of being in such a group is not false; those people did a lot for me, and I had wonderful experiences because I belonged. But did we have anything actually in common? Not more than I had with the eventual fans of the post-selling-out band. They were just nice to me because we could claim some kind of us v. them mentality.
It's a good thing artworks have never been put to commercial, political, or religious purposes before now.
Making a chump of anyone who might have thought that CYHSY was in some meaningful sense different from whoever the ad guy was who wrote "Be a Pepper."
I don't see "making."
Art, schmart. Bach wrote what the burghers of Saxony would pay him to write. Mozart wrote what the aristocracy of the Austrian empire would pay him to write. They were lesser artists than [insert indie band of your choice here]?
No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money.
On the fans, AWB gets it exactly right.
In fact, this discussion reminds me somewhat of my experience here. We are not necessarily more like one another than any other group of people, but we have a common text and certain commonplaces that give the appearance of likeness, such that I feel pretty safe meeting up with people here, and have made lasting friendships. That's how I felt as a groupie; it was a way to make conversation with people I wouldn't have met otherwise.
14: That is, we all know all the words to all the same "songs." N00bs are not to be trusted until they learn some of the words, not because it will make them "like" us, but because talking to people who don't get your references is more frustrating.
Huh. The reason I was angry about Janis Joplin's song being used to sell cars was because I thought it was morally wrong for a company to use a dead musician's critique to sell more of their product.
(n.b. I understand that JJ and her co-writers were not singling out Mercedes-Benz.)
1dealist nailed it in 1: The rest of you are young and pathetic.
N00bs are not to be trusted until they learn some of the words, not because it will make them "like" us, but because talking to people who don't get your references is more frustrating.
I think this analysis is lacking: learning the words won't make anyone "like us" (grant that though it's contentious), but that doesn't mean it doesn't show that the person was like us all along. It's not just a matter of frustration at lack of getting a reference, there's also frustration at talking to someone who doesn't understand how the whole process works—there's a style and not just a content. You might want to assimilate learning the style to learning the words, but I think it's more substantive than that.
I think that if the common text and commonplaces are pervasive enough, that can make those to whom they're common more like one another than an arbitrarily selected group.
18: Fair enough, Ben. An ability to acquire a style is a real likeness.
JRoth, you crackhead, it's not as if selling the rights is conclusive reason to think that the writer's motivation was to get a song on a VW commercial lo those many years ago.
Amanda's point is a good one: given the increased recognition that the music business was--surprise!-- not on the side of either fans or art, it makes sense to look for other ways of supporting your songwriting habit.
You'd have realized that straightaway if you actually fit in here, awb.
21: Don't make me paranoid, Ben.
An ability to acquire a style is a real likeness.
Yeah, and there's more than that, I think. The humor here (what's left of it, Ben) isn't for everyone, and neither are the politics, the gender discussions, etc. There's definitely a common sensibility at work. It doesn't make us all soulmates, but we're a lot more alike than fans of a band.
24: I only became a fan after you sold out in 2006, so I'm defensive.
20: and it should be pointed out that there is no other way to support a songwriting habit.
I can't speak for rock, but in the electronic world, it simply isn't possible to make a good living through record sales alone. Even touring carries enough capital costs that you have to be basically huge-ultra-megastars who sell venues out everywhere, all the time, if you want to have a shot. I have one friend who makes his living doing live electronic sets, and it is a mighty modest living.
I heard a radio interview recently with the Dresden Dolls, no small-scale act, and even with all their current success they (a) have to tour all the time and (b) still only clear about 30k each per year. The Nine Inch Nails tour that they opened? They lost money.
So, yeah, sure, it can be a bummer to hear a song you really love being used to shill for some stupid product, but to say that bands shouldn't sell out is to say that they shouldn't be able to make a living off of this thing they do that you allegedly care so much about. I have very little respect for that, frankly.
No no.
A large part of it is that the fan, who has some emotional attacment to a piece of art, gets that song played in a commercial context in a way thats hard to avoid. I think i woudl mind a lot less if i could block out all commercials and billboards and shit like that. Although i think part of it is the 'fan-created value/associations' thing.
18: I am nothing like you people. Figuring out that you should, you know, type in real sentences and not ask for every reference to be explained doesn't seem like that much of a tribal rite to me, just basic politeness.
The DD song "Sex Changes" would be a lot better if the lines "today be still your beating heart / you'll have to keep on feeding it tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" went, as I initially misheard them, "today be still your beating heart / you'll have to keep on beating it tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" (lyrics).
It doesn't make us all soulmates, but we're a lot more alike than fans of a band.
In part because the numbers are small enough that people can create an alikeness; I think that's where you were right about dilution.
There was a book a few years ago by Jacob Slichter of Semisonic about this, talking about the financial problems of being a "popular" band. I didn't read it, but I heard some interviews in which he explained that, when you're a really small band doing all your own promotion in Minneapolis, you can kinda live on what you make playing festivals and small bars, putting out a few CDs. But the instant you have a radio hit and get a record deal, they fuck you on everything. The execs would take them to really fancy restaurants, and they'd feel like they were being courted, but the next month, the restaurant bill would show up as one of their expenses--that kind of stuff, everything getting charged back to them. So the only money they could really make was selling music for movies and ads, though they were totally opposed to it. Apparently, they came out of the late 90's having made basically no more than they were making before they had a radio hit.
There are about four different things going on in the usual backlash:
* A die-hard '60s notion that rock music maintains some sort of countercultural currency, which just ain't so, if it ever was. (The Zombies did a commercial jingle for Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing, as I just noted over at LGM.) This is the most irritating one to argue with, because it gets tied up in all kinds of stupid Boomer identity issues.
* A sense that musicians in the '80s and '90s who explicitly were looking to avoid their dissent being commodified have given up. I don't think this is really true, you know? It's not like Fugazi or Youth of Today are interested in having their music used in a Levi's ad; contrawise, does anyone think that Devo was ever predicating their image on a tough no-sellouts stance?
* The fact that once a band gains wider dispersal, they're no longer a useful cultural shorthand. Identifying, say, Nick Drake fans and recognizing them as a certain sort of person (or at least someone who might have significant overlap in musical taste) gets harder after the "Pink Moon" VW ad propels him onto the charts a gajillion years after he died.
* The fact that a lot of bands are still struggling with figuring out how to make a decent living in an digital economy. Jenny Toomey's Future of Music group is who I turn to for this sort of thing, because the FoMC people are by and large whip smart, and Toomey's been thinking about this for a good long while.
Reposted from Yglesias, with corrections
Young people today!
Sometimes some of the power of music and lyrics comes from the audience's belief that it isn't just marketed commercial crap.
I.E., repeating myself to make the point clear, people often listen to music specifically because they think that it's not marketed commercial crap.
To put it in marketing terms, the indie musician's brand is compromised when it's contaminated with Sony's brand or Ford's brand, sort of like Jesus' brand being compromised when it's contaminated by Amway (to the point that Amway-type Christianity is dominant nowadays).
On the other hand, once indie cred is understood to be a marketing schtick (to be kept unmixed with the Ford marketing schtick), indie really is lost, no? On the third hand, when the indie audience starts making their own compromises in order to make a living, they're less likely to be vigilant about purity.
On the fourth hand, you gotta do what you gotta do. Lots of artists in history made big compromises, but they usually weren't indie types.
It still pisses me off when the Pretenders introduce Rush Limbaugh. Apparently there were no royalties paid for years, and now the royalties are being donated to PETA. Since PETA, like Limbaugh, is shit, this doesn't cheer me up much. On the fifth hand, I don't think the Pretenders ever made big ideological claims.
Tom Waits / Densmore / The Doors
4: There was a long piece somewhere about the deep, ineffable bond that Insane Clown Posse fans had. The author asked several of them to explain that and they all said the equivalent of "You had to of been there".
I think there is a genuine additional thing to regret (though I don't personally hold it against the bands) when you see the commercial in question over and over and over again, and the song you used to like winds up being indelibly associated in your mind with Oldsmobile or Mr. Lumpy's House of Crab or whatever.
though I don't personally hold it against the bands
Well, depending on just what's being advertised, at least.
Mr. Lumpy's House of Crab
Weezer really are a bunch of sellout fucks.
29: That's how I first heard it too, and you're right --- it would have been better.
It's possible to have a real hatred of advertising, PR, promo, buzz, brandnaming, and so on without hating the product being sold. I don't know anything bad about Toyota, for example, but I'm pretty sure that if I experienced a lot of Toyota hype I'd absolutely hate it.
When CYHSY (or whoever) sells a tune to BK, then that line is blurred/erased.
Come to think of it, "Gimme Some Salt" would make for a fantastic fries commercial.
And I'm surprised that selling out is being discussed as if it's a big deal. Pitchfork actually had quite a good editorial on the death of "selling out" for independent artists. Nowadays, it seems more pleasant than anything else if a band I like gets widespread exposure. Sure, I got a little annoyed at "Bittersweet Symphony" becoming huge in the US as "that Nike song", but that's partially because the band got screwed so hard at the same time. When a car commercial comes on with "Galang" or a Go! Team song in the background, it's just nice that they're getting the cash and exposure. Hell, I want them to keep releasing records, don't I? Then let them eat cake and wash it down with fine beers and cheap whiskey!
Because I don't have a TV, I rarely know what music is being used to advertise what. In 2003, I went to a Polyphonic Spree show, not knowing that they'd had a song on the VW/iPod commercial, and there were all these people there I didn't expect to see at a PS show. At first, I was pissed about it, but the commercial is one of the few with music I actually think handles it fairly well. They play the entire opening of the song, and name the band and the song in the corner like a music video, and there's little to it other than outlining the curves of the car. And since it is a commercial about being able to listen to the kind of music you have on your iPod while driving, they don't cut it up or do voice-over on top; it just has a little text on the screen.
When I teach composition, I ask my students to analyze an ad that appeals to their artistic or ideological sensibilities and evaluate their own reactions. When I taught that in 2003, I ended up saying that this ad was specifically trying to appeal to people who hate the way independent music gets repackaged and sold, associated with a product, drained of its own meaning, because it does a fairly good job of making the commercial as much about the idea of indie music itself as it is about the car.
The reaction I have to this is, of course, in the long run, an even deeper sense of having been invaded.
Back in 1967, before you people were born, film people I knew were saying that TV and advertising use of media was often more skilled that artistic use, partly just because there was so much quick money in advance. I had a bad feeling then and still do; TV news is really a virtuoso production, but what utter crapit almost always is.
In 2003, I went to a Polyphonic Spree show, not knowing that they'd had a song on the VW/iPod commercial, and there were all these people there I didn't expect to see at a PS show.
I've found this phenomenon to be linked more to how accessible a band's music is than to how much TV exposure they've gotten. As far as I can tell, the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem never got any commercials, but they were accessible and likeable enough music that, once they got some articles written about them, they could explode in bizarre ways. Those people can be kind of annoying at concerts though, at least around here, because they don't seem to grasp basic concert etiquette or have the fun energy of the 18 and under kids.
This is a major saving grace of noise rock. There's really no way for those bands to sell out even if they wanted to, and no one goes to Lightning Bolt or Parts & Labor shows unless they really love the music.
43: I know I'm at a really good show when the performance is so engaging that I stop hating everyone around me. I am not someone who can stand being nudged repeatedly in the ribs by drunk people.
Old chestnut, true. I wrote about this a while back after the A.V. Club fronted this debate a couple months ago. One of the things, I think, to mourn when a band 'sells out' - becomes popular and financially successful through licensed music - might be the way in which that success, that fame, damages their ability to continue making music (making Art, if we really want to turn this old debate into something much older). Popular musicians burn out young, by and large; sophomore albums obsess over the costs of fame in a way that's alienating emotionally to some people. By observing we change what is observed; does widespread attention destroy what we love just by affixing thousands of eyes to it?
One big fact of life is that the US only supports a rather small number of original musicians, a few of whom make hundreds of millions of dollars and most of whom don't even break even. So faced with the choice of continuing in music or doing something else, people will end up making compromises. Individual musicians choose to play backup for more successful musicians, or work as studio musicians, or play in cover bands, or play weddings and other such occasions. For a band to license advertising or accept sponsorship is a version of this.
On the other hand, if you started out as a conscious dissident there's a real cost to doing that (and not just if you're a musician).
"Get used to it" is pretty flawed wisdom, in my opinion. Being a grumpy old man isn't as bad as people think.
43: I saw Parts & Labor about a month ago, and they were basically playing slightly noisy pop punk. It was extremely disappointing.
Lightning Bolt, on the other hand, remains pure.
I can't wait for the day somebody hires paperrad to make an ad for something.
Also, slightly self-aggrandizing factoid I forgot to share earlier before my internet died: two of the first servers at napster were sifu.napster.com and tweety.napster.com. I'm so part of the problem!
This is why I listen exclusively to bands that most corporations would pay large amounts of money to avoid being associated with.
I will never be able to hear the phrase "old chestnut" again without thinking of.
I should point out that I wasn't so much saying that 7 is how I feel as that 7 might describe how people feel. Apparently I failed to establish enough ironic distance. Fucking 00s.
That said, comments like 13 (no offense, OFE) are SO annoying. No shit, artists wants to get paid. As an architect, I want to get paid for my art. That doesn't mean I don't know the difference between selling my skills/talents and selling out. Christ. Are none of you creative professionals?
There's at least 2 things going on in this tiny corner of the discussion:
Thing 1: Big difference between being paid to create a piece of art and being paid to create an advertisement. This is so fucking obvious it seems stupid to type it, yet every time this discussion happens, people act as if they don't know it. "Be a Pepper" is an advertisement. "Pink Moon" is not (even though Nick Drake got paid some money for it!). Or, rather, was not. Now it is. It is not irrational for "Pink Moon" lovers to be unhappy that its status changed.
Thing 2: When artists are paid not merely for their product, but for their product to be something specific (e.g., court poets), the product is, in fact, something different. It may well be amazing art, if the artist is amazing (if you were paying attention, you noticed that I praised the artistry of "Be a Pepper"). But no one is ever under the illusion that the art is something else. It never changes status. This is patently not what I'm talking about in this type of "selling out" (separate from the IMHO stupid definition of "selling out" as "earning money by performing your music for a larger audience than yesterday, when I started listening").
Anyway, I don't have a lot invested in the debate. For reasons widely discussed, I accept that current bands have enormous incentives to "sell out," and I don't care except what 36 said. Despite John's old-fogeyism, I still think that at least some 60s rock is actually debased by advertising use ("Fortunate Son" coming to mind, as its writer didn't approve, and its use was diametrically opposed to the writer's intent), but I've given up being offended.
JRoth, Look, take all the offense you want, but I didn't mean to be offensive. The point I was trying to make is that creative people have to work with the opportunities to feed their families that they get, not the ones they would like. The Stones or Dylan or whoever don't need to sell their work to the advertising industry, but that's because they're already closer to Bill Gates than most musicians will ever be. I don't care who they sell their songs too, because they're already on the other side of the wall. I may still like the songs, but that's not dependent on liking the bands. But those sort of people aren't really relevant in this argument, because they're not typical of anybody.
What makes selling out? Licensing your work for a product you positively disapprove of, maybe. But if it's something you might quite easily buy yourself, why not? A contract with the SOBs who own Sony is not categorically different from a contract with the SOBs who own Chrysler (especially after this week).
Personally, if a tune I like turns up in an advert, I welcome the chance to hear more of it, and I hope a lot of people who would never have heard it otherwise will enjoy it too. I'd prefer that nobody in the equation was dependent on the dubious ethics of capitalism to sell or receive their music, but not so much so that I want anybody to starve for their beliefs.
As an architect, can you always turn down every potential job where you don't like the client? If not, what do you see as selling out? I'm asking seriously - I don't understand where the line in the sand is drawn.
As an architect, I want to get paid for my art. Without trust funds is it possible to be an architect without being paid for it? Like, the man comes down to the 7-11 and says, "J., I need an 15 story office building quick, and my regular guy has the flu, and I heard you were pretty good with a pencil..."
Ars gratia artis is more the exception than the rule in the history of art, or so the mullahs have had me believe.
Fogarty was a nightmare case of someone who lost control of his output. At one point I believe that he was forbidden to perform is own songs, and he was even sued for recording a song ("Old Man Down the Road", I think) which "plagiarized" his earlier work.
The worst stories about music rights really make the free market look bad, and they're a good way to out freemarket fanatics, who never can see any problem.
Discussions like these always get very frustrating to me because it's hard to escape framing it around the guilt or innocence of the artist in question. I would like to have a means to enjoy music without commerical associations. I'd like to associate music with love, sex, friends, that one time that we were in the car looking for a place to pick strawberries, with my own life. Or even with other songs, or even with itself. I'd prefer not to end up associating it with either a) the need to have a Jetta or b) the idealized youthful hipster lifestyle that resembles my idealized image of myself but now signifies the need to have a Jetta.
Pace w-lfs-n I also think that the last forty years do represent a different period of the relationship between art and commerce, signified chiefly by what Frencher men than I have called "the Spectacle."
No artist should have to apologize for supporting himself. But thinkers should apologize for failing to imagine any other means of sharing culture than through corporate capitalism. Certainly this kind.
"Some of your friends are already this fucked."
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.
Required reading by Steve Albini. From Baffler #5. Poor Baffler.
But thinkers should apologize for failing to imagine any other means of sharing culture than through corporate capitalism.
Yes, but this is not fundamentally an anti-capitalist site. So as a matter of courtesy I at least tend not to stress options that involve hanging the last aristo with the guts of the last priest on their bandwidth.
As I cut nipple holes in my Che shirt, I will suggest that having national health insurance would be one way that musicians could afford to sell out without demolishing the cherished foundations of our society. Broken Social Scene like to talk about this.
Lest my aux armes comrades obscure my point, let me just say that it's silly to blame artists for keeping themselves in mutton, but it's silly to use the artist's lot to defend the system.
That's a perpendicular issue, Wrongshore. As far as I know, Papas Fritas put out every single album on an indie label (Mint? Minty Fresh?), but they still took Dentene money. The issue Albini's telling bands to watch out for is that they're going to lose control of their work, not that they're going to be commercialized and damned. The t.v. commercial decision strikes me as much more parallel to Albini's willingness to produce an album by Silverchair, a band I'd be willing to put money on him holding in some contempt.
A lot of bands signing contracts not only lose artistic control, they lose money. They get free travel and survive, but touring travel seems not to be fun.
Oddly, I've never heard anyone complain about Norwegian black metal bands selling out, and they stopped burning churches and killing people years ago.
Shit, rebellion and anti-authoritarianism is itself just another commodity, especially for young audiences. I understood what the Airplane was/ were doing by the time of "Volunteers"
"Up Against the Wall, motherfuckers
Tear Down the Wall"
Remember the Apple "1984" ad? It is the fucking nostalgia, the illusion of independence that is the commodity. Brooks Brothers in a Lexus with "Born to Be Wild" on the Blaupunkt. It. Is. Fucking. Hilarious.
The message in the use of "Pink Moon" is exactly in the "selling out" and is aimed at boomers. Kids can't afford those cars. "You thought you were free but you got over it. But it's ok. This car will make you feel better, a little melancholy but comfortable. In your heart, blah blah."
52: I wasn't offended; I just didn't want to seem offensive to your 13. My Thing 1 (and I still think it's unaddressed) is that working for a patron - or even a big record company - is way different from turning your (already-written) song into a jingle. Again, I don't believe you people are really so dense as to not see this.
53: Maybe this is a mystery to non-designers/creatives. There are principles I find important. There are ideas I have, which I try to express in my work. Sometimes I have clients who want to hire me for the ideas I have, the principles I value. Other clients don't care, but will accept whatever principles I express (which may be a subset of what I would do with $100M of my own). Yet other clients say "Fuck your principles, draw this, or we take our business elsewhere." Now, if I've designed a building I like (shorthand for the concepts above), and someone I don't like (the NRA) takes over the building, that's not a sellout like "Start Me Up" - it's ex post facto, and I don't benefit - so the analogy fails. But I can choose whether to attach my name to the NRA - or to design a crummy building, or to adhere to the letter of the law while flouting its spirit - in the first place, and therein lies the potential sellout.
As I said, it's stupid to define "sellout" as "anyone who makes a living from music-making." But that doesn't mean that "sellout" is an utterly vacant term. If John Fogerty had sold "Fortunate Son" to Wrangler, he'd be a fucking sellout, who wrote a song about the flaws in America, and made $$ and earned fan love from that sentiment, then turned around and made that song into a blindly pro-American jingle.
My own romantic vision of Kurt Cobain is that he was just slightly discomfited by a world that paid him big money for his depression and despair. I was reminded of the new biography of Warren Zevon, who regretted not having someone close to him die, so he could write a good song about it like Neil Young and Jackson Browne.
And then Steve Gilliard's family has requested that Jen post no further reports on his medical conditions. The commenters protested mildly, saying they understood and respected, but commenters are almost like family, and they want to watch.
If blogs are a distribution system, with success measured in fame/hit counts or approval within a self-limiting community, what are they selling? Besides humor, opinions, outrage and other feelings, they sell dog pictures and their operations and bike rides with the kids. Our very lives & families have become commodities for mass distribution and we fret about Elvis Costello's artistic integrity.
I can't understand why Cobain couldn't see the humour in it all.
Oh! OH!
The ending of Cronenburg's Naked Lunch
"OK, you're a writer."
That was funny.
"... but it's not hard to see where the animus toward "selling out" is coming from."
Personally I think the main source is the spiteful jealousy some people feel towards anybody who is successful.
65: If I'm not mistaken, "Volunteers" was the first of several contractual obligation albums. They signed the worst contract ever, and their plan was to crank out albums as fast as they could until they were free to do good stuff. It doesn't work that way, though.
As I keep saying, if one of the premises of your art is rebellion or liberation or anything of that kind, the selling-out problem is real. Churches can be run as businesses too, but many people find that nasty (though nasty people like those churches).
There is a midpoint where the musician makes an OK to good living without compromising himself, but it's hard to find.
until they were free to do good stuff
Oh? When will that be, then?
I liked their first two albums, if that's what you're asking. The first was pre-Grace Slick. The decline began with #3, IIRC. Volunteers was #6. My theory is that everything after Surralistic Pillow was distorted by the contract. I don't actually have detailed specific knowledge.
I liked their first two albums, and there were moments on "Baxters" and "Crown", but good stuff after "Volunteers"? Perleeese.
No, that was my point. I was told that they started cranking out bad albums one after another to get out of the contract, but by the time they were done with that they weren't able to do good stuff any more.
They went through multiple contract fights and forced name changes (Jefferson Starship --> Starship.)
I've met guy who'd met Marty Balin and said that everyone in the world hated Balin because he was a jerk. Wiki (which doesn't seem to mention the contract stuff) also says that their drummers kept quitting, usually for good reasons. Also that Slick was sharper than she seemed.
The Grateful Dead actually had a pretty good business plan. The escapist innocence of the SF scene looks incredibly silly, overall, though.
The problem with the Grateful Dead was that if you played keyboards with them you were a dead man walking (literally). But you're right about their business model.
I believe you that Slick was sharper than she seemed. She couldn't have been dumber.
I don't know the chronology of Airplane's records but I will submit that Bark is a fine, fine record and one of the best-ever album covers.
best-ever album covers
Hm... when I go to Amazon to try and get a graphic, I see an album with a big red circle on the front with the initials J.A. inside it. But my record at home has trompe-l'oeuil brown paper wrapping with a fish's head sticking out at the lower right. And the fish is wearing dentures!
Wikipaedia has the same album cover as Amazon. And they say it was the first record after "Volunteers". So to you OFE, I say Bark is after Volunteers and is a substantially better record.
Clownae, you're right about the original cover of Bark, but I can't say I was ecstatic about the music, even 30+ years ago. I think JA had tried people's patience just a little too long by then. Hot Tuna were OK, though.
Also, it could feature nothing but an extended version of 4' 33" on both sides and still be significantly better than Volunteers. It isn't a high bar.
Perhaps I should go to Wiki and complain that their Airplane thing is too partisan. But probably Airplane people have entrenched themselves in the Wiki structure.
Perhaps I should go to Wiki and complain that their Airplane thing is too partisan. But probably Airplane people have entrenched themselves in the Wiki structure.
tried people's patience
Well I'm a bit younger than you and Emerson -- all I knew of Airplane growing up was Surrealistic Pillow, which I liked a lot -- I'm pretty sure Bark was the second Airplane record I ever listened to, and it was a revelation of sorts -- but my patience had not been tried. I love Jorma and Hot Tuna.
"How many machine-men will you see
Before you stop your believin'
That speed will slide down on you
like brakes in bad weather." ...cue Nicky
There's good stuff on Volunteers. Jorma's slide on "Good Shepherd"
...
I was actually inspired mostly by a pile-on Richard Schickel over at Kevin Drum. Everyone was sneering at Schickel's credentialism, but I asked myself where I get my movie reviews. Well, IMDB, but I don't know the names, Matt & Ezra & Henley etc.
When you have 10,000 movie reviewers out there, if the review works and entertains you, you don't care who the reviewer is or his level of expertise. People didn't care about Lilek's politics when he was writing about his munchkin and Target.
I remember when people bought Northgate computers, mostly because they were Northgates. There were a hundred other little computer companies and shops trying to sell brand-names. They are almost all gone.
Do people read Drum because he is better than Ezra? Have Greenwald and Hamsher simply clued into a formula? No one, AFAIK, has yet looked at the blogosphere as demonstrating the two processes of commodification:adding exchange-value to private experience by capitalizing a market and then mass-producing it to where it is all interchangable. Not interchangeable? I would never drink Pepsi. I am also not listening to the Airplane more than the Decemberists because one band is better. Or reading Unfogged because it is funny.
I'll confess to being a guy who saw the Dead whenever I could.
Favorite Dead-related show - Garcia at Lunte Fontanne Theatre. Drove from Charlottesville to the show and back in a 24hourish period.
And on the topic, the Dead clearly were selling a commodity of being anti-sell-outs.
The Dead seem to have controlled their own business. So did Zappa and Ani deFranco. A musician with good business sense can do really well. Someone who depends on the biz will get screwed. Probably htper-idelaists with no business sense do the worst.
"Be a Pepper" is an advertisement. "Pink Moon" is not (even though Nick Drake got paid some money for it!). Or, rather, was not. Now it is. It is not irrational for "Pink Moon" lovers to be unhappy that its status changed.
I concede that it's not totally irrational for some "Pink Moon" lovers who strongly associate the song with some pre-"Pink Moon"-commercial time of their lives to be unhappy that the song now has additional associations which may be distasteful to them. Silly, but not irrational.
But in fact, I listen to "Pink Moon" all the time and the song hasn't changed at all. It sounds just the same as it did before the commercial. There's been no magical change in the status of the song. Nothing's been taken away.
I'm cognizant of all the evils of the music industry and how artists are routinely fucked over. I'm happy to see artists avoid that. But I don't mind hearing songs that I like in public spaces or in movie scores or television commercials. A song can't acquire too many different associations--that what eventually makes them folk songs.
that what eventually makes them folk songs
Greedy Populuxe wants to steal the intellectual property of musicians and songwriters.
I first heard nick drake on that Volkswagen commercial. There are a lot of good songs that I first heard on tv commercials.
