Originally published at: Band People: the artistry and economics of supporting musicians - Boing Boing
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Sounds interesting… It’s a nice reminder that the superstars who most of us think about when we think of the music industry (the big rock stars) are just a tiny fraction of the entire industry. The vast majority of people in the entertainment industries in general are, in fact, working schmoes with little security in exchange for their labor. I’ve argued that what was critical about punk was less the influence on genre, but how punks talked about music as a form of labor and how they brought into the public eye these kinds of discussions about how music is made…
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Amidst all the mentions of ‘bands’ it’s worth pausing to consider whether the band as a ‘thing’ is critically endangered just like the white rhino. (Answer: Capitalism)
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Great review! Interesting though how few to no names are mentioned. I remember often being intrigued by say, Adrian Belew. That guy really got around! Including…positionally? Not just as a guitar whiz, but sometimes as a lead singer.
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…huh?
If I started mentioning names, I would have started writing off the rails about Jon Wurster and Peter Hughes’ contributions, as well as my efforts to read between the lines of Nigel Powell’s comments about Frank Turner (he has left he band since the interviews took place, though in a much different than Peter Hughes). I also would have gotten into the weeds about Mikey Erg’s wonderful insights as both a frontman and a session / supporting guy.
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Spam maybe?
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To me, that period of time had fewer steps between musicians and fans getting their music.
Fast, cheap pressings of vinyl. Low-quality tapes of gigs and sessions, home taping and tape-to-tape. Homemade cover art and zines, too.
Bands and artists were their own industry!
If only the internet had led to a resurgence of that, and not, you know, Spotify.
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Yeah this is my experience. In some ways it’s harder. There’s an economic angle that people don’t often consider in the US at least I can say from experience. Even if you have enough cash saved or inherited to try to do something you can’t just rent a cheap garage apartment and press albums like you could in 1999 on a gig/service/teaching/whatever income. Alternatively the kinds of jobs that will enable paying people and recording, or building a good studio, pretty much preclude any touring or even regular releases while at the same time reduced costs mean almost anyone can at least try so all the channels are constantly highly saturated with content. Hard to make a kind of embodied scene out of that.
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Yeah, absolutely. They were very keen on cutting out the middle man, and that was part of the larger arguments about the exploitation of the majors. They were exploiting fans, too. Authenticity became the key concept, I think.
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I love the freedom to record digitally, it’s fantastically efficient and cost-effective.
But there’s no artefacts, there’s no cover art or sleeve notes to read, there’s no vinyl to covet. There’s far less magic in clicking a mouse button on a laptop.
Music feels like it should be on (or in) something. Then it’s magical. It has ritual.
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Absolutely… I still buy physical media whenever I can. I know that, even if it’s an artist on a large label, they’re probably still getting more than me listening to a stream and I get the shiny, too! Although, my preference is for CDs over vinyl, but honestly, if I could get a good tape deck and a portable one, too, I’d go for tapes!
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Physical space in general has been de-emphasized. I feel like so much of a “scene” is built around the real experiences people have in space and with each other. Third space, liminal spaces, empty lots in which the purpose of music is to bring people together physically.
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Related: that’s why I love radio.
Like, what’s the point in a request show, when you can listen to (almost) any song in history, whenever you like?
It’s because the sharing is the part that matters!
The music you chose on your headphones is good, but it’s not the same as a shared listen.
And sharing in-person is even better.
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I listen to a fair amount of music radio and the reason is that someone has chosen this music to share with an audience. Someone who knows more than I do about that kind of music, or new releases or just in general.
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The shows I like more are the DJ-curated ones, like the guy that plays Americana stuff, or the Blues guy, or the one who plays obscure album tracks, not singles.
Giving a fuck is what makes me eager to listen, and keep listening.
And getting back to the topic, knowledge of the who, what, how and when of the music, and the willingness to share that - that keeps me interested, too.
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Your lack of capitalisation has not helped your on-spec application for editorial work.
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This is THE Thing. In the 90s / early 00s, it was all about cutting out the middle man. This led to better home recording options, etc. That should have been great!
But it also led to Spotify saying “Yeah, we’ll help you cut out the middleman!…By teaming up with major labels to create a new captive listening service!”
Now, we have the means of production…but not the means of distribution, at least not where people are looking for it.
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Well that’s weird but wouldn’t it be safe to assume that was a production error, and not an editorial one?
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If you check out discussions from zines at that time (especially Punk Planet, but also MRR), you had a good deal of discussion on that very issue. Who was going to end up benefiting. There was an interview in one issue with the Sound Opinion guys (one or both of them) about how the digitalization was trending around the time of all that going down around napster and the direction it ended up taking (corporate control). I think stuff like patreon and band camp was going to be the next thing to help indie artists outside the mainstream, but enshittification is coming for that too…
That was ALWAYS the big issue from the 80s… once you got indie labels across the post-punk spectrum, distribution was the issue. There were all these indie shops (like Wax-n-Facts and Wuxtry, later Criminal here in the ATL… a couple others), but how did you get your records to them. Of course, going back to the 70s, these record shops also started their own labels (here in ATL, again, Danny Beard’s DB Records, out of the back of W-n-F). But distribution was still the key problem… So, those were formed, too. There was… Ruth Schwartz’s distro Mordam, Rough Trade in the UK… a couple of others that I’m blanking on at the moment… I know one really big one I’m missing… But you could do worse by reading Alan O’Connor’s book on punk music production…
As an academic book it’s a bit pricey, but worth it if your interested in this history and how it’s changed over the years…
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