Honey, You're Too Sweet For Rock 'n' Roll

“As long as there’s sex and drugs, I could do without the rock ‘n’ roll.”
- Drummer in the film Spinal Tap (MGM, 1994), when asked what he would do if he
couldn’t play rock ‘n’ roll.


Musicians make music. Listeners like to hear music. If the world were full of nothing but musicians and listeners, they might strike a simple deal. However, in the real world, there are middlemen who know how to strike a much more complex deal – labels are the super-structure that rests on the base of artistic creation. Labels act as brokers for a substantial cut of the profits. They offer the musician exposure to a wider audience, which means more money for all who cooperate. Labels provide quality production, mass distribution and powerful marketing tools. However, musicians have to earn this kind of support by agreeing to construct and deliver a mass-audience-friendly product so that the industry can move as many units as possible. Listeners are not individualized – they are referred to statistically as market share.

This paper is about the relationship between the musician and the music industry, the blending of art and commerce, and opportunities for independence. A musician’s song no longer reaches the listener directly – capitalism is about surplus value. The third man in capitalism makes the largest profit, not through creation, but through harnessing another person’s creation before it can be received and appreciated. I argue that this process can hurt the creation involved. However, subversion is possible and beneficial to the soul and quality of music.

Despite the considerable power of industry, musicians and other creators have the power of resistance (Hebdige, 1979, p. 165). “Real rock is always a rebellion, always a disrespect to the hierarchy, a blow to the empire” (Coyle & Dolan, 1999, p. 25). Musicians can resist the temptation, the lure, the hook, the promise of riches and fame, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – to circumvent industry’s deleterious effect on music by taking it more directly to the listener. Why not harness your own labour and harvest your own fruit? In Roll Over Adorno, Robert Miklitsch poses the question, “What would happen if artists could bypass the music industry and distribute their wares directly, via the Internet, to their fans (Miklitsch, 2006, p. 57)?”

In addition to selling music, musicians sell themselves to an audience. Musicians must project an image – a stylized visual for the listener, a fashionable identity with which to identify – and that image might be hard to bear if not in alignment with a musician’s core values. Musicians opting to go directly to listeners, foregoing the alluring pull of mass success that major labels offer, would allow themselves freedom of creation. Fame and fortune can corrupt, not just the music – the person who sells their music can also become tainted by the transaction. As a musician and a listener who has spent a few years around the music industry, I argue that while the industry is a seductive business partner, musicians have the power of choice. To the degree that a musician is able to maintain their independence and creative freedom, the listener receives music of greater quality and diversity. It is the industry that benefits when musicians squander their creative juice in return for various form of glamour. If glamour sounds appealing, who said that glamour was something the major labels had a monopoly on? Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll can be pursued independently. You can rent your own limousine.

Agency is possible. The musicians can opt for soul in the music, and keep the rights to their own soul, in order to pass all that pure soul along to the listener. Alternatively, they can file down the rough edges to chase mass-success, lured by the ultimate carrot - the dream of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The blend of art and commerce is not an either/or choice – these are simply two poles that creators exist between. A creator can protect the essence of their art, or choose to blend it with a degree of commerce.

Purists would argue that no blend of art and commerce is a good idea. Others would argue that art is profitable stuff given the endless pastures of profit that exist beyond the break-even point after production costs (Frith, 1987, p. 60). I argue for awareness of the tension between art and commerce and how that tension may corrupt the beauty of art in order to squeeze a profit out of it. For example, I have no problem with a musician selling t-shirts, concert tickets or recordings to fans – that is between musicians and their audience. Nor does there seem anything wrong with a musician creating an image for the stage. Stages are made for the creation of fantastic identities. The problem enters when a musician signs a deal with stars in their eyes, thinking that it will be limousines and life in the fast lane from here on out, not realizing that the label will charge the cost of that limousine to the artist’s bill. The label will want to buy the musician’s masters and rights. An artist’s image becomes a commodity, as well as the music. This is the moment – the crossroads – the blending of art and commerce and the ensuing chemical reaction and puff of smoke.

Glamour is gleam – it is ethereal – it has a tendency to evaporate. Once clarity has been restored, it is interesting to follow the path of where the money changed hands (Gantz & Rochester, 2005, pp. 85-87). Major labels have often done very well while many a musician has gone off the road. A musician can sign a record deal, however, they should do so with eyes wide open – the transaction taking place is a serious one. The selling of art is tricky. The industry knows this and takes great pains to proclaim the authenticity of their product. However, only musicians can safeguard their own creations from commodification.

SEX, DRUGS & ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Are sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll really so terrible – things to be feared? It depends on your point of view. Some would be enthusiastically in favour of this lifestyle mantra. Some would consider moderate sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll the spice of life. Others would argue vociferously against such a pleasure-oriented life viewing it as wasteful and dangerous. In his auto-biography Scar Tissue, Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Keidis discusses both the insidious nature of drug addiction, as well as the perks of rock stardom where women are concerned. Kiedis speaks candidly of his visits to and escapes from rehabilitation facilities, the overdoses of peers, and describes drug addiction as:
“…a progressive disease… every time you go out, it gets a bit uglier than it was before; it’s not like you go back to the early days of using, when there was less of a price to pay. It isn’t fun anymore, but it’s still desperately exciting…. Now you have one job, and that’s to keep chucking the coal in the engine, because you don’t want this train to stop…. You’re diving into a big insidious video game, but again, you’re being tricked into thinking that you’re doing something cool…” (Kiedis, 2004, p. 207).

On the perkier side, Kiedis reports that while the band was staying together in a house in which they were recording, they had “nocturnal visits from a …tangible entity” referring to a female “supporter of the band” that would regularly sleep with three of the band members in succession. Kiedis observed that Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lead guitarist John Frusciante “had become a much different person sexually, not at all interested in abusing resources that were available to him because of his status…I don’t think he would have done it if he thought it was causing her any pain or discomfort” (Kiedis, 2004, p. 276). In the film Almost Famous (Dreamworks Pictures and Columbia Pictures, 2000), during a Rolling Stone magazine editorial meeting, a woman complains that the band Stillwater calls women ‘chicks’ and then notes resignedly, “I know it’s a side issue.” The lead guitarist (played by Billy Crudup) in Almost Famous has an affair with Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson) while on tour. When the band heads back to New York, Penny Lane follows them to find the lead guitarist with his girlfriend. The lead guitarist averts his eyes while the tour manager handles Penny Lane on his behalf, encouraging her to leave the room without making a scene. In the film Spinal Tap (MGM, 1994), the tour manager exclaims, “There’s no sex and drugs for Ian!” Tour managers arrange the festivities more often than they take part in them and at times handle more delicate matters in order to protect the band from embarrassment. Opinions vary greatly on the merits of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as a philosophy to embrace.

However, the particular hook used to lure the fish is not the point. It is the luring itself that is important. If the deal to be made between musician and major label were a straightforward deal, there would be no need for artifice. The major label could openly lay all their cards on the table. However, in practice, artists are wined and dined, charmed and enticed. I submit that if you are a musician, you should at least know when you are being courted and ask yourself how you might end up paying for such attentions. Chances are good that someone, someday will hand you a bill for the wine-and-dine.

CROSSROADS

“The devil appears before the candidate and tempts him, saying, ‘I can grant you victory in the Iowa caucuses. I can give you the New Hampshire primary, the South, New York, California and all the rest… But in return you must sell me your soul. You must betray all decent principles. You must pander, trivialize and deceive. You must gain victory by exploiting bigotry, fear, envy and greed. And you must conduct a campaign based on lies, sham, hype and distortion.’ ‘So,’ the presidential candidate replied, ‘What’s the catch?’”
- Roger Simon, quoted in Road Show, 1990

In order to illustrate the sell-your-soul-for-rock ‘n’ roll mythology, I provide excerpts and descriptions from the film Crossroads (Columbia Pictures, 1986) starring Ralph Macchio, Joe Seneca and Jami Gertz:
First scene: Robert Johnson stands at a crossroads alone – looking down each road – waiting and nervous.
Second scene: “Ya Ever Record Before?” Robert Johnson now has a record deal…
Third scene: Ralph Macchio’s character, who will become Lightnin’ Boy, is described by his teachers at Julliard as a prodigy, “the finest guitarist in the school,” however, he is warned not to “serve two masters” in reference to his mixing classical and blues in musical compositions.
Fourth scene: A young version of Joe Seneca’s character, Blind Boy Willie, is standing at the crossroads. He tells the man who drives up that his friend (Robert Johnson) “says I can make a deal. Are you him?” “No, I’m his assistant…say goodnight to your soul, sir… sign (Willie signs a document)… be here Saturday night. See you in hell Blind Boy.”
Fifth scene: Young Lightnin’ Boy plays the blues for veteran Blind Boy Willie – Willie is essentially unimpressed, stating “you missin’… mileage” and when he finds out where the boy lives, he says “school dormitory? Ohhhh, times is hard, times is hard.”
Scene regarding race: one side of the street has the ‘white bar’ and one side of the street has the ‘black bar’ – Lightnin’ Boy says “I didn’t know that kinda thing still went on,” to which Blind Boy Willie replies, “now you’re starting to learn some deep blues.”
Dream sequence: Blind Boy Willie imagines a confrontation with the man from the crossroads. The man says to Willie, “Shame on you. Ain’t got no chance. You sold your soul. You going down. All the way down. Hell hounds on your trail.”
Scene – boy loses girl and becomes a real bluesman: Lightnin’ Boy wakes up to find his lover has hit the road and he discovers whiskey and the blues – Blind Boy Willie comments “Blues ain’t nuthin’ but a good man feeling bad, about a women he misses.”
Scene – crossroads: Lightnin’ Boy and Blind Boy Willie are headed south, getting closer to the crossroads where Blind Boy Willie had signed over his soul when he was a young man. Willie states: the “only thing I wanted them to say: ‘He could really play. He was good….I need to get back to the crossroads. You tell me how to get there?… This is it. This is the place where it all happened. Cause there’s a fella I got to see and if you playin’ it right, he gon come around.” (Lightin’ Boy begins to play the blues and the man from the crossroads arrives.) Willie says, “I come to see ya – tell ya the deal’s off.” The man replies, “According to this here piece of paper, the deal’s still on.” Willie responds, “I didn’t end up with what I wanted. I didn’t get nuthin’!” The man counters, “nothing’s ever as good as we want it to be. That’s no reason to break a deal. Course, if you had somethin’ to offer me…” (Lightnin’ Boy innocently takes on the challenge and Willie cannot stop him.)
The big showdown scene: Lightnin’ Boy plays Steve Vai. When Vai starts playing, there seems to be no way Ralph Macchio is going to out-guitar him with his Julliard blues. The surprising thing is, it is not actually the blues that helps him outshine Vai – he brings forth his classical training to impress the audience with his intricate finger picking and jubilant major harmonies. Vai cannot compete with his own shrill, flat, meaningless, atonal, noisy, mechanically and speedily picked soulless wail. So, Vai does what any stereotypical rock star would do – he throws down his guitar in frustration and storms off stage. Lightnin’ Boy and Blind Boy Willie’s souls are safe and to celebrate, they jam and the audience dances. Good triumphs over evil.

The mythology goes like this: In your youth, you sell your soul. When you are older and wiser, you win your soul back again. In between, you find out that the deal you made with the devil was a lie. The devil promised you the moon and you promised your soul in exchange. You would think that signing a contract would make it impossible to renegotiate - ‘a done deal.’ However, the reason that you get to battle the devil despite the contract is that the devil never provides his side of the deal in full. The musician does not get what they expected. Labels will spend money to woo artists into signing deals and will continue to woo them until sales of the product go into decline, at which point they will not answer phone calls with previously demonstrated alacrity. “Here comes the cold water. These hos don’t want him no more. He’s cold product. They moved on to the next schmo who flows,” rapped Eminem in “Lose Yourself.”

It is not all glamour. While the devil may deliver fame, the famous discover the value of privacy. A musician may make money only to find they have bills to pay on a grander scale as well. Touring schedules can be intense. Anthony Kiedis discusses touring in the early days of the band’s relationship with the industry:
“I didn’t even know what a music agent was, but it turned out that besides a manager, you had to have yet another industry dude/weasel – not that our guys were weasels, but generally speaking, these guys are a weasely ilk. So Trip booked us on this tour that was sixty dates in sixty-four days, covering all of America. It never even crossed our minds to say, ‘Hey, that’s a lot of shows, and there are no days off’” (Kiedis, 2004, p. 151).

Why not investigate web strategies for touring virtual nightclubs (Spellman, 2002, p. 73)? The weasely-ilk theme emerges frequently when veterans of the music world discuss industry folks. For example: “‘Industry rule number 4080, record company people are shady,’ rapped Q-tip (McLeod, 2005, p. 523).”

Comparing the music industry to ‘the devil’ may seem harsh, however, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones knows all about the hazards of rock ‘n’ roll. Richards coincidentally played guitar on “Sympathy With the Devil,” so presumably he can be called upon where music and devils are concerned. Richards reports: ‘We found out…that all the bread we made for Decca was going into making little black boxes that go into American Air Force bombers to bomb fucking North Vietnam…. That was it. Goddamn, you find out you’ve helped to kill God knows how many thousands of people without even knowing it. I’d rather the Mafia than Decca (Garofalo, 1999, p. 338).”

Jacques Attali discusses the history of music and how the musician went from being a “vagabond” to a “domestic” to a “jongleur” (Attali, 1985, p. 13-14). Attali’s jongleur “…was music and the spectacle of the body. He alone created it, carried it with him, and completely organized its circulation within society (Attali, 1985, p. 14).” Attali then describes how the jongleur became embroiled in politics, “hired to compose songs against the enemy (Attali, 1985, p. 14)” forbidden by kings “to sing about certain delicate subjects (Attali, 1985, p. 14)” and how “[t]he musician, then, was from that day forward economically bound to a machine of power, political or commercial, which paid him a salary for creating what it needed to affirm its legitimacy (Attali, 1985, p. 17).” If you substitute the major labels for the ‘kings’ and ‘machine of power,’ the situation has not dramatically changed in some ways.

Censorship is still an issue in mass-produced music. Where you have censorship, you have the attempt to undermine it: subversion. Attali states that “music heralds….it heralds the emergence of a formidable subversion (Attali, 1985, p. 5).” Attali discusses the relationship between power and sound: “[e]avesdropping, censorship, recording, and surveillance are weapons of power. The technology of listening in on, ordering, transmitting, and recording noise is at the heart of this apparatus (Attali, 1985, p. 7).” Attali goes on to describe the “…three strategic usages of music by power….make people forget the general violence…make people believe in the harmony of the world, that there is order in exchange and legitimacy in commercial power…to silence, by mass-producing a deafening, syncretic kind of music, and censoring all other human noises (Attali, 1985, p. 19).” R. Murray Schafer describes the way in which silence is often framed by language as a negative thing: hush, shut up, wordless, unsaid, unexpressed, voiceless, unspeakable, etc. (Schafer, 1977, p. 258). Control over what people can and cannot say is a powerful social and political tool. It is one thing to be silent and another to be silenced. Sound may be used as a deflection, a diversionary tactic. Adorno refers to “the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all (Adorno, 1938, p. 30).

Attali then describes the very moment that music was, in addition to being politicized, further commodified and institutionalized:
“In order for music to become institutionalized as a commodity, for it to acquire an autonomous status and monetary value, the labor of the creation and interpretation of music had to be assigned a value….it was necessary to establish a distinction between the value of the work and the value of its representation….It was constructed on the basis of the concrete existence, in an object (the score)…. Music, then, did not emerge as a commodity until merchants, acting in the name of musicians, gained the power to control its production and sell its usage, and until a sufficiently large pool of customers for music developed” (Attali, 1985, p. 51).

In Acoustic Communication, Barry Truax reflects Attali’s statement:
“To objectify something makes it a commodity that can be bought and sold. The evanescence of sound previously kept it relatively immune from commerce. One could pay to have the experience of a sound in concert, but one could not actually own the sound itself, only copies of its notation…. [with] the advent of the mass-produced sound artifact….the stage had been set for such commoditization….The industry has grown to billion-dollar proportions” (Truax, 2001, p. 133).

A value could be assigned to the score, giving music a price – that price was flexible enough to include a surplus value that could then be exploited by whomever held the rights to that value. Attali describes the point where we may have gone wrong. The trick now is to retrace the path he describes, in reverse – to go from being under a poltical/economic thumb, to reclaiming independence and artistic freedom by retaining all rights to the valuable art we create.

Robert Jourdain discusses the psychological effect of music in Music, The Brain and Ecstasy. Jourdain states, “[c]learly, music is very old” and observes that the original purpose of music may have been spiritual in nature, as part of ceremonies in resonant caves (Jourdain, 1997, p. 305). It has been argued that music has no roots of authenticity – that rock ‘n’ roll was always hand-in-hand with the industry (Colan & Doyle, 1999, p. 26). Simon Frith states, “[t]he industry began to be dominated by lawyers and accountants and by the mid-1970s there was very little tension between musicians and the business. Rock performers were more likely to complain about companies not exploiting them properly than to object to being ‘commercialized’ (Frith, 1987, p. 69). However, Attali takes us back further, to a time where there were independent musicians, before music was politicized, commodified and dominated. McLeod cites “the cantankerous Dave Marsh: “’I always tell people that for 10,000 years, there were human beings and there was music’… “There were no record companies (McLeod, 2005, p. 530).”

I do not argue that it is a simple matter to be an independent musician. It is not, which is why major labels are so compelling. They have vast resources to offer. The point is that they do not offer them for free. The industry has an agenda – to sell product. Musicians who share this aim will work beautifully with industry. However, if you are a musician whose main aim is to produce art, then it is important to be aware of the tension between art and commerce. Does the payoff need to be in the millions? If stardom is the goal, and you believe that major labels are the only route to stardom, then is the choice between success and obscurity? Is there an alternative? Can a musician reach an audience without using the industry’s long arm?

STRATEGIES FOR INDEPENDENT MUSICIANS

Independent production and distribution are possible currently, however, not for long. The major labels are re-establishing their traditional hold on the industry. A near-monopoly on production and distribution has gotten away from them only momentarily. McLeod states, “[f]or a century, the major label system dominated the music industry because it owned the means of production and distribution. Also – and this is important – by raising overhead costs (publicity, cross promotion, etc.), the music industry makes it more difficult for indies to enter the market (McLeod, 2005, p. 527).” Currently, it is possible to reach an audience of potentially millions via the web. The industry is locking up the legal angle and working on encryption technologies (Branston & Stafford, 2003, pp. 260-261 and Gantz and Rochester, 2005, p. 133). However, there exists a window of opportunity for musicians savvy enough to maintain control over the rights to their music.

There are various books available on recording software packages, the art of audio recording, podcasting and using the internet as a distribution tool. Music BC offers regular seminars regarding the music industry. Some of these resources are invaluable while others are saturated in hype. In David Miles Huber’s Modern Recording Techniques, he states, “In my opinion, these are definitely the good ol’ days! (Huber, 2005, p. 3),” “The Portable Studio….you can take it with you!…it’s now literally possible to record and produce high-quality audio anywhere and at any time (Huber, 2005, p. 9).” Huber suggests you “‘knight yourself’…say: ‘I am now a __________!’ Whatever it is you want to be, become it…Shazammm! (Huber, 2005, p. 23)” However, producer Kevin Hamilton (Fresh Air Audio, Vancouver, B.C.) once told me that the first step in recording is having something good to record in the first place. You can fix a lot in the studio, but not the essential elements. Rehearsal is key and must come prior to production.

Derek Sivers, President of CD Baby, spoke at an event on June 2nd 2007 sponsored by Music BC that I had the pleasure of attending. Sivers is a musician from Oregon who wanted to host his own web site. He looked into the possibility of selling his CD on his site. He said that it took him a few months to deal with the red tape of putting together the technology required to have a shopping cart function on his web site, as well as the ability to process credit card transactions, however, he succeeded in putting his CD online for sale. His musician friends were envious and asked if they could put their CD on his site as well. To make a long story short, Sivers’ web site became CD Baby (over 40 million dollars in sales since it began in 1998). So, it is certainly possible to reach an audience directly by using services of this kind. Sivers quoted sales of CDs in general as 734 million in 2005, 705 million in 2006, 650 million in 2007, and an estimated 400 million in 2008 – however, he pointed out that these are physical CD sales and that indie sales online had increased. This represents part of the bite that industry complains about when they speak of piracy cutting into their profits.

Initially, I was skeptical about this seminar. I found out about it from an article (not an advertisement, interestingly enough) in 24 Hours (general interest newspaper-ette distributed for free, Monday to Friday in Vancouver, B.C.), entitled “Fame, fortune awaits rock stars on Internet.” The article began: “No record deal bringing you down? Tired of dealing with messy flyers? Not sure how to turn your MySpace page into a merch-selling gold mine? Fear not, fledgling rock stars…” However, Sivers had some good advice for indie musicians. He suggested musicians find ways for fans to interact with the music – not to be “so precious.” Sivers chided musicians who say, ‘I think people are stealing my music because it’s not selling very well.’ Sivers observed that “obscurity is more of a problem than piracy” and that musicians need to let go of their music in order to build a fan-base and career. Sivers stated that if a song was good enough, people would spread it for the artist, virally. Sivers warned artists to keep all of their rights together – not so that the artist could retain them necessarily, but so that they would be better off when they signed a record deal, since the label would not be as interested in partial rights.

Sivers spoke of early adopters – people who were ahead of the music industry and already taking advantage of new technologies. Sivers advises “…ongoing experiments as opposed to one big launch” and encourages musicians to “persistently do something… crazy-ish.” How did Derek Sivers originally get into the music business? He ordered pizza for Vice-President Mike Freed at BMI who had just come in on a late flight and mentioned that he was really hungry (within earshot of Sivers, as Freed was going inside to speak at the seminar Sivers was attending). The pizza arrived near the end of the talk and Freed hired him at Warner Chappell Music in NYC straight out of the Berklee College of Music. The major labels have slick ways to market music and artists. Indie artists need to use their imaginations to create effective ways to differentiate themselves, however, luckily imaginative strategies are often very successful. Regarding industry publicists, Sivers described them as “slimy, scary, weird, multi-level marketers” and advised: “Don’t do it. Amway model. Litigious as the Scientologists.”

Instead, Sivers advised musicians to do covers of well-known songs to attract fans of that song to your band. Sivers suggested getting used to having to sell your music and advised having a catchy two- to six-word phrase to describe your band’s style – Sivers describes his own music as “Beatles meets James Brown,” and said the best one he ever heard was ‘Hillbilly Flamenco.’ The idea is that, in a sea of competition to be heard, one must distinguish one’s own music from the rest by hooking the listener, stimulating their curiosity. Sivers stated, “Stop looking at an album as an artifact – it’s the web that’s growing. An album is a playlist and the website is now the album art.”

Sivers described video online as the “most useful tool to propagate an artist.” Video is another area where the labels have tremendous power – they have capital to produce high-quality videos to show on MTV’s 24-hour commercial (Corbett, 1994, p. 40). Podcasting offers the technology to make your own video and offer it online, however, it is not that simple. In Podcasting Bible, Steve Mack and Mitch Radcliffe make being your own video director, producer and distributor sound downright easy. They break it into four steps: Planning (which advises that “[b]efore you hit the record button, it’s a good idea to know what you’re going to talk about (Mack & Radcliffe, 2007, p. 2)”), Production (again advising “perhaps even going as far as writing a script (Mack & Radcliffe, 2007, p. 2)”), Encoding and Distribution. Chapter One of the book is titled, “Stars Being Born Every Day (Mack & Radcliffe, 2007, p. 27).” How to Do Everything with Podcasting includes information on how to “Make Money from Your Podcast Through Advertising and Other Means,” and how to “Be Infotaining” while “Being Authentic” (Holtz & Hobson, 2007).

Hype experts gloss over the laborious details involved in each of these grand steps. It takes hours upon hours to record an album. Making a video requires more subtlety than they mention as well, as many film folks will tell you. Having said that, it may be a better deal for some to spend hours creating their own music and imagery, because they have no record deal, or because they want to protect and retain ownership over their own creations, or simply because they enjoy the process. It may well be more realistic and feasible to disseminate your own podcasts than convince gatekeepers to put you on television. Tyler Bancroft, who is in his early twenties and has his own marketing firm, spoke at the Music BC seminar as well. He shared his client Jeremy Fisher’s experience of creating his own video – an animated cigarette – that cost twenty dollars and was played on Much Music after being on the front page of YouTube. Fisher had to put in the creative work, however, he did find an alternative route to television other than going through a well-connected major label agent. In terms of complexity of video content, Sinead O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares to U” was a simple, well-lit, headshot of O’Connor singing the song, and was a powerful video. Radiohead’s video for “No Surprises” had the lead singer wearing an astronaut’s spacesuit – over the course of the song, we watch as Thom Yorke’s helmet fills slowly with water until he is forced to stop singing the song and hold his breath, all to the lyrics, “no alarms and no surprises please.” A simple idea can work if done well. (Do not try water-helmets at home.)

There are options. One can sign the standard record deal, or do a simple production and distribution deal (Makoway, 2001, p. 131) where you maintain ownership of your masters and may use outside sources for legal, accounting, marketing and management services. One-stop shopping is convenient, however, you can also diversify with independents. You can record at home or at independent studios and distribute through CD Baby. You can promote yourself one fan at a time, virally. You can take advantage of YouTube. “As Berklee College’s Director of Career Development Peter Spellman characterizes it, we are seeing a shift from the ‘music business’ to the ‘musician business’ (Spellman, 2002, p. 528).” When and if you do enter negotiations with major labels, knowing your alternatives will put you in a stronger position to make the most straightforward deal possible, if deals are to be made. If you have options, you can hold out for better deals – you can turn down deals. You can sell the whole soul all at once, or you can sell it piecemeal – still have a little soul left over with a moderate blend of art and commerce. However, there exists a potential trap regarding using independents as part of your strategy. John Corbett describes the indie music industry as, “… both farm team and a cottage industry…. The alternative music industry, and local-mode commodities in general, must be seen not as merely antagonistic toward the dominant industry, but as its abeyant partner (Corbett, 1994, p. 51).”

Why go to the trouble of battling the devil? Why not skip selling your soul, and go directly to Step Two: knowing that major label promises may be mirage and moonshine and plotting the most strategic route to getting the best balance between artistic integrity and making a living. On one hand, Michael Chanan describes how “…the need…to piece together an income from diverse sources imposed a sense of vulnerability [on musicians] which tended to encourage mercenary behaviour, and the increasing influence of market forces required attitudes and skills more common among tradesmen than artists (Chanan, 1994, p. 143).” “Billie Holiday…and Muddy Waters, rarely worried about their cultural legitimacy but sought commercial success whenever and however they could find it (Coyle & Donan, 1999, p. 31).” Making a living as a musician is not a piece of cake, however, you do not have to reach a mass audience to earn a decent income. McLeod cites a musician who states, “[b]ecause there are no huge expenses, there is no pressure to ship platinum and, therefore, compromise one’s artistic vision…. Rather than having to worry about selling a half million copies just to break even…musicians can make a living selling 20,000 units (McLeod, 2005, p. 528).”

Musicians need to eat to create – need to keep body and soul together. However, I argue that both needs are met when the musician sells directly to the listener as much as possible. The key is in degree. The major labels make it sound as though you either stay trapped in your local market playing small gigs to a core of loyal fans, or you sign a deal and they will make you a star. There exists a lot of middle ground that is intriguingly fertile at the moment. You can choose the degree to which you get embroiled in the music industry. They have vast resources – being marketed by a major label means your name and image being shouted from many a corporate-owned rooftop. However, it is possible to pay a mortgage with a less bombastic approach.

Does the process of commodification improve art? Musicians might ask themselves this question whenever making a decision regarding the direction they will take with their music. ‘It won’t hurt it,’ is not the same thing as, ‘it will help it.’ Selling a concert ticket may be a fair trade – musician gets money – listener gets experience – everyone’s souls are intact. Selling the rights to your songs and signing contracts you do not fully grasp is the road to selling your soul for real, putting aside the mythology. Fools rush in, while musicians consider present-day, independent options for producing, distributing and spreading the word about their art. Fools sign deals after too much champagne and hype about the future, potential rewards – wooed by the middlemen into giving up a percentage of their artistic soul. Musicians know the value of their soul music. McLeod cites “Fugazi member Ian MacKaye [who] states: ‘If there is anything good about the Internet – and there are some good things about it – it kind of cuts out the middleman (McLeod, 2005, p. 527 and Hebdige, 1987, p. 141).”

AUTHENTICITY AND SOUL

“Who’s using who? What shall we do? Well you can’t be a pimp and a prostitute too.”
- The White Stripes in Icky Thump

Musicians are not always innocents. They choose, sign, soften rough edges, cooperate in exchange for fame and fortune, and the glamour of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. One must have an appetite for something to be drawn in by it. There is an element of showmanship in the entertainment and beguilement industry that presents a Catch-22: performers need showmanship (telling tales, constructing characters and creating fantasies) to attract audiences – while at the same time the audience attempts to discern authenticity (Moore, 2002, p. 211) in the music and the image. Crowds demand flash, however, not too flashy; they want ‘fake’ and ‘real’ simultaneously. Performers must overstate their authenticity while understating their artifice and this takes its toll on the soul. The product becomes slick, having been through many hands before it is heard (Moore, 2002, p. 218), however, it is slick partly due to consumer demand – the industry caters to the market even as it restricts the overall diversity of content. Musicians sell their souls in both directions, vis-à-vis the industry and the audience.

At the start of the film Almost Famous, veteran rock critic (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) tells budding reporter William, “you cannot make friends with the rockstars… it just becomes an industry of cool.” By the end of the film, he says to William, “aaahhh, man… you made friends with ‘em. See friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong… cause they make you feel cool.” Musicians do a little luring of their own. At any rate, fans feel they are connected to their favourite musicians. Joshua Meyrowitz talks about this in No Sense of Place as it relates to television; he describes the process whereby fans think of television stars as their media ‘friends’… [that] viewers come to feel they ‘know’ (Meyrowitz, 1985, p. 119).”

In Spinal Tap, members of the band sum up the tension inherent in manipulating your fans into believing you genuinely love them:
David: We say love your brother. We don’t actually say it really.
Nigel: We don’t literally say it.
D: No we don’t say it.
N: We don’t really literally mean it.
D: No… but that message should be clear anyway (Spinal Tap, MGM, 1994)

However, if music is to retain its soulful qualities (Hugill, 2008, 100-101), then musicians will need to be kinder to listeners and pass along their best music, less sullied by ‘foxtrotability’ (Garofalo, 1999, p. 333) and less hindered by parasitic elements. Listeners are willing to spend money on music – that vast capital could be diverted, flowing between listener and musician, leaving the middlemen to find surplus value elsewhere.


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Films referenced:

Almost Famous (Dreamworks Pictures and Columbia Pictures, 2000) Director: Cameron Crowe.
Crossroads (Columbia Pictures, 1986) Director: Walter Hill.
Spinal Tap (MGM, 1994) Director: Rob Reiner.