I ran across this blog entry by a guy named Sean Dailey while perusing Dane 101, a not-very-good-but-it's-the-only-game-in-town community blog on all things (liberal) Madison. Hello! I thought to myself, here's something interesting - a Catholic Chesterton fan discussing punk. A man after my own heart to be sure, but I was to be disappointed; like so many who got bored with punk rock, Sean apparently decided it died as of the moment he stopped paying attention. He discusses how different cities all had their own distinct flavors when it came to their homegrown punk bands, and cites as examples bands like X, the Ramones and the Clash. No problem so far, but then he asserts:
But that scene played itself out long ago, and thus far, so far as I can see, nothing has arisen to carry rock and roll forward. Anything that came after, including so-called "grunge," was co-opted by the corporate giants, commodofied, and sanitized for MTV and chain record stores in shopping malls. The huge corporations pretty much control everything and very little of any spontaneity or originality occurs any more. One of the things I loved about the alternative scene in the Twin Cities in the 1980s was how independent it was: all the best bands recorded on local labels and sold their music only in independently owned stores, or else they sold their stuff between sets at their shows. They probably didn't make much money, but we all loved how they thumbed their noses at the corporate giants -- who would have just squeezed as much money as possible out of them and then hung them out to dry, deep in debt -- and did their own thing.
Sean, I've got to send you a mix tape my friend. If you haven't seen anything that has "arisen to carry rock and roll forward," you're simply not looking. Not everything that came after the Clash was "co-opted by the corporate giants, commodofied, and sanitized for MTV and chain record stores in shopping malls. " Not by a long shot. There's been a whole world of great underground music being made in the years since the demise of the Clash (plenty of it far superior to the Clash in my opinion, but then again, I always thought the Clash sucked).
I'd also argue that there's not really anything particularly romantic about selling your music only in independent music stores (which was hardly a matter of choice for most of us - the big stores didn't want anything to do with us!), especially when the rent is due and the van's tires need to be replaced, having been slashed by some "anti-corporate" rascal with spiky hair who decided your band was a bunch of sell-outs for charging more than $5 at the door.
And then there's this:
It used to drive me nuts trying to figure out what that attitude was and what it meant. I could not put my finger on its exact nature or what about it made it so attractive to me, yet I knew I liked it. I knew instinctively that it was superior to allowing corporate recording giants to have any control. Years later, I would learn to call it Distributism.
Again, I'd note that this was seldom a matter of choice. We wanted to be capitalists - we just weren't very good at making the kind of music that would make us rich. It didn't have anything to do with Distributism. Not remotely. We all wanted to succeed, ideally on our own terms, of course. But we were hardly promoting a new economic system. At my most idealistic - in the early 90s - I saw the potential for a self-sufficient, competitive independent distribution system that would give less mainstream or easily marketable acts more opportunity to find an audience but that was about the extent of my own utopian daydreams re: punk and in any case, it never actually happened. Well, I guess it sort of did, in the form of MySpace and file-sharing and so forth, but the former hasn't made that great a difference in exposing new people to under-the-radar bands and the latter has brought with it a host of problems that on the whole have been bad for interesting, exciting, edgy music.
I think the attitude Sean is referring to is simply the headiness one experiences that's brought on by the thrill of being part of a young, burgeoning, exciting, thriving music scene. It still happens, and has been for many years. The problem is, those scenes die out really quickly. Along with all the great stuff, there's a ton of sniping, politicking, backstabbing and general sleaziness. Musicians are a competitive bunch and, as most of us are wildly insecure, we're remarkably prone to pettiness, gossip, and envy; that stuff kills music communities. But the great thing is, new ones are always popping up. True, there are often long, dull, dry stretches in between, but I guess that's what old records are for...
Anyway, I kind of feel like a dick for picking on Sean's post, seeing as how a quick scan of other recent entries reveals a solid blog filled with plenty of good, old-fashioned Catholic feistiness (and a near-obsessive interest in home brewing), so my apologies if I come off too harsh; the whole "punk died in the 70s" (or 80s, or 90s) argument gets my hackles up but I'm well aware that it's precisely this kind of attitude that kept me off of MTV. Well, that and the whole not-singing-in-key thing...
UPDATE: Dane 101! sends some traffic my way. Weirdly enough, I was copying the link for the post when it changed - they replaced the photo that was up there with one of me and moved my item from mid-bottom to the top. I'm not sure why, but thanks for the plug, gang!