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Matt Taibbi (the greatest journalist working today) on the tea party.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
thoughts on politics.
one of the reasons i started this blog was not just to document the process of recording my own music; i also wanted it to be a place where i could periodically dump my thoughts on other matters, even if just to track the evolution of my worldview and thought processes.
so, if reading about a musician's political point of view is not your idea of illuminating blog material, this probably isn't the blog post for you. i promise i'll get back to music business with the next entry.
i've been thinking pretty hard about this recent bubble of self-described libertarians that's been rising in american politics over the past year or so. one might even trace it back to the 2008 campaign of ron paul (which happened mostly in 2007, of course), but since obama's election, and certainly since the debate on the health care bill began last summer, there has been a very loud minority (and for a laughably enormous percentage of them, it is literally the only sense in which they can be described as a minority) asserting that obama's economic policies represent nothing less than an end to capitalism and the free market system.
the "tea party" movement was launched by cnbc commentator rick santelli on february 19 of last year, and flogged on the fox news channel virtually every single day after that, particularly around the time when fox news organized nationwide "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties" (i'm not sure how it is that a news network can organize rallies on behalf of any one political party, but whatever).
everyone seems to have a theory on the tea party. it's been fascinating/embarrassing to witness the media "observe" the tea partiers, studying their strange codes and customs like anthropologists deep in the bush. the pundit/reporter/gossip class was convinced for a while that tea partiers were the children of the gingrich revolution, and we were about to see 1994 all over again. many seem less convinced of that as time passes, but that seems to still be the general view--the tea party voters are angry about deficits and long for smaller government, goes the logic, and in november, the democrats are in for a bloodbath, etc. i think both of these conclusions are understandable but lazy.
at first i dismissed the tea party phenomenon as a purely astroturf affair -- a fake grassroots movement ginned up by out-of-work, out-of-power republican operatives, inflated by breathless coverage in all the old familiar places (fox, rush, drudge, etc). the rallies seemed to be a short-term temper tantrum by folks who were used to their team running things (and not a small number of angry sarah palin supporters obsessed with darker conspiracy theories about obama). i still think it's mostly that, but short-term it's not. i now feel like it's the inevitable byproduct of the current historical moment, and it's somewhat connected to obama's election, but is actually a result of forces that have been building for some time.
i'm no political expert. but, i'm not uninitiated, either. i did some work in democratic politics for a while, and even landed a gig as a speechwriter on howard dean's '04 presidential campaign (and that's the last time i will namedrop that guy, i promise). i still keep in touch with many of the people i met during that period, and have never lost the passion for the political arena, even as an observer, though it's been years since i worked on an actual campaign. my strength has always been discerning the "big picture" -- the slow, generational swings that occur back and forth between our two political poles. political change doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it doesn't happen overnight, either; it tends to be more like a 30- or 40-year cycle. roughly, as i indicated above, the span of a generation.
every two years, the voters want something slightly different. this not because they're fickle or uninformed (though plenty are); it's because every two years, you're literally talking about a different set of voters. some people have died. others have just turned eighteen. some people have immigrated here. others have moved away. from one election to the next, it's sometimes hard to see the movement, but when you're talking about the long view, you're talking about a very different set of people voting today than the set of people voting 30 years ago, with a different set of shared cultural experiences, and most importantly, a very different set of conclusions drawn from those experiences about how the world works.
in my view, the presidency of george w. bush came at the tail end of a generational political cycle that began with nixon, peaked with reagan, and breathed its last gasp in 2004. there are similar figures in history, but we really only have two in the modern age -- herbert hoover presiding over the collapse of the republican coalition that ended with the great depression and the election of FDR (which admittedly stretches the definition of modern) and lyndon johnson trying to hold together the crumbling new deal political coalition amidst the shock waves of inner-city riots and the tragedy of vietnam. both analogies have their usefulness when it comes to bush, and the hoover analogy has certainly been made elsewhere, but i think it's worth examining the johnson presidency for clues as to what it looks like when a political coalition that has held for decades begins to self-destruct. it is a long, painful process for everyone involved, especially when it's not precipitated by one big event like the crash of 1929.
the New Deal coalition was, in its way, a historical anomaly, made possible by stubborn conservative southern voters with a reflexive hatred for the republican party (which was at that time still associated with lincoln and reconstruction). roosevelt and the new deal coalition basically built 20th century america, but the coalition couldn't hold together forever; politics is just people, and eventually, different groups of people who once had aligning interests will start to diverge. what held them together from 1932 to 1968 wasn't just the force of FDR's personality, though that helped; it was a shared sense of accomplishment and pride in the national effort to overcome the depression and prevail in world war two. government not only worked; it was capable of doing big things. government wasn't scary; it was a safety net. it certainly wasn't treated with the same mistrust reserved for unscrupulous businessmen who were accountable to no one and had driven the economy off a cliff; government, unlike business, was the "people's voice," and could be kept in check and held accountable by voters (again unlike business).
in the 1960s, though, huge cultural changes were afoot, and the biggest one was television (which unleashed all the others). suddenly, the public couldn't just ignore the civil rights workers being beaten on edmund pettus bridge; it was in their living room. so were the watts riots -- for four straight days of uninterrupted live coverage. so was vietnam. so was the kennedy assassination, and oswald's shooting. seen in the magnifying and distorting mirror of television, the unstoppable U.S.A. appeared to be falling apart. government couldn't control it. soon enough, life imitated television, with race riots occurring in over a hundred cities and the vietnam "conflict" hemorrhaging at breakneck speed. the economic base of the cities was collapsing as the televised images of black rioters drove millions of white people to the suburbs, where their televisions reassured them for the next 40 years that the world outside their door was a dangerous, dangerous place. the social safety net, one of the new deal's most proud and lasting accomplishments, began to be viewed as little more than handouts to undeserving minorities (a misconception that was only exacerbated when a series of impressive civil rights bills and a "War on Poverty" seemed only to inflame the inner city riots even further). so, when people talk about the 1960s as having shaped our country and our politics for many decades hence, this is what they mean -- the 1960s, far from ushering an era of liberal freedom and harmony, did the opposite: it set the stage for a 40-year period primarily dominated by reactionary racial and economic politics and a deep suspicion of not only government itself, but of the enemies within -- liberals, communists, atheist schoolteachers, welfare queens, city dwellers, black people in general -- who always had their hand in your pocket when they weren't pointing a gun in your face. we became a suburban nation with suburban values: high walls, locked doors, layer upon layer of insulation to protect each one of us from the reality of other people. the "american dream," in other words. in 1961, kennedy urged us to ask what we could do for our country. by 1981, we were back to asking what our country could do for us.
when a coalition falls apart like this, though, it's messy, especially for those people who had internalized the values of the previous coalition. in the 1960s, young people in particular became more and more hostile to the idea that american society wasn't what it had been promised to be -- namely fair, inclusive, moral, just. some of those young people became radicalized and acted out, often in ill-considered ways, especially in the case of groups like the weathermen and the black panthers. these extremists, far from achieving their goals, became a 30-year lodestone around the neck of any democratic politician trying to get elected. even bill clinton, in 1992, had a suspicious hippie past. (hell, even barack obama had to disassociate himself from former weatherman bill ayers, who apparently shook hands with obama a few times, and who many conspiracy theorists believe is the secret author of barack obama's memoir.) because the truth is, when an ideology is pushed into extremism, it is because that ideology is dying, at least for the foreseeable future. the 60s radicals raged against the american system when it became clear that the american system no longer shared their values. the less revolutionary-minded among them simply dropped out of society completely.
today we have another coalition that has collapsed -- the reagan coalition of evangelicals, businesspeople and national defense hawks. there are many reasons for this collapse, having in large part to do with the "people" factor (old people dying, young ones turning eighteen, minorities growing as a share of the population, etc.). but the precipitating crises were both foreign and domestic--the Iraq war and the housing market crash--and they both were a direct repudiation to the core philosophies of the reagan coalition itself. in reality, the demographics had been getting tighter and tighter for republicans since 2000, when a center-left majority appeared in the combined vote totals of gore and nader, which hadn't existed since, well, johnson. 9/11 artificially inflated the republican bubble for a bit, but the total dismantling of the regulatory state under the bush administration, along with an invasion of a huge country under false pretenses with no plan for stabilizing said country in the aftermath, led to a series of self-inflected wounds that caused a majority of voters to lose confidence in the republicans as a competent governing party. it wasn't just the housing crash (which was itself a cruel joke played on those who placed too much faith in the suburban american dream), and it wasn't just the wall street meltdown; it was enron creating an artificial energy crisis in the state of california, it was the outdated levees in new orleans, it was the bridge in minnesota collapsing; the philosophy of no government, no regulation, no investment in public works, no aid for newly homeless hurricane victims, no answers to the worlds problems other than military aggressiveness abroad and tax cuts for the wealthy at home that led to the end of the age of reagan.
but like the end of the age of roosevelt, the transition isn't a peaceful one. like the young hippies who felt burned by reality, the reagan-inspired radical individualists who are now being confronted with crises large enough to require collective action are very angry. this is understandable; believing for 30-odd years that the world operates in one way, and then being confronted with a wildly different reality, is incredibly unsettling. i'm fascinated by how closely the tea party movement resembles the hippie movement (minus the cultural and creative output, obviously). they are even self-consciously emulating it -- witness the planned "Tea Party Woodstock". (i have far less sympathy for their cause, of course -- a 50-year-old upper middle class man protesting a 3% tax increase doesn't really carry the same moral heft as an eighteen-year-old facing the vietnam draft -- but the similarities between the two groups are fascinating.)
one thing it's not, though, is the dawn of a new republican or libertarian era. demographics, recent events, technology, self-inflicted wounds, and finally the embrace of extremism will put the republican party out of power for a long, long time. sure, there may be an eisenhower down the road, just as there was a bill clinton during the republican era, but like eisenhower and clinton, they will govern by accepting the new political reality, not by trying to upend it. this november, the democrats will lose some seats, and they may even lose the house (though i doubt it), but the republicans who are fantasizing about 1994 are dreaming. it was literally a different set of voters that was voting at that time, and they had plenty of southern democratic holdovers from the new deal era just waiting to be picked off; in a way, 1994 was the completion of the reagan realignment. this year, though, republicans don't have a gingrich. they don't have a contract with america. they don't have a campaign. they don't have a leader. voters don't just vote for the other party by default (the democrats spent years learning this the hard way).
which is not to say that it will be a big victory for the democrats. we've just had two democratic "wave" elections in a row (2006 and 2008), and the democrats are very much due for a haircut. but in the 2012 republican primaries, the republican dilemma will become painfully clear. it was the dilemma faced by democrats throughout the 1970s and 1980s -- namely, that no one will be able to win their party nomination without taking unacceptably extreme positions, in order to satisfy the only base voters they have left. hell, this is already happening -- rand paul and sharron angle are the new face of the republican party. and therefore in 2012, the most likely nominee is sarah palin -- not only because she is by far the most popular figure among what's left of the republican party base, but because she can win big in early primary states like iowa and south carolina. there may be an "establishment" challenge to her in the person of mitt romney, but the republican "establishment" ain't what it once was. palin has fox, she has rush, and she has her facebook page; meanwhile mitch mcconnell, the most powerful republican in washington, can't even get his guy elected in a republican primary in his own state of kentucky. but even if somehow palin doesn't win, whoever the nominee is will be forced to pander as hard as possible to the base, and will be saddled with the baggage of a party that quite visibly lost their shit for the past four years or so.
no, we are at the end of one cycle and the beginning of another -- the republican base is shrinking, and in doing so, is being forced to take more and more extreme positions to satisfy the ideological purity of their base. this posture has already led them into another historic blunder--this one in arizona, where their mean-spirited immigration law has become a national symbol of racial divisiveness and has almost certainly driven hispanic voters into the arms of the democrats for a generation. it's almost pitiful to watch, this slow-motion train wreck that is today's republican party.
UPDATE: I rest my case.
so, if reading about a musician's political point of view is not your idea of illuminating blog material, this probably isn't the blog post for you. i promise i'll get back to music business with the next entry.
i've been thinking pretty hard about this recent bubble of self-described libertarians that's been rising in american politics over the past year or so. one might even trace it back to the 2008 campaign of ron paul (which happened mostly in 2007, of course), but since obama's election, and certainly since the debate on the health care bill began last summer, there has been a very loud minority (and for a laughably enormous percentage of them, it is literally the only sense in which they can be described as a minority) asserting that obama's economic policies represent nothing less than an end to capitalism and the free market system.
the "tea party" movement was launched by cnbc commentator rick santelli on february 19 of last year, and flogged on the fox news channel virtually every single day after that, particularly around the time when fox news organized nationwide "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties" (i'm not sure how it is that a news network can organize rallies on behalf of any one political party, but whatever).
everyone seems to have a theory on the tea party. it's been fascinating/embarrassing to witness the media "observe" the tea partiers, studying their strange codes and customs like anthropologists deep in the bush. the pundit/reporter/gossip class was convinced for a while that tea partiers were the children of the gingrich revolution, and we were about to see 1994 all over again. many seem less convinced of that as time passes, but that seems to still be the general view--the tea party voters are angry about deficits and long for smaller government, goes the logic, and in november, the democrats are in for a bloodbath, etc. i think both of these conclusions are understandable but lazy.
at first i dismissed the tea party phenomenon as a purely astroturf affair -- a fake grassroots movement ginned up by out-of-work, out-of-power republican operatives, inflated by breathless coverage in all the old familiar places (fox, rush, drudge, etc). the rallies seemed to be a short-term temper tantrum by folks who were used to their team running things (and not a small number of angry sarah palin supporters obsessed with darker conspiracy theories about obama). i still think it's mostly that, but short-term it's not. i now feel like it's the inevitable byproduct of the current historical moment, and it's somewhat connected to obama's election, but is actually a result of forces that have been building for some time.
i'm no political expert. but, i'm not uninitiated, either. i did some work in democratic politics for a while, and even landed a gig as a speechwriter on howard dean's '04 presidential campaign (and that's the last time i will namedrop that guy, i promise). i still keep in touch with many of the people i met during that period, and have never lost the passion for the political arena, even as an observer, though it's been years since i worked on an actual campaign. my strength has always been discerning the "big picture" -- the slow, generational swings that occur back and forth between our two political poles. political change doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it doesn't happen overnight, either; it tends to be more like a 30- or 40-year cycle. roughly, as i indicated above, the span of a generation.
every two years, the voters want something slightly different. this not because they're fickle or uninformed (though plenty are); it's because every two years, you're literally talking about a different set of voters. some people have died. others have just turned eighteen. some people have immigrated here. others have moved away. from one election to the next, it's sometimes hard to see the movement, but when you're talking about the long view, you're talking about a very different set of people voting today than the set of people voting 30 years ago, with a different set of shared cultural experiences, and most importantly, a very different set of conclusions drawn from those experiences about how the world works.
in my view, the presidency of george w. bush came at the tail end of a generational political cycle that began with nixon, peaked with reagan, and breathed its last gasp in 2004. there are similar figures in history, but we really only have two in the modern age -- herbert hoover presiding over the collapse of the republican coalition that ended with the great depression and the election of FDR (which admittedly stretches the definition of modern) and lyndon johnson trying to hold together the crumbling new deal political coalition amidst the shock waves of inner-city riots and the tragedy of vietnam. both analogies have their usefulness when it comes to bush, and the hoover analogy has certainly been made elsewhere, but i think it's worth examining the johnson presidency for clues as to what it looks like when a political coalition that has held for decades begins to self-destruct. it is a long, painful process for everyone involved, especially when it's not precipitated by one big event like the crash of 1929.
the New Deal coalition was, in its way, a historical anomaly, made possible by stubborn conservative southern voters with a reflexive hatred for the republican party (which was at that time still associated with lincoln and reconstruction). roosevelt and the new deal coalition basically built 20th century america, but the coalition couldn't hold together forever; politics is just people, and eventually, different groups of people who once had aligning interests will start to diverge. what held them together from 1932 to 1968 wasn't just the force of FDR's personality, though that helped; it was a shared sense of accomplishment and pride in the national effort to overcome the depression and prevail in world war two. government not only worked; it was capable of doing big things. government wasn't scary; it was a safety net. it certainly wasn't treated with the same mistrust reserved for unscrupulous businessmen who were accountable to no one and had driven the economy off a cliff; government, unlike business, was the "people's voice," and could be kept in check and held accountable by voters (again unlike business).
in the 1960s, though, huge cultural changes were afoot, and the biggest one was television (which unleashed all the others). suddenly, the public couldn't just ignore the civil rights workers being beaten on edmund pettus bridge; it was in their living room. so were the watts riots -- for four straight days of uninterrupted live coverage. so was vietnam. so was the kennedy assassination, and oswald's shooting. seen in the magnifying and distorting mirror of television, the unstoppable U.S.A. appeared to be falling apart. government couldn't control it. soon enough, life imitated television, with race riots occurring in over a hundred cities and the vietnam "conflict" hemorrhaging at breakneck speed. the economic base of the cities was collapsing as the televised images of black rioters drove millions of white people to the suburbs, where their televisions reassured them for the next 40 years that the world outside their door was a dangerous, dangerous place. the social safety net, one of the new deal's most proud and lasting accomplishments, began to be viewed as little more than handouts to undeserving minorities (a misconception that was only exacerbated when a series of impressive civil rights bills and a "War on Poverty" seemed only to inflame the inner city riots even further). so, when people talk about the 1960s as having shaped our country and our politics for many decades hence, this is what they mean -- the 1960s, far from ushering an era of liberal freedom and harmony, did the opposite: it set the stage for a 40-year period primarily dominated by reactionary racial and economic politics and a deep suspicion of not only government itself, but of the enemies within -- liberals, communists, atheist schoolteachers, welfare queens, city dwellers, black people in general -- who always had their hand in your pocket when they weren't pointing a gun in your face. we became a suburban nation with suburban values: high walls, locked doors, layer upon layer of insulation to protect each one of us from the reality of other people. the "american dream," in other words. in 1961, kennedy urged us to ask what we could do for our country. by 1981, we were back to asking what our country could do for us.
when a coalition falls apart like this, though, it's messy, especially for those people who had internalized the values of the previous coalition. in the 1960s, young people in particular became more and more hostile to the idea that american society wasn't what it had been promised to be -- namely fair, inclusive, moral, just. some of those young people became radicalized and acted out, often in ill-considered ways, especially in the case of groups like the weathermen and the black panthers. these extremists, far from achieving their goals, became a 30-year lodestone around the neck of any democratic politician trying to get elected. even bill clinton, in 1992, had a suspicious hippie past. (hell, even barack obama had to disassociate himself from former weatherman bill ayers, who apparently shook hands with obama a few times, and who many conspiracy theorists believe is the secret author of barack obama's memoir.) because the truth is, when an ideology is pushed into extremism, it is because that ideology is dying, at least for the foreseeable future. the 60s radicals raged against the american system when it became clear that the american system no longer shared their values. the less revolutionary-minded among them simply dropped out of society completely.
today we have another coalition that has collapsed -- the reagan coalition of evangelicals, businesspeople and national defense hawks. there are many reasons for this collapse, having in large part to do with the "people" factor (old people dying, young ones turning eighteen, minorities growing as a share of the population, etc.). but the precipitating crises were both foreign and domestic--the Iraq war and the housing market crash--and they both were a direct repudiation to the core philosophies of the reagan coalition itself. in reality, the demographics had been getting tighter and tighter for republicans since 2000, when a center-left majority appeared in the combined vote totals of gore and nader, which hadn't existed since, well, johnson. 9/11 artificially inflated the republican bubble for a bit, but the total dismantling of the regulatory state under the bush administration, along with an invasion of a huge country under false pretenses with no plan for stabilizing said country in the aftermath, led to a series of self-inflected wounds that caused a majority of voters to lose confidence in the republicans as a competent governing party. it wasn't just the housing crash (which was itself a cruel joke played on those who placed too much faith in the suburban american dream), and it wasn't just the wall street meltdown; it was enron creating an artificial energy crisis in the state of california, it was the outdated levees in new orleans, it was the bridge in minnesota collapsing; the philosophy of no government, no regulation, no investment in public works, no aid for newly homeless hurricane victims, no answers to the worlds problems other than military aggressiveness abroad and tax cuts for the wealthy at home that led to the end of the age of reagan.
but like the end of the age of roosevelt, the transition isn't a peaceful one. like the young hippies who felt burned by reality, the reagan-inspired radical individualists who are now being confronted with crises large enough to require collective action are very angry. this is understandable; believing for 30-odd years that the world operates in one way, and then being confronted with a wildly different reality, is incredibly unsettling. i'm fascinated by how closely the tea party movement resembles the hippie movement (minus the cultural and creative output, obviously). they are even self-consciously emulating it -- witness the planned "Tea Party Woodstock". (i have far less sympathy for their cause, of course -- a 50-year-old upper middle class man protesting a 3% tax increase doesn't really carry the same moral heft as an eighteen-year-old facing the vietnam draft -- but the similarities between the two groups are fascinating.)
one thing it's not, though, is the dawn of a new republican or libertarian era. demographics, recent events, technology, self-inflicted wounds, and finally the embrace of extremism will put the republican party out of power for a long, long time. sure, there may be an eisenhower down the road, just as there was a bill clinton during the republican era, but like eisenhower and clinton, they will govern by accepting the new political reality, not by trying to upend it. this november, the democrats will lose some seats, and they may even lose the house (though i doubt it), but the republicans who are fantasizing about 1994 are dreaming. it was literally a different set of voters that was voting at that time, and they had plenty of southern democratic holdovers from the new deal era just waiting to be picked off; in a way, 1994 was the completion of the reagan realignment. this year, though, republicans don't have a gingrich. they don't have a contract with america. they don't have a campaign. they don't have a leader. voters don't just vote for the other party by default (the democrats spent years learning this the hard way).
which is not to say that it will be a big victory for the democrats. we've just had two democratic "wave" elections in a row (2006 and 2008), and the democrats are very much due for a haircut. but in the 2012 republican primaries, the republican dilemma will become painfully clear. it was the dilemma faced by democrats throughout the 1970s and 1980s -- namely, that no one will be able to win their party nomination without taking unacceptably extreme positions, in order to satisfy the only base voters they have left. hell, this is already happening -- rand paul and sharron angle are the new face of the republican party. and therefore in 2012, the most likely nominee is sarah palin -- not only because she is by far the most popular figure among what's left of the republican party base, but because she can win big in early primary states like iowa and south carolina. there may be an "establishment" challenge to her in the person of mitt romney, but the republican "establishment" ain't what it once was. palin has fox, she has rush, and she has her facebook page; meanwhile mitch mcconnell, the most powerful republican in washington, can't even get his guy elected in a republican primary in his own state of kentucky. but even if somehow palin doesn't win, whoever the nominee is will be forced to pander as hard as possible to the base, and will be saddled with the baggage of a party that quite visibly lost their shit for the past four years or so.
no, we are at the end of one cycle and the beginning of another -- the republican base is shrinking, and in doing so, is being forced to take more and more extreme positions to satisfy the ideological purity of their base. this posture has already led them into another historic blunder--this one in arizona, where their mean-spirited immigration law has become a national symbol of racial divisiveness and has almost certainly driven hispanic voters into the arms of the democrats for a generation. it's almost pitiful to watch, this slow-motion train wreck that is today's republican party.
UPDATE: I rest my case.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
revolution (take me in...)
well, holy shit. i was experimenting with latin rhythms the other day, and this song came out.
this could be the most exciting song i've ever recorded in any genre.
new band devoted to exploring this sound coming soon...
this could be the most exciting song i've ever recorded in any genre.
new band devoted to exploring this sound coming soon...
Monday, February 8, 2010
new things!
been a long time been a long time been a long lonely lonely...
here are some new things!
i'm working on an alternate album cover that i like a lot more, which contains a description of how i've been thinking about the music -- "American Country" combined with "African" rhythms:
download a new version of "Leave it all behind you," now with much more rhythm inspired by the continent of Africa.
download a new track, "Brand new heart attack," featuring cassie singing beautiful/creepy background vox.
i am looking for musicians to fill out my band.
and, download a new (final) version of an older tune -- "The first time" -- which now has a more fully-produced sound (and, more rhythm elements to drive the beat forward).
more new things to come!
here are some new things!
i'm working on an alternate album cover that i like a lot more, which contains a description of how i've been thinking about the music -- "American Country" combined with "African" rhythms:
download a new version of "Leave it all behind you," now with much more rhythm inspired by the continent of Africa.
download a new track, "Brand new heart attack," featuring cassie singing beautiful/creepy background vox.
i am looking for musicians to fill out my band.
and, download a new (final) version of an older tune -- "The first time" -- which now has a more fully-produced sound (and, more rhythm elements to drive the beat forward).
more new things to come!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
artists, labels, singles
just saw this over at mbv -- a discussion of record labels and their role these days. this part gets at something i've been thinking recently:
lots of interesting things in here, but my first thought is that the imminent singles-driven musical culture that they all seem to be wary of is definitely where things are going, and my second thought is that this is going to be great for indie music, to be honest.
pop music is in such a weird place right now; the labels are all freaking out and sticking to the same types of sounds they've been pushing on us for the last 15 years or so, and i don't blame them, because they're running a business and when sales are down you stick to old reliable. this has only compounded the problem, of course, because as people get sick of hearing the 99th Nickelback or Avril Levine (or however you spell that), they seek out alternatives. there have always been people who sought out those alternatives, of course, but now they have a place to talk to each other and share information and self-organize, so the cat's much more out of the bag, and the labels haven't made really any effort to adapt.
(also, there's the rougher, more existential problem of the labels not really being needed by the artists anymore, what with online distribution and cheap recording technology, so the artists with antennae for this sort of thing are steering clear of them, thinning the already-lean major label talent roster.)
so. we have this whole historical moment happening, where the traditional pop merchants are eating out their own insides, the public listens to more music than they ever have before in goddamn HISTORY, and there's this "indie music" universe-thing that's gained all this momentum over the past 10 years or so because of the explosion of the internet culture, not to mention the fact that the largest generation in american history is all coming of age and consuming music faster than people can create it -- you can probably guess where i'm going with this.
the pop music industry is collapsing, and the indie artists are clearly poised to stage a full takeover of pop music culture, at least for a minute or two. but, in order to do that, the indie artists are going to inevitably start making their work a little more accessible. they're going to have to, really. "hits" are going to be a necessity. but, a "hit" is a broad category; indie music has been at various times conflated with strong antipop, anti-"mainstream" feelings, but there's no need to be afraid of a song or a video going viral. there's not a band or artist out there who wouldn't welcome that kind of juice.
and the listening public is curious. there's been a lot of buzz about this "brooklyn" thing, this "pitchfork" business; how many people have wandered over to pitchfork but been daunted by the scope of the indie ecosystem? how many people out there want to plug into this new scene, but have no idea where to start?
fellow indie musicians, listen to me, because i am so serious about this: we need to bring them in with pop songs. it will be good for everyone involved.
the 60s were mentioned above by the panelists, and it's a telling reference. is there a decade more associated with the marriage of pop music and musical and recording experimentation? the Beatles are everyone's touchstone, but the Beatles knew how to write pop music. they had to - otherwise people would forget about them; newer artists popping up every day. i personally think that the Beatles' understanding of pop music in all its forms and various genres was what made their songs so culturally monumental. when artists are forced to sort of "earn their keep," pop culture-wise, it keeps them from sitting around all day with their heads up their asses, for lack of a better way to say it. having to constantly write songs that will connect with people -- it keeps you honest. it's humbling, because for a pop song, there's only one goal -- for the song to be popular. the metrics are much harder. and ultimately, to keep making "hits" you have to be, on some level, in touch with the current moment.
but the good thing is, the future of pop is wide open, and there are no big bad labels to force artists to write these pop songs. rather, what's going to happen is, some artists are going to inevitably start filling the pop void, but on their terms. Animal Collective's "My Girls" and Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" are good examples of what i think is going to start happening more and more -- experimental indie bands slowly drifting toward a bigger, more accessible sound that doesn't compromise any integrity of the artists but instead merges old genres with new rhythms to create something people haven't heard before. we don't have the infrastructure yet to propel a song like "Two Weeks" into Billboard Singles chart heaven (or whatever the future equivalent is), but bands and artists are also going to have to come a tiny bit further in meeting the public. there is a new standard pop language that is going to evolve in the coming years, and it's going to probably be a teeny, tiny bit less obscure than those songs i mentioned above, but not that much more, to be honest. the two worlds are so close they're practically kissing right now.
Carrie Brownstein: Are we in the age of dabbling?
Gerard Cosloy: Dabbling? Definitely.
Mac McCaughan: You're right.
Gerard Cosloy: And the churn factor is severe; the public burns out on supposed faves very, very fast these days.
Mac McCaughan: To a certain extent, at Merge, we know all this but try to pretend it's not happening -- the churn factor -- seriously.
Carrie Brownstein: Are there any of your artists in particular who have suffered through this churn factor?
Gerard Cosloy: I'd rather not say. But I think it is fair to say that anyone who is making a second record is about to contend with it, to some degree.
Portia Sabin: Dudes, we are in the era of "I like everything," which translates to whatever is on the radio/on the iPod, which has always been the majority of music fans, in my opinion.
Chris Swanson: I feel like full iPods are an illustration that a large part of the population now consumes music like they did in the '60s. It's primarily singles-driven, or track-driven. It feels like a jukebox culture with iPods so ubiquitous. People are generally more into songs right now than bands, albums or labels.
Gerard Cosloy: Right on, Chris.
Chris Swanson: If it sounds great, people love it.
Mac McCaughan: I like songs, but I hate that trend.
[Robb Nansel from Saddlecreek Records joins the conversation at this point.]
Chris Swanson: Lots of folks still want to take it deeper, but I don't think it's necessarily a sign of a corruption of taste that people are stuck on a good song right now.
Portia Sabin: That unfortunately doesn't translate into careers for artists, though.
Maggie Vail : Yeah, I would say it's not new -- it's just in our world now, too.
Gerard Cosloy: Portia's right; it has always been the majority who thought that way. The difference is, there's no longer any cultural nudge-nudge to get anyone to think differently.
Maggie Vail : Yes.
Gerard Cosloy: Not on a mainstream level, anyway
lots of interesting things in here, but my first thought is that the imminent singles-driven musical culture that they all seem to be wary of is definitely where things are going, and my second thought is that this is going to be great for indie music, to be honest.
pop music is in such a weird place right now; the labels are all freaking out and sticking to the same types of sounds they've been pushing on us for the last 15 years or so, and i don't blame them, because they're running a business and when sales are down you stick to old reliable. this has only compounded the problem, of course, because as people get sick of hearing the 99th Nickelback or Avril Levine (or however you spell that), they seek out alternatives. there have always been people who sought out those alternatives, of course, but now they have a place to talk to each other and share information and self-organize, so the cat's much more out of the bag, and the labels haven't made really any effort to adapt.
(also, there's the rougher, more existential problem of the labels not really being needed by the artists anymore, what with online distribution and cheap recording technology, so the artists with antennae for this sort of thing are steering clear of them, thinning the already-lean major label talent roster.)
so. we have this whole historical moment happening, where the traditional pop merchants are eating out their own insides, the public listens to more music than they ever have before in goddamn HISTORY, and there's this "indie music" universe-thing that's gained all this momentum over the past 10 years or so because of the explosion of the internet culture, not to mention the fact that the largest generation in american history is all coming of age and consuming music faster than people can create it -- you can probably guess where i'm going with this.
the pop music industry is collapsing, and the indie artists are clearly poised to stage a full takeover of pop music culture, at least for a minute or two. but, in order to do that, the indie artists are going to inevitably start making their work a little more accessible. they're going to have to, really. "hits" are going to be a necessity. but, a "hit" is a broad category; indie music has been at various times conflated with strong antipop, anti-"mainstream" feelings, but there's no need to be afraid of a song or a video going viral. there's not a band or artist out there who wouldn't welcome that kind of juice.
and the listening public is curious. there's been a lot of buzz about this "brooklyn" thing, this "pitchfork" business; how many people have wandered over to pitchfork but been daunted by the scope of the indie ecosystem? how many people out there want to plug into this new scene, but have no idea where to start?
fellow indie musicians, listen to me, because i am so serious about this: we need to bring them in with pop songs. it will be good for everyone involved.
the 60s were mentioned above by the panelists, and it's a telling reference. is there a decade more associated with the marriage of pop music and musical and recording experimentation? the Beatles are everyone's touchstone, but the Beatles knew how to write pop music. they had to - otherwise people would forget about them; newer artists popping up every day. i personally think that the Beatles' understanding of pop music in all its forms and various genres was what made their songs so culturally monumental. when artists are forced to sort of "earn their keep," pop culture-wise, it keeps them from sitting around all day with their heads up their asses, for lack of a better way to say it. having to constantly write songs that will connect with people -- it keeps you honest. it's humbling, because for a pop song, there's only one goal -- for the song to be popular. the metrics are much harder. and ultimately, to keep making "hits" you have to be, on some level, in touch with the current moment.
but the good thing is, the future of pop is wide open, and there are no big bad labels to force artists to write these pop songs. rather, what's going to happen is, some artists are going to inevitably start filling the pop void, but on their terms. Animal Collective's "My Girls" and Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" are good examples of what i think is going to start happening more and more -- experimental indie bands slowly drifting toward a bigger, more accessible sound that doesn't compromise any integrity of the artists but instead merges old genres with new rhythms to create something people haven't heard before. we don't have the infrastructure yet to propel a song like "Two Weeks" into Billboard Singles chart heaven (or whatever the future equivalent is), but bands and artists are also going to have to come a tiny bit further in meeting the public. there is a new standard pop language that is going to evolve in the coming years, and it's going to probably be a teeny, tiny bit less obscure than those songs i mentioned above, but not that much more, to be honest. the two worlds are so close they're practically kissing right now.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
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