Selling Out

In re: the great selling out debate, I think it's noteworthy that the concept of "selling out" seems to implicate several different kinds of activities that should probably be separated.

What I take to be the core notion of "selling out" is the idea of deliberately altering your musical style for commercial purposes -- producing the song differently from how you would have at the label's request, making the songs shorter to be radio-friendly, that kind of thing.

I think it's clear enough why selling out in this sense gets a bad name. It's possible, of course, that music produced in this way will be good. It is, however, quite easy to see why one might anticipate bad results. In particular, it seems very likely that this method will wind up disappointing your core audience. Thus, even without adopting an unduly moralistic view of music or an ideological opposition to "selling out" you could still be disappointed to see a band you like appearing to sell out in this sense.

Now, the perniciousness of that notion of selling out leads to a kind of second-order worry. In principle you could ditch your indie label in favor of a major label and still keep your sound pure. In practice, however, maybe you worry that having signed a contract you'll find it difficult to resist pressure and stay true to your vision. It's easy to say you'll never give in, but we all know that things look different once you've gone a little ways down the road. 1Ls at elite law schools are famous for saying they're not going to go work for big corporate firms, and about-to-graduate 3Ls are famous for going to work for the firms they said they would never work for.

Thus, a practical worry develops about a band that "sells out" by signing with the big label. Going to a major isn't bad per se but it's perhaps indicative that bad things are likely to happen. Concern strikes me as at least somewhat warranted.

The trouble, in my view, is when this shifts from being a practical worry to an ideological one. Logically speaking, I see no practical reason whatsoever to think that bands selling their music to major corporate advertisers will have a deleterious impact on their work. The opposition must be a purely ideological one -- it's against the spirit of the music to partner with major corporations. And the trouble here is that anti-selling out ideology, at the end of the day, makes very little sense. It's a fundamentally Jesuitical enterprise based on goofy, arbitrary decisions.

What good does it do you to eschew Honda's money when they want to make an ad when, presumably, your band is going to go on tour and that tour is going to involve riding in vehicles made by major auto companies? It's not possible to participate meaningfully in modern society without being deeply implicated in the web of corporations that tie us all together. I use electricity and so does Ian MacKaye and together, he and I and all of you are partnering with the energy companies to destroy the planet. The only thing to be done about it is to try to support political candidates and movements likely to produce better public policy.

One can (and, indeed, probably should) boycott specific companies who have practices you abhor, which creates incentives for firms to try to avoid abhorrent behavior, but the idea that one could somehow opt-out of the entire system by not letting one's music be used in TV ads or not signing with a certain record label is silly. It's telling that Kurt Cobain had intense thoughts on the nature and significance of not selling out and was also a horribly depressed heroin addict who wound up killing himself; getting too obsessed with this stuff isn't something healthy people should be doing.

Comments

Young people today!

Sometimes some of the power of music and lyrics comes from the audience's belief that it isn't just marketed commercial crap. I.E., repeating myself to make the point clear, people often listen to music specifically because they think that it's not marketed commercial crap.

To put it in marketing terms, the indie musician's brand is compromised when it's contaminated with Sony's brand or Ford's brand, sort of like Jesus' brand being compromised when it's contaminated by Amway (to the point that Amway-type Christianity is dominant nowadays).

On the other hand, once indie cred is understood to be a marketing schtick (to be kept unmixed with the Ford marketing schtick), indie really is lost, no? On the other hand, when the indie audience starts making their own compromises in order to make a living, they're less likely to be vigilant about purity.

On the other hand, you gotta do what you gotta do. Lots of artists in history made big compromises, but they usually weren't indie types.

It still pisses me off when the Pretenders introduce Rush Limbaugh. Apparently there were no royalties paid for years, and now the royalties are being donated to PETA. Since PETA, like Limbaugh, is shit, this doesn't cheer me up much. On the other hand, I don't think the Pretenders ever made big ideological claims.

Tom Waits / The Doors

Posted by John Emerson | May 20, 2007 2:30 PM

I pretty much agree with what Matt says here in its entirety. Don't worry about "selling out," it's a bullshit concept that tries to tie (misguided) ideas about aesthetics to clumsy ideological naivete.

Posted by Quarterican | May 20, 2007 2:32 PM

this all makes sense if you think music is just entertainment. but it's also communication. there are ideas and messages and lyrics and images that are important cultural signifiers. it's a major part of what creates our culture, and culture affects public policy enormously.

If an artist has grown large advocating for cultural/political change (a la MacKaye), theyve created a cultural archetype people identify with, a role model. And if they then associate that role with like Exxon or Nike, theyre scrambling it. It's like saying: That idealistic thing you wanted to be? That political change you wanted to make? Actually, it was bullshit. Now go shop at Wal-Mart like a good American.

Posted by Tones | May 20, 2007 2:33 PM

"On the other hand" S/B "On the third hand" the second time, and "on the fourth hand" the third time. And "on the fifth hand" the fourth time. Thank you.

Posted by John Emerson | May 20, 2007 2:35 PM

Right. One of the problems with the selling out concept is that any and all moves toward a more pretty/poppy/smooth sound get denounced as selling out. But what if that is the kind of music that the artist genuinely wants to make? What if that's where they go because it's the next logical step in their artistic evolution, not because it's more commercial?

Posted by Freddie | May 20, 2007 2:41 PM

I am pretty sure there is a Sopranos spoiler in Scott Lemiux's article -- you may wish to mark it as such for those of us that are not members of the economic privilege class that can get HBO.

Posted by jerry | May 20, 2007 3:08 PM

Kurt Cobain was a small town boy who was ideologically bullied by the hip college kids in Olympia, WA about the importance of always being punker than punk. What he had a talent for, however, was big radio-friendly hits that you turn up loud on the car stereo. But his punk conscience instilled by no-talent ideologues couldn't let him enjoy his success. A sad story ...

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 20, 2007 3:15 PM

John thanks for the link to the John Densmore rant.

What I noticed about the "sellout controversy" is that the bands selling out for more exposure and more money so they can do their art thing are usually not the small unknown bands that *need* more exposure or more money to get by.

If they want to do it, that's up to them, but please don't piss on my back and tell me it's rain.

Posted by jerry | May 20, 2007 3:20 PM

I saw Fugazi in 1995, in a rundown ballroom (looked sort of like it was a VFW hall once) that some amateur concert promoter had probably rented for the night. Just outside the back door, there were two vehicles parked: a van for their equipment, and a camper-van (i.e., an Econoline-class van converted into a Winnebago) for themselves. No roadies; before their set began, they hauled their equipment up on stage themselves.

I just don't see what is ridiculous or preposterous about trying to go through life in that way, as MY seems to imply. Nor does going through life in that way necessarily imply a judgment or reproach against those who choose not to. The idea isn't to be pure, untainted by the consumer culture, but merely to do the best you can.

Posted by kth | May 20, 2007 3:23 PM

I use electricity and so does Ian MacKaye and together, he and I and all of you are partnering with the energy companies to destroy the planet. ... One can (and, indeed, probably should) boycott specific companies who have practices you abhor, which creates incentives for firms to try to avoid abhorrent behavior, but the idea that one could somehow opt-out of the entire system by not letting one's music be used in TV ads or not signing with a certain record label is silly.

This is illogical. A non sequitur.

How is a boycott of companies and products you buy similar to demanding control of over the products you sell?

How is the need to use electricity to survive in our modern culture similar to having to sell your product for use in TV? In addition to not being analogous, it just smacks of the excluded middle. Is there no other way for these bands to make their money? No other jobs? Without the TV money are they doomed to break up?

I am not saying bands should or should not sell sell the rights to their products for use in TV, etc., I am just saying the credibility and authority of your conclusion requires of us the soft bigotry of low expectations of our privileged pundit class.

(I think I preferred the original "poorer" indie well argued Matt to the newer more famous less logical sell out Matt.)

(I'm kidding about that last, I am hopeful that TBogg or Roger Ailes will sell out soon so that we can have a new Mike Royko or Molly Ivins.)

Posted by jerry | May 20, 2007 3:31 PM

I think that many people object to selling out because it is an acknowledgment that the band is making music, in part, for the money. It is the same reason that sports fans get angry when players leave their team for more money. Fans like to believe that it's all done for the love of the game/music and don't like that illusion destroyed.

Posted by David | May 20, 2007 4:27 PM

david, you're on the money in my estimation: of all the banal criticisms in the world, "selling out" is the most banal because it's really based on some profoundly misguided notions in the first place (that musicians, or artists, or athletes, or what have you, should be doing what they do entirely for love).

i suppose it would be possible for steve sailer to be wronger about kurt cobain, but i don't offhand know just how. typical.

Posted by howard | May 20, 2007 4:40 PM

"It's telling that Kurt Cobain had intense thoughts on the nature and significance of not selling out and was also a horribly depressed heroin addict who wound up killing himself"

Word. Your tendency to make comments like this is what keeps me coming back, Yglesias.

Posted by mark | May 20, 2007 5:04 PM

Matt, I took it that the debate you referenced was about artists, particularly musicians, selling the fruits of their efforts to commericial enterprises so that they can in turn be used to help sell other commodities. But you slid into a discussion about how artists choose to bring their work to an audience. These raise different kinds of issues about compromising and selling out.

Artists have always had to work within the commerical constraints of the second kind, just so they can make a living from their art and reach an audience. They always have to print posters and tickets, rent the stage or gallery, purchase props and equipment, pay the promoter, beg for patronage, etc. They settle on different strategies for making the necessary compromises while still producing something of artistic value. Shakespeare had to write some plays that conformed to many of the standards of romance "as you like it" in order to achieve any kind of success, and find an audience.

But the traditional artistic taboo against lending one's work to the traffic in other goods is a different matter. Part of the taboo is, I think, based on the feeling that commerce is an inherently filthy, dishonest and demeaning activity, practiced by a lower order of individual, and that an artist with any self-respect and integrity would naturally want to remain aloof from such activity if it is at all possible. It is one thing to compromise with the commercial world in order to practice one's art. But it is quite another to debase one's work in a purely optional way, just in order to cash in.

This taboo seems quaintly aristocratic to the offspring of those several generations who have now lived in the aftermath of the bourgeois revolution, a revolution which is still ongoing, and which continues to lay waste to many of the cultural, intellectual and spiritual value of other times and places, and elevate in their place the basest and most tawdry forms of human desire and existence.

I often find it depressing to contemplate the vast waste of creative talent and imaginative power that have been absobed by the marketing industry, and are poured into the daily traffic in nothingness wich rules modern life.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 20, 2007 5:21 PM

I think that "purism" is a deliberate straw man here. Nobody can be pure, but on the other hand, if you are at odds with our society in some serious way, you have to draw some lines, even if there's a cost. And if you've marketed yourself as a dissident, or if you see yourself as one, this intensifies the problem.

Lots of pure attitude dissidents have slipped into nasty versions of normality without a ripple: Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Mick Jagger, the creepy Ramone jerk.

Posted by John Emerson | May 20, 2007 5:25 PM

mark + sailer: wow, i never realized caring about art was such a debilitating mental disease. here i thought it was the drugs and depression that killed kurt, but apparently it was Artistic Integrity. they ought to add that one to the DSM-IV.

Posted by Tones | May 20, 2007 5:57 PM

There's a lot to be said for watching some band in a stinky bar where you could play pool during the week, for a $10 cover charge and 10 beers. You can see the expressions on their faces and talk to them after the show, and hear every scrape, chirp and squeal of the Marshall stacks loud and clear. They seem to genuinely appreciate it if you wear their shirt or buy their CD.

It's a lot different than seeing that same band in a football stadium for $60 with no beer, when they're walled off by King Kong Bundy lookalikes and the CD is $20 and the T shirt $35 and forget about the beer. Oh yeah. And the echo from note 1 interferes with the initial pulse of note 4, etc. such that it takes you 30 seconds to figure out what song thwey are playing.

One might even come to resent the band for this transition.

Posted by Jalmari | May 20, 2007 6:20 PM

It's telling that Kurt Cobain had intense thoughts on the nature and significance of not selling out and was also a horribly depressed heroin addict who wound up killing himself; getting too obsessed with this stuff isn't something healthy people should be doing.

I guess you find no trace of truth and value in the more idealistic notion that it is the broader world which is sick and unhealthy, and infectiously hostile to those originally healthy individuals who strive to preserve an elevated vision and see beyond the corrupt and banal to something more real and worthy of contemplation.

I can't comment on Kurt Cobain specifically, since I know little about him. But Cobain wasn't the the first artist or intellectual to find the world too ugly and intolerable for endurance, or who lost himself in the swings between ideal aspiration and the fatal fall to earth. Rather than simply dismissing them as unhealthy, why not consider the possibility that there is something profoundly right about their desperate vision, and that their tragic existence points us beyond ourselves toward something better? What makes the artistic obsessions with integrity and purity of purpose less healthy than the mind-numbing obsessions of more conventional existence: the obsessions with celebrity, acclaim, social status, material comfort and perpetual acquisition?

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 20, 2007 6:27 PM

One might even come to resent the band for this transition.

I think people are open-minded enough to recognise that these bands don't owe them anything. "Resent" is not the right word. "Lose interest" is probably a more accurate descriptor for most.

Posted by benny | May 20, 2007 6:52 PM

First of all my own blog has great commentary on this issue. Second of all y'all libtards who be all "Waaah! I can't understand a song in more than one way at once" seek to make ownership of the song yours and approve its use only in certain ways, and the same time you rip the music off the internet, boldly claiming the regressiveness of all notions of intellectual property.
Now I understand that you are not proposing legal limits to licensing music for ads, but you are still giving yourself an authority that could be described as moral in this sense.

Posted by Trolly McTroll | May 20, 2007 7:03 PM

MY, like many kids his age, is partially of blind here. The idea that an artist shouldn't sign with a major label because that's necessarily 'selling out' is, as he says, ridiculous. But that is not the same thing as selling your music to be used in a commercial - that is the truly bad kind of selling out, because you are selling some product other than your own, adding 'hipness' and an everything-is-so-darned-wonderful patina to some specific corporation which has nothing to do with your music, your viewpoint, etc. Acknowledging that one does have to use electricity is hardly the same as providing the soundtrack for a ComEd commercial. Why is that hard to understand?

Before our own Cultural Revolution (the Reagan Years), good, non-pretentious (or even pretentious) artists wouldn't DREAM of selling their music to be used in spots (other than equipment endorsements). Like those artists or don't, one of the reasons people fetish some of these 60s-70s artists so extravagantly today is precisely because those artists would never dream of doing that. If you think that the potential for getting a song placed in a Hollywood movie, or a national spot, or, etc. doesn't influence what artists today write, you are dreaming. Preposterous as many of those artists from the pre-Reagan days might have been, the first thing on their minds when they wrote music wasn't marketing tie-ins and corporate sponsorships for their tours. Most of them didn't even think in terms of genre, whereas in the dreary-present every kind of music has a 'slot' it must fit in - a slot someone else has already defined. Gee, I wonder why there is so much shitty, derivative music?

Posted by jonnybutter | May 20, 2007 7:34 PM

"The commodity can be understood in its undistorted essence only when it becomes the universal category of society as a whole."

...Lukacs, epigram to ch 2 of Debord's "Society of the Spectacle"

This comment is simply another interchangable factor of web-content-production.

What may have killed Cobain & is bothering Densmore is that the rebellion & protest is just another part of thee Big Show. No ratings without conflict, ya know.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 20, 2007 8:09 PM

Does Densmore's and Wait's recalcitrance make the use of the Beatles' and Nick Drake a little more valuable?

Were Shakes & Marcotte interesting and salable because of their fringeness?

I watch myself smile at a child and wish there was someone with a videophone around, cause maybe it could be sold for a Hallmark card.

We are getting very close.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 20, 2007 8:19 PM

Matt, you're great until you start blogging about subjects you clearly just thought about for half an hour early that day. Its especially difficult to do this when volumes have been written on the subject you're discussing and you clearly haven't read any of it. It was the same thing with that Endangered Species Act from a few months back.

Posted by jack | May 20, 2007 8:32 PM

1Ls at elite law schools are famous for saying they're not going to go work for big corporate firms, and about-to-graduate 3Ls are famous for going to work for the firms they said they would never work for.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Posted by washerdreyer | May 20, 2007 9:45 PM

Jack -- Matt has been actively not caring about endangered species for years now.

Posted by John Emerson | May 20, 2007 9:53 PM

I just feel sorry for the poor bastards who bought into the marketing gimmick that they were being rebellious & anti-establishment listening to this music in the first place. Especially 30 something Gen X types, who's views on commerical & material chastity, absent the context of social upheaval of the baby boomer years, is really exposed for the shallow posturing it always was.

One of the (many) benefits of Rap & Hiphop now being the dominant form of pop music today is the relative lack white middle-class bohemian fetishism & concern with "selling out."

Posted by DRR | May 20, 2007 10:15 PM

"But that is not the same thing as selling your music to be used in a commercial - that is the truly bad kind of selling out, because you are selling some product other than your own, adding 'hipness' and an everything-is-so-darned-wonderful patina to some specific corporation which has nothing to do with your music, your viewpoint, etc."

Um, licensing music as-is would seem to be a far smaller problem (if it's a problem at all) than an artist deliberately adopting a different style in order to be more commercial.

For example when the Scottish band Texas abandoned their prior history of blues-influenced rock and became a Eurotrash dance pop band. 2nd example: Phil Collins.

I'll grant that there is potential for trouble if songs are licensed promiscuously. It would be rather nasty if PECO Energy licensed 'Biko' for an ad campaign. ('Pee-co. Pee-co-o-o')

But that just requires that artists be castigated for exhibiting such poor judgement, when and if it happens.

Posted by Jon H | May 20, 2007 10:37 PM

The myth of anti-commercial artistic purity has always been preached by managers: gallery owners ripping off the Impressionists, magazine publishers ripping off cartoonists, record companies and music publishers ripping off composers and performers. It's very convenient for their interests to have artists regard material success as bad for their craft.

Posted by Bruce Baugh | May 20, 2007 11:15 PM

Before our own Cultural Revolution (the Reagan Years), good, non-pretentious (or even pretentious) artists wouldn't DREAM of selling their music to be used in spots (other than equipment endorsements).

Yes, this is the way I remember it too. There used to be a much more pronounced feeling that the artistic and intellectual community as a whole should work vigilantly to preserve a humane and civilized culture that aims at truth and beauty, and that stands apart from the depraved, ugly and lying world of commerce. This didn't mean artists should take a vow of poverty and produce only things that others wouldn't purchase, but that artistic solidarity demanded holding the line again the powerful forces of Moloch. There were certain boundaries one did not cross, and lending your art to the hawking of consumer wares was one of them. But the neoliberal era of Reagan, Thatcher and Clinton seems to have erased a lot of those old boundaries.

Perhaps fewer contemporary artists feel a need to resist the commerical world o' crap because they regard their own work as just more crap: transient baubles for the dollar store. A more sypathetic interpretation is that artists feel that the war is over, and Moloch won. Since we are all now compelled to work in the brothel servicing the soldiers, nobody holds it against anyone else for doing what has to be done.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 21, 2007 12:15 AM

Um, licensing music as-is would seem to be a far smaller problem (if it's a problem at all) than an artist deliberately adopting a different style in order to be more commercial.

The first seems a bit worse to me. If you take something of value you have created and put it in an automobile spot or on a bag of Cheetos, you grossly diminish its value, and the value of everything else you have ever made that others connect with you and your work. Artistic works, especially musical works, are often ruined for us when they become attached in the imagination with something base and tawdry. Commercial advertising desecrates everything it touches.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 21, 2007 12:44 AM

I wouldn't even go so far as to define "selling out" as altering your music for commercial purposes. "Altering your music for commercial purposes" seems to imply that there is some sort of pure, idealized version of the music you write somehow floating in the ether, or flowing from your soul, or whatever. It seems to imply that your muse is sending you crystal drops of sheer creative genius, which you then distill onto a blank page of staff paper.

In reality, people write music for a purpose, and for an audience. Writing for that audience isn't altering the music, because there's no prior form to be altered. And frankly, I have the upmost respect for musicians who possess the craftmanship to write a piece under known constraints, and still make it beautiful.

Check out sometime what John Scalzi, an author, says about similar sentiments in his own profession.

Posted by Patrick | May 21, 2007 12:58 AM

Um, licensing music as-is would seem to be a far smaller problem (if it's a problem at all) than an artist deliberately adopting a different style in order to be more commercial.

Too bad you didn't read my whole comment. The problem is that, in the current atmosphere, artists generally factor-in 'placement' - usually unconciously - before they write the first note.

I just feel sorry for the poor bastards who bought into the marketing gimmick that they were being rebellious & anti-establishment listening to this music in the first place...absent the context of social upheaval of the baby boomer years, [it's] really exposed for the shallow posturing it always was.

Agreed. Hippie-dom-ness was mostly a shallow ocean of bohemian fetishism, but it's worse now: the fetishism now is a competely integrated, a priori, indivisible part of the marketing concept, rather than the hurried afterthought it was in the 60s. It's not the difference between the wonderful halcyon days of yore and the current shitty days - the very idea that that's the operative dichotomy is part of the problem. What we're looking at is the difference between less-bad and more-bad. More-bad is worse, because in the former there at least was room for a certain amount of creative deviation from the norm - not much but a little. Frank Zappa, Weather Report, Iggy Pop, Capt. Beefheart, Tom Waits, Jimi Hendrix, Dan Hicks, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath etc. would not get major record contracts today. They might still record, but you wouldn't know about them, even with the internet. Ray Charles probably wouldn't get signed either (not the Atlantic Ray Chas). All the culture the Borg is frantically strip-mining now isn't being replaced, only endlessly, and tediously, referred to.

There's nothing wrong with marketing per se - and good thing too, because it's unavoidable - but there is the honest, ethical kind, and the crass, greedy, mediocre, post-modern, line-of-least-resistance kind. The latter is exemplified by, on the one hand, already-stupendously rich old rock stars who feel the need to add as many more millions (and as much 'relevance') to their stack as they can (cough, Bob 'Trying to git to heaven before they close the door' Dylan); and, on the other, strivers who either pretend to be rebellious/Avant/quirky (in strictly pre-defined ways), or make music which is so utterly bland (cough, Dave Matthews) that it comes pre-digested - no chewing necessary.

I guess if young bands want to licence their music to ad agencies, you can't blame them exactly, but you don't end up with much culture that way - no one will licence anything which deviates very much. It used to be a time-honored tradition for bands to try to 'pull a fast one' and get a fluke hit in order to finance their regular blasphemous musical activities. But MY and other commentors here aren't advocating for that; they're saying you don't really need the blasphemy at all. Sorry, but that's wrong: no creative deviation, no culture. The best of rap/hip hop is definitely a fresh breeze - for more than one reason - but the ratio of good stuff to trash (IMO) is pretty lopsided; at least nobody's coy about wanting to make money.

The bottom line, to me, is: forget about the 60s. Just as there are negative and positive forms of vanity, there are both forms of nostalgia too, and lots of people MY's age are yoked with the negative form (and, to be fair, baby boomer hatred is perfectly understandable in terms of politics and a very broad kind of socio-pathology, but that's not the same thing as culture). The Decemberists might write some snazzy lyrics, but what about music? Remember music? There are lots of people in the Arab world, in Greece, in Latin America, and many other places, who actually care about music itself. Forget about Format. Create or support sincere music. Verbal narrative and music are not separate in a 'cartesian' sense. Every sound has an, as it were, political or social meaning. Don't forget music. Don't envy music - respect it, even if you don't understand it right away.

Posted by jonnybutter | May 21, 2007 1:03 AM

There used to be a much more pronounced feeling that the artistic and intellectual community as a whole should work vigilantly to preserve a humane and civilized culture that aims at truth and beauty, and that stands apart from the depraved, ugly and lying world of commerce.

Of course, this helped prepare the way for the RIAA, MPAA, and the like to trample the public domain and exploit artists ever more thoroughly. There's good business and bad business, but if you spurn it all, you're going to end up ignorant, disarmed, and victimized. If artists had embraced a suitable role for commerce of many sorts all along, they'd have been much better prepaed to resist the really immoral encroachments.

Posted by Bruce Baugh | May 21, 2007 1:06 AM

If you want to understand Kurt Cobain, read the biography "Heavier than Heaven" by Charles R. Cross.

I finished my review of it about 3 am on 9/11/01:

http://www.isteve.com/Music_Kurt_Cobain.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 21, 2007 1:33 AM

If artists had embraced a suitable role for commerce of many sorts all along, they'd have been much better prepaed to resist the really immoral encroachments.

I think Bruce is right here, but it's easier said than done. I don't see an alternative, though. However, the post-modern view is that there is no conflict to be managed. That is skirting - a particular blind spot I see in several of my favorite brilliant younger bloggers (and people). I guess we have to admit that the frank commodification/leveling we're facing was basically inevitable with or without the advent of Reagan himself (although the crude cultural clamp-down associated with the Great Communicator was definitely optional). Us old liberal/humanists don't like to admit this, but it's high time we did so, the better to deal with things as they actually are, and have been for quite a while. This is an absolutely vital distinction, without the benefit of which we aren't going to really get anywhere politically or culturally. Our 'world' changed in the late 70s-early 80s and it's not all Reagan's fault. Having him in office made things much worse than they needed to be, but part of his power was liberals' state of denial about changes which were happening anyway, for better or worse. We all need to draw new distinctions here...

Posted by jonnybutter | May 21, 2007 2:24 AM

Frank Zappa, Weather Report, Iggy Pop, Capt. Beefheart, Tom Waits, Jimi Hendrix, Dan Hicks, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath etc. would not get major record contracts today. They might still record, but you wouldn't know about them, even with the internet. Ray Charles probably wouldn't get signed either (not the Atlantic Ray Chas). All the culture the Borg is frantically strip-mining now isn't being replaced, only endlessly, and tediously, referred to.

Johnnybutter, have you ever actually looked at the intrawubs? Even setting aside the fact that you just named a bunch of fetishized male "geniuses", your assertion is completely unsupportable. For Tom Waits, how about Neko Case? Black Sabbath, say, Mastodon or Boris. Beefheart, maybe Faun Fables, maybe Okkervil River. You must be crazy if you think those bands wouldn't have been discovered on the internet.

Posted by Justin Nisly | May 21, 2007 2:58 AM

60s musicians, as a whole, were still working in a framework drawn from high Western classical music, in which Transcendent Art was the ultimately goal. Obviously, tawdry commerce would foul this up.

The thing is, though, Transcendent Art isn't really about the act of playing music, which is what most of these young indie musicians want to do. If using a song in a commercial makes it easier to keep performing the *act* (not preaching the gospel) of music, so be it.

Furthermore, with the advent of the internet, we'll start seeing more bands who would rather be famous than rich, giving away their music while blogging or touring or temping to stay afloat financially.

Botomline: we're finally getting over the melodrama of the 60s.

Posted by Justin Nisly | May 21, 2007 3:07 AM

From Dan K, above: The first seems a bit worse to me. If you take something of value you have created and put it in an automobile spot or on a bag of Cheetos, you grossly diminish its value, and the value of everything else you have ever made that others connect with you and your work. Artistic works, especially musical works, are often ruined for us when they become attached in the imagination with something base and tawdry. Commercial advertising desecrates everything it touches.

I think Dan makes a good point that specifically goes to Matt's practical/ideological distinction. That is to say, we as humans are incredibly associative, and as a part of that, the context within which we experience music (or art) will invariably affect the way that we perceive it. A bad association will negatively impact our ability to enjoy the work on its own merits. So I think there is something practical to the idea that using music in advertising can have a practical impact on the music.

Now, it's possible that if a song has been around long enough, and the commercial is relatively tasteful, that there wouldn't be much harm caused by this. (It's even possible, though extremely unlikely, that a truly great commercial could enhance a song.) And so where this becomes ideology is when people absolutely abhor marketing usage of music without regard to the specific practical impact. Now, I think people do take this ideology -- and the cult of purity -- too far, but on the other hand, as it would be incredibly rare that use of a song in an ad would help the song and far more likely that it would hurt the song, the ideology that this kind of thing should be frowned upon doesn't seem completely off base.

But I think Bill Hicks got to the root of the whole problem long ago: Marketing people are evil.

Posted by Royko | May 21, 2007 7:16 AM

"The first seems a bit worse to me. If you take something of value you have created and put it in an automobile spot or on a bag of Cheetos, you grossly diminish its value, and the value of everything else you have ever made that others connect with you and your work. Artistic works, especially musical works, are often ruined for us when they become attached in the imagination with something base and tawdry."

aka, "I can't eat these, the peas touched the macaroni!".

Have fun with that. IMHO, life's too short.

Posted by Jon H | May 21, 2007 7:47 AM

Even setting aside the fact that you just named a bunch of fetishized male "geniuses", your assertion is completely unsupportable.

'Fetishized male geniuses'? What does their being male have to do with it? And calling them 'fetishized' is exactly my point. They *are* fetishized, because they got away with stuff you wouldn't now. They were supported enough, for long enough, to develop their art. It was a fluke, but a little fluke evidently goes a long way.

For Tom Waits, how about Neko Case? Black Sabbath, say, Mastodon or Boris. Beefheart, maybe Faun Fables, maybe Okkervil River.,/i>

You're making my point for me. Generally speaking, new artists are too-heavily referencing the older ones. When some of my younger friends tell me about new bands they're 'interested in' (not 'love'), I get the citation of a string of 'influences' with the precise amount of influence from each older band. What does that mean about the quality of the music the new band is making? Nothing. Many of these bands seem to be less (much less) than the sum of their parts. I know there are definitely exceptions, but...

You must be crazy if you think those bands wouldn't have been discovered on the internet.

What does 'discovered' mean? Yes, some people would've found some of them, but we're dealing with apples and oranges now - that world vs this. I'd love to see the big record companies die a quick death, but they did serve a function we lack now: focus. The chances an artist or band who has something to say is going to make the music they really want to make - whether they know in advance what that is or not - without getting paid to do it are pretty small, as ever. JS Bach (another 'fetishized male genius' - snort) was not a real estate agent with a 'band on the side'. He had a job writing music. People need to get paid to be artists, and I don't think you should have to sell your music for use in teevee ads to get paid. Maybe when internet micropayments finally gets worked out that can happen. I hope so. But I still think there's a cultural problem on the 'supply' side: the very fetishing you're talking about. My unsolicited advice: forget about 'rock' (like Jazz, a dead letter); forget about the 60s, forget about the false choice between making a living and being famous; forget about having a band if you really have nothing to say (or else find something to say). LEARN about music/culture instead of fetishing it. Support artistry rather than envying it. And forget about 'purity' - artists should develop their audience - yes, educate their audience - and get paid.

Bloggers should bet paid too, BTW.

Posted by jonnybutter | May 21, 2007 10:48 AM