Fashion Rocks arrived today, as a special add-on to one of my wife’s magazines. It is a Conde Nast promotion for a TV show they present. In it you can “shop just like a rock star”. Many new and old bands show up promoting fashion items or automobiles. This is a truly sad state of affairs and I can only conclude that these musicians are acting as paid shills because they have no way to make a living off selling recorded music. If the digital revolution has brought us to the place where even the youngest musicians are willing to pimp for big business, then we have probably destroyed any notion of rock and roll as authentic culture. It now is just one more division of the Madison Avenue selling machine.
Pardon me while I puke.
27 responses so far ↓
Hugo // August 4, 2008 at 7:37 pm |
“I mean, they’re sellin’ feckin’ Hippie wigs in WOOLworth’s, man! It’s OouVAH!”
[a favorite line from the last reel of "Withnail and I".]
Puking is often contagious, so pray pardon me as well…
Rick Turner // August 4, 2008 at 8:40 pm |
Jon, we had Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, and before that Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Now they’ve got Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, Shakira and Nicole Richie. I knew it was all over in about 1985 when a friend’s brother got a synth. I asked him what he wanted to do, and I meant musically; he said he wanted to be a pop star… Never made it.
On the other hand, I just saw Sonny Landreth the other night, and he just blew me away. I hadn’t seen him live in quite a while, and he just gets better and better. He’s got such a unique personal voice on his guitar…
Armand Asante // August 4, 2008 at 9:04 pm |
“they have no way to make a living off selling recorded music.”
Rock n Roll isn’t dead. Selling CD’s is…
Rock n Roll is alive and kicking in a way it never was when I was growing up.
The net is chock full of young new artists making music.
P2P has made available to the masses all the music ever recorded – anywhere in the world.
No longer am I dependent on the tastes of execs at MTV for the selection available at my local store.
The record industry, however, is definitely on its last leg – as are, probably, some of that industry’s less deserving “stars”.
I can proudly say I no longer buy music and never will again.
The money will probably be in live music – the way it was before the invention of the phonograph.
I trust talented folk will find a way to create AND earn a livelihood.
It is not a sad state of affairs when the record industry’s hold on our culture is weakened.
The digital revolution means no one will be able to push Britney Spears down our collective throats just because they own all the channels of distribution.
For the next Britney Spears to succeed and become a “Rock Star” she’d actually have to be GOOD.
Alex Bowles // August 4, 2008 at 10:18 pm |
Jon,
If you need your faith renewed, spend some time listening to kcrw.com. Or for that matter, just tune in when you’re driving to work. If you’re in LA, they’re local, and will set you straight, right quick.
And Rick, Paris and Britney are not this generation’s Hendrix and Joplin. They’re this generation’s Monkees (who sold more records in 1967 than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined.)
zestypete // August 5, 2008 at 1:21 am |
Echoing some of the comments here, there’s plenty going on in music, though the industry is going through some major teething right now. I can recommend loads of good bands out there – and I’d really recommend you listen to http://kexp.org (or sign up for their regular podcasts) for some of the latest and greatest new stuff out there. I’ve discovered about a dozen new bands through them in recent months and they’ve been a regular source for new stuff for me for years.
Also, you have to realise that because there’s a shift in the way we find new music these days, younger people aren’t quite as disgusted/shocked by bands looking for new ways to make money. In the UK, very new and unknown bands are often the first port of call for ad execs hoping to find a new sound for their latest ad. While I know there are plenty in North America who would view this as selling out, in the UK it’s just one way to hear about new bands. Somehow, some way, people here are able to distinguish between what’s being sold and the music being used to sell it. It never used to be that way, but right now it seems to work.
Oddly enough, I have a much bigger problem with overt product placement or association in films. If only because that violates some sort of theatrical fourth wall magic that I can’t quite put my finger on. When Nokia/Matrix ads started popping up ages ago, it really went against the grain somehow.
Mark // August 5, 2008 at 5:09 am |
Meh. Selling out isn’t that big of a deal anymore. It’s almost expected.
We have a compulsive urge to monetize everything. From what the musician says* to what they wear to what they drive to where they shop. It’s not as gaudy or blatant as in NASCAR, but the logos are still there. And when they’re not shilling other’s stuff, they shill their own. I don’t think you could name a current pop star who doesn’t have their own clothing line/fragrance/shoe.
We even accept the shill on a small scale: it’s rare to find a blog that doesn’t have links for AdSense or CafePress.
Rick said that in ‘85 the kids wanted to be a Pop Star; nowadays the kids want to be a Media Mogul They want the money/power/prestige like Oprah, Jay Z, Bill Gates, Martha, Tyler Perry, etc. Of course, just like in ‘85, they’re not gonna put in the work to achieve it.
Please understand, I’m not saying this is bad or good. It just is.
Now who wants to buy some T-shirts!?!
*Steve Stoute, VP of Black Music for Interscope Records, has even created a company called PASS with Peter Arnell—of the New York-based Arnell Group—to match urban music and musicians with advertisers. It’s widely known that Stoute was responsible for Jay-Z’s “Motorola two-way page me” shout on “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me).” http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-09-10/news/hip-hop-goes-commercial/
bigring55t // August 5, 2008 at 5:50 am |
Jon, it’s not music that is dying, it’s the recording industry, the very same industry that has almost killed live performance. Now the worm has turned, and recording is essentially a loss leader for live performances which is where the money is. Yes, there are many implications for the music industry as a whole, not all of them good, but recording and performing live are two separate skill sets and the current trend is simply restoring some of the balance that existed prior to the 1950’s when the money in recording really took off.
Jon Taplin // August 5, 2008 at 6:53 am |
I listen to KCRW every morning, so I know there is good music going on. What was so disturbing about the Fashion Rocks magazine was that so many new artists were featured in ads, or editorial promoting products. To name a few–Duffy,RhiannaKlaxons,M.I.A., Natasha Khan, Chris Cornell, Bow Wow, Gym Class Heroes, Portman, Jack White, Fergie, Katy Perry, One Republic, Pete Doherty, Liz Phair, Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown and the list goes on and on.
What I’m trying to say is that if file sharing has destroyed the traditional way for musicians to make money, so they have no other choice but to become Madison Avenue pimps, then every kid needs to rethink what he is doing in cutting out the financial underpinnings of music.
Now I know someof you will say, well they can just make money touring, but I promise you only the big acts really make money touring. Humping your butt across the country to clubs hardly pays for the gas and food.
Rick Turner // August 5, 2008 at 7:08 am |
The recording industry, for all it’s faults, is not what has impacted live performance. That’s been nearly murdered by television, video tape (remember that), DVDs, and home theaters.
I happen to live in one of the few towns in America where live music is thriving, and often enough, the hardest choice is not whether to go out or stay in, but which great performer to see on a given night. We’ve got a whole bunch of great clubs, bars, coffee houses, and larger venues here promoting live music. We’ve got five music stores in a town with about 55,000 people.
But what we don’t have and what few places have are clubs that will book in a band for a week or have a good house band with a steady gig. That’s what musicians had in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. There were also venues that people would go to not even knowing who was playing, but just trusting that the club would have great music. There’s nothing like playing in the same venue every night for a week or more to get your live performance chops together.
The balance will not ever be the same, but one of the interesting things is that there are a lot of “below the radar” musicians who produce their own CDs for four to seven thousand dollars of studio and production time, get a thousand pressed by DiscMakers or another company like that, and by the time they sell five hundred copies, they’ve broken even.
Another trend is recording and duplicating live performances in near-real time. With some performers, you can go to a gig, and buy a copy of the first set at the end of the second set. CD copying machines are cheap and really fast, and live mixes are better than ever. Some of the duplicating gear even ink jet prints the CD label, and with a color inkjet or laser printer, you can spit out jewel case artwork inserts as fast as you can duplicate the CDs.
Second set can be mailed to you…or it all can be uploaded to iTunes and downloaded for money, though the appeal of walking away from a live performance with an autographed CD of the evening is the kind of impulse buy that is hard to pass up.
Many of my musician pals like Muriel Anderson, Laurence Juber, David Lindley, Stephen Bruton, etc. make as much on CD sales at gigs as they do on their percentage. of the door..and this is all the kind of stuff you’ll never read about in People or Billboard.
But with the need to play a different venue every night and the rising cost of travel, times are really not easy for musicians. The PtoP mentality has really hurt, and though everyone revels in the decline of the record companies, don’t think for a second that this hasn’t really hurt the musicians. Thinking that they’ll make it up on the road is naive at best. They can’t.
Lee McKnight // August 5, 2008 at 7:56 am |
I just had to interject in regards to The Monkees reference. They actually have some amazing songs, especially Mike Nesmith, who I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) wrote the majority of his songs at that time. And went on to release some nice solo material as well.
The Monkees really are an underrated band-don’t believe me, listen to Papa Gene’s Blues or What Am I Doin’ Hanging ‘Round.
I’ll listen to The Monkees over just about anything released to commercial radio over the past 10 years, certainly. OK, I’m done.
thom m. // August 5, 2008 at 7:57 am |
I think that what Jon is talking about is that “rock and roll” (with quotes) is finally dead. I had a friend who once said, “if it’s not about Reagan, it’s not HardCore” and I think this is what we’re talking about. Not the music industry, not touring, CD sales, who musicians make money, but about “rock and roll” as a real rallying cry for the culture.
If we could have spent the last eight years without music creating some strong subcultural response, it’s as much to do with cool hunting as it is with file sharing.
ec brown // August 5, 2008 at 8:07 am |
–”Humping your butt across the country to clubs hardly pays for the gas and food.”
–”Thinking that they’ll make it up on the road is naive at best. They can’t.”
Thank goodness.
Being part of a nigh-moribund form of cultural communication (painting; gallery arts), I can say that when the money supply bottoms out, artists do keep working. Folks can realize that their craft or aesthetic missions don’t require financial validation. They get by, regardless, and simply redefine their notions of success. Students training to be gallery artists would typically have the expectation that they must rise to globetrotting status (hopping from London to Berlin to Shanghai, etc.) or to be fueled by grants and public funds. This is thinking leftover from the 1980’s when the art market went anabolic (before investor attention shifted to real estate).
Nowadays, more artists are paying more attention to the work that can be done locally, since, hell — a non-paying audience in your own town is no worse than a non-paying audience halfway across the globe.
Dan // August 5, 2008 at 9:28 am |
I remember Clapton doing Michelob commercials–it must be at least 20 years ago.
That was when I said, “OK you can take all of my rock and roll heroes, heap them up in a pile, and set them on fire. Good riddance.”
I heard that the Stones’ latest “tour” grossed over half a billion dollars. Let us bow our heads in reverence to the Almighty Dollar.
Alex Bowles // August 5, 2008 at 10:19 am |
I suspect guys like Sinatra spent the late 60’s thinking to themselves ‘good god almighty, what the hell is going ON in this country?’
Matt Rosenzweig // August 5, 2008 at 10:48 am |
“Rock & Roll” as it is represented here has been over for a while if you ask me. Indie rock does well, but that’s mostly because it is largely music made for record collectors by record collectors. I personally know dozens of small, independent artists who make a very good living (six figures and up) touring the world performing. They are represented by mid-tier talent agencies who book their tours and the artists run their own record labels doing limited run vinyl releases combined with extensive digital distribution. They don’t pay for studio time, their studios are in their bedrooms or on their laptops. A big part of their marketing strategy involves leaking their songs in advance to hotly-tipped music blogs, many of which are based here in L.A. The resulting buzz increases awareness of them as artists, resulting in larger attendance numbers every time they tour. The digital nature of the production, distribution, and marketing process has dropped costs to near zero. From my perspective, I’d say this is a fundamentally new paradigm for music.
Jon, it’s a shame you couldn’t make it to Electric Daisy Carnival – there were 72,000 people in attendance supporting these kinds of artists, artists that most people outside of electronic music have never heard of (to put it in perspective, Coachella’s biggest one-day attendance this year was 60,000 and last weekend’s Lollapalooza was 70,000). The headlining artists were very, very well compensated and my employer, the promoter for the event, made a very healthy profit. All of this happened completely under the radar of the mass media, without any corporate sponsorship, and this phenomenon only seems to be growing. While Madison Ave is pursuing last year’s notable artists to shill their products, the audience they are trying so hard to reach has already moved on. The consultants hired by these corporations to dissect the tastemaking process have probably never had a harder time doing their jobs – by the time a marketing campaign like Fashion Rocks has made it through the maze of corporate development and out to the masses , the content is already stale and cliche.
Rick Turner // August 5, 2008 at 10:57 am |
Folks like ec like to keep their artists nice and poor.
Armand Asante // August 5, 2008 at 10:58 am |
Jon,
You seem to be missing the point of the “file-sharing” kids.
They (we? I’m not a kid anymore but hey) don’t care about the young artists the record industry is promoting.
It IS sad for those young artists that they have to pimp jewelery to make a living (an industry-standard “rock-star” living, mind you).
They are “casualties” of the digital revolution (though I shed no tears for them). But they are not representatives of anything but the record industry.
There are thousands of other young artists whom the record industry wouldn’t touch/promote/care about in a million years. Those artists do have a future in this new economy.
“…then every kid needs to rethink what he is doing in cutting out the financial underpinnings of music.”
This however is a load of crock.
The free market has spoken. Selling recorded music has ceased to be a viable economic option. It is a thing of the past.
Kids don’t have to rethink ANYTHING. What you are seeing is Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand at work.
All that has been cut out are the financial underpinnings of the recording industry.
Not of music itself.
banco75 // August 5, 2008 at 11:10 am |
Yuck! Rockers who were once part of the counter culture are now schtupping with the corporate culture. Is Rock and Roll really dead? http://bankosphere.com/2008/08/05/on-rock-roll/
organizer // August 5, 2008 at 11:21 am |
Check out the new book Heavy Metal Islam by Mark Levine to restore your faith in rock as a cultural force.
bigring55t // August 5, 2008 at 12:06 pm |
Alright, let me try again. The traditional way to earn money for musicians is to play for audiences, not to make records. That began to change when large amounts of money began to be made in recording, which was in the 50’s, although maybe a case could be made for going farther back if you were willing to sit down and look at the numbers carefully. Most of the people in your list are probably following the advice of their manager and trying to become a brand, and are not at the point of their career where they could be considered “new”.
As far as recording “killing” live music, you tell me which puts more musicians out of work, hiring one rhythm section to record with 5 different singers in a studio, or having 5 different singers with 5 different rhythm section performing simultaneously? And no, I’m not saying that recording is the devil, but that the disproportionate influence recording has had over the last 50-60 years has hurt live music and made it more difficult for your average sideman to have a career. Don’t get me started on synthesizers.
Lewis Haidt // August 5, 2008 at 1:25 pm |
Well said, Matt!
Jon,
As your panel with Josh Kun documented last year, the very idea of a glorious “authentic” golden age of rock-n-roll is at best limited and at worst, itself a Madison-Ave-Hollywierd-recording-industry-creation while amazing black artists like Wanda Coleman, whose tradition of rock and blues, of course, the “greatest” such as Dylan built on and their place in music history was ignored.
So don’t cry for some imaginary past Argentina and maybe someday there will be collection societies 4 digital music.
Rick,
I have to beg to disagree. Thank god for synths. We wouldn’t have the below Pump Up the Volume, and amazing other good music. God bless the Pet shop boys and many other 70’s babies.
http://bluemandarin.blogspot.com/2007/02/pump-up-volume-im-taking-great-audio.html
ec brown // August 5, 2008 at 1:48 pm |
“Folks like ec like to keep their artists nice and poor.”
Actually, Rick, the artists I was referring to aren’t poor (but oftentimes very nice). They learn to manage without getting lured into mythologies of entitlement that come along with an artistic career.
What I’m saying is that people learn to rethink the baseline: “I make art/music because I have to, and love to” rather than “I deserve money for having worked hard at art/music”. It’s a slight shift of impulses that can still achieve the same results (ie. earning a decent living), but what primarily drives the career is cultural participation. In my view: putting the horse back in front of the cart. With the assistance of technology/channels discussed in the posts above, the costs of participation are reduced and the whole “LA or bust” scenario becomes just one career endpoint among many.
Phoenix Woman // August 5, 2008 at 4:57 pm |
Jon, ANY band that isn’t at the very top of the income heap is, unless they sell their own music, almost guaranteed to get screwed. I invite you to study the sad case of Danny Gatton, whose contract with a major label had him owing them money — one of the things that led to his suicide.
You might also want to read this article from the early ’90s by Steve Albini (http://www.negativland.com/albini.html), which shows just how the record companies screwed their acts; trust me, the same crap goes on today, but the internet now makes it much easier to sell your own music without a record company contract.
marplet // August 5, 2008 at 6:05 pm |
Hi Jon… I just started reading your blog and I love it. I hear you on the puke part. I just recently wrote a post comparing Britney to someone who hasn’t sold out, yet, and consequently finds herself living/touring out of a van. But, she sticks to it and keeps plugging away for her art. (Tift Merritt, know her?) Anyways, I think there are still people out there that have a soul, just probably not as many as there used to be.
zestypete // August 6, 2008 at 1:01 am |
It’s the music business, Jon. Emphasis on the word “business”. The rock n roll whose demise your bemoaning was a myth held up as reality in the hearts of those in the audience. The participants and performers were just people trying to make a living while doing something they loved, if not lived for.
Sounds to me like you have an idealised view of the music industry (again, emphasis on the word “industry”).
I’ve told this story before, but here it is again: when I was in college, I had friends in a band. They signed with a local small label in Montreal and received an advance and released a couple of albums and put on some of the best live shows the city had ever seen. They never hit the big time, but they were popular enough to sell out gigs across Canada. They reunited for three gigs in Montreal last year and they all sold out within a couple of days.
More than 10 years after they signed the original contract, they were still paying back the money on the advance. It’s a business and musicians that are trying to make it in the business learn this very quickly or go bust trying. Don’t begrudge those who go for it a bit faster than others.
Also: best sponsorship deal I ever heard for a band was when a well known ska band out of Boston was sponsored by Hugo Boss and got to wear sharp suits on their tour, which was all paid for by the company. They looked good, they sounded good and they ended the tour in a profit.
And finally: if you’re ever in London and want to hear some good music that is never going to sell out, go to The Windmill (http://www.windmillbrixton.co.uk) – it has live bands on every night from everywhere, it charged almost nothing and the owner has a real ear for great bands.
Andres // August 6, 2008 at 2:28 pm |
Bottom line, that’s all.
I just had dinner with a senior PR exec. and was amazed (naively I admit) that rappers get a fee for every time they mention, let’s say, Hennesy or Rolls Royce in one of their songs, and the PR firms make a healthy living making sure that this happens so do the rappers that dedicate endless nights to figuring out new ways to rhyme around Ferrari and Absolut.
Although I agree with the replies above pointing out the musical revolution happening in the Internet, I am really skeptical about the longevity of these “real” musicians; I know some really talented ones and sooner or later they all need to pay bills in a country that provides less support and requires more capital just to survive.
In order to make money in todays music game you have to be beautiful not talented, opportunistic not idealistic and above all else marketable.
Puke is right Jon.
Hugo // August 6, 2008 at 7:01 pm |
I’m sorry. I took Jon’s piece as concerned with the commercialization of art itself (moving it to market), but with the commercial-ISM that generally sounds its death knell.
Two examples, please. Punk began in East London largely as an attack on “fashion”, with which the pop culture was obsessed but which financially excluded the Cockney youth. They perceptively dissected “le jeunesse dore” of the disco era, with its costly drugs and fashions and cover charges and the irreproducibility of its synthetic music, and they declared war, as we all know. Shortly after punk reached New York, where it found welcoming branches of ancestral lineage, it began to turn into a hot commodity. Ticket prices rose, and so did the price tags on the punkable clothing at the used clothing shops. By the time punk reached Los Angeles, it had been turned into its nemesis, fashion, under the name of “The New Wave”, itself a title lifted and denatured from a bygone explosion of genuine European (cinematic) art. So L.A. New Wave was what East End London Punk despised, rejected, ridiculed in the first place. On the West Coast, it had become a cash cow. And so one finds the phenomenon of powerful and influential punk groups such as “The Clash” winding up their careers as millionairs still singing about what a drag it is that some people have money and others don’t.
The same thing happened with the Arts and Crafts Movement, which began similarly in England (and Scotland), made its way to New York, where it maintained much of its purity but also was introduced to commercialization which, by the time it had made its way to Pasadena and the Oakland Hills, had completely degenerated into the antithesis of itself: a fully commercialized classist race for the best architect.
I mean they’re sellin feckin hippie wigs in Woolworths. It’s over.
Let’s go.