I have been building a new kitchen now for what seems like forever. I have been doing it so long it seems to have permeated every aspect of my life (as evidenced here) - granted a lot of this is down to my insistence on largely doing it solo and an anally retentive attention to detail; but last night whilst I was engaged in my latest task my phone rang.
I must have answered in a pretty testy manner as my friend on the other end remarked that it was the sound of a bad day.
In truth it was merely the fact that with DIY there is a process:
Identify job.
Buy materials
Allocate time.
Start task.
At this point something will go wrong due to the seemingly inconsistent nature of walls, doors, floors, materials, instructions, human error etc and that time allocated slips away and suddenly you've spent the whole day producing the sum total of fuck all but a headache and a bad mood. I went from being super smug and ahead of schedule the day before to cursing injustice and screaming at now being behind schedule over something simple.
So in this mood I answered the phone (Sorry c.).
Anyway the point of my good friend phoning was to float the idea of possibly taking the idea of educating pork, sorry The Masses, onto a radio platform due to the local radio crying out for a midweek late night rock slot.
Rather than the 'play this contemporary shit' stance of say a Friday nigh slot (apologies if one exists, that was merely an example) it would be a chance to put my shelf furniture, sorry CDs and my mine of useless information to good use.
I loved it - the idea of putting a more palatable version of A Brief History Of Metal across to the world, maybe less of the narrow minded ranting and swearing that I have claimed as the corner stone of this blog (a teacher friend of mine lamented recently that he thought it was interesting, some times well written and informative, but sadly a little too racy to use with his students), but maybe enough to provoke debate and still give a decent account of rock music.
Topics swirled around my head for a fair while after that - things I have written here, things I have yet to write, all with a slightly more presentable version and less calling Fred Durst a cunt (gratuitously jamming that one in there to emphasise the point!).
The it occurred to me, if I did this would I in turn be doing something I have viciously attacked some bands for? In seeking a larger platform for my voice would I effectively be compromising what I set out to achieve here? Would I, guardian of the 'Towers, be selling out?
So it got me thinking, what is selling out and why is it such a crime?
Rock and roll and in particular it's uglier younger offspring has always been about rebellion and catharsis; Johnny Cash sang about kicking against the pricks and punk was about smashing a brick in their face.
Punk is a good place to begin really as the sell out accusation probably cuts deepest in this genre.
Punk was formed with the notion of not conforming; your dress, your attitude was about not fitting in, not wanting to fit. The scene became the great exponent of the Do It Yourself ethos - don't like our music enough to produce it on your big shiny corporation?
Well fuck you, we'll record it in a dank rehearsal room on a shitty 8 track and release it on our own label on a blank tape with a photocopied handmade cover.
Of course the irony is the more popular something gets, the more people buy into it the further away from it's core aesthetic.
This was apparent by the time the Sex Pistols exploded back in 1977.
The were everything that punk represented, but in a marketable version.
Both simultaneously a genius act of scene affirmation and exploitation - Rotten and co were basically encouraged to go out and be as obnoxious and anti establishment as they could be (and boy could they), yet at the same time they were creating a look and defining the commercial sound of punk.
Cue a million bands trying to bring about Anarchy in the UK.
This of course is the tip of the iceberg really and the whole evolution of punk would cause myself and the aforementioned friend to grow heated over much red wine. He of course knows far more than I do about the true gritty nature of crust punk that would come to spit in the face of 'pretty boys' like the 'Pistols, the Damned etc - the DRI's, Discharges and Black Flags of this world who came harder and later and I in turn could bore the tits off you about the light, poppy Southern Californian punk that was pioneered by Bad Religion.
My case in point example for this scene is that before Blink 182 were a huge pop chart bothering behemoth they were a NOFX/Bad Religion style band and I liked them. Genuinely.
Then they released that album with 'All The Small Things' on and were massively played to death on the radio. Now not only was this a softening in style but on tour when I saw them, it was like they hadn't existed before that album and weren't playing to please the people that had, until that point given them a career, but to those fair weather fans who would buy their stuff because of the new single.
Metal and rock was a dinosaur by the time punk spat in it's face at the end of the seventies and as a result it mutated, often adopting the DIY approach, Iron Maiden and the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (from here on out NWOBHM) would record their own records (Maiden's first EP is the much sought after Soundhouse Tapes) until they were signed and this approach is almost de rigour in todays digital age with platforms like Myspace helping to break acts far beyond the confines of their towns and cities.
The problem is that this creates a mentality where people in a scene identify with the musicians; they share backgrounds and tastes, they sing about the same issues that effect the people who turn up at shows - there is a connection and an underdog mentality to metal.
When a band expands beyond this and gets famous there is a thin line between staying 'true' to their roots but maintaining success and whoring themselves for the almighty dollar.
Take the biggest sell outs in metal: Metallica.
Now I still love them, but you have to admit that they are a pale shadow of their former selves.
They started out as a hungry young band with a hardcore sound, didn't make videos, dressed like everyone else and were very much in touch with their fan base.
This year they released Metallica Monopoly...
RRP $42.99
I appreciate that in the age of digital piracy bands don't make any money from CD sales anymore; the irony of an artist being in the position where they have more control over every aspect of their careers than ever before, is now there is no money to be had. Therefore bands that would have survived are now forced to tour the globe hawking ugly black t-shirts, wrist bands, thongs, bottle openers, belts, shoes etc to earn a living, but honestly... Monopoly?
How do you win? - Do you sell out?
It is long documented and debated about when Metallica sold out - most people will say The Black album and at 20 million sales and still climbing you could argue why. They took their honed thrash metal and dulled it, made it more accessible, shorter, more hit based (they released six, yes six singles from it).
However I would argue they sold out as a result of this album - it gave them everything they could have ever dreamed of, including the idea that they were 'done with metal'. They created an incredibly heavy album, kicked in the door of the mainstream and decided they had beaten metal itself.
The next two albums saw country, blues, self indulgence and more importantly entropy.
Sure the fire of youth is replaced by the consideration of age and if anything Hetfield's lyrics benefited from moving from the musings of sixth form poetry to the wisdom of the bar stool, but anyone who has seen Some Kind Of Monster saw the selfish, spoilt whiny posers they had become.
How can you identify with a man who sells a painting (pissed on a sofa) for more than most of us will ever see?
This is a band who came from tape trading and shut down Napster with Lars threatening to come round peoples houses and confiscate their hard drives - I had never downloaded their stuff, but at this point I queued up the whole catalogue in the hope the tubby tub thumper would come round so I could smash him in his gurning little face for the hypocrisy.
But downloading is not an issue I want to get into (again) here today.
The fact is that Metallica's last truly good album was probably The Black album. Since then they have become a marketing, merchandising vehicle - the first time I saw them was at Donington 95 and they were arrogant, self indulgent, took the piss out of the other bands, declared metal was dead and fucked around with their own songs. They may have gotten back some of that fire live and made a heavy record again but the fact is they just aren't as good as they were or the myth that what they are now is as good as people say it is just because they are not churning out shit like that fucking song with the Hurdy Gurdy... Low Man's Lyrics that the one, you know the mock Irish crap from Reload?
Ultimately Metallica don't care anymore - 'Sold out? We sell out most nights' - James Hetfield.
To me this is the equivalent of hearing about Ashley Cole (alleged beard needing, philandering pisspot and English left back) recalling how he trembled with rage because Arsenal 'only offered him £55k a week'.
Only! Oh, Poor fucking you - I'd like to make that in two years fuckface.
See some of us hated Cashley way before he cheated on warbling Geordie rascist and new national sweetheart Cheryl Tweedie.
But honestly as I said a while back Metallica could release a turd in a box with their logo on it and someone out there would buy it. Given that I buy anything with an Iron Maiden logo on what's the difference?
Maiden still care, Maiden still make challenging music, Maiden never sneered at everything that put them where they are or pretended to be something they weren't.
Music is art in the end and people will argue that in order to bring it to an audience you have to compromise a little - be it with band mates, yourself, the club owner, the record label etc - as fruit loop, wine making, stalling tactician Maynard James Keenan of Tool said on Hooker With A Penis
Dumb shit I sold out long before you ever knew my name,
I sold my soul to make a record and dipshit you bought one.
But the idea that your art panders to a commercialisation first before serving it's purpose is wrong, it creates a banal version of what has gone before - going back to the mad baldy from Tool at least he said this about the music industry:
I write these songs to move through some pain or work out some issues. and if I'm successful in my art and my expression I shouldn't feel the same way I did when I wrote those songs anymore and there should be a logical progression. But if as an artist I can express myself in someway that ends up helping someone else get through some hard time I guess that's great for everybody, that helps other people. The problem with the music industry in general is that artists get into it be use they have a desire to be desired and they have a desire to scream their heads off for whatever issue happened to them in the past, they weren't armed with the proper tools to move through any trauma or their childhood divorce or loss of parents and what they do is end up screaming their heads off and at some point they get popular now they are part of an industry that is run by people who are uneducated emotional people, in a way it's kind of a dead end and in this society we expect those artists to continue screaming to the end of their days..
Spot on in my book - look at suicide inducing, three chord wonders Nirvana. Cobain actually admitted to selling out to make money with Nevermind, of course once on that train he couldn't take it, like it or live with himself.
If we wanted to listen to jangling three chord repetitive bollocks, we would listen to the radio.
Talking of which:
Metal is an expression, sure it varies in degrees, Linkin Park's Hybrid theory was so universally transcendent that I know three different people who reckoned 'it was about their life' - Crap. It was just so non committal that the themes could be applied, but it was still good. Fast forward and they started making the same by the numbers bullshit again and again because it was on the Transformers movie soundtrack.
You can change so violently you alienate people, you can assume that people want to hear the same ideas again and again, you can stop trying to push yourself, stop trying to challenge your audience; instead of strengthening a genre by pushing boundaries you weaken it by settling for mediocrity, labels sign bands who were medicare to start with and the whole thing circles the drain.
A beautiful failure is far more attractive than an emotional flatline in my book, especially as you don't have to buy a CD to hear a band these days.
Of course this is all subjective and I should pull the plug soon on this epic rant.
The rules for selling out are complex, hypocritical and convoluted and in essence:
1. Any band that is popular/profitable
2. Any band that appears to be popular/profitable
3. Any band that you dont like
4. Any band that someone you dont like likes
5. Any band that makes a follow-up CD that isn't identical to the previous
6. Any band that changes their musical style
7. Any band that doesn't represent your style
But you can spot the pretenders a mile away, for every thousand bands barely 5% will have a career and even less than that be any good so it a shame that we are presented with a watered down marketable version of these things by people whose emotional barometer is completely fucked with regard to the 'product' they are putting out.
Now I'm rambling, but I have finished the kitchen and am off for a beer and to listen to c's debut rock show, I may join him next time.
Check it out
www.phonic.fm/listen-online
