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The Fuzz Challenge and David Brooks Part 1.
CapitalClinic posted something very interesting last week about an editorial by David Brooks in the New York Times. In the piece he found some ideas about current trends in the music business which posed worthy challenges to music communities in general and the Fuzz project in particular. I started writing about the article and these issues and it's turning into sonething of an epic as blog posts go, so I've decided to serialize it to keep everyone reading.
I think I see Cap’s point about finding cohesion and creating community among musicians and audiences. The time is right to begin that dialogue, and I'll address that in a bit. Before we get there, however, I think a close reading of the Brooks piece is in order.
Brooks writes about the passing of the musical environment of the ‘70s when a few artists like the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen could fill stadiums (they still do). He calls it a time of “musical integration”. By this he means that arena-rock artists were absorbing blues and folk music and incorporating elements of those studies into their own work. The masses would then fill the arenas, hear these influences in their beloved hits, and appreciate how these artists were incorporating their eclectic tastes and their quest for authenticity into multi-platinum selling albums. While the convulsive relationship between rock musicians and the blues is fascinating and worth continued investigation, the situation was a bit like having a women’s studies program taught by men at an all boy’s school. I certainly do not mean to deride the considerable talents of the musicians Brooks mentions, and the fact that they relentlessly pursued often hard-to-find recordings and listened intently it is a testament to their open-mindedness and curiosity. It must be remembered, however, that these artists enjoyed the favor of a monolithic music industry, which in those days had almost complete control over how recordings were manufactured, promoted and distributed.
Brooks misleads when he uses the word “integration” to speak of this phenomenon. The word has a definite resonance when one is talking about culture. Racism has been as much a part of the music industry as any other area of American life, and while there have always been people who appreciate various branches of American music tradition, there were often stark divides between audiences as well as artists. How much more attention has been paid by mainstream press to the rock stars who co-opted elements of African-American music than to the artists who created it in the first place? The stars’ records sold millions. The artists they most admired were often hard to find. Brooks’ implication that white rock stars were somehow necessary ambassadors bringing black music to white audiences – or that they saw themselves that way - is a reach.
It’s also worth pointing out that there have always been styles of American music that appeal primarily to white or black audiences. This point can’t possibly be brought home more clearly than by mentioning country and hip-hop together in this sentence. This reflects not only differences in tastes among social groups, but purposeful manipulations of marketing. Country and hip-hop perhaps represent opposite ends of a spectrum, while Jazz, R&B, Motown, and even classical musics could be placed somewhere in between along that spectrum. Degrees of polarization and integration have always been present within the arts. And I’ve got news for David Brooks: indie rock has always been white (brilliant bands like Living Color notwithstanding).
Setting issues of race aside for a moment, it was precisely the closed system of the music industry that allowed the whole arena-rock mega-star phenomenon to exist in the first place. Record companies could never devote the required marketing resources to develop all the artists who were worthy, and artists did not have the technological resources to do things themselves. Furthermore, let us not forget the generosity of major record labels: enslaving artists to multi-album contracts, requiring complete recoupment of all the expenses connected with an album before the artists saw any money, then paying pennies on the dollar in royalties. And if the new vice president laid off your A&R rep., you had no one to go to bat for you with the label, though you were still bound by your contract. If you were a developing artist, your career could evaporate in an instant, and it was back to washing dishes for you.
Ah, good times.
This was precisely the environment that musicians and music-loving entrepreneurs began to actively resist by handling the business side of things themselves. Brooks is quite right about the “fragmentation” beginning in the 1980s. Small labels began to proliferate, and artists, who just a short while before were completely marginalized, began to find their voices. The new crop of independent record labels, coupled with the rise of college radio stations with independent programming, allowed artists to produce and promote music with a diversity of aesthetic perspectives which was breathtaking. The influences of bands from that era are still being felt, and the new “indie” label phenomenon made a lot of musical careers (including that of yours truly) possible.
With the maturity of computer technology, the advent of recording and other music software, and of course the rise of the internet, it is now even easier and more affordable to create excellent sounding recordings and present them to the world in a variety of ways. It is no longer necessary for an artist to sell ten thousand units just to break even on her/his initial investment. One can sell a few hundred or a thousand and start making money. This is what we were struggling for all along. It is also possible to hear recordings by musicians from around the world, participating in every musical tradition known. Audiences no longer have to rely on some mega star to interpret traditional music for them. They can hear the real deal for themselves. Brooks refers to Top 40 radio as a “gateway” guiding listeners. I don’t know how you feel about it, but to me, and all my friends, it seemed more like force-feeding.
David Brooks talks about all this like it’s a bad thing. His editorial has the tone of a lament. He waxes nostalgic for what he perceives as a simpler time, while unable or unwilling to accept that the times were just never that simple. In order to do so he must not only ignore much of the serious shortcomings of the music business, but also the creative richness not only of the present time, but of the very history he has tried to claim as his own. In his wistfulness he denies the legitimacy of all the artistic/economic/political, etc. struggles that took place in the past thirty years. Brooks’ lament is as deceptive as the assertion that we can dispense with affirmative action because America is now colorblind (didn’t Brown vs. the Board of Education and ending Jim Crow take care of all that?), when in fact racism is still so systemic that it no longer requires active prejudice on the part of individuals to be oppressive. The oppression is built into the economy, and still needs to be actively corrected.
There are some other rhetorical tidbits in this piece that are subtle but make my teeth hurt all the more for that. I want to tease them out. Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Join us next time.
I think I see Cap’s point about finding cohesion and creating community among musicians and audiences. The time is right to begin that dialogue, and I'll address that in a bit. Before we get there, however, I think a close reading of the Brooks piece is in order.
Brooks writes about the passing of the musical environment of the ‘70s when a few artists like the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen could fill stadiums (they still do). He calls it a time of “musical integration”. By this he means that arena-rock artists were absorbing blues and folk music and incorporating elements of those studies into their own work. The masses would then fill the arenas, hear these influences in their beloved hits, and appreciate how these artists were incorporating their eclectic tastes and their quest for authenticity into multi-platinum selling albums. While the convulsive relationship between rock musicians and the blues is fascinating and worth continued investigation, the situation was a bit like having a women’s studies program taught by men at an all boy’s school. I certainly do not mean to deride the considerable talents of the musicians Brooks mentions, and the fact that they relentlessly pursued often hard-to-find recordings and listened intently it is a testament to their open-mindedness and curiosity. It must be remembered, however, that these artists enjoyed the favor of a monolithic music industry, which in those days had almost complete control over how recordings were manufactured, promoted and distributed.
Brooks misleads when he uses the word “integration” to speak of this phenomenon. The word has a definite resonance when one is talking about culture. Racism has been as much a part of the music industry as any other area of American life, and while there have always been people who appreciate various branches of American music tradition, there were often stark divides between audiences as well as artists. How much more attention has been paid by mainstream press to the rock stars who co-opted elements of African-American music than to the artists who created it in the first place? The stars’ records sold millions. The artists they most admired were often hard to find. Brooks’ implication that white rock stars were somehow necessary ambassadors bringing black music to white audiences – or that they saw themselves that way - is a reach.
It’s also worth pointing out that there have always been styles of American music that appeal primarily to white or black audiences. This point can’t possibly be brought home more clearly than by mentioning country and hip-hop together in this sentence. This reflects not only differences in tastes among social groups, but purposeful manipulations of marketing. Country and hip-hop perhaps represent opposite ends of a spectrum, while Jazz, R&B, Motown, and even classical musics could be placed somewhere in between along that spectrum. Degrees of polarization and integration have always been present within the arts. And I’ve got news for David Brooks: indie rock has always been white (brilliant bands like Living Color notwithstanding).
Setting issues of race aside for a moment, it was precisely the closed system of the music industry that allowed the whole arena-rock mega-star phenomenon to exist in the first place. Record companies could never devote the required marketing resources to develop all the artists who were worthy, and artists did not have the technological resources to do things themselves. Furthermore, let us not forget the generosity of major record labels: enslaving artists to multi-album contracts, requiring complete recoupment of all the expenses connected with an album before the artists saw any money, then paying pennies on the dollar in royalties. And if the new vice president laid off your A&R rep., you had no one to go to bat for you with the label, though you were still bound by your contract. If you were a developing artist, your career could evaporate in an instant, and it was back to washing dishes for you.
Ah, good times.
This was precisely the environment that musicians and music-loving entrepreneurs began to actively resist by handling the business side of things themselves. Brooks is quite right about the “fragmentation” beginning in the 1980s. Small labels began to proliferate, and artists, who just a short while before were completely marginalized, began to find their voices. The new crop of independent record labels, coupled with the rise of college radio stations with independent programming, allowed artists to produce and promote music with a diversity of aesthetic perspectives which was breathtaking. The influences of bands from that era are still being felt, and the new “indie” label phenomenon made a lot of musical careers (including that of yours truly) possible.
With the maturity of computer technology, the advent of recording and other music software, and of course the rise of the internet, it is now even easier and more affordable to create excellent sounding recordings and present them to the world in a variety of ways. It is no longer necessary for an artist to sell ten thousand units just to break even on her/his initial investment. One can sell a few hundred or a thousand and start making money. This is what we were struggling for all along. It is also possible to hear recordings by musicians from around the world, participating in every musical tradition known. Audiences no longer have to rely on some mega star to interpret traditional music for them. They can hear the real deal for themselves. Brooks refers to Top 40 radio as a “gateway” guiding listeners. I don’t know how you feel about it, but to me, and all my friends, it seemed more like force-feeding.
David Brooks talks about all this like it’s a bad thing. His editorial has the tone of a lament. He waxes nostalgic for what he perceives as a simpler time, while unable or unwilling to accept that the times were just never that simple. In order to do so he must not only ignore much of the serious shortcomings of the music business, but also the creative richness not only of the present time, but of the very history he has tried to claim as his own. In his wistfulness he denies the legitimacy of all the artistic/economic/political, etc. struggles that took place in the past thirty years. Brooks’ lament is as deceptive as the assertion that we can dispense with affirmative action because America is now colorblind (didn’t Brown vs. the Board of Education and ending Jim Crow take care of all that?), when in fact racism is still so systemic that it no longer requires active prejudice on the part of individuals to be oppressive. The oppression is built into the economy, and still needs to be actively corrected.
There are some other rhetorical tidbits in this piece that are subtle but make my teeth hurt all the more for that. I want to tease them out. Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Join us next time.
Comments
Maybe, the "good old days" were not so rosy after-all. Seen from the prospective of "nostalgia and regret" or "opportunity", the basic question remains: Are We Up To The Challenge?