fuzzix

Many of you probably won’t be aware of the DIY Ethic as a musical movement. That’s because you’re MTV addicted, consumer sheep with an attention span of a gnat on LSD ;-)

But seriously, folks… DIY and independent music has been important to me for many years. I like buying music where most of what I paid for it doesn’t go towards some suit’s cocaine debts. I like going to gigs where you can stand beside the artists, not below them. I enjoy music made for the sake of the music and not for the sake of shifting units. I will not enter into any debate on this. If you can stand listening to the whores then more power to you.

Now, recently my Against Me! T Shirt started to give me a terrible itching, burning sensation. “Hmmm?” I thought. I always think little sounds like that. Anyway, “Hmmm? Must need a wash!” So I washed it… and it still didn’t feel right. I decided to take a look around the interspluh and see if anyone else had experienced the same thing – if they were they weren’t talking about it. Quite a puzzlement – a two-pipe conundrum.

Anybleh, reading my daily web comics I see something interesting on punk-rock favourite, Nothing Nice to Say. It turns out that DIY stalwarts Against Me! have signed to a Warner Bros. subsidiary to earn for a media conglomerate and get on MTV or whatever it is people sell their souls for. I’ll let Mitch Clem of Nothing Nice take it from here because I can’t muster anything more than a middle-finger-response and the loudest “FUCK YOU” you’ve ever heard.

*edit* 1 Feb – Just listening to Zappa… Interesting track called “Drooling Midrange Accountants On Easter Hay” has the following message for the impressionable youth listening out for hints of obscenity:

Once upon a time, a record company had A&R people in it who would take a chance, make a decision, use their gut reaction, sign a group, and see what they could do with it. Okay? That was, whoa, a long time ago. It’s not that way anymore. All decisions about who get signed and what happens to the record are made by these drooling little midrange accountants. And everything is based on the numbers games in there. And the taste of the accountants is what is ruling the mass media. It’s all just the dollars and cents of exchange. And if you wanna make music that you believe in, the chances of doing it on a major label basis are nil, because they’re all so frightened. Everybody’s there trying to protect their job. And it’s easy– it’s easier to look like a wise executive by saying no to something if it’s just the most minutely fringe-oid in terms of content.

No.

The horrible part of it is the artists who are feeding this ecological chain stop making songs they believe in and start making product that they know will be airable. And they change the style of what they’re doing to fit within the narrow framework that is the contemporary accepted norm for suitable, radio-sounding music. And anything that comes outside of that norm doesn’t go on the air, you don’t hear about it, you don’t know about it. Right now there’s probably hundreds of artists in the United States making great sounds and great music. You’ll never hear it. You’ll never find out about it.