Unjamming the next generation

In the Simpsons episode "The Old Man and the Lisa" which first aired in 1997, Lisa helps Mr. Burns regain his lost fortunes by inadvertently giving him the idea to "recycle" sea creatures into slurry. After Burns sells the business, he offers her a check for $12 million as her share of the profits. Lisa has a crisis of conscience about where the money came from, however, and tears up the check instead.

I always thought Lisa should've taken the money and spent it on the things she believed in, and I'm sure others did as well. But none of us condemned her decision to refuse the money as being flat-out wrong; after all, it was perfectly in keeping with how we all thought back then. For Generation X, virtue was about identity. And guarding your identity meant staying independent, in order to retain personal freedom and control over who you are. Once Lisa took that money, it would've owned her, in all its corruptness.

So Generation X set about to rebuild the world in their image, and nowhere were their efforts more successful than in the world of music. Pearl Jam, one of the most socially conscious bands of the '90s, could've been the next U2; instead, they sabotaged that chance. Resenting the loss of freedom that comes with fame, Eddie Vedder sang in "Corduroy" to the millions who adored him, "I don't want to take what you can give, I would rather starve than eat your bread." Which makes sense; when virtue lies in who you are, then being obnoxiously big means you've sold your soul on some level.[1]

As a result of cautionary tales like this, some of us sought shelter in indie rock, which was explicitly designed to help bands avoid Pearl Jam's fate⁠— or worse, the fate of those who tried for that level of fame and failed. When you stay small, you get to stay in control. You get to keep your soul.

Because ultimately, those who choose independence recognise that they're human. They're not good enough to scale, and so they don't try. Sure, every now and again, one of the countless indie bands out there does manage to win over a large audience, but they typically fade out as quickly as they came, making their short-lived success most likely the result of chance or favoritism. Of course, we'll attribute it to hard work or some innate quality instead, validating our belief in the virtue of independence. Unfortunately, this also warps our understanding of what it truly takes to compete, and then we wonder why their success isn't so easily repeated.

But there's really no mystery here. Independence means giving up scale and leverage in exchange for retaining individual freedom and control. And this applies to indie labels as well. Unlike Geffen, who signed both Guns N' Roses and their future archrivals Nirvana with no other concern than profit and prestige, an indie label carefully screens each new addition to its roster, ensuring first and foremost that they're the right fit. When preserving one's identity is paramount, scale and leverage simply can't factor into the decision-making process. So while, statistically speaking, indie rock should've given us the next two or three Radioheads by now, instead it's given us none. This is a feature, not a bug.

As one of indie rock's rejects, I was awoken to the absurdities of the world built by Generation X pretty early on. Lately, though, I've been sensing a similar dissatisfaction amongst the younger crowd. Perhaps it was there all along; we'd just never crossed paths. But I do believe we'll reach a critical mass soon, at which point the next generation will openly question the notion that independence should be the highest virtue. In a world where people are literally starving, why would you resent being given free bread? Especially when you're perfectly free to spend it on the things you believe in?

For Millennials, then, virtue won't be about identity, but about impact. And making an impact means seeking out inter-dependence, in order to maximise leverage and the chance to scale.

Because ultimately, those who choose interdependence also recognise that they're human. They're not good enough to scale either⁠— on their own, that is. But when they team up with other individuals, each with something unique to offer, they can accomplish remarkable feats at will, again and again.[2] When we come together to create something greater than the sum of its parts, we become, quite literally, superhuman.

Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but these days, signs of an upcoming change really do seem to be cropping up everywhere. Here's one example: twentysomethings pursuing lucrative careers, thus having more money to give away. At the very least, this isn't something you would've read about twenty years ago. As the article explains:

In another generation, giving something back might have more commonly led to a missionary stint digging wells in Kenya. This generation, perhaps more comfortable with data than labor, is leveraging its wealth for a better end. Instead of digging wells, it's paying so that more wells are dug.

I don't know if these kids have hit upon the best solution, but it's definitely one more step in the right direction of equating virtue not with who you are, but with what you get done.[3]

Let's get back to Lisa Simpson and her decision to refuse $12 million. Now, there's no doubt that her counterpart in real life would've taken the money. My point is that, within the safe confines of a fictional universe, the episode's writers could count on its viewers to feel that Lisa did the right thing by following her heart. At the very least, certainly no one would judge her decision to be immoral.

And yet, symbolic gestures don't feed people or save lives, do they? So at its core, what really happened was that she took $12 million that could've gone to charity, and instead gave it all to Mr. Burns and his evildoing ways. How is that not flat-out immoral, fictional universe or otherwise? What if, in the future, we all spent less time worrying about our identity, and more time maximising our impact? That's what Mr. Burns's counterparts in real life already do. So why wouldn't the world be better off if everyone thought this way?

Footnotes

[1] Kurt Cobain presents a more obvious case study for exploring what Generation X's values did to its heroes, but I'd rather not wade into those waters.

[2] It's encouraging to hear Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes sing in "Helplessness Blues," "I was raised up believing I was somehow unique… [but] now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me." The problem is, cogs are essential, but also easily replaced. So it's not clear to me whether he longs to be subsumed into some grand and noble purpose, or rather to play a unique and indispensable role within it. And that's a crucial distinction to make, because only the latter situation represents true interdependence. Being unique is a good thing; you just have to earn it, and of course that's the scary part.

[3] Turns out this whole consequentialism thing mentioned in the article has been going on for some time now. I'll definitely be looking into it.

Tossing Bo Diddley a bone

(My last post left one question unanswered: Why exactly is diversity in music important? It's not crude or closed-minded to ask. After all, we don't really care about the overall makeup of sports teams, symphony orchestras, or Hollywood movie casts; we just want the most qualified to make it. So this blog post seeks to answer that question. Too long, didn't read: Pioneering invention depends on it.)

Until we get the next Bo Diddley, we won't be seeing the next Beatles. I think we all understand this intellectually.

Much like DJ Kool Herc had to come before Tupac Shakur, Jelly Roll Morton before Miles Davis, the Notre Dame school before Palestrina, and so on. In each case, the former helped invent the craft that the latter perfected. But while they all deserve to be respected as pioneers, we don't place them on equal footing, and it's not hard to see why. Music needs context to be widely appreciated, and context is understood not at the onset of a new craft's invention, but through its perfection. It's the ones perfecting the craft who write the soundtracks to our lives, while having us gaze romantically upon theirs. There's little glory that comes with inventing a new craft, in comparison.[1]

So everyone hopes to be the next Beatles; few dream of becoming the next Bo Diddley. But without new craft being invented for others to perfect, the cycle of progress gets broken. That's easy to overlook while there are plenty of interesting concepts left to explore. Unlike craft, though, concept doesn't provide much fertile ground; it's mostly a one-time deal that benefits one generation, or even just one artist.

And then what? Once every last concept has been fully exhausted, the future simply becomes a steady rotation, rather than accumulation, of music that resonates with each generation. The newer stuff might sound raw, but the underlying vision will have been endlessly polished. Its artists might look farsighted and bold, but the context for seeing them as such will be as old as the hills. Many would argue that we've reached this point already. Which is not to say that our generation's music can't be genuinely beautiful and wonderful, of course. But if that's all it is, then the next generation won't be keeping it around for themselves. Why would they? They'll have their own.

In other words, there are no shortcuts. The future of pioneering music lies in the invention of new craft, just as always. However unglamorous the role, someone has to take the plunge and be the next Bo Diddley.

The problem is, for the past decade we've been telling ourselves that the music we celebrate can be exactly what we want, all the time, each and every time. And what we want is music and artists that immediately resonate with us precisely because there's nothing left to puzzle over and figure out in their underlying context. In other words, not new inventions; not the next Bo Diddley. Which makes sense, after all⁠— being the least wanted in his own time is how Bo Diddley himself came to be Bo Diddley. Had he had a better option, he would've taken it. The bands making what we want, though⁠— what do they want? Chances are, if they hope to be the next Beatles, they probably want to see the next Bo Diddley get tossed a bone.

But now here we are. The next Bo Diddleys will necessarily come from those we least want, the very ones our present system is set up to reject. Sure, we could learn to want them, and that might help in the short term, but it won't fix the underlying problem.[2] Since we can't ever want everyone equally, someone will always be the system's least wanted. The only long-term solution, then, lies not in being wiser about whom we want, but rather in changing how we respond to whomever we don't.

So here's a proposition. Whenever an artist who might be the next Bo Diddley happens to show up, why not toss them a bone? In other words, let's ask ourselves: What's the bare minimum they need to not starve and die, at least long enough for them to sink or swim on their own merits?[3] And then give them at least that much.

It doesn't matter what they're trying to accomplish, or whether we get it or not. And if the present system doesn't allow us to do this, then let's change the system so it does.[4] After all, there are plenty of bones lying around that we're already happily giving away willy-nilly, and who knows when the next Bo Diddley will come along if we punt on this turn. Taking the unfamiliar path is more hazardous than most realize, and it's a sure bet that for every one that made it far enough to land on our radar, countless others sputtered out long before. So let's just toss that bone and get on with the rest of our day. Besides, when there's so little to lose and the future of music stands to gain so much, what's the worst that can happen?

Footnotes

[1] This isn't true of all musical inventors, of course. While Bach's music was derided as old-fashioned in his own time, its inspiration to later composers led them to revive his works. Bach now outshines all his successors, with only the possible exception of Beethoven.

[2] By the way, I want to ensure that none of you are picturing the actual Bo Diddley, whose place within rock and roll's pantheon no doubt conjures only the warmest feelings today. Instead, try to imagine who can't possibly be music's next pioneering inventor. Seriously, do it right now. If you find this difficult, start by asking yourself: Who out there is doing everything wrong? Suddenly, the next Bo Diddleys don't seem so appealing, do they?

[3] Where we stand right now with mashups might be a good example. It's a craft that has the potential to be taken much further, but for now, many of us don't credit it with conveying any real artistic meaning or emotional depth. So those who care to hear more have the means to do so, while everyone else is free to ignore it completely. That's pretty much what I mean by tossing a bone.

[4] This is, in fact, what my startup hopes to do.

Why indie rock lacks diversity

(While most resources that seek to empower artists do so by helping them achieve independence, my new startup will do so by allowing them to seek inter-dependence. Now, interdependence in music and the arts has always been the historical norm. And yet, because the culture of independence these past few decades has been so successful and complete, any progress towards reinstating interdependence will likely be mistaken for a relapse into de-pendence, and thus meet fierce resistance. These next few blog posts will reflect my attempts in real time to perfect my arguments addressing these concerns, so bear with me because some of my thinking is still kind of raw. Feedback and criticism are always welcome in the comments, of course.)

Many haven't failed to notice that as socially progressive as indie rock is known to be, there's a surprising lack of female and minority artists in this scene.[1] The following is my explanation for why indie rock lacks diversity and probably always will, despite the best intentions of most everyone involved.

First, we need to understand what indie rock is. "Indie" stands for "independent," and as anyone who's ever tried to get anything done knows, you choose independence when you want to retain personal control. You choose inter-dependence when you want to make the largest possible impact. Neither is superior to the other; it's just a question of what you want.

So obviously, indie rock is about forgoing the chance to make a large impact in favour of retaining personal control. But this also eliminates the most crucial incentive for trying to stand among the best.[2] Let's face it, why would an unknown band put in countless time and energy working to be the best when they've already deliberately limited the size of their audience?

In other words, indie rock is a genre that explicitly chooses not to provide unknown artists with incentives to try to be the best, and in doing so, actively undermines any such efforts. Because now, trying to be the best doesn't just offer little advantage; it becomes an actual dis-advantage. After all, to do so would mean diverting time and energy away from efforts for which indie rock awards the most points, towards those that award the least.

Okay, so now we've established that an unknown band probably won't get far working to be the best in indie rock. But even if it isn't a competition, it's still a contest. Too many want recognition, yet too few can have it. There's just no way around that. So the designation of being "the best" must still necessarily exist; it just isn't something anyone can actively try for.

But this is a problem because for some out there, trying to stand among the best is the only recourse they have for overcoming their natural disadvantage and leveling the playing field. The world isn't their playground, which means they can't cop the same nonchalance towards success that indie rock's most favoured sons do, confident that life will still be pretty darn good if the stars don't align in their favour. Rarely do they even question their lack of options; it's just the only reality they've ever known, which they've long since internalised as the basis for how they go about everything.

I'll refer to all those who belong in this category as "the other half." Obviously this includes women and minorities as a general rule, but I'm really talking about anyone who isn't favoured to win outside a meritocracy: the old, the weird, the unattractive. The Beatles were working-class kids trapped in a rigid class system designed to keep them in their place. They count too.

So what happens when trying to be the best is taken off the table? In his review of Bon Iver's second album, Pitchfork's Mark Richardson writes, "There's something irresistible about the thought of a bearded dude from small-town Wisconsin retreating heartbroken to a cabin to write some songs[.]" Was it really necessary to mention the beard, and the part about small-town Wisconsin? Yeah. While Bon Iver's music is beautiful, what we really love is the whole package: the image, the backstory, the persona. This makes perfect sense, because if being "the best" can't be earned through trying, then it must necessarily come from some innate quality. It comes from who you are.

Now, in its defence, indie rock has proven no less willing to embrace the other half for who they are as well, once they do happen to land on the radar.[3] But this uncertainty of landing on the radar is precisely the problem, because when you're the other half, the prospect of having your story deemed irresistible just can't be a part of your contingency plan. Bob Dylan didn't go around telling people he was a middle-class Jew named Zimmerman. That just wouldn't have flown and he knew it, which is why he focused solely on writing amazing lyrics instead. Bob Dylan is now a legend, precisely because his work was allowed to stand on its own, separate from who he was.

And situations where your work can stand on its own, separate from who you are, are what the other half naturally seeks out, because that's the most they can hope for. Of course, your work won't mean anything by itself unless you stand among the best. But at least you get to try to do exactly that. And if this must be your reality, then your reality is pretty darn awesome, because the other half throughout much of the world doesn't even get to have this much.

Well, unfortunately, indie rock… belongs to that part of the world where the other half doesn't even get this much. For as we've just seen, it's not about trying to be the best; you're better off simply being yourself. This is just what indie rock is, and always will be. Obviously, many find this empowering and uplifting. But the other half needs merit-based competition to thrive. By shaming them for their personal ambitions, indie rock shuts off the one recourse they have for leveling the playing field and winning any recognition at all.[4] And so they rarely do, as plenty now haven't failed to notice.

I don't doubt that pretty much everyone in this scene has only the best intentions. Few would dispute that indie rock is one of the most socially progressive genres out there. But this is, in fact, precisely the problem. Indie rock protectionism, like almost every other form of protectionism out there, is ultimately motivated by an altruistic duty to stand up for the common man. Unfortunately, this ends up screwing over plenty who aren't men. Or common.

Footnotes

[1] There's been plenty of criticism directed against Jody Rosen's article in Slate, none of which seems to understand the real point. (Rosen doesn't make it either.) Competition doesn't begin the moment a band needs to pass muster with the critics and the public. It takes place much earlier, when the labels decide which bands to sign, when the venues decide which bands to book, and even back to when these bands first decide to form. So if there's a homogenising tendency at work here⁠— which many of Rosen's critics do concede, but just consider too slight to be of concern⁠— then it's actually getting amplified and reinforced at every single one of these stages.

[2] I'm not making any specific claims about what being "the best" necessarily entails, or how exclusive it has to be as a percentage of the whole. It can mean seminal, inventive, masterful; it can be the top 1%, 5%, 10%. Let's just recognise it as a quality that can be voted upon, by those who acknowledge and respect that the struggle for recognition is a competition very few get to win.

[3] I don't rule out the possibility that Bon Iver might also be an example of the other half getting his rightful due. I'd need to see it spelled out, though, since Richardson's description above doesn't exactly strike me as one of disadvantage. Unless there's something truly brutalising about small-town Wisconsin that I'm unaware of.

[4] Ambition from unknown artists certainly does get celebrated in indie rock; but it's strictly the kind related to furthering one's career, not making groundbreaking music. Again⁠— and this is not a trivial point⁠— the "indie" part of its name really does define the fundamental character of indie rock, wholly and absolutely.

Music must be marketable to matter

In preparation for my new startup, I've been reading books on various subjects related to business, such as negotiation, accounting, and so forth. One subject that keeps popping up again and again is marketing. Now, in pretty much every music scene out there, marketing is just a synonym for promotion. When you look at the word itself, though, there's much more to it than that. A market is where sellers compete to offer goods and services to buyers. So being marketable means staying competitive in the marketplace, and marketing is really about asserting a constant presence within it.

In every other industry, all of this just goes without saying. Ask a pizzeria owner how they stay in business, and they'll speak in terms acknowledging that their customers might just as easily go to their competitors. But they maintain loyalty by using only the freshest ingredients, offering fast and friendly service, sponsoring community events, and so on. How a pizzeria gets paid is directly related to how it competes in the marketplace. It just wouldn't occur to the owner to think any other way.

Ask the loudest people in today's music industry how an artist is to get paid these days, however, and they'll chatter on about new distribution channels, online tools for booking shows, and so on. Almost none will speak in terms acknowledging that each listener's time and spending money are limited, and that a gazillion other bands out there are hoping to claim their share of it.

The worst offenders are those established artists who gained exposure under a previous model, yet are now trumpeting some new model as the road to salvation for each one of the gazillion unknown bands out there. These artists get invited to give TED Talks on "The Future of Music." Any first-year business major, however, can easily out them as snake oil peddlers. Until you've acknowledged the competitive reality of the marketplace, your proposed solution belongs in the fantasy fiction section, alongside hobbits and vampires.

I do get it, though. Rock music has finally reached the point that classical music was at half a century ago, where the most pioneering artists are now the least likely to achieve mainstream popularity in their own time. Given this reality, competition naturally loses any meaning as an arbiter of artistic worth and thus gets left by the wayside. I get that.

But when aspiring pioneers stop competing for financial success, they lose a valuable tool for self-appraisal used by everyone else, including artists from the past, to improve what they have to offer. This makes it easier to neglect their marketability in areas that definitely should matter, such as social relevance and intellectual interest. And then they're left woefully unprepared to compete in the only market that can possibly redeem all their efforts: the marketplace of history.

Consider two frontrunners in today's indie rock and contemporary classical scenes, respectively. Bon Iver might beat Jack Johnson hands down, sure, but he still has to compete against the Beatles. Thomas Adès might have the edge over Eric Whitacre, but there's still Beethoven to contend with. (On a side note, it just occurred to me that Adès and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon share a resemblance, although maybe it's just the beards.)

While both are highly accomplished, neither Adès nor Vernon has invented a new musical language or idiom, which doesn't bode well for their chances at posterity. Sure, it's easy to think of history as an awards show, where one only has to beat the other nominees in one's respective category for any given year. But even if this were a fitting analogy, let's not forget that when we pore over lists of winners past, plenty will fail to stick out as names we recognise, much less care about. Their years are now placeholder years to us; there's no rule saying we must treat them otherwise.

And there's no rule saying that music history can't have its own placeholder years, or even decades. So how does one stay competitive in the marketplace of historical relevance, when the passage of time is forever compounding the artistic worth of those who came first? Where do new musical languages and idioms come from? Looking at past composers and bands who've managed to hold their own against Beethoven and the Beatles, I'd say they come from some weird combination of blissful naivety, relentless ambition, and heightened awareness of history's crushing weight. That's just my guess, though.

But finding a definitive answer isn't my concern here. I'm just pointing out that any artist who remains blithely unconcerned about competing in a marketplace will probably get trampled by history, because history itself is a marketplace. And until this reality is acknowledged, music won't be following us into the 21st century. We need to shout this from the rooftops again, and again, and again.

Music must be marketable to matter. Every other solution being peddled out there is just so much snake oil.

The problem with indie rock tenure

I've written two blog posts on Andrew W.K. already, and this will be my third. Truth be told, I don't dislike his music; I'd even choose it over half the stuff that's out there. And by all accounts, he's like the nicest guy on the planet. So why do I find the cultural elite's embrace of him so problematic?

I think the answer lies in the following two hypothetical questions: Given any beloved album, could an unknown band speak to similar values and hold their own, or even beat it with an album that's superior? Would such an attempt even be welcome? Every band has its devoted fans who'd answer "no!" to both, of course. They're not my concern here.

My concern is only the cultural elite, who have to answer "yes!" to both, because their musical tastes are grounded in some communicable, defensible rationale for being good. And good music requires an open market where different ideas and sounds are free to compete.

Competition in an open market is great for two reasons. First, it assures us the best quality, and second, it gives us the freedom to decide. Commercial goods and services easily come to mind as examples, but politics works this way as well. If we don't like who we voted for, we can vote them out next time.

And this is precisely the problem with Andrew W.K.: He's undefeatable. I don't mean like Rocky Marciano, who never lost a boxing match; I mean like a monopoly or an autocrat. He literally can't be beaten, because once he's voted in, he can't be voted out.

You don't have to dislike his music to find this problematic, just like you don't have to dislike Facebook or some benevolent monarch to protest their hold on power. Once the market is closed, we no longer have the assurance of quality or the freedom to decide. Those who were opposed from the beginning lose the most, of course. But we all lose in the long run.

In other words, when we grant exposure to Andrew W.K., not only is that slot no longer competitive from now until forever, but a precedent has been established for the same thing to keep happening, over and over, until zero slots are left.

I'm not exaggerating Andrew W.K.'s tenure in the public eye here. Think about it. An artist known solely for making a "so bad it's good" album ten years ago was almost appointed cultural ambassador to Bahrain as recently as last year? How's that even possible? You don't hear anyone talking about Beulah or the Wrens these days. But it all makes sense once you consider that Andrew W.K. is undefeatable. What can't be beaten, will never go away.

Or here's even simpler proof. Just how would another band compete against I Get Wet, anyway? In other words, what could a "so much worse it's actually better" album possibly sound like, especially when Andrew W.K. himself hasn't managed to pull it off in the last ten years? So the answer to our first hypothetical question is no, and the same probably goes for the second one as well. Which means Andrew W.K. is perhaps the only artist beloved by the cultural elite for whom their reluctance to entertain any new challengers exactly matches that of Justin Bieber's fans.

Of course, one could argue that this is all symptomatic of a larger problem. Bands these days no longer compete for our awe and admiration the way the Beach Boys and the Beatles once did with Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's, respectively, but instead huddle together to bask in our unconditional support like children putting on a Christmas pageant. Of course, we haven't actually succeeded in replacing competition with communal harmony. When so many want exposure and so few can have it, competition must necessarily exist. It's just done out of view now, leading to a preselection process that's more haphazard and brutal than ever before, precisely because we don't see it.

So maybe Andrew W.K. is just a symptom, not a cause. I'm sympathetic to that. I just don't think we should so quickly resign ourselves to blithe acceptance once we believe it's the former rather than the latter. What if the two are intertwined and mutually reinforcing? Maybe there's no harm in celebrating Andrew W.K. while there are no new Radioheads to speak of. Or maybe the new Radioheads aren't getting exposure precisely because we're all too busy celebrating Andrew W.K., who knows?

I don't know. Just a thought, that's all. In any case, this is the last I'll be writing about Andrew W.K. for sure now.

Postscript, May 23, 2013: Yes, I know, he's also known for his motivational speeches. But this side career isn't really noteworthy by itself, since the power of his message stems precisely from what little he's accomplished relative to how far he's come. It wouldn't mean anything coming from Beulah or the Wrens, for example.

Addendum, May 23, 2013: Good Lord, I'd completely forgotten about Har Mar Superstar. This might throw a wrench in my whole argument here, since I definitely haven't heard from him in a while. I'll have to think about it some more. On a side note, I shared a bill with him in 1999, back when he was Sean Na Na. He ended his set with an ironic R&B cover, but other than that, he gave no indication at the time of being anything other than a bookish scenester.

Addendum, May 24, 2013: No, I don't think the example of Har Mar Superstar contradicts my point, since he was always much more transparent as a joke.

Undoing stupid damage

In a blog post several months ago, I referred to Andrew W.K. as a troll. Even then, though, I wasn't perfectly comfortable with the term. After all, what's a troll, exactly? If it's someone who upends the system, disrupting lives and careers in the process… well, isn't that just what every pioneer throughout history has ever done?

But I think I've settled the issue now, and it's all because I was reminded recently of something that happened many moons ago, back when I was a dishwasher at a dorm cafeteria. I worked there for the first six years of my adulthood, and that dishroom still serves as the backdrop for about one in every ten dreams I have to this day. In fact, it was probably such a dream that triggered this recent memory.

Anyway, what happened was, someone had smeared shit all over the walls of a toilet stall in the men's restroom, and it fell upon me to clean it up. Naturally I was annoyed, but why? It wasn't much more disgusting than some of my usual daily tasks, like cleaning out tampon receptacles in the women's restroom. What bothered me, I think, is that while I didn't enjoy scrubbing it up, it couldn't have been all that fun for the guy who did it either. Shitting into a paper towel and then smearing it on the walls, while trying not to get any on your hands, probably doesn't top many people's bucket lists. In other words, neither one of us gained, and both of us lost⁠— though clearly my loss was much, much greater, and of course that was the whole point.

Now, this shit-smearer was probably a dorm resident, which means he probably ate at the cafeteria twice a day. So here's a thought. What would've happened if, several weeks later, he had to do his business right after a meal? Only to be greeted with the stench of his own putrefying shit, which no one had bothered to clean in the meantime, as soon as he walked into the restroom? I'm sure he wouldn't have been very happy. I'm sure he'd prefer to live in a world where walls smeared with shit get cleaned as soon as someone complains about it. Yet a graffiti artist would love nothing more than to have their work left undisturbed.

This, then, is the difference between trolls and all the other troublemakers and system-disrupting pioneers out there: A troll doesn't really believe in the stupid damage they cause, and actually wants those undoing their stupid damage to prevail. Because without the assurance that it'll be undone, what they do lacks real meaning on its own.

So while Andrew W.K. might not be a troll himself, his enablers amongst the influential set certainly are. After all, since the dawn of humanity, every functional system has operated according to a basic principle: You enable what you want there to be more of, and restrain what there should be less of. It's like a WWI fighter plane, which had to fly toward where it wanted to shoot. You don't get to enable what you want there to be less of, and still think that things can go your way indefinitely. Do all these critics and bloggers, whose careers hinge upon giving the public a steady stream of interesting and innovative music, really want there to be more Andrew W.K.s out there? Or if the next Andrew W.K.s are already here, are they ready to humour a good portion of them with the same admiration and respect? It's doubtful.

In other words, their eagerness to enable Andrew W.K.'s career rests on an underlying faith that someone else, some sourpuss out there, is willing to schlep through the ordeal of protesting⁠— and ultimately prevailing⁠— against them. And of course the sourpusses will prevail, since their protests will be based on reason. But it'll definitely be a schlep. Which is weird, isn't it? Because while every system-disrupting pioneer in music history has inspired legions of future artists to follow in their wake, none of us wants to see that happen with Andrew W.K. So you'd think at least a tiny sliver of glory awaits those working hard to ensure that something no one wants to see happen… doesn't happen.

And yet, there's zero glory that comes with undoing stupid damage. It's just extra work you have to do before any real stuff can get done. You don't really even get credit for it, either. After all, the very nature of stupidity is that everyone agrees it shouldn't be so, which means there's nothing particularly courageous or visionary about undoing it. It's just a schlep, in every sense of the word.

And so the shit-smearing trolls win every time. At the very least, they'll always be a step ahead. Not because we don't value the shit-scrubbing sourpusses at all, but because we don't value them enough to compensate for the fact that it's much, much easier to smear shit than to scrub it. And yet, no one actually wants to see shit-smeared walls just left as they are. Which makes all of this pretty crazy, right?

Wait, it gets even weirder. As I mentioned in my other post, though Pitchfork initially gave Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet a dismal 0.6 in 2002, they offered a mea culpa by giving its 2012 reissue a glowing 8.6. Admittedly, they wouldn't have done so had this past decade been a watershed of musical innovation. But in the absence of true pioneers upending the system and disrupting lives and careers, Andrew W.K. does begin to resemble the closest thing we have to a Jelly Roll Morton, Bo Diddley or DJ Kool Herc these days. He won't be spearheading a new movement, and of course we don't actually want him to. But hey, why can't our generation embrace the troublemakers of our own time, indulging in the same proud subversion that past generations contemporary with the pioneers of jazz, rock, and hip hop were allowed to feel?

Well, here's a crazy thought. What if the next Bo Diddleys and DJ Kool Hercs are already amongst us, but they're just too busy undoing our stupid damage at the moment to be spearheading a new movement anytime soon?

Indie rock is doomed like the monarchy

Like the monarchy, indie rock is doomed. I don't mean that it'll vanish completely, just that it'll fade away in significance. The only nations ruled by monarchs today are either small and weak or else totalitarian nightmares. To be a respected player on the global stage, a government must be a democracy.

The reason for this is simple. No one says, "If I ruled the world, I'd be respected by everyone." That conveys nothing; it's a tautology, since rulers are respected by their very nature. No, they always say, "If I ruled the world, I'd do this, I'd do that." In other words, people intuitively grasp that with authority comes leverage, the power to get things done.

But a king doesn't see it this way. For him, authority is the end goal and thus exists for its own sake, to be divvied amongst relatives and loyal subjects in a way that cements his own hold on power. Of course, royal appointees can certainly use their leverage to improve the lot of the people. But that'd only be a fortunate happenstance; it's not why they were awarded their positions in the first place.

And so our natural inclination is to overthrow any monarchy, even one that's mostly benevolent. In our modern age, a nation led by an unimpeachable ruler can't hope to compete with one whose government officials use their leverage to advance society, and who are then held accountable by the people when they don't.

To be clear, I'm not comparing indie labels to the worst rulers in history. However, in favouring bands that are friends, ideological compatriots, and hometown heroes who've paid their dues, these indie labels have one thing in common with all monarchs: a disregard for how leverage might be distributed to maximise outcomes. In the indie rock scene, exposure is the end goal and thus exists for its own sake, which means bands are rewarded based on how hard they've worked for it, not on how remarkably they can use the leverage that comes with it. It's always a pleasant surprise when indie bands exceed our expectations with ambitious projects that take years of downtime to complete, of course. But that's not why they get signed in the first place.

A year ago, I read that an indie label I'd long respected was struggling financially and thus closing shop indefinitely. Having some friends in common with the label's founder, I got in touch and offered a deal in which I'd pay off some of his debts. In return, he'd release my album, for which I'd completely pay the expenses upfront. While initially receptive⁠— if only because he wasn't in the best position to refuse⁠— he eventually shied away from my offer and stopped writing back.

I couldn't figure it out at first. After all, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; I'd be shouldering the entire risk, and my band was at least as good as those on his roster. Only later did it hit me. To him, an indie label's greatest asset is its autonomy. Being admired and supported for doing things his way and listening to no one else is exactly what kept him afloat for as long as he did, and he wasn't going to jeopardise that goodwill now. Because without it, his only power is to grant exposure, nothing more, and exposure by itself just isn't worth much. Bands that can get decent reviews but don't really stand out from the crowd still have to hustle like crazy to get heard. And as far as he knew, those were the only bands respectable enough to represent his label.

For me, however, an indie label's greatest asset is its power to grant leverage. And that leverage is limitless in worth, just as a literal lever can be used to lift any heavy object by adding distance between the fulcrum and the exerting force. So if a band sees the leverage afforded by an indie label as their ticket to becoming the next Beatles, then that's exactly what it's worth to them, even if the label itself harbours no reciprocal ambition to sign the next Beatles.

In other words, this label's founder didn't value his own power to grant leverage anywhere near as much as I did. And those who don't value their own power⁠— who can't envision the lofty ends to which some out there might want to see that power used⁠— will eventually have it taken away, much like Vito Corleone took out Don Fanucci's little one-man operation. So his label will probably remain defunct, just like the great monarchies of the past. And if the other indie labels continue to shun those bands who value what they have to offer the most, in order to reward those who value it the least, then they'll probably fade away as well.

Patent trolls of indie rock

Long ago, the patent system was set up to encourage innovation by protecting intellectual property rights. The process of awarding a patent was straightforward, since most inventions were some kind of physical contraption that performed some obviously useful function. So either you'd invented something or you hadn't, and a roomful of engineers was all the patent office needed to make a sound judgment on that.

A few decades ago, the nature of innovation began to change. As new concepts and methods were being devised that were every bit as groundbreaking as the telegraph a century prior, patents started to be filed for algorithms and software that only a handful of specialists in newly established fields could understand. Overwhelmed, the patent office awarded quite a few of them, including some so broadly and vaguely worded that their holders could conceivably claim ownership of the entire Internet.

And some now do. They're called patent trolls, and they make their living by buying up old patents and filing frivolous lawsuits. These patent trolls produce nothing of value themselves, which makes them impervious to countersuit, so most companies decide to settle rather than risk lengthy injunctions. Cautionary tales abound of scrappy startups that chose to fight instead, spent years in legal limbo, and eventually won their case, but then had to file for bankruptcy because of expensive lawyer fees.

By exploiting a loophole in a system designed to encourage innovation, patent trolls end up stifling it instead. But here's the thing: They're not breaking any laws. Nothing's underhanded; everything's transparent. In fact, since they operate completely within the system, the system guarantees their well-being, and is thus synonymous with it⁠— much like walking barefoot on the beach guarantees and is synonymous with getting sand between your toes.

So this is when we have to step back and ask ourselves, do we value the patent system as it presently stands, or do we value its original intent? Pretty much everyone agrees that we should be rewarding innovators, not patent trolls. Ultimately, we care about the spirit underlying the patent system, not the system itself. And so changes will need to be made.

In my lifetime, I've seen two similar situations happen in rock music. The first has since been resolved; the second is, I think, still being decided.

The first situation was glam metal, which reached its peak during my early childhood. It's easy to forget now, but glam metal made sense as a youth movement when it began in the late '70s. The subversion of its androgyny was both offset and reinforced by its aggression, while the theatrics kept it lighthearted and thus accessible. But a decade later, long-haired men wearing makeup and tight leather pants were screeching in falsetto about getting into fights and sleeping with groupies. In other words, glam metal became overrun by trolls, who no longer reflected its original intent.

Now, some were comfortable with this, but those whose opinions actually mattered⁠— namely, the next generation seeking new aesthetics and ideals to call their own⁠— weren't. These kids wanted authenticity and progressive values, not teased perms and lipstick. And so glam metal died, not because grunge killed it, but because it'd lost sight of its underlying spirit, thus alienating those entrusted with keeping it alive.

The second situation is indie rock today. Like glam metal, indie rock made sense when it split off in the early '90s, as a reaction against alternative rock's increasing commercialism. Everyday kids, indifferent to corporate concerns, were forming bands with their friends, playing at house parties and local shows, and defying artistic boundaries. Through mixtapes and word of mouth, they promoted and distributed their music themselves⁠— and this independence is what came to define the genre.

A generation later, though, things look very different, with self-promotion now being the primary focus. While boldness and originality haven't been devalued, they're simply taken to be self-evident traits in anyone with the conviction to promote themselves. But this creates an obvious loophole: An artist focused primarily on self-promotion suffers no damage, and thus enjoys a huge advantage over those focused entirely on making art. And once a loophole is known, the trolls will come along to exploit it. Some now have.

I'll mention only the most extreme and obvious one: Andrew W.K. I don't feel good calling anyone a troll, except that his biggest fans already do so. No one, including these fans, credits his music with being bold and original; rather, he's respected for the passion and conviction by which he promotes himself. And this respect is always genuine, even when begrudgingly given by his critics. Why is this? It should be obvious: Once you've embraced the system for what it is⁠— one that celebrates and rewards self-promotion⁠— then you have to stay at least somewhat charitable to those who take this ideal to its logical conclusion by only self-promoting.

Because, like it or not, these trolls operate completely within the system. Nothing's underhanded; everything's transparent. And certainly very little is at stake, in a genre where innovation not only hasn't been seen for some time, it hasn't been missed. Which means it's perfectly okay to admire Andrew W.K. for his sincerity, and possibly even mean-spirited not to. So while Pitchfork initially gave I Get Wet a scathing 0.6 ten years ago, this year they gave its reissue a glowing 8.6 review.

In other words, sometime in the last decade, the lesson Pitchfork learned is that you can love the trolls at best, or tolerate them at worst. But the one thing you can't do⁠— at least not without looking downright silly⁠— is to denounce them while still embracing the system. Because the one is guaranteed by, and therefore synonymous with, the other. You might as well flip out because there's sand between your toes after walking barefoot on the beach.

So Pitchfork has grown comfortable with what indie rock has become: a system that now exists for its own sake, rather than for its original intent to reward innovation. But what about those whose opinions will matter most in the future⁠— namely, the next generation seeking new aesthetics and ideals to call their own? I suppose that depends on whether it's even possible for any new movement to replace indie rock. So here's a thought experiment: If indie rock is this generation's glam metal, then what'll the next grunge look and sound like?

I can think of one possible suggestion, but it'll have to wait for another blog post.

Addendum, December 17, 2012: A thought came to me as I was finishing this up. In Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he mentions a curious phenomenon related to mother turkeys, who feed and coddle their young in response to hearing them chirp⁠— an instinct that evolved as an efficient way for them to reserve care and resources for only their healthiest babies.

What some scientists discovered is that, if they placed a stuffed polecat nearby, the mother turkey would try to defend her chicks by attacking it. When they placed a tape recorder playing baby chirps inside the polecat, however, she'd coddle and feed it instead. Then, once the tape stopped, she'd go back to attacking it.

It's strange behaviour, of course, but nature knows exactly what it's doing. Brainpower is very expensive in terms of the energy it consumes, so the turkey's mothering instinct is optimised to get the best results using the least brainpower. It's a perfectly efficient system overall, and a few trolls exploiting its loopholes⁠— in this case, scientists wielding stuffed polecats that chirp⁠— can never come close to undermining it.

All of this is to say that I'm probably not being fair in my brief assessment of the current situation in indie rock. Obviously, people in this scene didn't suddenly decide to kick boldness and originality to the curb. Rather, they're overworked and underpaid, which means time and energy are precious resources that can't be spent on finding new bands that aren't readily visible. And since the best bands have the most to gain by promoting themselves and staying visible, then a system that equates self-promotion with being good is probably the optimal one to give us the best results for the least effort.

The alternative would be to search under every rock to find those few bands who are good but, for some weird reason, don't promote themselves. That'd be tedious and time-consuming. Like giving more brainpower to a turkey, the slight improvement in results wouldn't justify the extreme costs required to close the system's loopholes. Besides, how hard is it to promote oneself, really? So if indie rock is a perfectly efficient system overall, then we can afford to embrace the handful of trolls who manage to exploit its loopholes. At the very least, they keep things interesting and fun.

The problem, of course, lies in the assumption that it's an efficient system. Is it really? After all, time and energy are limited resources, so the more a band invests in self-promotion, the less it's able to invest in making music. And then there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which tells us that the least competent are oftentimes the most self-confident, precisely because being incompetent prevents them from recognising their own incompetence. And it's the self-confident who are most willing to promote themselves.

So I guess we'll never know for sure, until some new music label comes along that's willing to do things fundamentally differently. Or until enough people actually bother to consider how the history of music has played out for the last five hundred years. Either one.

Anyway, I don't think any of this contradicts what I was saying earlier. It just clarifies and refines my original point.

Waiting out "sitcom good"

As everyone in the startup world knows by now, the most successful ideas challenge our basic assumptions about how things might be done. Because they don't fit any existing standards for what counts as good when we first hear about them, by default we judge them as bad. For instance, Hewlett-Packard famously turned down Steve Wozniak's idea of an affordable computer to be kept at home for personal use. So if you're looking to invest in startups, or to find co-founders interested in starting one, it helps to keep in mind that startup ideas that sound plausible usually fail, while one that sounds awful might actually change history for the better.

In his latest essay, Paul Graham illustrates this point by imagining the kind of startup a sitcom character might start. If the underlying idea of the startup were truly daring and original, then the audience wouldn't understand it, or worse, they'd mistake it for one intended to sound laughably bad. So instead, the sitcom writers would probably choose to piece together elements of familiar successes from the recent past⁠— for example, a social network for pet owners⁠— to convey the impression of a daring and original idea. But of course, this is exactly the kind of startup that's least likely to succeed in real life. "Sitcom good," in other words, doesn't mean "real-life good."

Graham's point reminds me of the time I watched High Fidelity a while back. In the movie, Jack Black's character is always asking his friends to come to his shows, but each time they politely decline because his band has a terrible name. Towards the end of the movie, however, they finally go see him play, and he wows them all with a faithful rendition of a Marvin Gaye song. As it turns out⁠— to no one's surprise in the audience, of course⁠— his band is actually really, really good.

Except I was disappointed, because I was expecting "real-life good," not just "movie good." In other words, good enough to impress in real life the kind of music snob played by John Cusack in the movie. But then I realized I was being unfair. Had the screenwriters actually called for Jack Black's band to be "real-life good"⁠— as in daring and original for its time⁠— the audience wouldn't have understood it, or worse, they would've mistaken it for something intended to sound laughably bad. So instead, they had to call for something familiar to convey the impression of a band good enough to wow everyone present. "Movie good," in other words, doesn't mean "real-life good."

In the past decade or so, file sharing and streaming media have changed the nature of how we hear about and listen to new music. There's now a palpable feeling in the air that not only are we watching history being written in real time, but we're all helping to write it. So as history's screenwriters, we need to advance the plot every now and then with the discovery of new bands making daring and original music. What might such music sound like?

For starters, it can't sound like anything anyone would mistake for laughably bad. Black youth from the Bronx delivering spoken rhymes over scratched turntables and sampled beats, for instance, wouldn't have flown thirty years ago. Instead, the most plausible candidates would probably piece together elements of familiar successes from the recent past. So the key to finding them would be to stay alert and informed enough to know in advance what the next big thing will be, and then once we spot them, to single them out with surgical precision.

A perfect example might be this description of Bon Iver from a Pitchfork review: "There's something irresistible about the thought of a bearded dude from small-town Wisconsin retreating heartbroken to a cabin to write some songs." But of course it's irresistible⁠— it'd be instantly recognisable in any sitcom or movie as the backstory for some mysterious, misunderstood character whom we all wish to be, or be with, in real life. And of course the music itself doesn't disappoint, hitting all the right tropes that convey beautiful and heartfelt to us. So Bon Iver is "sitcom good." Heck, he might even be "sitcom best."

This isn't to argue that it's cynical in its emotional appeal. Of course listening to Bon Iver is a genuinely moving experience, just like Jack Black's channeling of Marvin Gaye was a truly masterful performance. But we're being asked to take on faith that the bands we've chosen for our times aren't just good enough to be written into History (the script), but actually daring and original enough to be remembered by history (the actual thing). And that's where it gets problematic.

Because, as with startups, lowercase history recognises bands as good not because we say so and then root for them to succeed, but because market forces demand that they be reckoned with. These markets don't need to be financial, mind you; they can be cultural, intellectual, and social as well. After all, Reddit and Wikipedia don't make much profit, just like the Velvet Underground still doesn't sell many records. But people use Reddit and Wikipedia because their services are extremely useful, and people still talk about the Velvet Underground because there's so much to say about them. These are things we actually want, sometimes in spite of ourselves; we don't just want to want them.

And the startup world now knows this. It recognises that history can't be written in real time. History is simply made, by people and events that no one expects, and to believe that greater awareness and more experience can help one get better at predicting the future is to completely misunderstand how innovation and progress work. By definition, we can't expect the unexpected. Instead, the key to preparing for the daring and original ideas of the future is to stay open-minded, dismiss nothing by default, and always diversify, taking enough smart risks so that many small failures can be offset by a few large successes. Much like how the major labels operated in their heyday, come to think of it⁠— minus the heartless part, of course.

But here's the depressing thing. It took the startup world decades to learn this lesson, and only after seeing numerous instances of smart, influential people not initially getting the point of personal computers, web-based email, micropayments, camera phones, and so on. Indie rock, by contrast, not only hasn't even taken a first step towards understanding this yet, but for the past few decades has been teaching itself the completely opposite lesson that tomorrow's pioneers can be anticipated and chosen in advance. So Bon Iver's entry into the mainstream, which wowed few outside this scene, has been tallied a roaring success, while Pitchfork's recent People's List⁠— in which indie rock kids overwhelmingly favoured a major-label band whose rise to critical acclaim could never have been anticipated or guided along by the indie labels⁠— doesn't seem to have inspired any real soul-searching here.

But even once indie rock finally does experience its definitive "Hewlett-Packard turning down Steve Wozniak" moment, most likely it'll still be decades before people in this scene start to figure out how innovation and progress actually work, and that history just can't be written in real time. Until then, they'll continue to insist that the key to discovering daring and original music is simply to stay alert and informed enough to call it before it happens. Good in indie rock, in other words, is going to mean "sitcom good" for a long, long time to come.

So if you're interested in hearing the daring and original bands of our times, you might want to dust off some old vinyl records for now. Maybe take up knitting.

Because you're in for quite a wait…

Addendum, December 17, 2012: Yes, Bon Iver certainly has a market, but markets can be artificially inflated. When an indie band is granted exposure to the mainstream and wins a Grammy, only to then suffer an immediate backlash while failing to gain widespread support or recognition, it can probably be said to have had its cultural worth inflated somewhat by various insiders and press.

By contrast, the latest teen pop stars are not an artificially inflated market, because no major label signs them believing in their longevity to begin with. Releasing a few singles that sell millions before fading into obscurity is exactly what they were meant to do all along.

I'm not saying that Bon Iver can't eventually make history. The market for his music will now correct itself by deflating somewhat, yes, but he'll have the spotlight for a long time, along with multiple chances to get it right. And to be clear, I do agree that his music is beautiful. It's just that it isn't capable of maintaining cultural relevance on its own without the crutch of indie rock's hopes and values to prop it up.

Doing without such crutches, though, is exactly what needs to happen for any artist to be historically memorable. Today's mainstream and tomorrow's history might share few similar priorities, but the one thing they definitely do have in common is a complete disregard for what indie rock wants them to want.

Of future Joyces and judiciaries

If you're reasonably intelligent and come from a stable, middle-class upbringing, it's probably not all that hard to make your mark as an individual by creating or inventing something truly unprecedented and meaningful. As long as you're willing to forsake a life of security, comfort, and enjoyment, my hunch is that it's actually fairly easy.

But that's just the thing. You only get one life to live. And if you're already guaranteed one that's secure, comfortable, and enjoyable, why on earth would you gamble it away for some vague and foolhardy ambition, the full implications of which nobody in this world, including yourself, will recognize for a long time to come, even if⁠— and that's a big "if"⁠— you actually do succeed?

After all, if you're doing something truly unprecedented, then there's no metric that yet exists to value what you've just done, no established system to reward you or give you full credit. If you're lucky, you might see your achievements acknowledged within your lifetime. But to a degree that correlates with all your time and energy spent, and relative to what they'll be worth for all humanity to come? Definitely not.

Here's a thought experiment. It took James Joyce fourteen years to write Ulysses. What if you could be guaranteed the same impact on the world that Joyce had, and all it'd cost you is fourteen years of your life spent working full-time on your project?

There are caveats, of course. You wouldn't be paid while you're doing it, so you'd either have to hold down a real job as well, or else have others willing to support you. You'd miss out on opportunities that only come once in life, when you're young and spry. You wouldn't have many relationships to fondly look back upon, if any. And you might be very, very unhappy for long, long stretches of time.

So would you sacrifice fourteen years of your life for the guarantee of being the next James Joyce in your chosen craft or field? Quite honestly? Probably not, if there's an easier and more fulfilling path to take. You only get one life to live, and fourteen years makes up a huge chunk of it. Once those years are gone, they're really, really gone. And so, paradoxically, if you've been blessed with the resources to be the next Joyce, you're probably also smart enough and privileged enough to choose the much better option of not being the next Joyce.

Which is why history is disproportionately shaped by misfits straddling the borders of respectable society. Music of the last century, for example, is overrepresented by Jews, gays, and Blacks, and it's not hard to see why. Given just enough opportunity to know what the good life can be, but denied the opportunity to actually live it for themselves, they had to direct their skills and resources elsewhere. In other words, history is disproportionately made by those who weren't really wanted in their own time.

The celebrated theme of our time, however⁠— which many are counting on to be its defining legacy⁠— is that the Internet is making the world increasingly democratic by putting everything up for popular vote, allowing us to surround ourselves further in the things and people that we really, really do want⁠— in place of those we simply don't.

This is problematic, because it's not how history works. But what's most absurd is that this isn't even how democracy works! Every truly democratic government on this planet includes an unelected judicial branch that's accountable solely to justice, reason, and sanity, not to popular sentiment. Any system without such a check in place is not only not a democracy, it's indistinguishable from mob rule.

So until the Internet systematically allows for an unelected judiciary⁠— in the guise of individuals we trust to act as informed curators and gatekeepers⁠— then it isn't actually democratizing anything. And this is such a huge problem that, quite frankly, how we end up tackling it shall be remembered as the true defining legacy of the 21st century.

I honestly believe this. Who's with me?

Disruptive innovation and musical upstarts

Most mainstream bands aren't very good, and countless memes and entire websites are devoted to mocking the worst of them. Indie rock, by contrast, prides itself on putting out really, really good music first and foremost. So on those few occasions when an indie band finally breaks into the mainstream, it's reasonable to assume that they'll quickly mop up the place with their superior talent and artistic brilliance. And yet, more often than not, they end up being the ones getting mopped. Why is this?

I think the answer lies in my previous blog post, the one about scalability in music. The average indie band might be far more palatable than the average mainstream one, but it's not any more scalable. It's like a pizza joint in this respect. There might be one in your neighbourhood that's very popular and makes the tastiest pizzas, but it'd face serious resistance if it tried to scale on a national level. Why? Because there's a million pizza joints out there, plenty of which are just as good, if not better.

The backlash against Bon Iver might be understood in this context. Despite its beautiful sound, and despite being critically acclaimed and Grammy-approved, his second album is currently rated 3.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon, on par with Coldplay's latest. Why? Probably because we all know bands similar to Bon Iver that are at least just as good. And while we don't mind the Pitchfork lovefest, a Grammy takes things into new territory. Bon Iver's music might be very good, but it's just not very scalable.

This won't trouble Jagjaguwar, of course, who surely found a windfall in Bon Iver's modest success within the mainstream, but it isn't reassuring to those of us who'd like to see another Beatles or Radiohead in our lifetime. That is to say, a band that combines widespread popularity and cultural relevance with critical acclaim, artistic brilliance, and pioneering invention. If the one scene that prides itself on putting out really, really good music isn't capable of bringing us this band, then what hope is there?

I think the solution might be found in The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, which seeks to answer the question of why so many top companies take a nosedive in the face of advancing technology and societal change. The examples from history are endless: Western Union, Xerox, Montgomery Ward… and so forth. Popular wisdom, of course, would argue that they suffered from poor management, neglected their customer base, and failed to continuously innovate. But the book refutes this argument by showing that these companies were actually managed very well, extremely attuned to the needs of their customers, and constantly investing in new research.

The key lies in Christensen's distinction between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. The early automobile, for example, was a sustaining innovation, because it didn't change markets or assumptions. Only the rich could afford it, so they simply replaced their primary means of personal transportation. The term "horseless carriage" might sound whimsical to us today, but it genuinely captures how this new contraption was understood and accepted by those living at the time. By contrast, Henry Ford's Model T was a disruptive innovation, because it changed both markets and assumptions by bringing the automobile to the middle class.

Now, it was obvious to all that the switch from carriage to automobile represented a huge leap forward in technology. The mass-produced Model T, however, looked so plain and dreary next to the shiny fittings and plush interiors of its predecessors. What respectable steel magnate would be caught dead in that? For this reason, the other companies didn't treat it as serious competition until it was too late. The lesson here is that if your understanding of progress is defined by sustaining innovation, then not only will you fail to recognise disruptive innovation for what it is when you see it, you might even consider it a step backward.

What Christensen also observed is that established companies enjoy a huge advantage when it comes to staying on top of sustaining innovations, so upstarts tend to fare worst when trying to compete within established markets and values. The ones that do well and eventually take over, on the other hand, are those that create new markets and values⁠— in other words, they create disruptive innovations. Personal cars, personal computers, web-based email. And there are plenty of cases where it wasn't even planned at all; the upstarts resorted to it in last-minute desperation, simply as a matter of survival.

And that's the problem with indie rock's forays into the mainstream: They don't challenge prevailing assumptions or values. There's no real difference between what Bon Iver fans and Coldplay fans listen for in music⁠— as opposed to, let's say, those of classical versus hip hop. At best, Bon Iver fans can argue that his music represents a superior take on what Coldplay has to offer⁠— in other words, a sustaining innovation. But as we've just seen, that's not enough for an upstart to compete with an established act. On its own turf, Coldplay still wins by default.

So the next Beatles or Radiohead to truly succeed in the mainstream will only do so by fundamentally challenging our assumptions about what good music can be, where it might come from, and how it gets made⁠— in other words, it'll represent a disruptive innovation. Which means that, unless we're open to the lessons offered by The Innovator's Dilemma, it's quite possible that when the time comes, we'll look this upstart straight in the face⁠— and then immediately dismiss them as representing a step backward.

In fact, it might've happened countless times already.

Scalable and non-scalable music

In preparation for my new startup, I spent this past summer reading some books on the subject, including The Lean Startup, The Innovator's Dilemma, and Founders at Work. As it turns out, some of the shortsighted practises they mention as cautionary tales are exactly how many of today's indie labels operate. So I've been trying to draw further parallels, hoping that knowledge of startup culture can lead to greater understanding of the problems currently facing indie rock. But so far, none of my attempts on this blog have really quite grasped it.

Until now, that is. I think I've got it now. And in retrospect, it seems absurdly obvious. It's really all about a distinction that's quite basic in the business world, even as it's rarely acknowledged, if it's understood at all, in the music world. I'm talking about scalability.

Startups such as Blogger, Facebook, and Twitter are scalable. That is to say, they're designed to accommodate unlimited growth of customers and users. This is because what they offer, ultimately, is new ideas. Since there's little precedent to show how well a new idea might succeed, though, startups operate under great uncertainty. A seemingly bad idea today might be worth millions tomorrow. Or… it might just be a bad idea.

A non-scalable business, by contrast, combines time, labour, and raw materials in a way that doesn't easily accommodate new customers or users. A pizza joint is a good example. Since each pizza joint can only make so many pizzas a day, none competes intensely with any other. And everyone likes pizza, so there's no need to create a new market from scratch. The downside of this certainty, of course, is that few in the pizza business can expect to make an easy living.

Since a pizza joint's sales are relatively steady from week to week, whether it can stay in business might depend on the tiniest sliver of net profit on each pizza sold. When I was a delivery guy many years ago, the owner could give me the exact cost, in pennies, of a single handful of each topping. So once a pizza joint is firmly established, its main priority is to extract ever more value from the limited time, labour, and raw materials it's able to invest.

By contrast, what's a startup's new idea worth? Since there's no market for it yet, no one knows. Even a ballpark range is impossible. So instead of fretting about the net profit of each individual user, startups simply work to acquire more and more of them. And since the underlying idea is ultimately what makes or breaks fortunes, they need to stay flexible should their initial assumptions prove wrong. But a pizza joint would be foolhardy to stray from its original mission of making the best pizzas ever.

One last difference is that since startups have no fixed limit for number of users, they're often open to hiring more people. After all, the cost of dividing their fortunes even further is easily offset by the resulting growth to their user base. By contrast, a pizza joint with a fixed customer base shouldn't hire any more workers than it needs to get stuff done.

So which is better, scalable or non-scalable? Of course such a question is absurd. We want online chat, but we also want lunch. We want people out there thinking differently and challenging our basic assumptions about how the world might be. But we also want people out there giving us exactly what we want, the tried and true approaches that keep the world sane and running smoothly. It's pointless to compare the two. They fulfill vastly different needs.

The music world has its own versions of scalable and non-scalable. The former see creativity and the ability to generate new ideas as their best assets, while the latter focus on cultivating skills that'll allow them steady work. In the classical realm today, for example, composers generally belong to the former, and performers the latter. And just as in the world of business, it's pointless to argue which is more important. Throughout history, however, the circumstances of the world have not always treated them as equally important.

Even as late as Mozart's time, composers and performers were both treated as tradesmen. In fact, it was the critic who was held in highest esteem back then! (If this sounds bizarre, remember that those doing the critiquing were the nobility.) So both were non-scalable since their efforts weren't appreciated outside the courts that hired them. It wasn't until Beethoven inspired the cult of the "brilliant, tortured artist," and new advances were made in printing and publishing, that the world's first scalable musicians arrived in the form of the Romantic composers. A century later, audio recording allowed performers of popular music to be scalable as well, and everyone was happy.

Unfortunately, scalability didn't (and still doesn't) always equate with quality. New business strategies sprang up to wring maximum sales out of minimal talent, thereby undermining the key premise of scalability, which is that achievement of scale is its own proof that scale is deserved. So when file sharing came along to disrupt this practise a decade ago, most just shrugged, including myself. And since scalability, or the ability to scale, is meaningless once opportunities to scale have been removed, the spotlight has now shifted back to non-scalable musicians, much like in the time of Mozart.

These non-scalable musicians differ from scalable musicians just as pizza joints differ from startups, in that what they have to offer is their time and labour. In other words, their work requires them to be there in person to get paid, usually in small amounts at a time. Not surprisingly, then, for the past decade a certain glee has been palpable in the air now that creative works by themselves, without further time or work put in by the artist, no longer generate the exorbitant earnings they once did.

The newfound attention received by non-scalable musicians also means they're now filling up the rosters of the record labels, whose business model was optimally designed for scalable musicians. But… this is a problem, isn't it? Because as corrupt and degraded as scalability was at its worst, the historical record will always show the heights it reached at its best. These heights just aren't going to be repeated by musicians holding non-scalable concerns and priorities, and I think they themselves would be the first to agree.

But it's not too late to give today's scalable musicians the opportunity. And if any should succeed, it'll probably be the ones who think most like startups. That is to say, the ones offering new ideas, being flexible in their assumptions, and eagerly splitting fortunes with those who can bring them a wider audience. The first thing that smart investors often ask about a startup is, is it scalable? It won't be long before the smart labels start asking the same about the bands they sign.

So now I fully understand what my startup is meant to do. The point isn't to sow tension or resentment between scalable and non-scalable musicians, who fulfill vastly different needs for their respective audiences. We want some musicians to challenge our basic assumptions; we want others to give us what's comfortable and familiar. It's not a contest to determine which is more important. So I just hope to give all musicians, as well as other artists and eventually all individuals, the chance to be scalable by genuinely deserving that scale, in a world where such opportunities are quickly eroding away.

Yeah, that's it. I think I've got it now.

Symbolic hustling

I'm currently writing a business plan for my startup. As the non-tech cofounder, my responsibilities will involve making cold calls, finding clients, attracting investors⁠— in short, hustling. But wait… I hate hustling! Don't I? After all, "I hate hustling" pretty much sums up every single post on this blog. And the whole point of my startup is precisely to make it easier for artists not to hustle. The more I think about it, though, the more I realise that there are actually two kinds of hustling: the regular kind, and what I call symbolic hustling. And my revulsion is strictly towards the latter.

Let me explain with an example. Let's say you're looking for a job. How do you go about it? Well, you need to send out resumes, schedule interviews, and network. Is that all you have to do, though? No, you also need to go to school, develop skills, and build up experience. But it's pretty obvious that these belong to two very different categories. The first category describes "things you do to tell the world what you have to offer." The second describes "what you have to offer." We call the second category "qualifications," and the first, "hustling."

Now, finding a job is pretty hard these days. For every job you might want, it always seems like there's someone more qualified. Wouldn't it be great, then, if you could be judged not just for your work skills, but also for the time and energy you put into hustling? Once you think about it for a full second, however, you realise that this is a really bad idea. If you could get credit for hustling, then everyone gets credit for it. The job market would become a race to the bottom, as applicants try to gain an edge by handing out more and more resumes and racking up more and more interviews.

I call this symbolic hustling. It differs from regular hustling not by how it's done, but by how it's received. Symbolic hustling counts no less than your qualifications do, effectively merging the two categories into one. Ordinarily, no institution would put up with this. It can only become a reality when a) qualifications are too fuzzy or capricious to ever be objectively measured, and b) the pool of applicants is way too large for even a fraction to be given fair consideration. In such cases, immediately identifiable and quantifiable metrics are desperately needed, and symbolic hustling does the trick.

Not surprisingly, then, this is what popular music has become. I often hear it said that musicians have to hustle now, just as they always had in the past. This is a half-truth. They're hustling again, all right, but not like in the past. Jimmie Rodgers and Charlie Parker never imagined they'd get credit for hustling. They did it because, well, that's just what you did back then to get your music heard. And if things worked out and you made it, you stopped hustling. Why keep sending out resumes when you're playing Carnegie Hall?

Look at Sun Ra. No one had to hustle harder than Sun Ra. Yet how much did his struggles as a working musician figure into his own self-created mythology? None. He preferred to talk about his trip to Saturn. That's how little hustling was worth back then. You did it to let the world know what you had to offer. That's all it was. It wasn't the actual thing you were offering. By contrast, so many of today's successful musicians will continue hustling throughout their careers⁠— keeping a constant online presence, touring at a heavy loss just to show they've done it⁠— because hustling is precisely what we love them for.

Here's an interesting question: When symbolic hustling counts, who wins? I'm going to venture a guess: not the best bands. That's just my hunch. I'm certainly nowhere near the best, but I've always aspired to be the best, and you need to aspire to be the best before you can be the best. (This is why British bands dominated in the '60s. They were all working-class kids desperately trying to break out of a rigid class system, and thus had a much stronger work ethic than their American counterparts. You couldn't tell by appearances, though. Ambition makes you look pretty ugly, which is why none wanted to show it.)

So if I hate symbolic hustling this much, then it's a good bet that others like me, the ones who aspire to be the best, probably do as well. This makes logical sense: Why divert time and energy away from things that'll help make you the best musically, towards things that merely count symbolically? But then this means the ones who aspire to be the best will never get heard, because they can't possibly compete in a world where symbolic hustling is given equal weight. There's just no upper limit to how much others can and will symbolically hustle.

I truly, truly believe that music will make a staggering leap in improvement once we do away with symbolic hustling. Sometime in the future, a pioneering band will come along that the mainstream can rally around, like Radiohead, making us all wonder if it might just as easily have happened much, much sooner, were it not for our current priorities. Because this band certainly won't be the kind that symbolically hustles, the kind that gets all the attention at the moment.

So that's why I'm eager to get this startup going, because it'll help those artists who hate symbolic hustling as much as I do. And this is the best part about startup culture: Here, you hustle to get things done, not to get credit for it. It's an awesome deal when all you care about is getting things done. Just the very idea makes me feel empowered in a way that I haven't felt in so long. Seriously, it's like being a modern-day Sun Ra.

What startup culture can teach indie rock

In his latest essay, Paul Graham, whose company Y Combinator helped fund Reddit and Dropbox among others, explains one of the inherent complications of investing in startups:

The best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas… If a good idea were obviously good, someone else would already have done it… One of my most valuable memories is how lame Facebook sounded to me when I first heard about it. A site for college students to waste time? It seemed the perfect bad idea: a site (1) for a niche market (2) with no money (3) to do something that didn't matter.

In other words, it might be wiser to invest in a startup's underlying ambition and competence rather than how well its ideas presently speak to you. After all, our gut feelings are shaped by what's already out there in the world, the same world that everyone else lives in. So anything that speaks to you probably speaks just as well to many others. This doesn't mean it's not a good idea. It just means it's unlikely to be the next big innovation that takes everyone by surprise.

I've argued before that the indie label habit of trusting gut feelings, of signing bands that best speak to them, is what's killing innovation in music today. But I'm slowly realising that it goes way deeper than that. In the past week or two, as I've renewed my search for bandmates, I've gotten a few responses from those who really enjoy the music and dig what my band is about, but just don't see it as something they personally want to join.

Now, the notion that a record label should be like one big, happy family united by a common sense of purpose is probably specific to indie rock. On the other hand, the notion that joining a band is a deeply personal decision, much like being in a relationship, is embraced by everyone. A band has to be the right fit on an emotional and spiritual level. To argue otherwise would be comparable to endorsing forced marriages.

And yet, those gut feelings telling musicians which bands to join are really no different from those telling labels which bands to sign, aren't they? That is to say, they're shaped by what's out there in the world, the things we already know, the things that are familiar to us. So if you're a musician, the bands that best speak to you probably speak just as much to everyone else. This doesn't mean they can't be good bands. It just means they're unlikely to be the pioneers of tomorrow that take everyone by surprise.

Is it possible, then, that the Internet, which makes it so much easier for us to find bandmates with similar habits and ideals, is also keeping our latter-day Lennons away from their latter-day McCartneys? It's probably no coincidence that many of today's promising bands are essentially one-person operations, like Bon Iver or Tune-Yards. The praise is well deserved; they sound amazing. Of course, it's no surprise they can pull it off: They're one person making the kind of music that one person can reasonably be expected to make.

But what about the future of musical innovation that necessarily requires lots of collaborative effort? It's not likely to come from musicians joining only those bands that best speak to them, nor from one-person bands making one-person music. Our best hope, perhaps, is the epic bedroom recordings made by lone individuals who remain unconcerned with tailoring their sound for live performance. The ambition and competence shown in such works can be taken as proof of the promise they hold as future collaborators.

And if their works don't speak so well to us here and now, or if they sound too polished or too rough or just plain off, that shouldn't be cause for concern in the long term; after all, at present they're just one person trying to make the kind of music that one person can't reasonably be expected to make, especially live. Of course, as I've said before, live performance is exactly what matters most to indie labels. Which is understandable, given that it's the main source of revenue and a reliable means by which word gets spread.

But that doesn't mean we should just give up on these bedroom artists completely. Surely there's a middle ground to be found, where labels can publicly assert confidence in them without undertaking the same financial risks demanded by the official bands on their rosters. In fact, validation from a respected source might just be the final step needed for these bedroom artists to find interested collaborators. It'd be the indie rock version of a startup incubator like Y Combinator.

Because until someone finds a way, we're probably not going to discover the indie rock versions of Reddit and Dropbox. Right now, those bands are being killed off before they're even given a fighting chance.

Footnote, September 15, 2012: For those unclear on the Beatles reference, Lennon was as much threatened by McCartney's talent as he was in awe of it. But he was also a working-class kid, during a time of limited social mobility, who saw music as his ticket out of Liverpool. Thus, the only practical option was to make McCartney a Beatle (or rather, at that time, a Quarryman), rather than risk losing him to a rival band. And through the years, this friendly competition between them kept them both in top form as songwriters, making the Beatles the greatest rock band of all time. But the two weren't ever really close. My point is that this isn't a situation most musicians today would consider ideal. They'd probably try to avoid it if they could help it.

Would Asthmatic Kitty sign an unknown Sufjan Stevens?

Indie rock embraces an incredible diversity of musical styles, from Afropop to chamber music, and we in this scene should be commended for always seeking out new sounds and aesthetics. But what if tomorrow's musical innovators aren't different so much in terms of their sounds and aesthetics, but rather, in their methods and approaches? How confident would we feel then about being able to identify this next generation of pioneering bands?

I mean, let's think about how new bands are currently discovered. As we all know, the indie labels keep their eyes peeled on the local music scene. They attend live shows, listen to word-of-mouth generated by live shows, and follow a network of personal connections kept hidden from much of the music-buying public. And they almost never listen to demos from unknown bands. This isn't just how it's done; this is how everyone in this scene agrees it should be done.

For example, when Asthmatic Kitty signed Shapes and Sizes on the strength of an unsolicited demo, they made it clear that they felt comfortable doing so only after seeing the band's live shows and meeting the members in person. Fortunately, this proved an accurate measure of Shapes and Sizes, a four-piece band whose brilliant, angular sound carries through no less effectively whether live or recorded. But would it have worked out quite so well had that demo been, let's say, Illinois?

Let's imagine that Sufjan Stevens never released Michigan or Seven Swans, making Illinois the debut album of a complete unknown. Now, a good home studio requires relatively little investment these days, so the quality of the recording would probably be just as good. But when you're a complete unknown, it's exceedingly difficult to coordinate and schedule times when all your supporting musicians can get together to rehearse parts that they didn't write, and then play a local or regional show for zero pay, over and over and over again.

So the live shows of an unknown Sufjan Stevens probably would've failed to match the promise of his demo by a long, long shot. And, pretending for a moment that we're in some parallel universe where Stevens himself hadn't founded Asthmatic Kitty, it isn't difficult to suppose that ultimately they'd have rejected him for this reason. After all, when it's just so simple and straightforward to "get out there and play," how can a label take seriously any artist who proves so fundamentally incapable of fulfilling this most basic of prerequisites?

(If you're unfazed by hypothetical scenarios, this is exactly how my band was rejected by Slim Moon in 2007 when he was doing A&R for Nonesuch. He really liked our "Ulysses of rock albums," but promptly walked out after he saw we were just two guys onstage playing to a mostly empty room. Given that he knew I played every instrument on that album myself, and that I'd just moved to New York a few months earlier, I'm not sure what more he was expecting to find.)

"But wait!" you might protest. "When I read an album review and listen to the music online, I'm not worried about the quality of their live shows. If I don't like the music, then it's irrelevant, but if I do like the music, then I'm happy to see any live rendition, no matter how stripped down⁠— and I assume they'll just keep getting better over time. And anyway, wouldn't having the support of an indie label be all that a complete unknown needs to finally be taken seriously and cobble together a road-ready band?"

Well, these are my sentiments, anyway. So presently, the indie labels base their decisions on the strength of live shows, even as the music-buying public's initial loyalties always lie with recorded albums. And sure, when file sharing started killing album sales a decade ago, making live shows the main source of revenue, this strategy might've proved prescient from a financial standpoint. But with technology now allowing anyone with enough time and energy to create mind-blowing bedroom recordings of epic scale and imagination, it might be time to reassess what we're missing out on from an artistic standpoint.

What if we needn't be subject to the whims of established artists to hear the next Illinois or Ys? What if any unknown artist or band with the ambition to create such an album could do so, and stand a realistic chance of being heard by the public if it's truly that amazing? This notion hardly seems revolutionary. And yet, sometimes revolutions are born not so much from fiery upheaval as from a singular shift in our most basic assumptions. Which means the time for this next one is as near⁠— or as far⁠— as we want it to be.