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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Labelmetrics? Musicball?

Peter Brand: People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws: age, appearance, personality. Bill James and mathematics cut straight through that… Billy, this is Chad Bradford. He's a relief pitcher. He's one of the most undervalued players in baseball. His defect is that he throws funny. Nobody in the big leagues cares about him because he looks funny… This guy should cost $3 million a year. We can get him for $237,000.
—Moneyball

Some of you know that several years ago, I set out to create the "Ulysses of rock albums." The hope was that by putting out an album that couldn't fail to win stellar reviews, I'd gain a foothold in this scene without having to spend years playing in dive bars to crowds of three on a Wednesday night. Both Secretly Canadian and Nonesuch liked the album and kept in touch for a while, though both eventually declined. But overall, there just wasn't enough of a reaction elsewhere to solidly confirm to me that such a path isn't in fact viable.

So I concluded instead that my "Ulysses of rock albums," which necessarily demanded the kind of time and attention from its listeners that I as a nobody hadn't yet earned, was simply the wrong project to make it happen. My next project would leave nothing hidden below the surface, and all would be well. Feeling the sting of rejection and fearing that my place in music history wasn't as assured as I'd assumed, I decided to mix pragmatism with personal feelings by making a comic book album about Rosalind Franklin, the historically neglected English biophysicist.

But lately I'm beginning to realise that this new project is fated to be completely ignored as well, even before its first wave of promos has been sent out. The immediate visibility of its worth is irrelevant. The true lesson I should've learned the first time around is this: Any attempt to gain a foothold in the indie rock scene by crafting an album that can't fail to win stellar reviews will always be doomed to fail, for the simple reason that indie labels don't consider album reviews.

This is a provocative statement, I know. I could buttress my argument with observations I made as a former intern at Dim Mak, or exchanges I've had with various label reps over the years, but I'd rather not risk descending into snark, however unwitting, and anyway these wouldn't mean anything coming from a nobody like me. So let me just ask you to step into the shoes of the label reps, and see things from their perspective.

Music is hopelessly subjective, and familiarity breeds comfort, which makes it difficult to objectively judge things like artistic beauty and cultural relevance. At the same time, support for the indie labels is dependent on their role in nurturing artist empowerment and self-reliance. Consequently, a label's confidence in an unknown band is gained not through recordings, for which the barriers of entry are too low to be an effective gauge, but through live shows, with everything signified by what they entail: the voluntary presence and immediate feedback of the audience, the spirit and passion evident on each member's face, and the ability to meet and connect with the band on a human level afterwards.

So new bands are discovered through some undetermined combination of personal connections, word-of-mouth, and serendipity, and the live show is the forum where it all comes together.

Let's say you're a label rep, and you've just watched a fantastic set by a band you've heard great things about. They've built up a local reputation through sheer commitment and elbow grease, and it shows: A good-sized crowd for a Saturday night has turned out. A longtime fan pulls you aside and tells you she was there from the beginning, watching them play in dive bars to crowds of three on a Wednesday night, and even back then they always gave it their all like they were onstage at Wembley.

You meet up with the band after the set and they're super friendly and passionate about what they do. Talking to them feels like talking to old friends. Reassured, you sign them. Half a year later you release their album, send them on the road with a more established band on your roster, and wait.

The reviews come in… they're great! You pat yourself on the back for another gem well spotted. Or… they're not so great. You tell yourself, that's okay. You've heard firsthand their brilliance. It just wasn't meant to be confined within the carpeted walls of a recording studio. And you've seen them make it in their own hometown. With your resources and their diligence, they can just as easily win over Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, one at a time, in the exact same manner.

Your intern walks in with the day's mail, which includes a few unsolicited demos. You tell her to file them away with all the rest in an overstuffed bin at the back of a closet, and ask her to book your flight to the upcoming SXSW, which you've been eagerly anticipating for weeks.

In other words, a general prediction of how favourable the album reviews will be is never once made before a label signs a band. They simply don't matter. Live shows, not recordings heard free of any context, are what make and break the deal.

But wait! Let's step back into our own shoes now. How many of us prefer to discover new music by randomly going out to see unknown bands play live? At most, one out of ten of you just raised a hand. Many of us rely on recommendations from friends, but that just kicks the question up the road: How do these friends hear about new music? And concert reviews don't tell us much, since they contain more descriptive commentary than qualitative judgment, which is what we're really after. We read them to keep up with bands we already like, not those we don't yet know.

No, with new bands we want album reviews, preferably with the option to see all the various scores aggregated into a single number. Any band that has a realistic chance to reach our ears is obviously good enough, yet being bombarded by thousands of them, we count on trusted intermediaries to winnow down the selection even further. For most of us, album reviews are the lifeblood of our musical tastes, whether directly or indirectly. But you see where this is headed: The most important criterion by which we judge new music is actually completely irrelevant and only tangentially related to the actual decision-making process that brings new music to us!

The movie Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis's book of the same name, is about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who led a team with one of the lowest payrolls in the major leagues to a stunning twenty-game winning streak in 2002. Beane's strategy was based on sabermetrics, a system of statistical analysis pioneered by Bill James. As Peter Brand (based on real-life Paul DePodesta) explains in the movie:

There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening… People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs… When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy's got a great glove. He's a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases. But is he worth the $7.5 million a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions.

For sabermetricians, the problem with traditional statistics such as batting average and slugging percentage is that in order to be translated into meaningful action, they need to be interpreted by human beings, whose gut instincts are woefully susceptible to irrational biases. In the movie, for example, we see Beane's scouts express faith in one player's abilities due to his "strong jaw," while another player's "ugly girlfriend" is taken to signify a lack of self-confidence.

What does all this mean for indie rock? Simple: In the same way that most sports fans are loyal to their teams rather than to individual players, most music fans are won over by the music first, not the artist. Consequently, an indie-rock version of Peter Brand might argue that there is an epidemic failure within indie rock to understand that an indie label's real goal shouldn't be to sign bands, but to sign music. And in order to sign music, you need to sign albums⁠— that is to say, the albums that have yet to be made.

It won't be easy to effect this change, of course. The indie labels will find it unsettling to focus primarily on hard results while ignoring the auras, personalities, stories, and human connections that speak to them most and count for so much in their eyes. But such a dispassionate approach would actually be a blessing, for it'd encourage them to evaluate new bands the same way that first-time listeners already do. Indie rock will also have to drop its penchant for myth-making in real time, but this would be no real loss either, since history usually backfires on such attempts anyway.

Perhaps the most valid objection is that in baseball, wins are quantifiable and indisputable, while music is hopelessly subjective. All's fair when it comes to making judgments, so it's pointless to argue with whatever external features enhance our listening enjoyment, however much they're based on irrational biases. I get that. And it's natural to be suspicious of sterile calculations, especially when something that's so emotionally engaging and personally meaningful is at stake. The decision-making process will always retain some element of the mystical and ineffable. I get that too.

But I'm not asking anyone to accept some totally inconceivable alternate reality here. I'm simply arguing that this aversion to cold, hard numbers shouldn't cause the indie labels to neglect the one cold, hard number that most music fans not only already do trust, but possibly trust above all other criteria: the weighted average of every score that accompanies each album review.

Trusting gut feelings is what defines the spirit of Generation X, the generation that started indie rock. By contrast, the Millennials will accept all the mounting evidence that human intuition is largely irrational, and work with that as a fundamental reality.

So it won't be long before indie-rock versions of Bill James and Billy Beane come along to forever change the game of discovering new music. When that happens, the indie labels will have to ask themselves: Do we want to be the indie-rock equivalent of the 2002 Oakland A's? Or are we content to be depicted in the eventual movie as some old guys signing bands based on criteria that future audiences will find no less wrongheaded and superficial than "strong jaw" and "no ugly girlfriend"?

Can indie rock survive the Millennials?

When I first started playing in bands hoping to make a splash in the East Bay scene a decade ago, it was common knowledge that the way to attract indie label attention is by not needing a label. For the bands themselves, this makes perfect sense: Self-reliance through promoting and distributing your own music allows you to negotiate from a position of strength. When you consider what's in it for the labels, though, it's exactly as strange as it sounds.

Imagine this McDonald's billboard: "Anyone can put meat and cheese between bread, really. The real exchange takes place between our suppliers and our customers, which we merely facilitate. We're not really needed!®" This would make for a pretty lousy business strategy, which is why no business works this way. The ideal model for a business is interdependence, where every single part and person is needed to play a unique role.

The model for indie rock, by contrast, is indie-pendence, where no part nor person is forced to rely on any other. But despite its reduced efficiency, this strategy has worked pretty well these past two or three decades, precisely because we value artist empowerment so strongly. We support the indie labels that refuse to exploit untested bands, and in turn, they promise that every band they sign has proven its mettle through self-reliance.

Of course, by forgoing interdependence, we lose the possibility that the whole can ever be greater than the sum of its parts. In my last post, I explained that the Beatles were exceptional precisely because they could count on others to handle every little thing unrelated to making music. But our desire to see bands get out there and hustle essentially guarantees that none today will be as musically noteworthy as the Beatles. Self-reliance, then, isn't just a virtue we highly respect; by default, it's the only virtue that has any chance to distinguish indie rock.

And this will go on for as long as the generation that started indie rock, Generation X, can go on. But the next generation, the Millennials, might choose to play a different ballgame altogether.

Let's face it, indie rock was perfectly made to suit Generation X. The notion that pluck and courage should count for more than cultivated talent, or that those of like-minded spirit can be adored by the world for banding together⁠— these resonate well with a generation that famously resented having to work jobs they hated, to pay for houses they couldn't afford, to fill with stuff they didn't need.

The big story about Millennials, on the other hand, isn't that they resent their jobs, but that they can't even find jobs. Their worst fear is to be forever shunted aside, despite all their qualifications, to make way for those possessing elusive qualities that can't be earned. In this light, the notion that pluck and courage should count for more than cultivated talent might suddenly seem a bit more vulgar, while an indie label that prides itself on being run more like a family than a business might look no different than any other institution that favours connections over credentials.

This is all conjecture on my part, of course, but I've noticed that I don't hear the rallying cry "Support the indie labels!" nearly as often as I did a decade ago. Which makes sense, given the rise of crowdfunding as the self-reliant artist's new source of empowerment. If your business strategy as an indie label is to not be needed⁠— to be a mere facilitator, contributing nothing of substance to the process⁠— then your unwillingness to step aside once a more streamlined option becomes available… makes you no less an exploitative middleman than the major labels have long been accused of being.

Indie rock currently reflects Generation X's admiration for the effort it takes to get to the top. But should the Millennials ever definitively declare that they'd rather celebrate what it takes to be at the top, the indie labels will need to drastically change or else wither away. Rather than signing bands that don't need a label, then, they must prove themselves indispensable by signing exactly those that do⁠— in other words, the ones desperately reliant on others to handle every little thing unrelated to making music.

Don't get me wrong, indie rock's model of independence has given us a long run of truly amazing bands. But the most influential and relevant bands in music history thrived during times of inter-dependence. And when you think about what interdependence is⁠— well, that just sort of makes perfect sense.

Of Deists and late Beatles

Who do you think would make a great President of the United States? I think many people would include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Neil deGrasse Tyson on their lists. Yet, none of these three could ever hope to become President. Why? They're all self-professed agnostics.

In this country, believing in the providence of a Judeo-Christian God is an unofficial requirement for the Presidency. It might not make much sense to those of us who don't believe religion holds an exclusive claim on morality, but it especially doesn't make sense in light of what we know about the Founding Fathers, many of whom subscribed to Deism, the 18th-century version of agnosticism. (Without the theories of evolution and the Big Bang, they needed a divine clockmaker at the very least to explain the origins of life and the physical universe.)

It all kind of reminds me of indie rock. In this scene, you need to get out there and keep playing shows. And yet, the Beatles, arguably the greatest rock band of all time, completely stopped touring and performing after Rubber Soul. They then went on to release four of their five best albums. So why do we insist that current bands should only be discovered by doing the very opposite of what the Beatles were doing at the peak of their career?

Okay, I know what you're thinking. The Beatles did their residency in Hamburg. They wrote nothing but crowd-pleasing pop songs for years before putting out the intricate studio pieces that cemented their legacy. In short, the success of their later years very much depended on the honed performance chops of their earlier ones. And whether a band has that initial, solid foundation to build upon is exactly what indie rock's unofficial "get out there and play first" requirement is meant to measure.

But does it really, though? Look closer and you realize that the Beatles got tremendous help, particularly from their managers Allan Williams and Brian Epstein, and especially starting at a time when many around them still found them mediocre. Read the history and you'll get the impression, again and again, that the Beatles had zero business savvy and couldn't possibly have made it out of Liverpool on their own. For those who understand human nature, of course, that should go without saying. You can only do so much, and the Beatles were obviously too busy writing and performing music.

But we no longer live in a time when budding entrepreneurs were more likely to be lurking in the wings hoping to discover new talent, rather than just starting their own bands. If we did, then yes, a band's draw might be a more accurate gauge of their artistic worth. As it is, though, "get out there and play" isn't so much about a band's ability to play live shows, as it's about their conviction to get them.

And that's a problem for bands that want to grow. When you're young, getting shows isn't hard to do. It's pretty easy when you're content with nothing more than being in a band and playing out. That conviction isn't hard to come by, so it's easy to see why few in this scene can muster any sympathy for those bands who lack it. But let's face it, it's only easy to come by when you're young. As you grow older, life gets in the way, just as you start having more to say, and these changes in circumstance and temperament naturally make writing and recording more fruitful and rewarding than performing and touring. But what happens if you never got any exposure during your early years? Then those early years don't count, and according to indie rock, nothing you do beyond them will count either.

So is a band really to keep itself artistically stunted for years and years, until a scene representative comes along to start the ticker? No one prefers this to be the situation, and yet we see it happen all the time. A good live band traverses the local circuit for a decade, then finally gets discovered and enjoys their brief moment in the spotlight only to dwindle back into obscurity after a year or two, precisely because they languished for too long as a good live band when it was probably time for them to progress onward towards something bigger. Who'd want to hear this band? Who'd want to be them? And yet, surprisingly, the present system remains unsympathetic to any other approach.

I think this explains my band's predicament in a nutshell. With doublespeaker rhyme, Bobtail Method, and everything else we've done, I feel that we've long reached our Revolver phase, and I refuse to regress backward. Meanwhile, indie rock coolly awaits our Please Please Me and until then, refuses to accept anything more advanced or developed from us. So one of us will eventually have to cave.

But this issue is really about so much more than the Bobtail Yearlings. Many of you would agree that religion is an absurd gauge of a President's moral compass, not only because it'd be easier and more accurate just to observe those morals directly, but also because some of our greatest Presidents would've failed such a test. Similarly, do we really need to see a band "get out there and play" in order to believe in their potential as a great band, when we can just directly assess their potential to be a great band? Because, guys… THE BEATLES.

Indie rock is intelligent design

Mrs. K: Now, class, the big magic recital's coming up, so we're going to start with some basic toad-to-prince spells. Everybody get out their toads.
Lisa: Hocus-croakus!
(Her toad turns into a tidy prince.)
Mrs. K: Oh, excellent, Lisa. A-plus. (Aside to prince.) And we'll discuss your grade over breakfast.
Prince: (Gulps and chuckles nervously.) Yes, rather.
Mrs. K: Well, Bart, did you study your spell book last night, or did your fairy godmother die again?
Bart: I studied. (Waves wand.) Abraca… turn-into-a-prince-guy?
(His toad turns into a monstrous cross between a toad and a man that can't stop throwing up.)
Mrs. K: Sloppy work as usual. Lisa's casting spells at an eighth-grade level; you've sinned against nature.
Toad-man: Please kill me.
Bart: (To Lisa.) You think you're so great just because you have godlike powers.
Prince: (Walks between Bart and Lisa.) Stand away from milady!
Bart: (Picks up toad-man.) Get in there! Defend my honor!
Toad-man: (Throws up on Lisa's prince.) Every moment I live is agony!
—The Simpsons, in the episode "Treehouse of Horror XII."

Those who defend the theory of evolution often bristle to see religion asserting itself in a debate where it has no role to play. What tends to get overlooked, however, is that a very secular reason still exists for why some out there might prefer to see an omnipotent hand in life's creation: Natural selection is just mind-numbingly brutal. The random, unguided process of trial and error necessitates that innumerable creatures had to struggle in pointless existence, and entire branches and lineages had to be wiped out with nary a protest from the indifferent universe, just so that we could be here today.

The thinking goes like this: We don't have to give up on the technical processes of evolution completely, but wouldn't it be great to know that some conscience up there was in charge of the whole operation? Because if it was known all along that the goal was to steadily push towards humanity, then there would've been no need to branch out into countless detours and dead ends that could only result in widespread suffering and mass extinction. And the miracle of human life wouldn't have to rest upon past cycles of cataclysm and genocide after all.

When you think about it, the major labels in the '80s and '90s worked very much according to the evolution model. In their attempt to seek out the strongest and longest-lasting, they laid a claim on any and every aspiring contender they could find. There was no central, coherent vision, as exemplified by Geffen's signing of both Guns N' Roses and Nirvana, two bands that couldn't be more different in their ideals and temperaments. And every once in a while, a lackluster Pablo Honey today blew up into a world-changing OK Computer tomorrow. In fact, it was exactly such surprise successes that kept the wheels churning and justified every Material Issue that inevitably got trampled by the wayside. Survival of the fittest, after all, means the unfit won't survive.

The major labels had no idea what they wanted, and therefore they simply looked everywhere, indiscriminately exploiting and tearing apart music scenes as they went. The indie labels vowed not to repeat this sin. Partly out of necessity and partly out of principle, they took the opposite course, choosing bands with great care based on predefined aesthetics, methods, and values. When you know in advance what you want, you need never unwittingly string anyone else along, allowing them to chase false hopes and empty promises down countless detours and dead ends. I think you know where this is going. Indie rock is based on the model of intelligent design.

Now, I support the theory of evolution myself, but it's not so essential to my argument which side of the debate you're on. Perhaps the amazing diversity of flora and fauna on this planet was brought about by random processes taking place on a global scale over billions of years, or perhaps it was guided along by an all-knowing and all-powerful entity. Either way, it definitely couldn't have been micromanaged by any one of us, and this is the flaw of the indie label model: They're human, so what comes next is only what they can readily envision. Now sure, if you're an indie label, it's quite possible to find and be charmed by something a bit off-kilter and completely unexpected, should it happen to land in your sights. But your fundamental assumptions regarding who, what, how, and why will remain unchallenged, and your scene will fail to evolve.

I'm not saying we need to go back to those uncaring days when the major labels threw everything against the wall to see what would stick and then tossed away the rest. But the indie labels have left us with a music scene that isn't committed to thinking differently so much as it just happens to think differently, in a manner no less fixed or rigid than the mainstream it sought to overcome. What makes it the worse scenario is that faith in their intelligent design allows us to revel in a feeling of progress, without actually having to endure the kind of woefully unfair and world-shattering upheaval that actual progress often entails.

Because, for better or worse, pain is an unavoidable part of making history.

Will Occupy kill the indie rock star?

Indie rock is built on the romantic notion that heart and courage should count for far more in this world than unimaginative talent and routine effort. Certainly, this explains its historical appeal to college-educated young adults, many of whom have seen their lives stalled and creative passions stifled in unfulfilling careers. And ultimately, it's their salaries and prominent social status that have helped push indie rock to a level of cultural importance beyond its immediate capacities.

Today's college-educated young adults, however, are discovering that hard-earned credentials aren't enough to even grant them a first interview. Might the sting from this collective experience fundamentally change what this current generation will come to value in music? Bored with our careers, we once really loved the idea of a scrappy little band making the rounds, struggling to be heard, driven purely by earnest conviction. But now, with five or more job-seekers for every job out there, it seems just a little more crass that anyone should be asking for others' time and attention while feeling no need to match that sense of entitlement with superior results.

The worth of indie rock music is hopelessly tied to the goodwill that we feel towards its artists, which isn't a sustainable economic model in the long term. It works only when times are good. And presently, times aren't good.

Academic respect for rock and hip hop?

I've met many people who believe it's only a matter of time before rock and hip hop come into academic respectability the way jazz finally did a couple generations ago. The thinking goes something like this: A new musical movement lowers the cost of entry for participation, drawing disdain from the mainstream establishment. But among this new influx of participants, a select few will find a way to stand out, thus raising overall standards of proficiency. Over time, they'll become so good at what they do that, despite its different aesthetics and approaches, the genre as a whole will win the respect of established musicians. Jazz now shares equal footing with classical as serious music; and as it went with jazz, so it'll eventually go for rock and hip hop.

I think comparing jazz to these two populist genres, however, ignores one crucial difference between them: The former, like classical, is product-oriented, while the latter are persona-driven. Classical music wasn't always free of biases regarding those behind the music, of course; in the past, opportunities for Jewish, female, and ethnic composers and performers were severely limited. However, this was symptomatic of the societies that spawned classical music, not the genre itself. Today, few such barriers exist, with many schools and conservatories actively courting women and minorities in the name of diversity. And jazz was a melting pot from the very beginning, since its focus was always on how well you played. Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans, both White men, faced no difficulties in being embraced by the genre's black pioneers.

In rock and hip hop, by contrast, it matters quite a bit who you are, where you're coming from, and how you go about doing things. And I'm not just talking about all the superficial fluff out there; I'm talking about the kind of music that gets critically acclaimed and is undeniably relevant and important to music history. Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet could only ever have been made by young, disaffected Black men. The members of Pavement could only ever have been young, unambitious White men. The former were angry about lacking empowerment and demanded to be heard; the latter casually disowned their natural privileges. For both bands, the power and appeal of their music had everything to do with who they were as individuals.

In other words, it's not just fans of Nickelback or Soulja Boy preventing rock and hip hop from joining the ranks of classical and jazz; it's also the Robert Christgaus and Chuck Klostermans of the world, along with people like you and me who recognise that identity is central to the message in these genres. We want to know about Dizzee Rascal's troubled youth, Liz Phair's feminist views, and Daniel Johnston's schizophrenia. Their stories don't just bring these artists to our attention; they actively infuse their music with greater meaning, helping them reach deeper into us. We don't want to see them crowded out by hordes of middle-aged, gray-haired men who possess the advantages of time and money to cultivate superior technical skills and musical craftsmanship.

But this is exactly what we'd need to happen for rock and hip hop to come into academic respectability as jazz has done. And no fan of rock or hip hop today believes the tradeoff would be worth it. So let the academies have their music, and give the masses theirs; interested listeners can make the effort on their own to trek back and forth between the two camps. Because at the end of the day, we really don't want them to meet; we really do want to preserve rock and hip hop as refuges where youth, image and backstory will always reign supreme. We just don't want to be caught saying so.

Indie rock's place in music history

Let's say you know nothing about classical music, and you ask me to recommend a good composer for you. Suppose I were to respond, "Well, there was this guy two hundred years ago who was really well liked by everyone in the Hamburg scene. He was always promoting upcoming shows, and he'd stick around for hours afterwards, signing autographs and chatting with fans. Oh, and get this: He started his own music publishing company, because he wanted to empower himself and others as independent artists!" If I were to say all that, I think you'd look at me like I had sponge cake for brains. These aren't traits we typically value in long-dead composers.

And yet, it's openly acknowledged and celebrated that building up a following and being self-reliant in matters of promotion is precisely what gets a band noticed and respected in the indie rock scene. The priorities that set indie rock proudly apart from the popular mainstream, in other words, are also counterintuitive to music history as a whole. If a band aspires to get signed to an indie label, they're expected to expend enormous amounts of time and energy on doing things, and being things, that really don't matter much to the greater world of people who listen to and appreciate music across oceans, generations, and ideological divides.

It's not that actual music is incidental to indie rock; rather, the goodwill that a band naturally generates by being out and about invariably carries over into our assessment of their music. Objective standards provide a mechanism to counter this tendency, but a scene like indie rock that rejects such standards will grow to cheer it on instead, comfortable in its assertion that a band's artistic worth is inextricable from its likability. So if one runs an indie label, and one likes Band A better than Band B as individual people, then one will attend more of their shows, one will hear and like their music more, one will judge them to be the better band, and one will ultimately sign them over Band B. And since supporting indie labels is how bona fides get earned, we're left with relatively few past instances in which these judgments have been openly called into question.

But how long can this kind of support last before it finally begins to erode? After all, the difference between Band A and Band B is still a blind taste test for the general public. We'll always choose Band A over the Band B we know nothing about since they didn't get signed, of course, but we don't live in a vacuum; all of us know some amazingly talented Band B working our local scene. Overall, they probably number in the tens of thousands. Check out the most recent addition to any indie label's roster, though, and chances are it won't be readily obvious what advantages their music possessed to have vaulted them over the tens of thousands of other bands equally worthy of consideration. Don't get me wrong, they're almost always pretty good. But the same could be said about all the forgotten bands snapped up by the major labels in the heady 90s. Remember Chalk FarM?

Back then, the major labels were casting a wide net, signing every band out there who'd worked hard to build up a regional following, hoping to find just a few who could make it big and recoup all their investments, with a tidy sum added to boot. The rest had their fins sliced off before being thrown back into the sea. The majors were hoping to make a killing; by contrast, the indies in these uncertain times are simply trying to make a living. Signing bands who signal a can-do spirit towards self-promotion minimises their risk of losing money. So it's easy to sympathize with their struggles to stay afloat; nobody will be penning an indie-label counterpart to Steve Albini's rant against the major labels anytime soon.

And yet, their respective criteria for choosing which bands to sign aren't really all that different, are they? And as such, couldn't the same be suggested about their respective places in music history?

A resistible Canaanite's request for crumbs

I don't pay much attention to what's happening in indie rock these days, but I still keep tabs on Bon Iver. Justin Vernon is like my doppelgänger of sorts: Heartbroken and feeling like life had reached a crisis point, he and I each withdrew into seclusion to write and record an emotionally cathartic album. Our stories kind of diverge from there, of course. He got signed to Jagjaguwar; I got rejected by their sister label, Secretly Canadian. His album made it onto numerous "best of" lists; mine sold something like fifteen copies, mostly to friends and family. His latest album is now receiving the same level of critical acclaim as his first; I've spent the past five years unsuccessfully trying to convince music critics that I exist.

I think his music sounds pretty enough, so this post isn't meant to criticise Bon Iver in any way. Rather, it's a commentary on the Pitchfork review of his latest album, in which 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…" Some of you may remember my thought experiment from last month, in which I asked you to imagine the music of Sufjan Stevens and Beirut being made by people whose physical appearance probably wouldn't lead anyone to presume an indie rock affiliation. As you've probably already guessed, this post continues where that one left off.

Richardson isn't arguing that image and identity should matter in indie rock, but his statement reveals an ingrained comfort with the notion that some physical appearances and provenances possess greater myth-making potential than others. Maybe this doesn't bother women from small towns or bearded dudes from big cities too much, but we might ask whether there exists some point beyond which an outsider's personal identity is just too distant or foreign for this scene to recognise them as one of its own. To be clear, I'm not saying Bon Iver doesn't deserve the attention and respect he gets. I just think we can also sympathise with those who don't start out with his advantages.

Now, some might argue that music, like romance, isn't and shouldn't be concerned with providing equal opportunities. It's about what we as listeners and lovers want for ourselves, and nothing more needs to be said or defended. I understand this. But what people want can also expand and mature over time, so those of us who aren't presently wanted can still work hard to build up our merits, knowing the day will come when those efforts finally mean something to somebody. We all understand this as well. That's why, as a short Asian boy, I've learned to be gracious and not gripe about my lesser fortunes. And that's why, as a songwriter, I try to write songs that showcase objective mastery and aren't vulnerable to the subjective tastes of any particular time or place.

Well, here's where it gets tricky. So far, indie rock hasn't appreciated any of my efforts in the latter department, and now I have to wonder whether this modus operandi of mine will always backfire in a scene that values humble sincerity and frowns upon calculated effort. But really, how else could I possibly do it? I'm not a bearded dude from small-town Wisconsin, and there's nothing irresistible about the thought of someone like me doing anything, period⁠— much less retreating heartbroken to a cabin. So if it's plainly obvious that I don't know how to go about things, rest assured: I'm not totally naive, either. The reason I don't bother to make the kind of music that indie rock never fails to appreciate… is because I have good reason to suspect it wouldn't be appreciated coming from me.

Here's a personal anecdote. When Liz and I left New York, we shipped a lot of our stuff to Seattle through Amtrak. Now, their website doesn't give too many details, so when we got there, the charges turned out to be more than what we'd been quoted. I tried to stay good-natured and compliant, but Liz started sulking and shooting daggers from her eyes⁠— and amazingly, this is what worked. The poor guy let us go with our original quotes. It then occurred to me that we all instinctively do things in ways that work best for us. Now, I'm a short Asian boy, and Liz is an even shorter White girl with a Southern drawl, so we both get walked upon with some regularity. But no one likes to make Liz upset, whereas I'm only an amusing clown when I get upset. Thus we've learned to react very differently to the same situation.

So, getting back to indie rock, I'd wager that few in this scene would lament my current lack of recognition, given my insistence on creating an unwelcoming monstrosity filled with Easter mondegreens, doublespeaker rhymes, and emotions buried beneath thick layers of sardonic wit. But I'm just not someone who can hole up in a cabin for months, laying down my unadorned whispers into something painfully earnest and vulnerable, and expect to be loved for it. That wouldn't work for me. I've been who I am my whole life, I've seen what my identity signifies to others, and I'm pretty self-aware as an individual, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. If it does work for some, I'm only glad to hear it; I wouldn't want to live in a world incapable of spawning Bon Iver, Joanna Newsom, Daniel Johnston, or any other artists making the kind of music that only those like them could ever be loved for making.

In turn, everything I do is done with an intuitive understanding of what works best for someone like me. Now, given that my life's journey up to the present has been an endless series of sputters and false starts, it's obvious that my intuition is oftentimes downright wrong. But in my defence, I really don't have many precedents to work with, much less goodwill to inherit. If, by some miracle, Mark Richardson were ever to review a Bobtail Yearlings album, he wouldn't be tapping into any universal sentiment about short Asian boys from California. And so I struggle over and over to create new archetypes from scratch, despite my perfect record of failure thus far, because creating new archetypes is all there is for me to do. It doesn't get me any love here and now, true, but it's the only way I can do it if I'm ever to be loved at all. Tomorrow's music historians will certainly be sympathetic to this predicament of mine, and I think some of today's indie rock fans would too, given the chance to know about it.

The question is, will they ever get to know about it? That's not my decision to make, unfortunately. I'll leave you here with a parable. Jesus only preached to his fellow Israelites, so when a Canaanite woman persisted in begging him to heal her daughter, he told her, "It isn't right to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs." The woman replied, "Yes, but even dogs eat crumbs that fall from the master's table." To which Jesus then said, "Woman, you have great faith! Your wish is granted." My point is that I'm not looking to be anyone's favourite here. What I'm asking for really amounts to just table scraps, and I've certainly proven my persistence. Hopefully, one of these bearded dudes around here will rise up to be my messiah!

Rise of the comic book album

When a band is established and widely respected, fans will spend hours parsing lyrics that were written in a minute. But if you're a complete unknown, no one will spend a second bothering to understand a line that took you days to write. When it comes to discovering and judging new bands, most of us are only willing to give a single perfunctory listen at best, all the while asking ourselves just one question: "Do I dig it, here and now?" This isn't a judgment of anyone's priorities; I do it as well. Time is precious, after all, and there are just too many other bands out there waiting in line to be heard.

But in any case, this means that, when you're just starting out as a band, you're at a huge disadvantage if you aim to create music laden with deeper meaning that's evident only after repeated listens. Time and effort are finite resources, after all, and while you're busy investing them in things you won't be given any credit for as an unknown band, plenty of other bands are happy to focus solely on those features that are immediately visible at the surface. In the end, they're the ones who have the best chance to become viral sensations on Fluxblog and Stereogum, not you. In fact, you're really not part of the competition at all.

I learned this the hard way after getting zero critical reception from my forays into doublespeaker rhyme on Yearling's Bobtail. So for this next album, I vowed to drastically simplify my songwriting, and I think I've been pretty successful for the most part. Still, I found myself writing lines like, "As a clamp for cords ties the slack in her gown." Rosalind Franklin had ovarian cancer, you see, yet ironically, she was placed in the hospital's obstetrics wing. So, you know, umbilical cord clamp, emaciated body in maternity gown… In theory, a listener paying full attention would make these connections by the end of the song. However, like I said, when you're an unknown band, such thoughtful listeners don't actually exist for you in reality.

And that's how I came up with the idea for this comic book album. With pictures arranged in sequence, the meaning behind my songs can be readily understood upon first listen, while the music itself remains perfectly uncompromised. At the same time, the sheer presence of a competently drawn, full-colour comic book might help to signal the album's seriousness to record labels and music critics in ways that all the bluster of an accompanying onesheet never will. Of course, this isn't just a marketing ploy, but an artistic endeavour in its own right as well. And thank heavens for that, since I'm the nobody that I am today at least partly because I find unabashed attempts at self-promotion so unpalatable.

I don't plan to make any more comic book albums beyond this first one, though. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, it's challenging, it makes me a more well-rounded individual, but man… drawing panel after panel is really, really time-consuming! Plus, beyond artistic satisfaction, I really only have one purpose for it in mind, and that's to get my foot in the door. So if my little experiment succeeds, then there won't be any impetus left to keep doing it, since there are so many other uncharted paths to explore. And should I really want another comic book album to my name, I'll just storyboard it and use my newfound leverage to hire an illustrator.

Anyway, if I can set a precedent by getting the indie rock community's attention as an unknown band with this comic book album, I foresee two things happening. First, the playing field will be just a little more level for music that's less conducive to live performance. Good live bands have always held the natural advantage and always will, of course, but that advantage has become untenably lopsided in recent years due to changes in how music is distributed and promoted. Setting music to sequential art won't counter the imbalance for every innovative songwriter out there, but it could help a few.

And second, the notion of how unknown bands pay their dues might finally be expanded to include the time-consuming effort that goes into writing thoughtful and innovative songs. In the world of indie rock, respect is earned by winning over a new crowd every night, not by sitting alone hunched over a desk for hours. But no one in the world of comic books feels this way. And this isn't a minor issue. How much we credit a band with having paid their dues enormously affects how charitably we approach their music and how much we're driven to impress it upon others. So those few of us dedicated to songcraft at the expense of opportunities for performance have a vested interest in allying ourselves with those of a like temperament in different fields. It's always good to have strength in numbers, and those like us in the world of comics are especially many.