DVD Review: Dinosaur Jr., BUG, Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2013
Images from the Internet

Dinosaur Jr. Bug, Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans
Directed by Dave Markey
MVD Visual
106 minutes, 2012
www.dinosaurjr.com
www.MVDvisual.com

The 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, is a fantastic place for the reunion of Dinosaur Jr., and for them to play out their entire 38-minute classic noise punk 1988 release, Bug. The club was to DC what CBGB and the Rat were to New York and Boston, respectively.

For the second title released as In the Hands of the Fans (the first being the Stooges doing Raw Power), the band started out as Dinosaur, and then had to add Jr. to it because the name was already taken by some L.A. classic rocker “superband” that lasted for five minutes, step on the same stage. This is remarkable for a number of reasons, two of which are the length of time from the last performance to this mini-tour, and that this band has quite the combative history of infighting of the Who proportions.

The problem with them, as trio of humans, is that they are all hyper-talented perfectionists, with their own vision of what that entails. Needless to say, there have been some classic and highly-publicized intraband clashes. Plus, being prima donnas didn’t help, either.

Getting back to the story behind the series, through an online contest (via YouTube), fans were asked to send in videos of why they should be the chosen ones to film the concert. Six were selected, and we are introduced to them (all male) before the start of the performance part. Before the show, each is given a placed to stand and a camera. Then all the film is edited together in a coherent full concert.

As a band, they are infamously loud. For example, even in a club the size of the 9:30, there is a stack of 6 Marshall Amps alone behind vocalist / guitarist J Mascis, and another stack behind bassist Lou Barlow. And yet drummer Murph holds his own against this wall of noise.

The band is often lumped into either the hardcore bands on SST (who released much of their material), or compared to the alternative scene of Nirvana and the rest of the Northwest. This is actually inaccurate. It could be more precise to posit that they are part of the missing link between those two scenes; their sound is quite chaotic, with crashing instrumentals, and Mascis’s less than pretty voice (never mind on key), bred in the hardcore scene, but they also have a sense of melody, structure and a heavy reliance on guitar, as much of the Northwest discipline did, with the likes of Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and yes, Nirvana.

With the strong reliance on classic/heavy rock, through the use of long guitar solos that had been abhorrent to the hardcore scene before it, the new breed of SST artists like DJr stretched in new ways by bringing back some of the old. Their shows, as evidenced here, were not necessarily full of jumping around… okay, Barlow shows he can move onstage, but Mascis is sturdy as a rock, and I do not say this in a disparagingly way. It’s hard to read him, with his long (now nearly white) hair hiding his face to the audience and cameras, his voice is of a thin range so there is not much that can be read into his vocal emoting. But he is the both rock and the hard place when it comes to playing his instrument, which is does with flair, even when he’s wailing.

Bug was a big release for the band, going to No. 1 in the UK in the indie charts. And yet, in his curmudgeonly way, Mascis has stated quite clearly in the past that this was his least favorite album (perhaps because it was most popular, going against punk ethics?). It is one of the more, well, commercial (relatively) of DJr’s albums, with a definite melody line amid the thrash, and recognizable chord progressions, even if the lyrics get lost in the translation. Mascis has been called monotone, and I don’t necessarily buy into that, but I would agree with the mumbles part. And since I listen to the LP every once in a while but not enough to know it well, I am not sure about the overall content / intent.

Despite the ravages of time and discordant behavior within the band, they remain tight as a trio, familiar enough with each other’s moves and licks to be in sync, at least musically. In part because of this, Bug remains a stalwart and influential record, and it’s as stunning live now as it was on vinyl (you heard me) then. Unlike the Stooges show which played the album out of order mixed with other tunes, DJr stick to the LP, and in same order.

For the final song on the album, “Don’t,” which is the only track on Bug that Barlow was permitted to sing, they bring up a guest vocalist from the audience (one of the video winners?) to scream out the oft repeated lyrics, ”Why?! Why don’t you like me?!” This may be Barlow’s protest, by saying, “You want me to sing only one tune, then fuck you, someone else can do it for me.” Or perhaps it’s a way to connect with the audience via participation (or both). With Mascis’s wild post-hardcore guitar screeching solo over Barlow and Murph’s rhythm pounding, this long piece really epitomizes the sound that followed the original basic structure of the start of punk’s Third Wave.

An interesting aspect about watching the band is that even though their sound melds so well, they could all be in separate rooms for all the physical interaction. There isn’t really much in the way of eye contact. Mascis basically looks down at his guitar when he’s not at the mic, Barlow bounces around in that hardcore back and forth motion, and Murph, well, drummers need to concentrate on the tempo. There is a b-roll shot of them talking in the back alley during the credits, probably before the show, but how much of that is staged I couldn’t guess.

The six fans do a mostly great job capturing the band, and the editing is superb at not doing that 2-second cut that MTV pioneered and has annoyingly been used to death. True, most of the cameras seem to be focused on Mascis, and I would have liked to have seen more of Barlow’s work, as he’s more interesting to watch onstage, but I understand the “lead” gets the largest draw of attention, even if unintentional.

There are lots of extras for this release, so let’s get on with it. First one up is called “On Stage Interview with Henry Rollins.” The Black Flag fronter / writer / poet / actor / etc. is a self-professed “XL Dinosaur Jr. fan.” He also mentions the opening-but-unseen-here band, Off!, which features ex-Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris (Rollins calls him the “best Black Flag vocalist bar none”; I would have liked to have seen that performance as well). He brings the band up on stage in front of the 9:30 audience while he conducts in questions. Topics include volume, evolvement of style, early career and records, touring, and general punk rawk.

For the “In the Hands of the Fans’” nearly 19-minute short, those who were chosen to film this show get to hang out backstage with DJr, and ask them questions, such as who is their favorite bands/influences, and who would they like to slam. The questions are kind of mundane, but the answers by the band are interesting if you want to know where they come from, musically speaking.

The rest of the shorts are bonus live footage of the songs “In a Jar” and “The Wagon” (9 min) from the same show (I’m guessing the encore), a co-interview with J and director Dave Markey, who is also known for 1991: The Year Punk Broke in1992 and Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (I have the original Desperate Teenage Runaways VHS) in 1986, and I am looking forward to seeing his latest on the Circle Jerks, My Career as a Jerk (8 min), and “Rollins on the 9:30 Club” history (3 min). Most of the extras were filmed in the alleyway behind the club, at least one during the soundcheck bleeding through.

There is no denying that together or individually, Dinosaur Jr. and Bug are among the most influential bands of its period, which I would group with the Minutemen and Husker Du, of music that took the simplistic hardcore scene and changed it into something else, much as the Beatles changed rock’n’roll with Sgt. Pepper’s. It then became something else, even if the genre title stayed the same.

I am hoping this series continues, and as a suggestion, how about Slade doing Stomp Your Hands and Clap Your Feet? Or Television doing Marquee Moon? Or…

Band:
J. Mascis: Vox / guitar
Lou Barlow: bass / vox
Murph: Drums

Set List:
Freak Scene
No Bones
They Always Come
Yeah We Know
Let It Ride
Pond Song
Budge
The Post
Don’t
Sludgefeast
Raisans

Bonus live footage:
In a Jar
The Wagon

DVD Introduction


Full VOD:
www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3D9Bvv_j0CThU

Book Review: Hüsker Dü, by Andrew Earles

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2011
Book cover image and videos from the Internet


Hüsker Dü: The story of the noise-pop pioneers who launched modern rock
By Andrew Earles
Voyageur Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2010
288 pages; USD $24.00 / CAN $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-7603-3504-8
voyageurpress.com

I remember that day in 1984 when I went to my Post Office box and there was a package from SST Records. This wasn’t too unusual, except this one was heavy like a brick.

Rushing home I opened it up. Inside were two albums, each one a double disk: The Minutemen’s Double Nickel on the Dime and Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade. Apparently, they had both come out the same day. Then I took them out for a spin.

Hüsker Dü had grown quite a bit since their first LP, Land Speed Record, one I found excellent, but not a stand-out. With each HD release, though, their growth excited me more as they became somewhat more melodic. Still their rise was 45 degrees up until the end.

So what began as an above average fast-as-fuck hardcore band started to include some melody, rather than just trying to rely on proving how Speedy Gonzalez they were (after all, even a ratón rápido has a physical speed max). This is when HD became, well, more.

Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were lynchpin bands that were of great influence, such as the Ramones (NY punk), Talking Heads (art rock), Sex Pistols (punk rock), Blondie (New Wave), REM (college rock), and Black Flag (hardcore); HD to were to become highly influential about mid-way through their history. While the subtitle of the book seems a bit hyperbole, there is no denying that HD played an important hub in the huge wheel of indie music in the ‘80s.

Other than a 37-page full chapter in Michael Zaerrad’s intriguing Our Band Could Be Your Life (acknowledged by Earles), there has been nothing extensive written on HD. That is, until this book, which follows the career somewhat before, during, and somewhat after. Drummer / co-singer / co-songwriter Grant Hart and bassist Greg Norton both took part in the process, giving Earles extensive quotes about the band. Only guitarist / co-singer / co-songwriter Bob Mould does not raise a voice here, except in quotes from previous sources such as fanzine interviews from the period. This could be because (a) he is currently working on his own auto-bio and didn’t want to be redundant, (b) he would not participate in anything that has to do with Grant Hart and / or Greg Norton, (c) he does not want to be associated with anything as singularly focused as a HD book that is not also about his other projects, or (d) all of the above. While his lack of participation does not eliminate the message of the book, it does leave a bit of a vacuum, and also a less-than-subtle message to the reader and / or previous members of HD.

Hüsker Dü is a fact filled telling of their early years, about finding each other, the growth of the band, recording sessions, the eventual break-up and a chapter-long follow-up of what-happened-since and where-are-they-now. What it does not reflect much, is the dynamics of the inner workings of the band (what made them tick).

In other words, as important a document as the book is, there is something missing as far as the band’s “personality,” even with extensive quotes by Hart and Norton and the fact that Earles is completely willing to face that HD were not perfect (e.g., there is, gratefully, no histrionics on the lines of “I have seen the future of…”). While the details are there, it’s a bit shy in the hues.

For example, it is clear that Grant and Mould were having huge ego attacks against each other, and that they fought for who would have what number of cuts on each release, but there is nothing about the form the “battles” took, just that they did. While their tours are discussed extensively, describing songlists, crowd reaction, and press mentions, there is no Get in the Van backstage stories, other than that Grant and Mould flew on separate planes while Norton rode back with the equipment. While not a dirt hound per se, I would like to see a little bit of juice to get the feel of being on the road with them, especially considering how often they toured. In other books there are wonderful stories about being on the road with the Ramones or the Clash, for example, and D.O.A.’s Joey Shithead wrote some wonderful road / war stories in I, Shithead. This book is dry meat with a hint of gravy (note that I would be just as critical if this was mostly gravy with little meat).

The last thing I will say in this direction is wondering if there was any fact checking going on with the book; there are some blatant errors that pop up here and there. For example, in discussing HD’s influence, Earles mentions Bostonian “all girl band” Salem 66. While they were all females for a very, very short period at their inception, during most of their career the two main women in the band were aided by a revolving series of males to round out the trio (and why he didn’t mention somewhat similarly sounding Boston band Christmas is a curiosity). But the biggest error I found was the repeated mention of Seymour Stein and his Sire bands (in a negative tone), including the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie and Television. Well, at least two of them were never on Sire (Blondie on Private Stock and Chrysalis, and Television on Elektra). Makes me wonder what else was off that I missed…

Despite these flaws, there is a lot to actually recommend about Hüsker Dü I was extremely glad to be able to read this more extensive story of their career. It made me go back into my collection and play all their records (yes, vinyl) again, as he discussed them in detail. I also appreciated the sometimes extensive republishing of articles about / interviews with the band during the period, especially those by Mould, since he did not participate in this venture.

I’d met HD during an interview on New York cable access show Videowave, when I was the cameraperson for the shoot. I noticed that while they all interacted well together, Grant and Mould never looked at each other (of course, having given them copies of FFanzeen, they decided to keep reading them during the actual interview, so there was little eye contact anyway). They were all pleasant enough, even Mould (who was known for being snarky), and their soundcheck was killer. A photo I took of Mould during the check was published in Brian Cogan’s The Encyclopedia of Punk Music and Culture.

Speaking of photos, there are two sections of great pictures (my favorites by Kathy Chapman; see kathychapman.com) of the band’s history (and after), flyers, and the like. Tour songlists are sporadically added throughout the text, and there is quite a few appendices, including (but not only) an extensive discography and filmography, bands who have covered HD songs, and bands who were influenced by them. Also included with the book is a free bumper sticker that states “What Would Hüsker Dü?”

Considering the strong personalities that inhabited the members of Hüsker Dü, this book could have been more, but even with the lacks mentioned within this review, there is surely more than enough of the history of the band and the world in which they spun, to keep the ardent fan’s attention, and inform those who are curious.

DVD Review: History Lesson Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen, 2011
Images from the Internet


History Lesson Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984
Directed by Dave Travis
Historical Records, 1984-2010
57 minutes, USD $14.95
AHistoryLesson.com
MVDvisual.com

Hardcore spread like a wildfire through the indie scene, ignited first by the New York (etc.) underground, added to the fury of the British punk movement, and fed by the election of little Ronnie Reagan. A nonconformist segment of youth was angry at the failure of the populace electing a restrictive, overbearing government that would have negative effect on nearly everyone’s lives possibly for seven generations.

There are arguably two locations where this fervor took off from, though both connected by a single person: Henry Garfield: DC and LA. And yet, he has absolutely nothing to do with this documentary. Go figure.

Back in the 1980s at the height of the LA hardcore explosion, Dave Travis videotaped a large number of bands, both in concert and in interview, and thereby pretty much documented the history of the scene. After all these years, he has compiled and edited some of these into an hour-long show, hinting that it may be just the first part of a series.

For his first release, he has picked some heavy hitters (and some not as much): alphabetically, it’s the Meat Puppets, the Minutemen, Redd Kross, and the Twisted Roots. Which are which (in my opinion)? Well, all in due time.

First let me state right off the bat, the sound quality of the music is pretty lo-fi, obviously taken from the camera’s (camcorder?) built-in mic rather than the stage or soundboard. There’s barely a sung or spoken word from the stage that’s legible. And for all that, well, who cares, this is still exciting as all get-out, to actually watch these bands play, getting an idea of what they were like live. I didn’t get to see many of the LA groups (though I did see the Dickies play at Irving Plaza in the early-to-mid ‘80s, though I can’t remember the opening band[s]; I was kinda chickenshit and stayed in the back, far from the more volatile than usual mosh pit), so having the opportunity to see this is a thrill, no matter what the sound quality.

The interviews between each of the songs are verbally crystal clear. Various members of each of the bands are tapped, some around the time period of the recordings, and some later; one of my only gripes about the package is that the date of the interviews – or even years – is not indicated. So, step by step, here are some of the (expanded) notes I made while watching the tape.

The credits roll over the Minutemen playing; I believe, “A History Lesson Pt. 2,” which would make a lot of sense. First up is some opening interviews. We meet the dread-locked and ironically facial haired Paul Roessler (keyboardist of Twisted Roots, 45 Grave, Geza X, the Screamers, the Mommymen, etc.) and his wife Hellin Killer (of The Plungers) – and their cat and dog. Then there are quick clips each of Jeff McDonald (Redd Kross guitarist), Curt Kirkwood (Meat Puppets guitarist) and his brother Cris Kirkwood (Meat Puppets bassist). There are lots of sibling pairs on this tape.

The first group up is the Meat Puppet (I have 8 of their SST albums – keee-rist), taped at Perkins Place in Pasadena, May 12, 1984. They open up with “Melons Rising,” off their first self-titled LP. All the camerawork (and editing) is done by Travis, so to give the impression of multi-camera work, he edits bits of different parts of the show into a song, which is totally fine, just amusing because it tricked me for a while until I realized that some clothing was different from shot to shot. Cris plays in a woman’s slip, and all is right with the world, as fuzzy the visuals and sound is. Hey, this was high-end for back then, in those wonder years before HD, and when video cameras weighed more than 7 lbs when loaded (well, mine did).

The next set of interviews is bobbing back and forth with the Kirkwoods, where they discuss drugs, Black Flag, and recording processes.

“Saturday Morning” (also from the eponymous LP) is the next song. Another kick asser, and almost literally as Kurt almost gets into a fight with someone in the audience at the end of it. Fun!

After another Cris interview, they break into “Lake of Fire,” from the Meat Puppets II album. This one is less hardcore, and slower. Though all these live bits and even some of the interviews, there is a lot of effects going on that were new at the time. If his Toaster (I’m guessing) could do it, Travis used it at one point or another. It’s very late ‘70s-early ‘80s, so again, it’s amusing to watch the slides, fades, fisheyes, bluescreen overlays, twirling prisms, etc.

Interviewed next is the ever dynamic and fidgety Minutemen bassist, Mike Watt. A ball of motion (especially with his hands), he explains how Minutemen songs were written. It’s an interesting piece, as Watt is almost always engaging when he talks. The first song by the Minutemen is “No. 1 Hit Song,” from the Double Nickels on the Dime LP (I have 7 Minutemen albums, all on SST). Even following the lyric sheet from the album, I can’t follow the song, so I just say screw it and sit back and enjoy it. By far, the Minutemen are the best group on here, and if not for the car accident that took vocalist / guitarist D. Boon’s life, who knows where they may have gone. They jangle and crunch their songs, which are great. D. Boon is a electrifying front man, even though he wears the same shirt for every performance (white, ripped in the back), including this one from the Olympic Auditorium on the same date as the Meat Puppets show above, May 12. It must have been a great day for Travis, and a fortunate one for us that he was there with his camera.

One more shot of Watt further describing the songwriting process, and we move to “Martin’s Story,” also on Driving 55 MPH on Highway 10… I mean Double Nickels on the Dime. It’s a short tune. In fact, most of the songs here are pretty brief, and when tallied, I’m guessing the interview times are probably as long as the music shots.

Watt again (why not George Hurley?…I’m just askin’), of course, and the Minutemen do “Jesus and Tequila,” from the same LP, but this time it is taped at the Cathay de Grande in Hollywood, dated simply 1984. This is one of the MM’s bluesier numbers, and it’s nice to hear them shift gears a bit.

After Watt discusses how he misses D. Boon (they had been friends since the age of 13), we’re back to the Olympic Auditorium on May 12 for “The Big Foist, again from that same LP (hey, it was a double disk, y’know). D. Boon puts on a great show.

Anyone who has followed the Minutemen know that Watt has his own musical language (e.g., mersh = commercial; merch = stuff of the band’s to sell), and here he explains how a band’s world is basically either flyers or gigs. Watt gives great interview; he’s as intriguing a talker as D. Boon was a frontman. Their last number is “Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs,” from the What Makes a Man Start Fires? album, again at the Olympic. As with all their songs, the lyrics are deeper than one can tell aurally; thank God for lyric sheets.

After being reintroduced to the Roesslers, who describe how the Twisted Roots was formed and picked their sound (Germs meet Screamers, Paul claims), we get to hear their first cut, “Never Was” (I do not own their one EP, if I remember correctly), recorded at the Music Machine in LA during the spring of ‘84. Maggie Ehrig (who acted in the punk film Suburbia) is a decent front person, and of course there’s Dez Cadena (Black Flag, Misfits, DC3, etc.) on guitar, and yet, I found them kind of lacking. The song sounds a bit classic rock mixed with a tinge of folk. I’ve heard them described as more new wave than punk. Either way, they didn’t really do much for me.

Paul explains that he sees the band as “Public Image meets the Beatles,” which partially explains their next number, “Love Your Friends,” which has a nascent Goth vibe, again with just a tinge of folk in there; maybe it’s Maggie’s colorful skirt? I kid, of course.

Following another ho-hummer with Paul and Hellin, the Twisted Roots play their best song here, “Mommy’s Always Busy in the Kitchen.” By far, it has the widest musical range, and kept my interest throughout.

For Redd Kross, the interviews are a brief one with bassist Steve McDonald, and mostly with his bro and guitarist, Jeff McDonald. Steve claims that band was anti-dinosaur rock, but pro rock star attitude, while Jeff claims KISS and Alice Cooper as major influences of the band. The line-up for this version of the band is different than the one Posh Boy 12-inch EP of the band that I have, when they were still Red Cross, and it included Black Flag’s Ron Reyes and the Circle Jerks’ Greg Hetson. For this show, it’s Dave Peterson on drums, and his sister – and future Bangle – Vicki Peterson (no sign here of other sibling, Debbi).

Their first number is “Janus, Jeanie and George Harrison,” taped at the Pasadena Valley Auditorium in June of ’84. To me, they sound more like a hybrid glam metal and hair band, though they dressed like a cross between Aerosmith and the Small Faces, with furry clothes and long hair that they whip around. They’re noisy, thudding, and guitar-focused, with few lyrics and lots of instrumentals between. Vicki is barely seen except in the dark or in profile (with that sparkling black top that slides off one shoulder she would wear often in the Bangles; she has since gone on form the Continental Drifters and the Psycho Sisters, both with her sister-in-law Susan Cowsill).

I think I’m going to quicken this up a bit as this is getting long now. The last two tunes they do are also name songs, “Linda Blair” and one (or a version of one) that’s on my Posh Boy 12-incher, “Annette’s Got the Hits.” All the songs are intriguing, but sound pretty much the same.

During the interview segments, the rest of which are of Jeff obviously years after the band was gone, he tells how Vicki was his girlfriend for six years, and this was the only time they every played together during that time, not even jamming at home, which I find odd (and now is he married to ex-Go Go’s Charlotte Caffey). He also goes on to say more than once that he did not like the sense of community in the scene and that he and his brother Steve preferred to imagine themselves separate from the audience. Further, he states distaste on having been on SST, claiming “they were a cult.”

The only other quibble I have with this collection is that while the chapters are broken up by band, each the secondary search leaps may stop anywhere from the beginning of a song or at an interview. After watching the Q&A for the first time, on further viewings I would want to see just the music (some of the final tip ends are cut off), so if the talking heads were put at the end of the subchapters, all one would have to do is hit the search at the end of each song, and then jump from tune to tune to tune, etc.

I am so glad that Dave Travis took this live footage (along with the interviews shot by himself, Dave Jones, and Dave Markey), and that he is releasing it to a waiting and wanting audience.

Meanwhile, I am so looking forward to Part 2. Let ‘er rip, Dave!

A Rambling Look at Independent Music

Photos from the Internet

I’ve been writing music reviews now since about 1975, when I was editor of the Scepter, the newspaper of Kingsborough Community College, which even predates my fanzine by two years. To quote Jeff Salen’s line from the Tuff Darts song, “It’s all for the love of rock and roll.”

Before 1975, I was more of a film person than one interested in music. Yeah, I enjoyed listening to it casually, hearing new stuff sporadically, and even seeing some amazing shows (Slade with Aerosmith opening, Roxy Music where I took my first-even in-concert photos on an instamatic, Alice Cooper, Melanie, Dylan, Jennifer Warnes, Mary Travers, Elephant’s Memory, Brownsville Station, and a nascent version of the Fast were some). But music was more peripheral of my interests.

What changed my perspective was June 20, 1975, a date I’ve mentioned on my blog often: it was the night Bernie talked me (dragged me, more accurately) into going to CBGB's for the first time. At some point I’ll tell that story, but for now I’ll stick to something a little more esoteric.

Similar type of backpack

Back in the ‘70s, even before my club-going days started, I wore a backpack, which I would realign the straps and wear over one shoulder. You may ask what is the big deal? Back then, not only did no one else do it, but I had to go to an army/navy store to find one. It was always khaki, and made out of canvas, which is a quite sturdy material…though I had to replace it every three years or so from wear. As I started to buy albums, it would make life easier to carry them around from store to store.

There are so many ways going to clubs like CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, and seeing all these unsigned bands who were fighting just to put out their own music, altered my way of life. True, I never ever punked out: the closest I came is when my friend Nancy lent me her leather Ramones-style jacket for about a year around 1980 (through an extremely hot summer, but I still wore it gladly and proudly). Other than the leather, I was already dressing like the Ramones (sans long hair) even before then, with a tee-shirt and jeans. One example of a way I did change is that I basically stopped wearing brand names, other than possibly Lees pants and PF Flyers sneakers. As the Jordaches and shirts with alligator icons starting becoming popular, I associated them with the whole mainstream bland sounds of arena rock, soft rock, and disco. I stopped wearing polyester (not that I had much, but people gave it as gifts on birthdays and the like), which back then was hard to do because it seemed everything was made of the crappy synthetic material. I’ve always liked my pants straight legged and belted around my waist, not flared at the bottom and hip-hugging (which always felt like my pants were falling down). Ironically, the CBGB’s shirt itself would become a brand, thanks in large part to Guns ‘N Roses.

An early Ork Records release

One of the big lessons of the period was how important independent music was. By the early '70s, mainstream media was busy with genres I would never be interested in, such as lame rock (Kansas, Yes, Rush), hair metal (Bon Jovi, Poison), and especially disco. When the bands I was listening to starting putting out their own music, or small labels like Ork and Stiff launched, it was easy to go down to Greenwich Village, especially record stores like Discophile on 8th Street, and just pick them up as they came out. By 1976, and especially 1977, it was much harder to do that, since there were so many coming out each week. Plus, indie records were usually much more expensive at sometimes 1976 $5 each. Luckily, in the cooler stores, independent and local releases were usually in their own bins, so one didn’t need to weed through thousands of mainstream singles to find the ones being looked for.

In 1977, I had been tired of having problems getting my writing about indie music published in college newspapers, that were only interested in what was on the radio, so I decided to start my own fanzine, FFanzeen (whose legacy is the blog you are now reading). As I started publishing, I wrote to indie labels to let them know of my existence. There was no email back then, so it took work to find the labels in the stores, write down their addresses, write each letter one-by-one, and mail them out, never knowing if it was reaching anyone (indie labels came and went quite quickly, much like many fanzines). Slowly but surely, review copies of records, and even some cassettes, started coming my way. And I respected each of them, even if I didn’t like a particular band, because (a) I knew the burden of work and personal cost of them on the bands/labels, and (b) I was aware of their rarity. Even now, many of the records on my shelf have not been re-released as CDs. Some of the labels did find some relative success after a while, like Alternative Tentacles and SST, but there are the smaller ones like Eat Records, which will probably never see a reissue unless they have a devoted label owner, such as Bob Richert with his Gulcher label, willing to pay for re-releases out of his own pocket, or until someone like Greg Shaw emerges to collect them and release it in a “Nuggets” format.

An early SST release

Now that technology has reached a level of where everyone with a computer can record their own music and release it by burning disks, indies are both more important and at the same time damaging. Burning disks are putting an end to many of the ways collectors function, with virtual music (such as mp3s) replacing the physical (CDs, LPs, etc.). This is shown in the demise of Tower Records, and Virgin on the brink of vanishing. Another result is also the disappearance of venues of live music. There is so much music being put out now, that the number of bands that can become popular through exposure is almost only available again through mainstream media outlets, such as the radio. People don’t know what to listen to anymore; since the music has become as disposable as the bands.

College radio is probably the most important outlet for the independent release, and it is being flooded by home grown sounds that they don’t know what to do with it. More music is being released yearly than can be listened to. At a college radio conference I attended (held by the IBS), one of the panels was about how a band can get someone at the station to actually listen to their output. The station managers and DJs were just overwhelmed, and most of it just got shuttered aside; even college radio personnel won’t even listen to virtual recordings anymore, only CDs.

An example of a recent indie release

And yet, through it all, I still applaude indie music. I revel in indie music. While I won’t write reviews about anything other than physical disks, I still encourage bands to produce their own sounds – though I beg of them not to do it by themselves only, and to have a separate person not in the band do the final mixing or engineering, because self-indulgence is the biggest hindrance to recording. I call it the “let’s use every dial on the console” syndrome. With the lack of venues, self-recording is a stellar way to judge where one’s band is at any point in their development.

I’m not sure where independent music is heading, whether it will continue to grow into an mp33,000, or if CDs / DVDs (or other formats) will completely vanish. I hope they won’t disappear. I like the physicality of the plastic of CDs or vinyl of records, much as I enjoy the feel of negatives when I photograph.

Yes, I am aware that it is the collector in me that wants the tangible over the virtual. The soundbyte of an MP3 always felt more disposable, and somehow less “valuable” than the physical disk. For me, the electronic song is more like a placeholder, sort of like the listening station at a music store where one can hear what something sounds like to make the decision to purchase, but not to cherish. It is okay for an iPod jukebox situation, but I want the box. I want to read about what I am listening to in a booklet that comes with the disk, or to admire the art of a record cover, not to read about it only online. I want to hold onto the cardboard album cover or CD case as I listen to it, much as a sport fan will hold a football or basketball while watching a game. Somehow, holding an object makes me feel like part of the process of the music, like the end product is special and meaningful. In my mind, virtual = demo, whereas the CD is the final product, even if they are the same sound.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned that way.