r.mutt's blog

1/30/07 MAKE THE FILM JULIAN, JULIAN julian schnabel getting heckled at the director's guild awards: nice comeback, julian. 1/25/08 LEAVE IT TO BEAVERS sample pages from thomas' long-awaited book, all we ever do is talk about wood, which drawn and quarterly should really have pressed by now. in other book publishing news, an excerpt from black postcards: a rock & roll romance, a memoir by dean wareham, guitarist/songwriter/singer in galaxie 500 and luna, and star of max's movie. 1/22/08 ———————————— — mp3 blog update — 1/20/07 SUMMERLOVERS UNREQUITED for those who missed it the first time(s) around, you can download my summer 2007 demos here. those four little, hastily recorded songs and these two stupid joke songs were all i recorded all year. 365 days. six and a half minutes of music. p.s. thank you to the lieb. 1/08/08 "THIS MUSIC AIN'T YR FUCKING INDUSTRY": SHE SAID V. THE BOTTOM LINE when i was fifteen, the bass player in d.b.s. was accused of raping someone (this wasn't ryan, who replaced the accused in d.b.s. and who is a swell guy). so far as i know, nothing legal came of this, and i have no idea about the veracity of the allegation. but the lynn valley punk scene took it seriously. at the next seylynn hall show i went to, there was a mountain of literature, pamphlets, buttons, and the whole nine yards about rape and women's rights and such things. a friend of mine said to me that night, "you know, i believe in 'innocent until proven guilty.'" but the point i took away was that, whether or not said former d.b.s. bassist had committed the act, those were important conversations to be having, and those allegations were as good an occasion as any to provoke dicussion. so it's much to my consternation that sub pop records has been all hush hush on the recent — and graphic — allegations directed at marty crandall of the shins. i've always thought that the death cabs for cutie, les tigres, and sub pops, despite selling out or whatnot, were always still decent people, at least on the most basic and inviolable levels, if for no other reason than because of lessons learned from punk rock (like the ones i learned at seylynn hall). well, it looks like i was being silly and naïve and was wrong, at least on the sub pop count. here's how the developments proceeded: 1. initial allegations, 2. sub pop telling everyone to "shut the fuck up," and 3. the charges being dropped and the accuser "shutting the fuck up." now, obviously i have no idea what actually transpired, who said what to whom, and what changed (hands). but there are lines. and between those lines, sub pop comes out smelling bad. see the record cover above? even in the early years of sub pop, the corporate jokes were only half jokes. by the time the grunge years came out, bruce pavitt and jonathan poneman were in bed with warner bros. that once-iconic loser t-shirt had given way to ironic t-shirts with the sub pop logo on the back and pictures of a skyscraper on the front, with captions like "world domination regime" and "www.subpop.com" on them. only the joke was actually on the people wearing the t-shirts. the whole "monoculture media conglomerate" thing was in reaction to those disingenuous sub pop as corporation jokes. yes, there are lines. and it doesn't take a corporate lawyer to read between them. and in this case, sub pop's bottom line seems more heartless and inhuman than ever. you want to put a face on what is lost in the corporatisation and professionalisation of "indie rock"? here's one. r.mutt's diaryland profile tradition and the individual talents' friendster profile monopöle!'s myspace profile your emily dickinson's facebook profile —————blog archives