"Sub Pop offered us a contract for two more records which we ended up turning down, this was a little while ago. We had no problems with Sub Pop and we absolutely loved working with them, Kathy [Foster] and I just felt that we needed to go it alone again, for ourselves, for our 'art,' if even for just a short while."
In May, a wonderous event occurred, informally known as Grunge Summit 2008. On a cloudy Seattle evening, Jack Endino, Bruce Pavitt, Jonathan Poneman, Megan Jasper, Mark Arm, Susan Silver, Chad Channing, Charles Peterson, Tad Doyle, Jeff Ament, and Kim Thayil all convened at the Sub Pop headquarters for the purpose of a MOJO interview, the result of which will be featured in the August issue on newsstands in early July. With so many grunge greats in one room, we decided to make use of the opportunity by handing out questionnaires and making them take photobooth pictures.
in response to the aforementioned questionnaire's third question, "What do you think of the current state of music?" bruce pavitt, founder and former head honcho of sub pop records wrote, "lacking social engagement."
sub pop records comes up a lot in this blog. usually, i refer to it derisively. this is the most recent example (and a pretty good one, compared to some of the cheap shots i've taken). at the end, i say that, in a way, my label, monoculture media conglomerate, was named after sub pop. in truth, it was named with two things in mind: 1. my first band, monopöle!, and 2. sub pop's "world domination" rhetoric. in the mid-90s, a few years after nirvana's nevermind became one of the best selling albums of the early 90s (and, in the process, sub pop's bank balance went from $0 to $2.5 million), sub pop started selling these ironic t-shirts that said "world domination regime" and, eventually, "www.subpop.com," along with their trademark "loser" t-shirt. only, you know, all of this corporation talk wasn't really a joke.
the label began to extend itself more and more, signing more and more bands, throwing more and more money at them, spending more and more on promoting them, until, at a point in the late 90s, there was no money coming in. it was around this time that bruce pavitt, the guy who thinks "the current state of music" is "lacking in social engagement," took his company shares and retired to live year-round on one of those summer home islands (one of the san juans, to be exact). in the hands of sub pop's other founder and longtime business dude jonathan poneman and former receptionist megan jasper, sub pop signed a bunch of bands, most notably the shins, who fit in neatly with the popularisation of "indie rock" earlier in this decade, then they sold a million postal service records, and sub pop became a corporate ogre again. (note: the sub pop A&R guy who saved sub pop by signing the shins was... isaac brock).
Pitchfork: The rise of indie culture and how it's more visible now — is it comparable in any way to the grunge hysteria of the 90s?
BP: [pause] It's different. It's matured into a really... it's a cool scene, there's a lot of a diversity. You look at the festival you're putting together, there's a lot of diversity there and a lot of people going to see it. I don't think it has the insane buzz of what was going on in Seattle. At the same time, there's so much material out there and it's a really healthy industry, people have jobs selling records and making records and promoting them. Because there is so much material, I don't think it's having the same cultural impact as the late-70s punk rock scene. If you walked into Wax Trax in 1978, 79, the whole vibe was so against the grain that it was revolutionary.
Indie rock is very healthy, there's a lot of diversity and a lot of creativity, but it does not have the revolutionary spirit of the late-70s punk scene in regards to design and politics and fashion and stuff like that. I really miss that, and I'm looking forward to a youth musical cultural scene that's a little more revolutionary, where indie bands aren't vying for McDonald's commercial spots. I think, politically, the scene's got pretty watered down. There are economic opportunities for many people, but I don't think, artistically, it's as revolutionary as that particular period.
Pitchfork: How do you feel about all the licensing that's going on now, speaking of McDonald's commercials?
BP: I can fully understand [that] artists want to be able to pay their bills. As a fan of art, and art as a way to shift dialogue and address cultural issues, there's a part of me that's really, really saddened by that and can't really relate to it. I'm really kind of shocked at how there's so much... beneath the surface, there's so much political turmoil going on in this country and it's not really being addressed by a lot of artists. I think in times of crisis it's the artists' responsibility to dig a little deeper. It's time for a new punk rock revolution — a whole new take on it, but one that goes a little deeper than creatively written relationship songs and McDonald's commercials.
Pitchfork: What went into that decision of pushing artists toward licensing?
JP: Well, we didn't really push them that way. We said, the choice is yours. We understood that there was an ethical dilemma. If you've read Fast Food Nation, which I did at the time, you're going, "Eww, McDonald's." But on the other hand, there's a couple of other things to consider: First, the nature of radio play, which up to that point had always been the holy grail. Radio essentially is the same thing — you're padding the advertising with music. The music brings people to listen to the radio, but the reason why advertising and radio stations themselves actually want people to listen to the radio is not so much for the music, but for the advertising because that is what pays the bills. This was put on its side to a certain degree, or seen a different way. This was kind of the same premise, but the artist gets cut in more directly on the revenue side.
The other thing is, as formats change — through CD burning, through music being made available through different means, and the channels of music distribution loosening up — a lot of the revenue that was coming from sales is actually... more bands are relying on the revenue derived from film and TV licensing than ever before.
It also comes down to where the music is positioned in the culture, because there was a real feeling that the music was sacrosanct, back in the 1960s. "How dare you use this Jefferson Airplane song to market blue jeans or cosmetics or whatever." But now, while I totally understand and respect those feelings, as a practical matter there's so much cross-pollenization of media at this point anyway, that it just seems to me to be another facet of that.
you think i just excerpted that exchange because of pavitt's dissing of "indie rock" and his going all revoluationary art-into-life program of early punk rock, but i didn't. nor did i quote that to make fun of poneman's corporate synergy nonsense-speak. i just like how pavitt is all après moi, le merde. i mean, dude, you're bruce pavitt. you don't need to convince anyone that you're cool.
as much i love taking shots at sub pop, i'm taking shots at the jonathan poneman/megan jasper sub pop. the shins and postal service-era sub pop. i would never in a million years diss the sub pop of bruce pavitt, charles peterson, mark arm, and tad doyle, the sub pop that replaced mudhoney and nirvana with beat happening and sebadoh. that shit just isn't done.
obviously, bruce has a point. i just don't remember it being all international pop underground conventions when he was in charge either. i do, however, remember bruce's cameo [not picture above] in the cameron crowe movie singles.
7/04/08
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
jesse helms is dead. you know how the song goes: "he was a nazi, not anymore/he was a nazi, life evens the score/he's dead/dead/dead/dead/dead."
