Excerpts from internet.listserv.postcard2: 24-Feb-99 RE: Hyper produced
Bobby Bare by David [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> this whole contemporary ability for an artist to deliberately make an
> uncommericial record (I don't WANT lots of people to hear my records, and I
> sure as hell don't want a lot of people to LIKE them!) is, in the main, a
> pretty recent option. Punk? Post punk? Whatever.
You might trace it to avant garde and prog acts in the late 60s (though
the Velvet Ungerground certainly tried to sell lots of records by being
poppier than LaMonte Young, and Jefferson Airplane made singles even as
they derided the Beatles for being bubblegum), or maybe even free jazz
(a lot of indie rock fans dig Sun Ra, late Coltrane, etc., and I suspect
some of that appreciation has to do with those artists' uncommercial
sensibilities) but I'd argue that obscurity as an argument for artistic
credibility in music doesn't pop up in any significant way until you see
stadium tours, homogenized radio formats, and multuiplatinum recording
artists in the 70s and 80s. Even in the 70s, many punks wanted to be
commercially successful but (in the US at least) failed. The Ramones,
for example, wanted to be the biggest band in the world (and eventually
did a lot of strange things to try to sell records, such as getting
Graham Gouldman of 10cc to produce an album), but it didn't happen.
I do know that folks like Jello Biafra, Greg Ginn and the like elected
to do things another way in the wake of these failures and rather
strident antipathy towards commerical success (and established ways of
achieving that success) developed from there. I'm not aware of debates
about the ethics of "selling out" by signing to a major label being much
of an issue before the early 80s, though that might be due to my age
than any real historical trends.
Carl Z.
