how to get ahead in music
It’s true I’m a grumbling whining miseryguts who thinks life is pointless. A proper waste of time, don’t wanna be here, etc etc. Til I go see my friends play in a venue that has “BECKY M IS A SLAG” “you are loved ♥” “EAT PUSSY!!!!!” and “Rishi Sunak is a cunt” crawling up the walls like cockroaches, in everything from thick red sharpie to the humble biro. It smells like sewage and it sounds like shit, like the speakers can’t hold the weight of sound, and not only is the AC burping out hot air but it’s dripping with a mysterious substance too. It keeps landing in my hair. The room is electric; explosive even, and it’s only you and four other people. The secret to discovering joy might lie somewhere between my friend being sick in a toilet that won’t flush and the other tryna charm their way into a drink/a fag/a bump — all while some guy I met in the pub is howling about the cost of living crisis on a makeshift stage.
Unfortunately for us the things that make life worth living – friends dirt sweat love horriblyfast noisepunk – arent worth shit in a climate where no one cares about anything except ££££. It’s not a modern phenomena (‘yuppy culture’ (1980s) ‘consumerism’ (1990s)) but now in the 2020s its blindingly shiny, penetrating from all angles. Like Alex DeLarge we’re strapped down our eyes clamped open forever staring at the things we love be brutalised; soul sucked from it til it’s whimpering on the floor seconds from death / what happens is as soon as those rapacious suited vultures get a whiff of something the culture is craving they rip it apart from the insides and try to sell it back to us, all shiny. they don’t understand we liked how our fingers bled when we ran them over the ridges & how we couldn’t get the smell out for weeks. wrapped up in the filth & failure was all the beauty; it was real and came from blood guts passion spit ambition; born from the want and need to get it out – & not from the ugly piggy guzzling want to eat coins
It’s tough. Innate human nature is at total odds with the way we’ve set up society. We’re a caring sociable populace meant for communal dancing and making each other laugh, not crunching boots in the faces of friends lifting ourselves closer to imaginary heights. A creature will get devastatingly sick in an environment not meant for it; unhealthy and miserable it will chew on its own tail in despair until there’s nothing but bone. Impressive really we’re still going – but what is it, five years left?
We’re culturally sick & barren. Think of AI art – truly a tumor tentacleing its way through our culture & injecting it with poison. What’s the point of it? Someone sit me down & explain what the point is. I don’t want to be precious but you make art because you want to express something, you have something to say, or you wanna be lazy & not get a real job. AI art is not art. I can’t imagine a person with a soul that stinks so much of rot than an AI artist. How must it feel to be nothing but a vessel for evil? How must it feel to be so devoid of original thought? Do you not feel love? How much venom is in your famished heart?
As soon as art/music/literature/film is made solely for the purpose of making money, its over. It’s so hard to care about the so-called artistry of taylor swift, for example, when it’s clear everything she does is just to fund her private jets. Genius to make albums that are so bland and boring everyone who listens can fill in the blanks, thus using other people’s emotional & creative minds to fund your own piggy lifestyle. Perfect capitalist vampire. Is this really what we deserve, a cultural landscape that is so devoid of meaning and emotion that it serves no one except one lady’s back pockets? I wish I was dead.
A cultural landscape populated only by private school kids leaves nothing for the rest of us to chew on. Small bands – cool bands – don’t get backed like they should so don’t reach their wider audiences & find their niche little realm. We’re being priced out of the big shows & the small venues are getting shut down every other week, leaving a chasmic void not only within our cultural world, but in our inner lives too. No longer can we stumble upon a local band in some dingy basement – the basement’s closed down & the band couldn’t get the time off work anyway.
I’m no tinfoil hatter but sometimes it feels as though they’re training us up to be nothing but little working machines and the daily fight is getting relentless. Where do we go from here, and what is the answer?
We deserve better, we need it to be better, I need it to be better – I’m floundering here. All my friends are in the best bands in the world and they keep breaking up cus they can’t afford rent. Every day I wake up I’m so upset I’m so bored I don’t have any money. You care about art, you care about fun, you care about your friends & you care about the world? Here’s your answer:
go to local venues / watch the support / buy a drink / dont ask for guestlist / buy merch / buy loads of merch / tell your friends / put on events / donate all your money / learn an instrument / forget about your career who cares / sit outside / keep going until its fun again / repeat & repeat & repeat
Find your corner & fight for it baring teeth & claws out. Care about these two things: art, community, art, community, art, community. Write your values down & stick to them & make sure they’re in the best interest of everyone. I want the doors to be swinging open for council estate punk rock wreckheads. I want society's throwaways making horrible music that scares away the people it’s not meant for anyway. Steve Albini said: “I want the music to outlive all of us.” – Get over you, the individual, you’re not important; instead think of you as a unit, as part of the collective – then you’re indispensable. The key to a thriving culture might be the elasticated brains of weird people mashing their experiences together to make something new – chase the desire to make something that outlives all of us, & then you might find meaning
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We're fast approaching a point where the real has to (really it needs to) assert itself over the commodification of all our social and cultural planes of being by digital platforms. The novelty of social media platforms as well is evaporating quickly if not evaporated entirely by this point, and I suppose we'll see a return of the homebrew HTML website in full force soon. But Pssst, on the dl: while venture capitalists and neoliberals are focused on the kaleidescope of these digital spaces, maybe we could build up some new real world structures now that they've properly stripped the old "real" for parts in favor of the now-dead dream of web 2.0...