Geza X

BACK TO THE UNDERGROUND -By Geza X
I was a hippie in the '60's and a punk in the '70's. In fact, I helped create both of those movements. But, more to the point, I was a social activist with an obsessive interest in mass psychology. So I spent a lot of time pondering underground culture and how it relates to the mainstream. For me, the thrill of discovery has always boiled down to the turning point where an underground phenomenon erupts into the mainstream. It's just plain intoxicating to be the first person to hear or see something new before it spurts all over the planet.
QUESTION: Well then, how, exactly, does that happen? ANSWER: Yeah, yeah yeah—EVERYBODY wants to know the answer to that question because that's where the money is, right?
Okay, I may tell you. Lemme think about it. I've pursued that information in great depth. But not for the money. I've spent most of my adult life dissecting this ridiculous question entirely because it is a fascinating sociological experiment. You see, I worship and believe in underground culture. I think it's really important to the evolution and survival of the species. So, in my urge to learn how society ticks, I've looked for trends way in front of everybody else, and learned how to start trends myself. Yeah, just because I could. The music business doesn't give out accolades, or Grammys, or lifetime achievement awards for weird skills like that. In fact, they don't pay for ANYTHING if they can get someone else to pick up the tab. So I gave myself a deep education in an esoteric subject only to find that there will be NO pay off. I've been a volunteer, a scene-starter, a behavioral scientist etc, pretty much on my own dime for 30 years. Divide that length of time by the money I made and it comes to about 15 cents an hour. HAHAHA. That, in a nutshell, is the music business to an artist. Well, a couple of years ago I just went AWOL, said "Fuck it" and retired at age 53. Seeya. That gives me the right to say whatever I want here. And I'm glad you can't talk back. Don't take it out on MySpace, either. These are just my personal opinions.
Okay, so you study something day and night for 30 years and guess what? You see patterns and start getting a clue. And when you have a clue, believe me you can spot the clueless pretty easily. They wander around in a hermetically-sealed vacuum at trade shows and panels, "discussing" "changes" in the "music business" with their "peers". Duh. I used to do those panels too, as the "alternative' or "indie" voice, but everyone laughed when I laid out all the reasons the industry was going to implode in, oh, 5 to ten years. Umm, that was about 5 to ten years ago. But being "right" is a hollow victory if you can't exploit it. If I had settled on being, say, 6 months BEHIND the curve instead of way ahead, I'd probably be a fuckin millionaire right now. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of the cult classics I recorded but I learned the hard way what a ghastly mistake it is to have a giant top ten hit during a corporate mating orgy. I could get all political with that, but never mind.--I know you're not likely to question a system that destroys, rather than creates, culture by enslaving artists. I have to choose my battles here.
Nevertheless, as a participant-observer of those two vital underground social/music movements and an addict of social psychology, I've had a unique vantage point from which to make observations that so-called 'insiders" have obviously missed. And I see the future! Ironically, I say this from the rain forest on the Big Island in Hawaii with my computer on a cardboard box, partying with a bunch of Burners, Ravers, Rainbow Tribers, DJ's, philosophers, ecology freaks, etc. Once again, I'm helping usher in an underground upheaval that's set to spoo all over the country with energy that'll make the sixties look like a dry run. It's already in effect and I wouldn't miss the show for the world. IT’S THE ‘NEXT BIG THING’. Wooooo....
HERE'S THE PROBLEM...
Over the years, the music business has drifted very far from the persons it purports to serve. In order to show where things went wrong, and suggest some solutions, I’d like to present a few trigger points from my theory of culture:
1) Pop music, and pop culture, are essentially underground phenomena. Underground culture arises spontaneously as a response to outside conditions and evolves organically. It is promiscuous and will eventually mate with any other pop culture elements in its orbit.
2) Pop culture is exclusive, authentic, and non-commercial in its formative stages. That is because it is a medium of "secret" communication about a new lifestyle, a private wavelength that supports the spread of this information to the trusted few along secret communication channnels.
3) Pop culture hits the mainstream when a certain critical mass is achieved. After that time, stability occurs and the ideas, images, or sounds "just make sense" to the public at large.
4) If a subculture is raped prematurely for its surface bling, the underlying truth stops being fed. Then it dies before reaching fruition and broadcasting its message. No matter how many records it sells, it has been neutralized as an instrument of social change.
5) If no. 4 happens, the message goes back deep underground, forms lateral roots, and erupts as much as 10 years later in an unexpected location, such as Seattle, where it tries to deliver the message again. There, it might get raped again, held aloft for its surface beauty while stripping away all content, repeating the process of message dilution. Each time this happens, it gets driven deeper till it inevitably blows sky-high with all the energy of the prior blocked cycles. It is my contention that, as the record business marketing machine got better and better at co-opting underground movements, this problem got more and more serious and we have a very big undercurrent to deal with now. One spanning 30 years. I’m convinced it’s about to blow sky-high.
Can you read between the lines here? Okay, I'll just spell it out: Pop culture thrives when it has a message. It withers when the message is removed and only the surface trappings are left intact. Sorry gang, it's NOT the shoes or the jeans or any of the other crap we cross-market with. Yes, yes, it's a lifestyle thing...but STUPID POSES AND CLOTHES ARE NOT A LIFESTYLE. We have extremely shallow people attaching extremely shallow ideas and values to extremely shallow products and pursuits; thus selling an extremely thin xerox copy of authentic "lifestyles" to other shallow fuckers who don't deserve any better. No wonder the kids are horrified and refuse the entire phony gag--they know better. But hey, we've gotten so damn good at faking it that we do a pretty good sleight of hand--look at "indie "rock. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. In fact, once in a while, we steal a trend at the perfect time and fool everybody {{rubs palms together}}. KAA-CHING!
Call me lame, but I care what happens to the world. I mean, is all this Kiddy Porn Snuff Rock really coming from complicated artistic geniuses who are "somehow" saying something important--or is it just a reflection of the values of smelly old record executives with huge drug connections and serious mental problems? Don't even bother to answer that one--I know the drill. "Well, it's just entertainment...like a movie, or a game. Everyone knows that shit ain't real...we're just here to sell people what they want, not censor it..."
EXCUSE ME, but shut up. Music, unlike the movies, sells lifestyle first and music second. It is expected to be authentic. The performers are selling what appear to be real lifestyle vignettes. That's what's so dark about it. We fall in love with their freedom and want to emulate them. Somehow, this has degenerated to ‘cool’ murders, rapes, thuggings, and worse. You're fuckin crazy if you don't see that.
I fell in love with the music scene in the 60's because I liked the message. Over the years, I tried to continue communicating meaningful messages of some sort. Sometimes it worked, and other times I failed, going for the cheap shot or the knee-jerk reaction when I could have tried harder to say something fresh. I was young and didn’t have control over every situation. Of course, conditions in the industry also limited me so I know how hard it is to do anything good. I feel yer pain. But at least I really, really tried. I've made over a hundred records and most of them say something I can endorse. It's the message, stupid. Everything else, including the medium, is just a carrier.
But the medium is important too, for other reasons. It provides the "technology" (used broadly) to disseminate the message. So it obeys some rules of its own:
1) The medium must provide good delivery for the lifestyle message--a rap group is a better medium for inner-city messages than a chamber orchestra or a puppet show.
2) The medium must make cultural sense. CD's are a non-medium to indigenous peoples who use log drums.
3) The medium is sometimes interesting in its own right but will soon draw ire if presented as more interesting than the message. Gimmicks, clothes, whatever it's tied to...if there is weak content or no content, there will be fallout. This problem seems unique to music, and is based on the above presupposition that the "consumer" is actively "buying into" lifestyle, as opposed to passively "buying" a trendy product. (Other industries, such as fashion, seem to do fine with trends that exist for their own sake, so go figure...)
What happens in an era of weak messages and strong media? Lots of things. First of all, a rift is created between the street and the distributor. The distributor is mandated to pressure the consumer with powerful technical and marketing enticements. The consumer is mandated to resist the inflow of empty data. The distributor ups the pressure with more bells and whistles. The consumer, longing for authenticity, turns his back. The distributor, rotting in hubris and arrogance, mistakes razzle-dazzle for content and keeps coming out with spectacular new ways of forcing the same boring message on its victims. The victims, disgusted, stop buying altogether. Getting no reaction at all, the distributor tries one last ploy and scares the fuck out of the consumer with shocking, ugly, grotesque images. The consumer rolls his/her eyes back in their head and relents, buying the creepy product bacause they simply can't believe it's out there and freely offered. I've got news for everyone: they are only buying because they are in shock. It will wear off and the amoral and sociopathic marketing machine will have to devise even creepier 'entertainments' to disempower us with. Why aren't people going up there with sticks and pitchforks? Oh, cause we can't FIND the perpetrators.
Whatever. I'm mad. Can't help it. It's getting in the way of my thrilling conclusion...
In 2008, both the medium and the message are changing dramatically on the street, even as the industry sloths through another decade of arrogance and complacent denial. Do I actually have to type the words THEIR TRICKS ARE NOT GOING TO WORK at you or can you see the pattern I'm trying to show here? I'll give a couple of examples, although I could say so much more. Wrap your mind around the fact that audiences are losing interest in bands and records entirely, in favor of large-scale spectacles such as interactive multimedia performances. THAT is the direction of the future. Records, deprived of true communicative intent and substituting the phony heaviness of sex and violence, don't offer anything new anymore. On the other hand, underground art fairs, featuring a wide variety of entertainments vis-a-vis Lollapalooza or Burning Man, ARE creating a new community and new ways of distributing The Message. And these are tough times, therefore the message grows more political and experimental and exciting. I see people exploring all sorts of new hybrid ways to do their music and art, such as playing at art galleries or combined with theatrical presentations...that's because A&R have dropped the ball and offer nothing of value to the new school. And, most damning of all, no one can AFFORD to buy into that stupid game anyway. Real talent is being held out by impossible obstacles. Sorry, that's just the way it is. I'm not saying it to deter anyone from art or music. In fact, I'd rather be sleeping right now, it's 3 am. Goodnight.
Geza X