"Corporate Rock Still Sucks" said the stickers of a fine independent label so long ago. I can't add anything to that sentiment; I can't say anything that hasn't been said about the music business before. The bottom line hasn't changed: the music business has nothing to do with creative expression (and everything to do with lawyers and pencil-necked businessmen making money), and no band on a major label can make a legitimate claim to artistry. The music business is business: accounting, mass-marketing, packaging, calculated risk-taking, advertising, trend creation, consumer psychology, etc. It is a business that has honed its marketing juggernaut and public relations over 50+ years. The most disturbing aspects of the music business lurk in the rock genres - fabricated rebellion, the alleged creation or discovery of New Music™, and the related co-opting and pasteurization of punk, independent, or underground sounds. Of course the consumer is assured the Cutting Edge Music™ provided was produced with the highest artistic purity - "This is the music of the street! These are some kids like you, doing their own thing, playing the music that they want to!" Let's look at a few examples of The Great Satan in action.

The myths of creative freedom and beaucoup bucks for an artist on a major label are well documented. George Michael and Prince have both provided excellent examples of what the real policy of any major label is: make an album that is safe enough, predictable enough, and boring enough to be mass-marketable - or we won't release it. Prince was made out as a pretentious fool by the mass media when he changed his name to the unpronounceable character, but very few covered the story when his reasons were revealed - I smell a conspiracy! Prince legally changed his name in a calculated effort to be released from a recording contract he found unsatisfactory, exploitative, and stifling. I remember the television performance where he had penciled 'SLAVE' on his face - I salute you, sir. To those who say, "Poor little rock star, making millions and getting laid," I say: examine the numbers of the business. High-profile, proven record movers can (pay their lawyers to) negotiate for a 'higher' album royalty of $1.50 or so - but the average album royalty paid out by a major label is less than one dollar. Mass produced CDs cost less than one dollar to manufacture, but sell for around $16 at your local MegaMusicChain™ -- you can do the math as to where the money is going. Furthermore, the royalties apply to all of the band's expenses (they pay for their own recording, videos, gear, tour, and merchandise through advances) first before they see any payout. Again, I have nothing new to add to this old tale, see Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music" in The Baffler #5 or excerpts here or here. My point is there is no artistic freedom or control even though the band is paying for every piece of the package.

The fabricated rebellion of major labels' New Music™ is so shallow and transparent that it may not deserve mention. Anything that could be marketed and sold to millions, or even hundreds of thousands, has nothing to do with rebellion. You are not an Individual™ for buying it, regardless of the message that's been pounded in your brain. A band like Rage Against the Machine, on Sony Records, is in the awkward position of having less claim to the alleged rebellious and counterculture messages in their own lyrics than the crappy band that covers their songs down at your local watering hole on Friday nights.

Every five years or less we are presented with The New Music Marketing Term™, representing music that we supposedly have never heard before. Every time it is something we have heard before. Your favorite pet genre is no exception:

• Rock 'n' Roll = "How do we avoid the 'colored' labels of blues and jazz?"
• Heavy Metal = Blue notes at 73 BPM.
• Disco = "How do we avoid the 'colored' label of funk?"
• New Romanticism = "David Bowie was doing this 5 years ago."
• 80s Dance = "We can't say disco, it's a dirty word!"
• Industrial = "David Bowie and Kraftwerk were doing this 10-20 years ago."
• Death Metal = "I growl like Iron Butterfly and scream like 80s hair metal, too!"
• Speed Metal = Blue notes at 214 BPM.
• Grunge = Recycled heavy metal, punk, and indie guitar rock riffs over produced for zit-faced suburbia.
• Electronica = "We can't say Dance-Music-More-Mindless-Than-The-80s, it gives us away!"
• Nü Metal = Pedo-Metal

What is most disturbing is how many supposedly counterculture folks buy into and use these ridiculous marketing terms. A local hippie-ish 'free thinking, anti-authority' gentleman I once had the displeasure of hanging around had the annoying habit of labeling anything I listened to with loud guitars 'grunge.' Brilliant, man. Kurt Cobain invented distorted guitars!

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