3 posts tagged “money”

Dear major labels:

If you want my money, meet or beat digital prices in physical stores. Please. I want to buy CDs. I want to support artists. I care about album art, I really do. I want to see that producers and mixers and people at the plant get paid, and I still spend more on music than 95% of the U.S. population.

But insulting me with $13 releases, especially during the first couple weeks the CD is out just earns my ire and rancor, which, in the end, costs you money.

Sincerely,

a fan of music.

Thing more important than the rest of this blog: I love the band name Sinking Ships. I also like that band's that band's full length, Disconnecting.

I know I'm a few steps removed from the mainstream, and I'd like to think that I'm at least unfamiliar with what's trendy now, (but then again, this account, and my iPod speak otherwise...) but I really have no connection with the Pitchfork crowd, I hope. And it's real easy to just speak about out of college 20 somethings searching for something in life to appeal to them as "the Pitchfork crowd", and I just fell for it.

Weren't they called hippies 40 some years ago? Slackers a couple decades later?

Or perhaps they are well-employed, in which case, they probably had to work for it. Saudi princes and the like notwithstanding, one does not get a high paying job in an emerging industry by being born into it. One must go through hard work to get there. And certanly there's some bias about manual labor versus office work, and I'm not going to deny that. I'm sure the guy working construction would spit on the indie/hipster's car from his lunch break 20 stories up, but to suggest that the indie/hipster effortlessly glided into the position is ridiculous. College isn't called college so guys can smoke weed and listen to the new "insert band pitchfork is jocking here" record. Those kids get thrown out or burned out rather quickly anyway. It's called college because it's hard work to get a degree.

And maybe I grew up strangely, and the culture is different now, but I don't expect a degree from a college to get me a high 5 digit job right out of the gate. That comes maybe, maybe 10-15 years later, with hard work and luck. Also, that job is going to mean less and less because of the rising costs of everything, inflation and this taxes on this war in Iraq.

But if we're going to play by the stereotype, then the only difference between them and I is in the bands and brands I buy.

Consider:
American Apparel Hoodies//Band hoodies
digital camera and blog// digital camera and blog
listens to obscure indie music//listens to obscure punk rock music
iPod//iPod
nose in the air approach to music//nose in the air approach to music (though I'd argue I'm making progress and stopping that praticular approach)
obsessive with music//obsessive with music

All I want is simply not to be thrown into the same category as these guys: L.A. Indie/Hipster Though this is only a joke, the fact that it is even being made about this group worries me:

On Wednesday, November 8, 2006, the morning after the California general election, it’s announced that a surprise write-in candidate has triumphed over Arnold Schwarzenegger. Our new governor is to be Steve Aoki, a.k.a. DJ Kid Millionaire — heir to the Benihana restaurant fortune and owner of the indie rock label Dim Mak (Bloc Party, The Kills, Das Oath). Aoki makes the following public statement: “I’m so inspired by the people of Los Angeles, the way they go to work every day. They’re fucking awesome."

Do people my age really expect to be earning six figure salaries right out of college? I'd like to think not, though that is what is getting reported, though I wonder how much of that is the media playing to predictable biases, but then again, I don't have the statistics, so I'll let it be.

I suppose I'm just sick of the media portraying my generation as a bunch of drug-abusing rich kid slackers.

P.S. However, if I hear one more example of quasi-moral outrage against the stereotype of "hipsters", I'm going to sit in my chair and fume/rant about it on my blog. Sure, saying I'm going to burst a vein in my forehead, grow 14 feet in 15 seconds and have my skin turn green sounds better, but let's not forget: I'm not important. That's not going to happen. A kid on the internet becomes angry. Unheard of, I know.

The list of vaugely new CDs to pick up, sorted by label:

Bridge 9:
OUTBREAK-You Make Us Sick, Failure
HAVE HEART-The Things We Carry
CARRY ON-A Life Less Plauged, It's All Our Blood
BETRAYED-Addiction EP

Revelation:
SINKING SHIPS-Disconnecting
SHAI HULUD-Hearts Once Nourished With Hope and Compassion, A Profound Hatred of Man: Shrapnel Inc
BOLD-The Search: 1985-1989

Drive Thru Records:
THE EARLY NOVEMBER-the Mother, the Mechanic and the Path

Fat:
NONE MORE BLACK-This is Satire
THE LOVED ONES-Keep Your Heart
WESTERN ADDICTION-Cognicide
THE LAWRENCE ARMS-Oh! Calcutta!
DEAD TO ME-Cuban Ballerina
PROTECT COMPILATION
RANDY-Randy the Band

Epitaph:
HOT WATER MUSIC- the New What Next, Caution
GREG GRAFFIN-Cold As the Clay
THE BOUNCING SOULS- The Gold Record
RAISED FIST-Sound of the Republic
THE AGGROLITES- S/T
THE DRAFT-In a Million Pieces

No Idea:
REHASHER-Off Key Melodies

Deathwish Inc:
EMBRACE TODAY-We Are the Enemy

Victory:
STREETLIGHT MANIFESTO-Keasbey Nights
SPITALFIELD-Stop Doing Bad Things
DARKEST HOUR-So Sedated, So Secure (deluxe)

Vagrant:
THE FUTUREHEADS-News and Tributes
TONY HAWK'S AMERICAN WASTELAND
FACE TO FACE-Shoot the Moon:The Essential Collection
ALEXISONFIRE/MONEEN-Split

Equal Vision:
BETRAYED-Substance
108-Creation. Sustenance. Destruction.

Jade Tree;
LIFETIME-Somewhere In the Swamps of New Jersey
NEW MEXICAN DISASTER SQUAD-Don't Believe
KID DYNAMITE-Four Years In One Gulp (DVD)
PAINT IT BLACK-Paradise

Some will be crossed out after Warped, but my suspicion is that this list can and will hold me for the year and the next.