Premier Rock Forum

hahaha!

Or "lol", dare I say it.

Never got the fuss about Sonic Youth. Don't like coffee either. Makes me ill. What am I doing here?

simmo wrote:What am I doing here?

Hiding from the green dildo monster who keeps on chasing you?

John C3 wrote:Since you ask, when I work I work in libraries, institutions where the commodity is neither sold nor pushed and where only a disregard of the rules of sharing the commodity brings about an economic factor in the consumer's relation to the institution.

Isn't taxation an "economic factor in the consumer's relation to the institution"?

Fuck Sonic Youth anyways!

simmo wrote:Never got the fuss about Sonic Youth.

They used to be a great band. They had The Hooks, The Chops, The Licks and all of those other things that good American Rock Music has in abundance, but they went a little mental once they started competing with bands like Guns 'n' Roses and Mötley Crüe.

steve wrote:

unarmedman wrote:Maybe a more appropriate question is:

What career band isn't out there to make money?

It is possible to make money (and probably just as much money, I would argue) without allying yourself with douchebags. Nobody has any qualms about bands making money. It's the allying with douchebags that people dislike.

I completely understand this point, I'm just trying to figure out how it's avoidable. Let me provide a case study:

My younger brother in law is in a band that has been playing in the orlando area for a few years. They've become increasingly popular, and recently released their first album. They've also been touring to support said album mostly in the southwest. They played SXSW last year and also soundtracked a movie that premiered there. They seem to be on the up and up.

So about 6 months ago my wife is telling me what they're up to and says that they're about to audition to play in a GAP ad. I immediately sour to this idea and ask why they would do that, that is so obviously against what he is about. (He is very much a music snob and has found a lion's share of his identity in music) She responds that it will give them a lot of money to help pay off the recent cd release, and help give them touring money.

So in proposing these questions I'm going to take it for granted that 1)GAP would be in the 'douchebag' column, and 2)Aspiring career musicians have to view this stage of their career in the same perspective as they would once becoming full-time career musicians (rock stars!). This guy, he really views his music as 'his business'. He refers to pedals as business expenses, etc. He's done this from day 1, absurd as it sounds.

So what can bands do? What are non-douche money makers, so startup bands and bands like Sonic Youth?

ERawk wrote:

John C3 wrote:Since you ask, when I work I work in libraries, institutions where the commodity is neither sold nor pushed and where only a disregard of the rules of sharing the commodity brings about an economic factor in the consumer's relation to the institution.

Let me get this straight, I'm a little unclear about this. Overdue fines at your library are enough to support a living wage? Exclusively (or is the "economic factor" you speak of one of many)? Your library is not getting funding from your respective government, which could partake in practices just as questionable as corporations (even on a local level), nor from other various patrons that could have possibly gandered their wealth from corporate ties (you know, blood money)? And if this is a library of a higher/secondary/primary education, your respective school/university/college doesn't accept donations from corporations if/when the taxpayers can't quite cut it (I'm not exactly sure if there is a comparable system to the American Public vs. Private system in the UK)? How thoroughly have you traced the money trail of your paycheck?

Synergy is a bitch, isn't it?

The library I worked in until last December was an academic library and was becoming more and more business oriented, as is the University to which it belongs. Which is why I now live in a tree on the Yorkshire moors and eat only my own freshly prepared excrement.

John C3 wrote:
Which is why I now live in a tree on the Yorkshire moors and eat only my own freshly prepared excrement.

LOLZ

I used to send a lot of shit at Starbucks when I was a kid. As much as I hate corporate hegemony, Starbucks are actually an unusually ethical company. Rather than write this out, I'll just quote verbatim -

CNN wrote:A pioneer in the area of corporate responsibility, Starbucks broke the mold in the fast-food industry by offering health-care benefits and stock (called "bean stock") even to part-time workers. It is now forging partnerships with coffee growers around the world that are designed to give growers a fair price for their beans -- often higher than the so-called Fair Trade price -- and to promote sound environmental practices. Starbucks also seeks to become more "green" at the retail level by, for instance, offering a 10-cent discount to customers who bring their own cups.

"They are innovative, distinctive, commendable and unfortunately not copied by many other companies," says David Vogel, who teaches at Berkeley's Haas School of Business and is the author of The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Sonic Youth record for Geffen, a company famed for putting the artist first (except that one time with Neil Young admittedly). They've put out some very noisy music since signing and each time Geffen has released it without interference. SY also have kids and they've put lots of that corporate money into some avant garde side-projects.

So, it's an pioneering coffee distributor and a noisy rock band on Geffen working on a CD together?
Sounds about right to me.

tommydski wrote:So, it's an pioneering coffee distributor and a noisy rock band on Geffen working on a CD together?
Sounds about right to me.

<scratching my head>